Yonder Wandered Fluttershy

Chapters

2

Fluttershy woke up with a start to a grumbling sound, she was still in a bubble and no it had not been a dream that she was trapped in one drifting in a void. This was the fourth time she woke up to this and she had finished her carrot already what she assumed was days ago not wanting it to rot and become useless. She hadn’t really thought that dying of thirst would come before dying of hunger. What was there to say? There was no one else around for what looked like forever to say it to if she did have inkling as to what she would discuss.

Sighing she could use a drink right about now, she was really weak and suffering from the lack of food and drink. She looked around, the universe was a beautiful place and it just wasn’t a place that a pony from her world was ready for quite yet. The first lesson was a harsh and memorable one; bring a lot of food and water with you if you’re going to be traveling randomly through space.

Some part of Fluttershy wouldn’t give up the ghost as she looked around, she could see a sun that was not quite the one from her world. There were so many small orbs in quite distance from her and if only her bubble would float close enough to… did she feel some weight beneath her hooves?

Looking down Fluttershy couldn’t help but feel a bit of trepidation as her bubble started to fall towards a planet, a world not like hers that looked to be entirely covered by an endless sea. Her bubble slipped past the cold upper atmosphere easily enough, but when it hit warmer air the bubble suddenly burst with soft popping noise and she fell, she barely had any strength to give a half hearted scream. She fell for a few minutes before hitting a thick cloud and her momentum left her legs sticking out the bottom of the cloud she had struck.

She inhaled with her nose, the air smelled of salt water, quite a thick amount of salt water considering the world was obviously covered entirely by an ocean. She was just glad she could breathe at all and only hoped that whatever alien organisms or bacteria she was breathing in didn’t end up killing her. She weakly pulled each leg up and on top of the cloud and ripped up a large puff of the cloud up to hold to her mouth. She tiredly squeezed at the cloud and forcibly swallowed the fresh water that poured into her mouth.

Fluttershy was praying that what she was drinking was actually pure water as it tasted quite refreshing the second it hit her tongue. At this point she could care less if she was drinking acid rain; Fluttershy needed the reprieve of good fortune. What she truly needed badly right now was food, she didn’t see any other creatures in the sky and she rightly assumed that any creatures she saw here would be water bound.

Looking over the edge of the cloud and at the horizon on all sides of the cloud she stood upon, she saw nothing but sea water. At least she’d never go thirsty as a pegasus can separate fresh water from even the most toxic sludge, if there was any fresh water to be had in it that is. She wouldn’t have a large effect on the environment getting drinking water or even doing the pegasus form of showering.

What of food though? Fluttershy’s stomach gurgled again in the throes of pain, her ribs were noticeably showing and her hair was starting to get matted. Grabbing another chunk of cloud she squeezed it above her head to wash some of her weariness away. She wouldn’t want to swim in the unknown ocean without food clearly visible or near the surface; she’d have to eat kelp and moss. Her best chance was to find a nearby underwater mountain.

Fluttershy jumped straight up and flapped her wings, only to fall back into the cloud. She was too weak to fly or the atmosphere was a bit thicker than normal, it was definitely a combination of both as far as she could tell. She started taking apart her cloud and shaping it, drinking what water she could from it while creating a rectangular shaped cloud. Upon finishing she nodded her head to herself in thought; her weary mind was almost getting to her and at some point she might lose hope of ever getting home. As long as she lived there was a chance she’d see her friends again no matter how miniscule it seemed.

No matter what her condition or how her personality changed she wanted to get back home to her friends. Slowly flapping her wings while hugging the cloud tightly she drove it forward with minimal propulsion and tried not to cringe at the ache in her stomach and the lack of what wasn’t in it at the moment. She looked over to side of the cloud every now and then for a dark unmoving spot in the water near the surface, all she had to do was find a underwater mountain and there would be kelp and moss that would promote her survival no matter how lacking in nutrition it might be. It would be enough for her, it just had to be.

Even a little time on a planet covered in water with no landmarks was not kind to Fluttershy. Water was an easy resource to get and after only what she thought was a few hours she found food was truly hard to come by. It wasn’t a problem with finding it; it was a problem getting to it without getting attacked.

Fluttershy dove into the warm water having found a mountaintop in the sea; she immediately went to work leaving her cloud hanging just above the water like a pool toy waiting for her. She swam to the top of the underwater mountain and started collecting green and brown seaweed and some bright green moss that looked particularly safe to eat. When she felt movement of something swiftly going through the water she immediately went for the surface with what little she had gathered. She only got her cloud twenty feet up when she saw what had interrupted her foraging.

It was one of the many scary creatures in the murky waters of the planet and it shocked her to witness the suicidal starfish like creatures that, after failing to catch her on her way back to her cloud, blew up violently. The fact that they exploded and were covered in a strange muck from the glimpse she got told her something was very wrong; she didn’t believe that creatures would naturally do something like that.

Her eyes filled with tears as she moved her cloud higher from the surface of the planet, something felt very off now that she looked at the waters. She felt the danger from her position in the sky. She knew that for the next few days it would be hard for her to get enough food to fill her belly. She was glad that she was better at swimming then she was at flying, those lake krakens back in Ponyville really helped her prepare for this kind of situation.

After a while of floating above the water eating her meager earnings, she tried again several times to forage in the turbulent sea and the reactions of the native creatures kept getting even scarier. Whatever was going on here on this planet, Fluttershy didn’t feel the humongous lightning jellyfish creatures, the frighteningly mutated looking anglers or exploding shellfish were normal. Each time they tried to attack her in concert working as if they had one mind, they were however quite slow to react to her presence and only moved on her when she went deeper than ten feet at most as she could estimate without a visual aid. They only came after her a minute or so after she touched the waters of the infinite ocean giving her precious little time to dive down deep enough to get food for herself. It was as if there was an intelligence driving all the creatures on this planet to try and kill her even if it meant destroying themselves to do it should they fail, she got covered in foreign blood a few times in the last hour or so and was hit by stray bits of shell and or organs of the creatures that died trying to end her life.

She did manage to get more food and would be capable of surviving a little longer, but she was incredibly sad for the creatures that lost their lives trying to end hers. She barely even noticed that her hair wasn’t taking the salt water, blood and or bits of exploded aquatic creatures very well. Thankfully it all came out of her mane when she dried herself off using chunks of cloud as a towel to rub it all out until she was dry and clean.

She might need a comb or a brush sooner or later, but until then she could clean her hair out with cloud matter. It was something that Rainbow did all the time and she wanted to be remembered as she was when she left, so she didn’t feel like making drastic changes to her appearance at this time. She didn’t care how silly, inane or even vain the thought was, she wanted to retain her appearance as well as she could to live up to the standards Rarity thinks she somewhat has.

Eating the moss and kelp helped her stomach temporarily stop gurgling, those animals sacrificed their lives to try stopping her from getting food and she wouldn’t let their unusual sacrifices go in vain. The moss tasted pretty bad and the kelp was somewhat more tasteful, now if only she had some rice and vegetables to go with it. She had a little more strength, but all the swimming and moving a cloud around was taking its toll on her stamina which was nowhere near as lasting as her friends, such as Applejack in a particular.

Fluttershy may be stuck here forever, but her spirit wouldn’t let her quit. She was a survivor, a nature nurturing naturalist of a pony and she would push herself to live for her friends. She knew that even with the tenuously stretched connection that her friends missed her greatly and were wondering where she was.

“I want to go home.” Fluttershy muttered to herself curling up on her personal cloud, she didn’t like this world or the creatures that seemed to all be messed up by something. If only she knew a method for getting home or at least a direction to travel in to get there. She fell asleep upon her cloud and would collect more food tomorrow; survival was what she needed most right now.

The next day she had found out the truth of the problems of this world, upon waking up and once again scrounging the depths of the dangerous tides. She forged her path to filling her water resistant saddlebags with food. She stayed close to the surface as she could, not wanting to make more of the native sea creatures sacrifice their lives in such a horrific meaningless manner. Their blood was on her hooves quite literally.

The truth was that there was something hurting the creatures of this massive ocean, she was lucky enough to have been missed by whatever the metallic objects were that flew through the general areas she foraged at. They were dumping strange substances or chemical into the sea before flying up into outer space. Fluttershy knew they were foreign to this world and they were upsetting the natural ecosystem with whatever it was they were doing or trying to accomplish. She could do nothing to save this world from those metallic flying objects; she wasn’t strong, brave or a fighter like her friends. She was also technically a pacifist, even if she did truly want to make those metallic things go away to wherever they came from and leave these poor sea creatures alone forever by force.

The numerous unidentified flying metal objects were accompanied by even larger ones in fewer numbers that seemed to carry the smaller ones. They were all coming from the same sky from which she fell, what they were doing here wasn’t nice at all. She was glad that she was able to wrap her body in cloud and get close enough without being spotted; she just had to see what was inside the strange quick flying machines. The sludge they spewed was definitely toxic, of that she had no doubt. She could smell the stuff even from what she guessed was a mile up from the ocean, she would steer well clear of where they dumped their toxins. Fluttershy did not want to get sick without any chance of medical aid as there were no ponies here to help her if she became ill and was so far barely managing to avoid sickness in her weakly state.

Couldn’t they see that they were destroying what looked like a beautiful world from what she saw beyond the atmosphere? What could be a good enough reason for wanting to destroy the planet like this? It didn’t make any sense and it was madness that they’d hurt all life on this planet badly enough to drive the creatures of the sea into a suicidal frenzy. While Fluttershy hadn’t been here long she was already missing her nice safe home and all her wonderful little animal friends, her Homesickness couldn’t be cured as she had no idea where her home was amongst the stars.

She wished she could do something to stop the atrocities these hairy bipedal monsters were unleashing upon this world with their machinery and technology. They had to be the reason why the animals looked unnatural, even in this environment animals didn’t normally kill themselves without reason or worked outside the food chain to attack intruders. They were destroying this planet and they were doing it on purpose, she was a helpless little pony that could do nothing to stop them. She idly thought of sneaking aboard their massive ships to escape this world or to somehow convince them to leave, but she didn’t think she’d survive the attempt.

Fluttershy was fighting with herself before long over her indecision of whether surviving to see her friends again meant more to her than trying to save this planet and the life here that was being ruined by these monsters from the stars.

Author's Note

Far away from home she did go, by the fate of magic’s unfathomable power from her world she did flow. Will she ever make it home, bouncing around the many worlds one of which might be her tomb? Will she make friends or walk a lonely path as the wind blows, she was a small little mare but her strength certainly shows. A world of water where nature was being twisted, the seas of turmoil and pain leaves her eyes misted. Strange highly technological creatures from beyond the skies and the norm, they were destroying that what with time nature did form.

3

Nothing but ocean again, Fluttershy woke up to it every day for what she thought was the last few weeks and was barely surviving on what she could scavenge. Time was hard to track on this world and the shy mare couldn’t figure out how to tell when a day had went past considering how many times she saw a moon and or a glimpse of the sun in a day. She had come to a decision about the metal ships, she’d stay away from them until she had no choice but to try and board one of them. They stuck to a particular area of this world, as far as she could tell and they were clearly aggressive.

From what little she garnered the aliens were taking some of the sea creatures aboard and those creatures didn’t leave. Fluttershy didn’t want to become a statistic and stayed far away from those larger metal flying boxes, even if they could possibly help her get home. Every time she saw them they’d disgorge their triangular, bee or pyramid shaped metallic objects. What they did Fluttershy hadn’t a single clue. She didn’t get a good feeling from being near them, especially after having watched the triangular ships dump clearly toxic waste into the sea a few times ruining what was a beautiful and serene world. She had seen the creatures that hadn’t been polluted and they were docile as lambs.

The entire world was slowly becoming quite hostile to those who couldn’t live in the sky, given she was the only one that could Fluttershy was doing pretty well if in need of some more of that sea fruit she had recently discovered. It would be worse if she had to survive on a raft as touching the water drew those sea creatures near the polluted areas to come after her.

Fluttershy was just trying to get by and survive the best she could and she was doing well enough despite her meek physical strength. She was staying well out of the path of the sludge dumpers ships and she was feeling a bit healthier after having found a few bits of strange vegetation that she called sea fruit. Fruit trees that survived in sea water would have really interested Applejack; they were a wondrous bit of vegetation that had aided Fluttershy in staying healthy.

Missing her friends was the one thing that she kept coming back to as she pulled a green pear shaped fruit from her saddlebag and started eating it after rubbing it thoroughly against her personal cloud. She couldn’t stay on the planet of the endless ocean for much longer. Nibbling the fruit, it tasted sour but it proved that it was at least keeping her scurvy free.

Taking care of her teeth was a slightly different problem; she had to make floss from seaweed, figuring out a way to clean her teeth further then that without toothpaste was problematic. She was on a whole different world, what wasn’t her problem at the moment? The vast ocean was a fantastic place aside from all the danger, the less toxic and mutated creatures were much more enjoyable to study when the water was much clearer instead of murky and ominous.

She heard a large groaning sound in the sky and her ears went straight up, her pupils shrunk and with the fruit clenched in her mouth she turned around to look at what was coming. It was too late her little nest cloud she had formed for herself, it had shattered against the metal hull that flew through it. Fluttershy whimpered in pain as she felt her body hit something with the consistency of glass.

Fluttershy had quickly figured that her luck had finally run its course this day; it was larger than those small metal ships but not nearly as large as those box shaped ships. Looking through the glass window she could see a strange creature working the controls before it stopped and looking up blankly at her, it looked as coldly metallic as the surroundings inside the ship. Fluttershy squeaked and tried to back away from the window only to hear a strange voice, she looked around for the blank emotionless voice and it continued talking.

Fluttershy kept eating the fruit from her position on top of what she figured to be one of those strange flying space bound vessels, she spat a few seeds aside into her saddle bags and hoped they stayed dormant. She would have to be able to glide for a nearby cloud and hide out there once she finished her fruit. She needed her strength so she kept eating the fruit, it was all for not as two arrowhead shaped small ships arced out and away from the large flying object she sat upon.

Now there were three different voices talking as Fluttershy tried to make herself as small a target as possible and continued to eat the fruit carefully from her perch on top of the metallic vessel, trying not to choke on it as the memory of Angel inevitably popped up in her head. How were all her little friends doing without her? She could only hope her best pony friends were watching out for her other little friends.

One of the voices sounded angry and sarcastic, Fluttershy didn’t understand what he was saying but it was clearly a young hot blooded male that reminded her of how Rainbow Dash sounded. The other new voice sounded older and wiser, much more like a grandpa, but also male he seemed to be having a discussion with the other one with the emotionless voice coming up every now and then. They were taking positions above the winged pony seemingly to watch her like hawks while keeping pace with the larger slow moving metallic object.

Fluttershy knew they were talking about her, how could they not be? She quickly finished off her fruit and hoped that she could get away when they were distracted; there was no way she could fly faster than these things. She had seen what the other small ships like it could do and they had weapons that had somehow burned the sea creatures that flew out of the waters to their horrific deaths, she had stayed as far away from anything resembling that scene as she could. She still hadn’t figured out what the weapons were, but they were definitely more powerful than a unicorn’s horn and they flew much faster than anything she has ever seen.

She carefully moved back to the glass like substance and huddled up next to it, they wouldn’t fire their weapons at her if they risk destroying the larger flying metallic thing or damaging it. She had learned that the larger ones carried the smaller ones like a mother alligator would carry its young in its mouth, one of the things she remembered telling Pinkie Pie about when discussing Gummy once upon a time. Pinkie Pie took such good care of her pet.

Fluttershy could hear the two emotional responses from the two different voices as she went back to what she thought was relative safety. The older one seemed to be giving off an emotionally friendly positive outlook where as the other one was grumpier sounding, she didn’t know what they were saying. The only thing that mattered to her at this moment was whether she was safe or not just standing here pressed against the glass with the strange being working the panels below her position.

Breathing in deeply, Fluttershy tried to calm down. She took some comfort in the fact that these didn’t look like the ships that were dumping toxic wastes into the ocean and doubted the ones who were would care if she was an intelligent being or not. She shivered and curled up in her position making sure to keep her wings firmly tucked into her sides as she listened to the two voices that seemed to be in an argument of some sort. A fourth voice came up and it sounded a bit high pitched for a masculine voice, it seemed to be offering a compromise of sorts. Whatever it said Fluttershy soon found one of the arrowhead flying objects nearing her position.

Fluttershy quietly pressed her back to the glass to watch what was happening, the ship lowered and the top of it opened up somewhat. Curiously a creature with the head of the rabbit hopped out and started saying things in a caring tone she’d expect the same of herself to give to injured wild animals in their time of need. Her ears perked up and she slowly made her way across the surface towards the large rabbit, while paying a small bit of attention to the other arrowhead thing keep watch over her from above.

She didn’t know whether she could trust this thing or not, but she would do so if it didn’t mean her any harm. She looked up to its large grey ears and its old face; it looked to be a rather spry rabbit thing for being so old and they stood there looking at each other as her hair whipped lightly in the wind. She only noticed it as being strong the further out from what part of the large metal objects she had been standing on. After a moment the rabbit creature held out a hand like a minotaur would have and gave her a hopeful friendly smile.

It was offering her a bit of kindness, holding out her hoof she put her life in this rabbit creatures hands they stood there for a moment holding hand and hoof. The creature carefully and gently led her to its flying device. Stepping onto the wing and into it, Fluttershy found herself slowly squished in the cramped space which was slightly unpleasant.

Fluttershy patiently watched as the rabbit also got in and worked the things on this flying object and it closed up with them inside before it sped off causing her to squeak and cover her face with her hooves. After a moment she felt the rabbit creature give her what she assumed a few kind words and patted her head soothingly, as he kept his left hand on what she assumed was steering the flying vehicle around.

Looking out the window curiously in the cramped space, they sped away from the front of the large metallic ship where she had been stuck on. It was oddly designed and had four large wings, green lettering on the side she couldn’t read and a large red symbol of a fox with wings. The rabbit curved them gently around to where she could see a large opening. The one that they were currently flying towards that was well lit, the flying object slowed as they entered the larger flying object and then they stopped.

Fluttershy marveled at the wonders of the place she was now in, it looked to be designed to go through space like the other ones. She could see similar devices that looked different to the one she was being coaxed out of. They were all blue and white with a red winged fox painted symbol painted on them, a cutie mark perhaps? One looked like it was a box that rolled along the ground with a large horn with the hole in the end and the other one was being looked over by a vulpine creature that looked like a tall bipedal fox.

Her attention was quickly brought away from the fox hopping into the strange elongated transport by the snapping of the rabbit’s fingers and he motioned towards himself. Fluttershy warily hopped out of the flying object and looked around herself in wonderment, when a large blue jay like being gruffly came up to the rabbit and started conversing with him. Fluttershy put the rabbit between herself and the angry bird as they talked and she stayed at the friendly rabbits back.

A being that looked like a bipedal frog walked in and up to her without a pause and held out a device to her. She looked over the device and then at the one on his head… did he want her to wear it?

“Um… do you want me to take this?” Fluttershy said pointing a hoof at the device questioningly, the frog looked rather excited that she had opened her mouth and tried to communicate. After a moment the arguing rabbit and the bird, of which she hadn’t noticed moved away from her looked over at the frog questioningly before voicing something to him.

The frog thrust the strange device into her hooves as he moved past her causing her to fumble with it a bit as he started talking to the other two odd beings. Looking over the device she twisted and turned it carefully not wanting to break it, the frog came back to her but she was too distracted by the device to notice. That was until the frog lightly tapped her shoulder causing her to jump. He held out his hands showing a placating gesture, she nodded at understand that he hadn’t meant to scare her.

The frog motioned to the device he was wearing on his own head and motioned for her to put it on and was giving her directions on how to do so, nodding Fluttershy understood the instructions well enough.

The pony placed the device on her head making sure to settle it down correctly around her ears and mane not knowing what to expect, but nothing happened to her thus far and if they meant her any harm they could have done so since then. The bird looked particularly jumpy with that strange device he kept fingering with his feathered hands, the rabbit and frog seemed much more at ease.

Having slipped the device on her head the frog touched something on the device and a small microphone popped out, Fluttershy knew what a microphone was at least and she poked and decided to test it. She felt like one of those pop diva ponies that Rarity would always go on about.

“Testing, one, two, three… is this thing on? What does this thing even do?” The frog looked particularly excited at her testing the microphone and talking into, all the excitement soon left them when they heard a voice, one that drew all of their attentions. The fox was standing on the elongated vehicle; he was motioning to the frog and yelling something to him, he swiftly crawled back into it after he was done saying his part. The fox sounded particularly serious, grim and possibly even passionate?

The frog slapped his forehead and motioned for Fluttershy to stay put, she moved over to an out of the way corner to sit down as she watched the frog tinker with something causing a bunch of light wielding bits of moving metal to pop out and she watched as they moved along the elongated vehicle poking at it in several points.

Fluttershy was curious, this was the first time she’s ever met real live aliens before and they didn’t seemed particularly evil despite the grim air about them. She watched as the hangar start flashing lights and she spread her wings pressing herself into the corner and watched as the vehicle slid forward and dropped away from the large flying object created a huge splash in the ocean.

“Did they really just…” Fluttershy asked shocked at what they just did, they dropped the fox into the ocean in that vehicle. Didn’t they know that it was dangerous down there? What were they doing here and why were they doing it? To say that she was completely out of her depth here would have been a pun worthy of Pinkie.

None of those other more box like ships dropped any live beings in the water, just toxins. She wandered over to the edge to see the elongated vehicle calmly sink into the ocean. She heard a voice calling out and she turned about and saw the frog waving to her to come back and away from the edge, she trotted over to him and wondered what was going on. Were they here to help the endless ocean from the toxic waste dumping invaders? She could only wish this were true.

Unfortunately for Fluttershy, she had just unknowingly got brought aboard a ship in the midst of an intergalactic war. Harmony was just not something that the entire universe ran on.

4

One would think first contact with an alien race or in this case multiple races would happen years into the future of the pony race, the accidental astronaut Fluttershy would disagree with that as she was currently making an interesting first contact. One where she figured out that the crew or in particular the large friendly bipedal frog was at least trying to prove she was of an intelligent mind. The wear and tear resistant saddlebags should have been somewhat of a dead giveaway.

The device she had emplaced on her head felt a bit funny, it covered the top of her forehead and swept around her ears to her cheeks where a microphone popped out of the right side of the device. She still had little inkling as to why it was given to her, but she knew it was a headset like a pair of earphones that didn’t cover her ears.

In front of her the frog was gave her the simplest test in the universe, one of which she was sure Twilight would either roll her eyes at or fall into an ever rising panic that caused a domino cascading effect of epic proportions. Fluttershy completed the test well enough and was completely patient with her new friends or at least she thought they were friends. All she had to do was put the objects on the screen into their proper slots after watching the frog show her how to do it, it was basically puzzle solving on the magic box thing that reminded her of a movie projector screen only a lot more interactive.

Next the frog wrote down a math equation, something she recognized since her race had the same style of performing mathematics and she wrote up a more complex math problem which the frog solved with an amused smile. She nodded to him that he had gotten it right, at least math was somewhat universal between ponies and these aliens, the written and spoken languages were completely different though.

A voice was heard yelling and the frog flinched, he hit a few buttons and the screen popped up with a view of a beautiful scene underwater. The scene slowly flowed towards some ruins and they were covered in the toxic sludge that had been dumped into the ocean. The frog had made some form of comment in appreciation to what they were seeing before the toxic sludge; Fluttershy whimpered sadly and stared at the beauty of the seas slowly turning into a nightmarish place. It was moments later that the screen showed warped and twisted sea creatures coming out of the woodworks towards what she assumed to be a real time movie camera or that was what she thinking of it as being.

After a moment she heard what she knew to be the fox’s voice coming from the scene and it seemed to be urgent and the frog started to say something as the waters started to get darker. She heard the rabbit make a comment from wherever he was and the frog stated something in a sad tone, Fluttershy then saw something fly in front of a camera. It looked like two commas glued together and were spiraling towards the threatening creatures before violently exploding. Twin blue lasers lanced out from the camera and they were witnessing the deaths of the mutated creatures while the fox speaking in an even normal tone but there was a hint of fear and anxiety in it.

She poked at the screen with a hoof sadly and tears sprung up in her eyes, those poor creatures, they could probably rest easier now that they were no longer in pain. Did the fox really have to kill them like that? More of those spiraling balls of light flew through the water after the frog tried to make an upbeat comment. They were lighting up the darkness of the ocean very well and allowed the fox to avoid the dangers that kept coming at him. The camera rolled, tilted and bounced with the movements of the vehicle he was in.

The frog stared at her with a wondering look and noticed that she was looking at the monsters on the screen as they died; he gave her a gentle hug. At least the fox wasn’t needlessly killing everything; he was only attacking the mutated creatures that came at him. Still a lot of them perished, squid like things, clams, anglers, small jellyfish, eels and some things she couldn’t even logically compare to from her world. Those exploding shellfish and starfish were around as well, all of them were twisted from the more peaceful creatures she had met foraging earlier that let her be.

Fluttershy didn’t like watching this, she heard the bird made a disparaging comment about something and he wasn’t even in the room for her to glare at. Didn’t he see that the lives of innocent creatures were being ruined? Suddenly the fox spoke up in an alert tone, she didn’t see anything on the screen but the frog next to her was doing something with haste. Turning back to the screen she saw something open up and a giant eye was staring right back at her, she screamed and leapt backwards. The frog looked up at what she saw and gawked as it became quite clear what had scared her.

It was huge and it was absorbing and spewing toxins into the surrounding waters, it was truly hideous in appearance and it certainly didn’t look friendly. It looked like a clam that was much bigger than the vehicle the fox took down there, Fluttershy didn’t know whether to feel sorry for the fox or the creature for becoming what it did.

It wasn’t a long fight, but the vehicle the fox was in took a pounding from the monstrosity and the monstrosity itself had its muscles that helped keep its dome shut shredded and its eye blown apart in a very bloody fashion sending chunks of it flying everywhere scattered along the ocean floor which became filled with a mist that turned the water red. There was a sudden cheerful sounding dialogue between the four emotional beings she had met, the water even cleared up slightly as the vehicle the fox was piloting was heading towards the large flying object she was on. The large vehicle dipped itself slightly into the ocean to receive the damaged underwater traversing device.

Fluttershy really needed to learn how to talk to these people as she was upset by what she had just seen. She had to learn more and why they were doing what they did; though she had some idea of what was going on she didn’t know the full scope of it. She wanted to understand why this tragedy had to occur.

By this point Twilight would have used some kind of translator spell and would have fixed the communication issue, Fluttershy did not have that luxury. Rainbow would have brute forced her way through the issue and probably would want to fly one of the arrowheads. Applejack would have probably started an alien fruit plantation by somehow floating the underwater trees on the ocean to create an artificial island. Goodness knows what Pinkie would have done should she have ended up here, probably steal one of the vehicles on this spaceship and then subsequently crash it in the most bizarre and silly manner she could possibly get away with. Rarity would do nothing but go on about fashion this and that, even in the direst of situations not to mention holding her appearance up to an incredible standard with minimal supplies on hoof.

Out of all of her friends Fluttershy figured she was the most level headed easy going one, even if she knew she was shy beyond all reason. She understood animals on an emotional level; she could even speak with them as equals and even hold conversations for long hours about how to prepare nuts for winter the correct way. She would take this one hoof at a time, she was nowhere near her home or even with her friends right now and had no right to force her views upon others especially if It was going to get them killed or without having a full idea of the situation. The rules outside her world were definitely going to be different and on some level she knew she was very frightened by this, she just had to keep calm and keep a goal in mind. Find a way to get home, but not to the point that the cost would be who she truly was and if she was gone long enough who she truly was might not even be the Fluttershy that left. It was a sobering thought that made her whine slightly at the possibility. New goal, never ever forget her friends and the world that she was born on.

Fluttershy calmed down and gained a determined look, she would communicate with these male creatures and she would find out what their purpose for killing that admittedly monstrous foul sludge and monster spewing gigantic clam. During the battle it had created long giants worms that reminded her of viral parasites just on a larger scale, they were equally frightening looking as the explosive pearls and the bile it constantly spewed everywhere.

Fluttershy moved over to the frog and poked him, causing him to jump, inhaling slowly she decided to say something. His enjoyment at the ending of a life, even one as twisted as that one was, felt wrong and she would give voice to her feelings even if that voice was not understood.

“I know you may not understand what I have to say, but I think that what is and has happened here to be a horrible thing. I hope that when you can finally understand what I have to say, that we can part on better terms then we’re going to right now. I just want you to know that those poor creatures didn’t choose to be like that and they had lives before they were turned into what they became.” Having finished speaking to the frog, she solemnly turned and walked out of the room with her head down not waiting for a response or even hearing one in the silence.

Fluttershy idly wandered the corridors of the ship until she ran into the paunch of the rabbit and he was looking down at her with a sympathetic smile, his eyes spoke of seeing worse then what she probably had today. He put a hand on her withers and started to lead her to a room and then he made her sit at a table. It wasn’t a large room by any standards; the rabbit showed her three pictures floating in the air.

One picture was green and had a plant on it, one was a swirl of red and green having both an image of a plant and animal on it and the last was just red having only the indistinct animal on it. Fluttershy tilted her head at the images; she flicked an ear in question at the rabbit and tried to get an idea of what he wanted of her. She shrugged in confusion, the rabbit got the message and opened his mouth to clack his teeth together and then rubbed his stomach before pointing at the images.

Reaching up with a hoof Fluttershy daintily hit the plant option as to point out her dietary needs and then remembered something. She unstrapped her saddlebags from her body and placed it upon the table much to the rabbit’s interest as she had seemed to have forgotten about them ever since their spaceship slammed into her. Opening the bag she pulled out some of the fruit she had found in the ocean she only had three left, she also had some kelp wrapped around a wad of moss. She bit off a chunk of kelp and offered some to the rabbit and he shook his head no, she pointed to the moss and again he declined.

Fluttershy held up a fruit to him and placed it before him and placed one back into her saddlebags, leaving the moss and kelp for her to eat with a single fruit for dessert. It was good enough for her to survive on and she wanted her friend to know what she has been eating, she also separated some moss and kelp if he felt the need to look at it. The rabbit picked up the fruit and scrutinized it, whatever created the images sent down a grid of light to move over the fruit length and width.

A new image lit up in front of Fluttershy with a picture of the fruit and the trees it came, plus a picture of this planet she had seen before she entered its atmosphere where her bubble finally popped. The mare quietly watched as he read whatever the squiggles were telling him and he smiled and took a bite out of it giving a simple hum of appreciation to the sour flavor. He went through the process of looking over the seaweed and the moss; he pushed it back towards her while sticking to the fruit she had graciously given to her host finding no issues with what she has been eating.

After a while of watching her eat, he looked towards her rear end and brought up several images of insects that looked nearly like butterflies but not quite. He was curious about her cutie mark? Fluttershy knew he wasn’t a pony and wouldn’t understand the meaning behind it, but it wouldn’t hurt to try and help him understand. She waved a hoof to get his attention she pointed at her ball of moss and made a wide exaggerated motion with her hooves. Nodding a picture of the planet showed up, she looked around the floating images surrounding the planet until she came to the fish. She touched it and smiled as she watched a wave of them swim through the air above her made of nothing as if by the magic of a unicorn that specialized in illusions.

Her wings fluttered in excitement at watching the images flitter about through the waterless air above her, she went through several of the creatures she had seen in the ocean that weren’t mutated by those other space vessels. Without saying a word she bonded with the rabbits by showing him how she saw nature and its beauty by pointing out details about each creature with a hoof and motioning about why she was fascinated about each one. The rabbit scrutinized what she was showing him and started to smile a little as he watched her point out details that most wouldn’t catch or think important about all these creatures.

The rabbit was smiling at her excitement and silent lesson of appreciating the beauty of nature; he frowned a bit after a moment in a lull of her teachings. He quickly summoned up a picture of a familiar box like spaceship design. Fluttershy frowned at it and looked at the images of the mutated animals he brought up next. The rabbit pointed from one thing to another and then created a frowning face with the images. Fluttershy nodded shyly hiding her face, sadness and tears behind her mane. The rabbit gained a stern look on his face at seeing her being so sad and clenched his right hand. It was not in anger but simply in grief, he apparently didn’t like those flying boxes either and looked away with a faraway stare in his eyes.

A voice is nowhere as prominent as an action. The things you show others can mean more then the things you can possibly ever say, Fluttershy had learned this from watching the body language of hundreds of animals and the one she was communicating to learned this by the wisdom of his age.

Author's Note

The young celebrate a victory and will always look towards the future.

The old see the tragedies commited to achieve the victory.

6

Fluttershy would have never imagined being in the middle of a war. Being in the middle of it and actually being an active part of it were two completely different things. She really didn’t like the idea of killing living beings unless it was by accident, in self defense when you had no other choice or if you were a predator and needed to eat something.

She has been on the ship for an entire month, in that time she helped out the ones who were actually a very active part of the war. She made a little niche for herself onboard by cooking, cleaning and just overall making them feel at home and comfy after a very trying battle.

Thus far they had passed by a second murkier water planet in the system, one where it was too late to stop the enemy from polluting it to the state it was in now. The enemy had totaled the environment of the planet in its entirety, making Fluttershy cry at the ruination brought to a lot of innocent life that the planet once held.

Leaning back and sighing from her work in the kitchen, she thought the team was incredibly good at flying and even Rainbow would have wanted one of those fighter ships. Fluttershy stayed behind on the main transport of the four mercenaries while they were currently busy blowing up a weapons factory down on the next planet.

They had a run in with the grumpy bird’s old friend on the ruined planet and she sounded rather nice. Fluttershy even heard Rob, the mechanical voice of the ship, mentioning her modified fighter following them down to the planet they were at now after they off the tank. It was nice to know that their friend was willing to help them, but if she wanted to help so much then why didn’t she just come onto the ship and ride with them instead of following behind them?

While they were busy down on the planet, Fluttershy was doing things that needed to be done around the ship that she thought would be nice way to return their kindness for taking her onboard their home as she didn’t want to be a freeloader. She liked the sea world she landed on, but she wouldn’t want to live there for the rest of her life and it was thanks to them she might be on the path back home already.

Fluttershy cleaned, dusted, talked to Rob over the ship wide communications array and was preparing a meal for the crew once they got back from their life or death struggles. She wasn’t worried about the safety of the crew as they’ve already pushed back invaders from their main home world, punctured through an entire fleet while devastating it, stopped pollution on the planet she was on and took down one of their enemy’s bases on the previous planet. Not to mention the many skirmishes they got into on the way through all these places up to their new mission on the resource heavy planet of Macbeth.

She was better off not thinking about them being so close to death as often as they were with entire throngs of things shooting at them from all angles everywhere they went in the name of peace and money. Fluttershy was more surprised they were more worried about finding a place to safely offload her as right now it was looking to be a hard thing to do, much harder considering they are all warming up to her and they were in the middle of some dangerous territory.

The frog, whose name was Slip, was the engineer that maintained all the more technical stuff onboard and he would have made a great friend for Twilight. He enjoyed vegetation as much as any pony would, but he tended to like bugs in his food crushed or still alive. He was quite easy to be friends with and had a positive outlook on things, though he was a bit insensitive at times. She hoped he liked the salad she was making for him; especially after they had a long talk about what happened on planet Aquas and gained a good understanding of one another.

The rabbit, whose name was Pep, was the lone surviving member from the original team of mercenaries and was as much an advisor as he was an experienced pilot. Fluttershy had quite a few philosophical debates with him. He spoke fondly about his daughter since she reminded him so much of her; he usually did this when their debates stalled. Said debates about why true peace was never really achievable or even feasible and that a little chaos was always a good thing, they stopped when things became too thought provoking. Fluttershy knew he would like those vegetables that look liked carrots in his salad. Maybe with some vinaigrette she had made from the alien plants of this solar system. Applejack and Rarity could have gone on for hours with him on any subject when it came to philosophy.

The bird, whose name was Falco, had as much ego as Rainbow Dash and they would have been best friends from the moment they started boasting at each other. Sure he may seem aggressive and antagonistic, but he truly cared about all those who could get into his abrasively tough heart which went to no ends when it came to reminding Fluttershy of Gilda the griffon. She also knew that he liked her and would never openly admit to warming up to her, he was too prideful for that. Instead of saying it openly, it was seen in his actions. If she was about to do something where she could end up hurting herself he’d immediately drop whatever he was doing to scold her about it, then he would help her with the task in question so she’d remember how to do the chore the next time they needed her to do so. She hoped he liked the soup she made just for him, it tasted a bit salty and bland but the aftertaste was worth it the initial flavor which wasn’t bad at all and he was definitely going to need some coffee when he got back, as the stuff really calmed him down.

The name of the fox was in fact Fox; he had a personality that Fluttershy considered very brave. He was also an awkward goofball in most social situations considering he was as bad as she was; though you’d never know it by how graceful he flew and how focused he was on bringing peace to his solar system. The red winged fox symbol was practically his cutie mark; it defined him and his family that he protected by attracting more attention to himself then his best friends could take off of him. From what she could tell he always drew more fire then his friends ever could by an exponential amount, just watching the recording of him puncturing a hole in an entire fleet of those large ships with his fighter alone was breathtaking. It was only a few minutes into the fight when she heard the recorded message of the enemy commander telling them all to focus their fire on Fox alone.

Fluttershy needn’t lecture Fox on all the lives he was taking or how his anger could get to him and lead him astray; he knew all too well what he was doing in this war by fighting as hard as he could to stop it. She hoped she got that dessert recipe right, Fox needed something sweet in his bitter life after having lost his father to war and treachery. He definitely needed more friends and time to relax; he was surprisingly young to be putting so much stress on himself, not to mention the responsibility he was shouldering was enormous. It wasn’t very healthy for him to hold all his sadness in all the time.

The last crew member didn’t need any food; his name was Rob robot model sixty four. Fluttershy didn’t entirely understand what he was; just that he was some kind of magical construct as far as she was concerned. At first he seemed like this entirely emotionless thing that simply stated stuff, but after having spent some time around him he started to become strange and more proactive. He asked if there was anything she needed or if there was anything he could do for her whenever he saw her moving about the ship. He was connected to the entire ship that was the home to Fox and his friends, so he had the ability to show her whatever information she wanted to know had she bothered to ask for it. He’d show her without hesitation and seemed to enjoy just being in her presence, got less mechanical sounding the more time he spent in her company.

“Rob, do they need us to pick them up yet? I’m almost finished with the meal, oh and is Falco’s friend coming too? I hope I made enough for all of them.” Fluttershy hummed softly as she moved about, the four guys couldn’t cook to save their lives and yet they had a kitchen on this ship that was completely underused and oddly stocked. Eating nothing but nutrient bars had to get real old, they tasted like various types of fruit and as Applejack would tell her, even too much of a good thing can be bad. That is why every now and then Applejack would sneak a pear into her diet sometimes just for a change up of flavor.

“I will make an inquiry if she is coming onboard Miss Fluttershy. The mission is now complete we are heading down to the planet for pick up. The enemy forces have lost their ability to generate weapons in a large capacity, the estimated lives saved by this operation is in the millions and the crew are all safe and accounted for with minimal need of repair.” Rob would always give Fluttershy something positive to think about, he always seemed to be trying to please her and make her happy with infallible calculations and logic. After a moment of silence he spoke up again. “Yes, pilot Katt Monroe is coming to dinner at the request of Fox on the terms of a business proposition.”

“I’ll set another spot at the table then, thank you Rob.” Fluttershy hadn’t met Falco’s friend yet, but she sounded nice after having watched her help them out on the planet called Zoness.

“That would be prudent Miss Fluttershy, you are always welcome. Ever since you came aboard crew and ship efficiency has gone up twenty percent.” The more warm sounding mechanical voice answered back, Fluttershy blushed a little at receiving so much praise when she really wasn’t doing all too much except the little things.

It wasn’t ten minutes late that Fluttershy was witness to a pink furred white haired bipedal cat entering the area where she had set up a meal for the weary pilots. They both stared at each other as soon as they made eye contact, Fox and the others looked at the offerings on the table curiously while Fluttershy and the cat looked each other over.

“Hey when did you get a new member, especially one that can cook? Meow that smells good, some food would hit the spot right about now and I could care less if the nudist made it.” The cat person licked her lips as she sniffed the air; she was immediately at the table first before anyone else. Fluttershy wondered why she had to point out that she was nude so bluntly, she had never bothered to ask for something to make clothes with and was okay with just being au natural. Fox and friends were used to how her culture worked by this point and she understood their need to wear clothing; this cat didn’t have the luxury of knowing about her home yet.

“Actually she’s what my business proposition is about Katt… but before that we better eat, wouldn’t want her efforts to make a meal for us to go to waste after all we just went through.” Fox rubbed the back of his head as he looked at the soup after being doled out by Fluttershy, after getting a taste he became hooked on it and so did his friends when they got theirs. “Fluttershy this is wonderful, are you sure you’re not from any of the planets in this system? Let me introduce you to Katt Monroe…. who seems to be enjoying your cooking a little too much.”

“Well excuse me if I hadn’t had a decent meal since I was shot down and had to steal that experimental Venom made Invader mark three fighter which I modified a bit to fit my particular needs. It was touch and go for a while and I really needed a distraction to get off Zoness, your arrival was quite fortunate for me to that end.” Katt let out a belch and continued to stuff her mouth with salad and soup. “This is so good after having to eat nothing but crap for half a year. You guys are so lucky that I stole that fighter, it really helped out with the war effort given they had to stick with making cheap knock offs. Oh the things my Catspaw can do, it’s top of the line like your fighters happen to be with all kinds of bells and whistles. Managed to snag the blueprints and destroyed most of the data on it so they couldn’t exactly recreate it. If you have a proposition for me I’ll gladly hear you out and lend my skills to the cause, but only if I can get more of that soup!”

“Well I’m glad you’re enjoying the food.” If making friends in space was going to be this easy then Fluttershy would be home in no time, she smiled vibrantly. Katt reminded her of Pinkie Pie, vibrant and upbeat especially for being stuck on a planet worse off than Aquas was for half a year given it was turned into, as insensitively as Slip called it, a complete dump.

The meal was met with approval all around about her cooking, she did enjoy caring for others and in turn they were caring for her as well. The shy pony got to know a bit about Katt Monroe, she was a rebellious pilot that was being a constant thorn in the Venom Army’s side and was once part of a gang that Falco took part in. The Venom Army was what fox and his friends were fighting against and were the ones causing all these horrors and pain throughout the solar system. As they were finishing up the food Fluttershy noticed something was off with Fox and he had a frown on his face.

“Okay now it’s time to talk about that business proposition I have for you Katt, you most likely know where we’re heading to next right?” Fox started slowly, Fluttershy noted he was trying not to look at her.

“Yeah, but I’m not that good a pilot. I’m not nearly suicidal enough like you guys to go for that kind of run.” Katt seemed to go from peppy to instant worry within seconds, what she said kind of scared Fluttershy a little. She thought Katt was a good pilot considering how well she helped out Fox and his friend twice already.

“I’m not asking you to help us with putting a large hole in area six, I’m asking you to transport something for us and to make sure it gets to some form of safety.” Only now did Fox look in Fluttershy’s direction, the pony looked away shyly knowing what he was getting at.

If it was dangerous enough that Fox can’t risk her being around, then it was for the best that she wasn’t around for them to worry about. Fluttershy understood this well enough; it was like when Twilight first became a princess. They were so focused on Twilight’s status and keeping her safe that they stopped being the good friends they were entirely because of it, in this case she knew what it felt like now. Except it wasn’t exactly the same thing as she wasn’t as important as to be needed for an entire planets continued survival by controlling both the sun and moon; it was for the best that she left with Katt instead of putting herself in needlessly danger.

“I’ll take a babysitting gig over that suicide run gladly. Just don’t die doing what you have to in ending the war once and for all; I think it’s kind of insane but if you are able to pull it off…” Katt Monroe trailed off and saw that the four men at the table were already feeling the loss of their nude space hippie already. “So how soon do you want me and your little cuddle toy here gone?”

“As soon as possible and when she’s done gathered her things, I’m paying you up front right now so don’t disappoint me by just running off with the money. After you two set off we’re going to head off full tilt into area six and we’re not stopping for anything once we start our assault, as after we go through that we’ll have direct access to Venom and we can take the fight to him once and for all.” His tone seemed a little too cool, but Fox was really making the right decision here to have her away from the action. “You’ve already been exposed to more than enough horrors of our war than I’m comfortable with Fluttershy.”

“Oh, its okay, I’m sure everything will work out in the end.” Fluttershy said honestly, she hoped them the best and expected the worst after hearing area six described as a ‘suicide run’ by Katt. As she exited the room she turned her head back to them and smiled softly. “I guess I’ll go get some things together right now, is it alright with you if I take a few things with me? I mean if it’s not a bother if I take some supplies that we might need; maybe I can take a while in doing that to give you some time in case any of you need to say something to me before I have to leave with Katt?”

Fluttershy exited without waiting for a response and started to the room she had on this ship gathering together some things the crew had shared with her. She had a picture of the entire team, the translating headset from Slip, a medical kit and a small box full of nutrient bars as they had a surplus enough to last those two years. This was all she felt she could really take from the ship aside from her saddlebags which were still in good condition. It was going to be hard saying goodbye to her new friends that she might never see again. It only made her think of her pony friends again; she was also hoping that her house in Equestria would still be standing if she ever got back home.

7

Fluttershy was in the hangar of the ship and looking at the four pilots who were there to see her off before they went to a more dangerous place, a planet that was aptly named Venom. Even a single whiff of that planet’s atmosphere could kill a hundred ponies in seconds because it was just that poisonous. Even touching the dirt there was deadly.

“Thank you for coming to see me off and everything else you’ve done for me.” The pony gave each one a hug and a kiss on the cheek except for one who she was saving for last; she smiled up at Pep as she finished her hug with him. “I remind you of your daughter and you remind me of a good friend.”

“Glad to be of service young lady, I guess this is goodbye huh? You be okay you hear me?” Pep said with a smile, Fluttershy nodded and turned to the last target of a hug and smooch.

“What are you looking at space hippie?” Falco was as abrasive as ever leaning against the wall with his feathered arms cross and looking away.

“A friend, even if he’s a little upset that I’m leaving.” Fluttershy hugged him wrapping her hooves around his waist and after that with a flap of her wings she got up to his cheek with a quick kiss. Whereas others had leaned down for her she had to fly up to him, he didn’t try to stop her either and just blushed slightly but kept trying to play it cool just like Rainbow Dash would.

“Just get going already, we’ve got a mission to accomplish and we can’t wait hours on end for you to leave you stupid space hippie.” Falco had a slight smirk as he said this.

“Okay, Ms. Monroe do you have everything ready?” Fluttershy trotted her way up to the pink ship, the Catspaw it was slightly larger than the fighters Fox and his friend used and it was her transport to safety. It could seat two comfortably and was created to be a long range fighter that can go from planet to planet without needing a transport ship, its main purpose was to be a heavy assault bomber and Katt had gutted it slightly to be a bit roomier. She had already put her saddlebags onboard in the back of the fighter and all she needed to do was climb in.

“Yep, just got to get my last bit of cargo onboard and she’s taking her dear sweet time saying goodbye to this gaggle of idiots.” Katt didn’t look up from what she was doing and was busy running her claws over several things in her ships open cockpit and was doing last minute checks on all her systems before launch. “It’s nice to see they have the time to say goodbye to such a sweet thing like you, the universe needs more innocent people like you Fluttershy and less people who’d prey on that innocence.”

“I’m sure you’ll get home eventually Fluttershy, but until then we hope that you’ll like Corneria. Your best bet for getting there Katt is by cutting between sector X and Solaris and going to Katina for a supply stop.” Fox ruffled Fluttershy’s mane causing her to squeak adorably and he chuckled lightly at that. He hefted her up onto the ship when she could have just as easily flown up and into it. Fox’s tone got serious again and he held out a slip of paper which Katt took as Fluttershy crawled in behind her piloting seat. “They recently fought off a bunch of Venom Army invaders and had a bit of a time destroying a Venom super weapon, so it should be safe from there on out once you reach that point. If you run into any trouble once you arrive ask for my buddy Bill Grey and tell him Fox is a friend of yours, if he’s still stationed there he should help you out. If you get attacked or can’t reach Katina for some reason then launch an SOS on this frequency in that general direction and try to go for Fichina instead and ask for a Lucy Hare. She should be able to look out for Fluttershy and take her in if you can’t reach Corneria.”

“My daughter sent me a message saying that Fichina was secured after the Venom Army threatened the base there with a bomb. My daughter is a good pilot in a pinch and helped them out by defusing the bomb that the Venom Army planted.” Pep was certainly proud of his daughter saving the day, his daughter the astrophysicist, pilot and a hero. She may be able to one day find Fluttershy’s home planet.

“Got it, I don’t think any of you are going to die except maybe Slip unless he really steps up his game. See you later Falco, have fun getting your tail feathers singed and may your ego be ever so bloated since that’s how I like it.” Katt giggle at that and gave them time to clear the hangar. She closed up her ship and looked back at Fluttershy with a smile. “Did you go to the bathroom before you got in? I’m just asking because it’s going to be a long while before we come across another toilet like the ones they have onboard, they’re so freaking clean I could probably eat a three course meal on them without getting sick.”

“I’m okay Katt and thanks for the compliment.” Fluttershy received a surprised look from the pink humanoid cat. “I did a lot of cleaning for Fox and his team, it was the least I could do after they helped me get off of Aquas and after they saved all those poor sea creatures from those mean polluters.”

“I just knew it, no guy I know would ever keep a toilets that sparkling clean. This is the Catspaw, we’re heading out and we’re going to full throttle once we get out into open space to hopefully avoid any trouble.” Katt started flicking several controls and the ship lifted into the air causing Fluttershy to jump slightly with fright. It took the pony a moment to calm her nerves down before they shot out of the hangar at insane speeds causing the mare to give off a pitiful hardly audible scream.

“Stay safe and good flight to you Katt!” Fox was last heard saying over the communications as they were quickly getting out of range.

Katt and Fluttershy were safely heading away from Macbeth and there were no enemy signals on the radar. After a moment she started to work something on her controls and then she leaned back to relax.

“Well got anything you want to talk about Flutter? It’s going to be a while and this ship is now on autopilot so I’m not going to be all too busy unless something goes wrong.” Katt looked behind her seat and snickered at the poor pegasus lying on her back with her hooves in the air. “Yeah, Catspaw has kind of a kick doesn’t it? The guys who designed this ship knew what they were doing and it has quite a good cruising speed, it’s just so unfortunate that it requires me to reroute the power from the weapons to get it going this fast without compromising the shields.”

“Um… I’m not exactly the most technologically savvy pony Katt, but that all sounds very nice. My people aren’t exactly this technologically advanced, though we do technically have the ability to get into outer space at this point in time. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience to be the first of all pony kind to come out this far.” The more she thought about it, the paler Fluttershy got. “Oh I hope they don’t make a big deal of me being the first space traveling pony, I really don’t like large amounts of attention.”

“How come you don’t like attention? You’d be a celebrity of your entire species to be the first one to go into space, even if it was admittedly against your will that you did. You get lost and then to return home valiantly to accolades of having survived your experience with the bubble and with tales of what it’s like out here… well after you can figure out how to find your home that is.” It had been an intriguing topic of discussion and Katt was also into the idea of relatively easy space travel by magic bubble. Fluttershy hadn’t been too amused and pointed out something to Katt and the others while they were eating, while the bubble did protect her from the airless vacuum of space it didn’t help with the fact that she nearly starved to death riding in it.

“Would you believe I had a career as a supermodel? I didn’t like it very much and I prefer my nice quiet home with all my animal friends compared to all the stuff they put me through. It all started when a friend of mine named Rarity wanted me to model some dresses for her.” Thus started Fluttershy and her tale how she made her spa date partner jealous with envy. Talking about it out loud, Fluttershy let a hint of despair creep into her voice as she had probably missed several spa dates already because of how long she has been gone.

Hours later in the middle of a nap, Fluttershy was jerked awake when she felt the Catspaw shudder. She looked around blindly panicking before remember that she was on a fighter with Katt who was looking just as panicked.

“We’re close to Katina, but we may have just acquired a large problem with getting there. Now let’s see who the jerks are that messed with my catnap.” Katt quickly worked over her console and blinked confusedly at the data she was receiving. “Quick question, does that thing look familiar to you?”

“Um… no, I’ve never seen anything like it before and I’m not exactly a well traveled astro pony.” What Fluttershy was looking at was a huge green and grey colored ship that reminded her vaguely of a giant turtle. It three fin shaped masses sticking out of it, a lot of glowing orange bubble shapes dotted along its hull, the front of the ship looked like it had a head with two of those orange bubbles for eyes and it was bearing down right on them firing large beams of energy.

“I was afraid you’d say that, there have been rumors of out of system abductors and I guess we just found them. That’s just our luck huh? Well they’re not taking us without fight.” Katt immediately started off by trying to open a communications channel with Katina. “Mayday mayday, this Katt Monroe of the Catspaw, we’re currently on approach for Katina and if you can hear me, I’m under attack, please respond anyone.”

“Um… Katt…” Fluttershy from her position looked up at the massive ship opened its mouth to watch it unleash a swarm of fighters at them. The fighters were wide looking green and yellow with two red bubbles on top and each bubble held a figure in it, the side of the ships either had claws or a four barreled energy weapon cannons of some kind.

“Don’t worry I see them.” It was all Katt had to say about the approaching fighters that were starting to catch up to them along with the larger ship. “I repeat this is Katt Monroe of the Catspaw, is there anyone out there? Damn it all, if there is a Bill Grey there you better get your butt out here and help me! The carrier ship currently tailing me has launched fighters and there’s too many of them to handle on my own.”

“This is Katina defense base Catspaw; did you just say Bill Grey? He’s one of our pilots; we’re just now scrambling some ships to help you. How long can you hold out and what kind of enemy forces are you seeing? Are they from the Venom Army? We just got finished booting them out of our forward defense zone, how can they have possibly licked their wounds this fast.” The operator on the other end of the communications device sounded exasperated and Fluttershy wanted to feel sorry for him.

“I’ll see what I can do, just get your butts out here and quick! They are confirmed as not being of the Venom Army and they have unknown weapons capacity and…” The Catspaw rocked hard as a blast of energy struck its shields, Katt grunted audibly but held onto the controls. The Catspaw slowed down and Katt steered her ship around to face the fighter swarm. “Darn it, my shields just took a huge hit. I can’t outpace them and I’m going on the offensive. I’m sending you visual data now, I can only assume they are the rumored out of system abductors and are trying to take me and my passenger alive. Repeat, my fighter is about to become a can of creamed vegetable matter if I don’t get some immediate support and I don’t like the idea of anal probing.”

“We have fighter squadrons en route with an ETA five minutes, hold them off as best you can if you can’t outrun them. Katina base has the received visual recordings; we finally know what those bastards that have been blindsiding our patrols look like now. Give them hell until we can assist Catspaw! We’re now monitoring your attackers so we can know what to scan for next time, Katina defense base out.” After the voice on the other end of the communications feed went off, Katt flicked her long range communications off and immediately started firing burst of shots into the fighters while weaving deftly between them and the grasping tethered claws that some of them fired at her ship.

Fluttershy cowered down and whimpered as Katt sent the ship spiraling and twisting through the enemy formation and a wall of energy beams lancing out all around them. The Catspaw was ripping through quite a few of their ships, leaving behind several floating bubbles that started flying back towards the large ship that had spewed them out.

“Don’t worry Fluttershy; we’re going to get through this.” Katt swerved between two of the ships as they blasted each other with their grappling claws and blasted apart three more ships only to see something that made her flinch. “Or not… hold on to something!”

Why did this have to happen to them? Was it something Fluttershy did to deserve her friend being put into danger because of her? The mare grabbed the back of Katt’s seat wrapping her hooves tightly around it as the large ship hit them with a shot that sent the Catspaw spinning.

“Darn it, don’t they know how long it took me to get a ship like this? Ugh, I’m hit and I think we’re ducked, my engines are at half strength and are probably getting worse.” Even with this knowledge Katt spun the Catspaw about and lanced her lasers through several more ship when a grapple claw hit the rear of the fighter and clamped down on it.

“Katt… I don’t think we can escape.” Fluttershy noticed that for every ship Katt destroy the bubbles would always make it back to the larger ship and more enemy craft would fly out, another grapple slammed home on the struggling Catspaw forcing her to the floor. It was too damaged to try and break free anymore.

“Fluttershy get your things, once we’re brought aboard we’re going to hit the floor running because I’m going to blow up the Catspaw and we’ll try to find a place to hide once onboard.” Not needing to tell her pony friend twice, Katt pulled out her personal laser pistol from a spot above her seat, a small medical kit she clipped to her waste, a small box of her own ration bars also put at her waste and a data pad that held the information on her ship was pocketed. “This is Catspaw to Katina squad, I’m caught and I’m going to blow my ship once it’s brought aboard. We’ll try to find a safe place to squirrel for a time before trying to escape. Repeat my ship is totaled and I’m going to play groundhog with my passenger to infiltrate their ship.”

“We hear you Catspaw. We might not be able to stop them from bringing you onboard and we’re sorry for that, but we can nail quite a few of their fighters for you. If you find out where they’ve taken some of our people, get back to us in any way you can with the information, we will pay you well for it if you can manage it.” The Katina fighters had finally arrived, but the Catspaw was already being towed right into the mouth of the large unidentified carrier ship.

“Thanks, if you ever come into hear from a Fox Mccloud asking around about us. Tell him that Katt and Fluttershy got a little sidetracked by circumstances beyond their control.” Flicking off her communications with the sudden swarm of fighters from Katina that started ripping into the unknown wide two bubbled fighters, Katt turned to a whimpering Fluttershy. “Are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry about all this trouble I got you into Katt!” Fluttershy wailed at being the cause of her friend’s great loss in the now less than functional fighter that was now in the huge ship.

“Shush now, this isn’t your fault Fluttershy. So be quiet now, you couldn’t have possibly known about these guys even I didn’t see coming. Sure losing the Catspaw may hurt me emotionally for a while, but I’ll show these bastards that you don’t mess with Katt O’ Nine Hells Monroe! Now get ready to move your cute little tattooed butt cuddle toy, because this ship will explode in twenty seconds once I pop the cockpit.” Katt held her right hand over the button that would start the countdown and blow the canopy of the ship and looked at Fluttershy who nodded shyly. “When I hit this button start flying or running and don’t you dare look back. So long Catspaw, I wish our parting wasn’t so bitter and sad. At least you have one last trick left in you.”

Fluttershy had packed her saddlebags and flared out her wings waiting for Katt to hit the button that would doom her much beloved ship, Katt loved it like Rarity would love a big diamond. There was the sudden feeling of weight and the Catspaw was released from the grapple claws causing it to fall to the floor with loud thud shaking the both of them up. The pony took a look through the canopy and could see a lot of strange bipedal beings holding what appear to be elongated versions of the laser pistol Katt was now holding in her left hand.

Lifting up her right hand, Katt slapped it down harshly and the canopy exploded outwards suddenly filling the area around the Catspaw with smoke. She quickly wrapped her right hand around Fluttershy’s mane and violently threw her forward before jumping out herself.

Fluttershy hit the floor confused and started running when beams of energy lanced out at her, she started crying when one of the shots managed to go through one of her upraised wings when she tried to start flying. It splattered her blood on the floor of the hangar, not to mention tripping and falling on her face.

Despite the pain Fluttershy leapt to her hooves and galloped forwards for the opening away from the gathered bipedal creatures shooting at her, she didn’t see Katt anywhere in front of her. Looking behind her Katt was managing to keep up while firing shots at into a crowd of would be captors taking several of them down. The next thing Fluttershy knew her world exploded with pain and she was lying on her side, her vision was all blurry after the sudden bright flash and she couldn’t hear anything anymore it was all so silent. The last thing she saw was two pink arms wrapping around her body lifting her from the floor before she promptly blacked out as the pain became too much.

Author's Note

This story is to help me see if I can keep up a three thousand words minimum per chapter going. No Wander or Sylvia yet, but then again Fluttershy isn't exacly in that part of the universe yet.

8

Why did the universe have to hurt so much? Her head and wing felt awful. Fluttershy let off a scream when she opened her eyes, it was so dark. Luckily she never screamed loudly unless she was excited which was not a usual state you’d see Fluttershy in.

“What in the… oh you’re awake Fluttershy. I told you not to look back; I had to carry you out of there. It’s a good thing you’re not very heavy or we would be having a talk about what you have been eating to weigh as much as dark matter.” It was Katt’s voice but it was so dark, Fluttershy could only see her eyes. “I’m glad your okay, how are you feeling.”

“It hurts.” Not being able to help but whimper Fluttershy cuddled into the closest thing at hand, which was in fact Katt. “Where are we?”

“Well I did grab and throw you by your mane, I’m sorry about that by the way. You kind of froze up there for a moment after hit the self destruct and started the smokescreen. You face planted when you tried to fly taking a huge knock to your noggin, that happened when you got shot through your right wing and you were also launched into the wall by the explosion. I have to admit you’re a tough little thing, for a cuddle toy at least. As to where we are well… that’s not exactly good news.” Katt sighed and pulled Fluttershy into her arms and started to pet her carefully as to not touch the bruise on her forehead. “I found out a lot while you were out, we’re no longer in my home of the Lylat System and this ship we’re on is bad news all around.”

“How come, we’re still alive aren’t we? Isn’t that good news?” Fluttershy could only see a pair of eyes in the dark that didn’t look happy or willing to tell her something.

“If you consider a mind controlled violent race of amphibians, beaten bloody slaves and being trapped on said large warship that has both good news. Then we’re doing just peachy.” After a moment Katt decided to go to Fluttershy’s previous question. “We’re on the lower levels of this massive ship in some air vents located around their engines, whoever designed this ship had something in mind with killing the entire crew and all the slaves just in case that mind control ever wears off. At least that’s what I think the option for venting everything on the ship to open space is for. It gives us a perfect place to hide, but at the same time it tells me I went from messing with that mad monkey in my system to dealing with something else entirely. I don’t even know why I’m even telling you this, you’ve probably don’t even understand what mind control is.”

“Um… actually my friend’s brother was put under mind control a long while before I ended up in space.” Fluttershy started off hesitantly, she reached up and cringed at touching her forehead with a hoof. She whimpered and tears started to come to her eyes until she felt a pair of lips kiss her forehead softly. “Thank you.”

“It’s okay, I’m here for you. You’re right that we’re still alive; we can still do things as we’re not entirely trapped in a corner and it’s a lucky coincidence that your translator is undamaged after those tumbles you took. What we can still do is what matters in the end. Unfortunately the money Fox forwarded to me is useless in this system we’re currently in. So what was this thing I hear about your friend’s brother becoming mind controlled, it certainly sounds like a story to get our minds off the situation at hand or in your case hoof.” Katt watched as Fluttershy shyly shrunk into herself and then took in a deep breath.

“Well… it all started one day when I and my friends were having a picnic on the grassy hills of our world… and my friend Twilight received a wedding invitation.” Fluttershy was going to tell Katt the story of the changelings, it was sad in some ways and bright and happy in others. Most of her friends forgot what became of the changelings after they were launched away, only Fluttershy hadn’t and they had all been hurt and injured being tossed far away from the capital city of Canterlot. She felt sorry for what became of the changelings who were just hungry and needed food, but kidnapping and mind control wasn’t the right way to go about it. If they had only asked for help maybe Celestia could have given it to them, instead of their queen got them to turn their backs on Twilight.

Meanwhile out in a different part of space… there was a giant planet sized eyeball blinking curiously in a specific direction, eventually the eye transformed back into a planet. This was the planet of Equus and the one who had just returned it to its natural state was none other than Discord.

“Well it seems I’ve found our wayward friend out there, but getting to her or vice versa is going to be a might bit… difficult… especially when she’s always moving around so much.” Discord the chimerical creature of chaos shook his head sadly; his best friend was trapped in the belly of what looked like a giant space turtle with creatures that had negative auras compared to her bright positive shining one that almost blinded him to stare at directly at for too long.

“Difficult how Discord, couldn’t you just snap your claws or something and just bring her straight home!” Rainbow stated huffily as she flew up into his face.

“I would if I could Rainbow, I don’t like to admit it but there are limitations to my powers over chaos and my powers can only work on this planet and as long as I’m near it. As such, while it’s not impossible for us to go to her it could be an eternity before we’d find her and it’ll be hard for her to come to us since she probably doesn’t even know how to find a way back home to our planet. That is not to say we can’t see what she’s currently doing, but I can only change the planet into an eyeball for so long and I don’t think turning it into an ear will let us hear anything from her. You can’t truly hear anything when there is nothing but space between your ears after all. Here, let me show you what I saw.” With a snap of his griffon like claw, an image appeared floating in midair showing Katt and Fluttershy huddled together in a dark place. The image zoomed out to show the space ship they were on and quite a few other things about it. “It appears our dear Fluttershy has gotten into quite a dangerous pickle, oh I so do hope that whoever it was that caused her such pain comes to us for visit. I shall endeavor to be a part of the welcoming committee.”

“All we needed to know was that she’s still alive Discord, thank you for doing that much for us. We can only hope that she can find a way home.” Twilight saw that Fluttershy was making friends out there, one that looked like an unusually large cat and she smiled. Fluttershy wasn’t the best pony at making friends on her own without some pony else introducing her, but that she had made one said a lot. “Please stay safe and find your way home to us Fluttershy.”

Back with Fluttershy, she had just finished telling Katt the story of Queen Chrysalis.

“And I’ve felt sorry for the changelings ever since.” Fluttershy wasn’t going to hide the fact that she felt bad about how things had turned out.

“How can you feel sorry for them they wrecked a wedding, attacked your capital in force and made you turn your back on your friend?” Katt didn’t raise her voice; she was more curious then angry.

“Yes they postponed the wedding, but they didn’t force me to turn my back on my friend and there wasn’t a single pony casualty throughout the entire invasion.” That Fluttershy could shut her up so fast was miraculous, Katt looked like she wanted to ask a question but didn’t have the heart to voice it. The very question Fluttershy had heard the answer to without meaning to ever hear it; just exactly how many changelings had perished in their attack on Canterlot.

“Has anybody ever told you that you are too kind for your own good?” Katt winced and grabbed at her left shoulder, some blood seeped through her fingers and was heard splattering the floor next to the light her data pad was giving off. “Darn, all that moving around must have reopened my wound. I’m so glad they weren’t using lasers, would have made my shoulder useless. Damn it all, getting shot still hurts.”

“Oh my goodness are you okay? Oh no you’re bleeding, here let me help you with that.” Fluttershy and Katt both had their own supplies and they were currently pooled together, they had eaten some ration bars while she was telling her story.

“Yeah, one of the Croakers managed wing me before my ship exploded too. We’ve been pinned down by a bunch of relatively stupid bipedal toads. I can tell you already that they have nothing in common with Slip’s family, so I’ve been calling them Croakers to differentiate between the two of them.” Katt hissed while tensing up her shoulder as Fluttershy gently wrapped and pulled the bandages tight around the wound. “I’ve managed to mine some data from a few parts of this mother-ship and I wouldn’t want to be caught alive. They have slaves onboard in the lower areas, a lot of shock troops the next level up and beyond that is a hangar with their fighters is under heavy guard. We’re as far away from any trouble as we can possibly be, but getting off this ship without getting caught is going to take a miracle.”

“You said something about mind control earlier?” Fluttershy had to get her mind off of the wound and she was busy trying not to think of her own bandaged wing as it twitched causing her some agony.

“Yeah they, the Croakers that is, built an intelligent computer that is something like Rob Sixty Four and something went horribly wrong. Now the Croakers follow its every order hardly questioning it and it is constantly broadcasting its mind control over the entire ship. For some odd reason it has no effect on anything aside from the Croakers so we’re definitely safe from it.” Picking up her data pad Katt starting going over the things she had discovered from sneaking around the ship while Fluttershy was out cold. “While it is using them as pawns, this artificially created intelligent monster the Croakers made is not throwing them away pointlessly. The fighters these guys fly are designed to be expendable while keeping the pilots alive. Those red bubbles release some kind of protective shield that keep the pilots safe on destruction that are drawn immediately back to this Croakers mother-ship on a wavelength specific tractor beam where they can immediately get into another fighter. It wasn’t long after learning about the fighters did I cross that disturbing bit of info on the venting system and yet it has never been used to date as far as I can tell. That’s a good thing considering we’re in one of those vents at this moment. There are several ships like this in the Croakers fleet and they are all equally this big.”

“Is there anything else you want to tell me that I probably won’t understand very well?” Fluttershy was still busy trying to wrap her mind around all of this, she didn’t understand very much except that something like Rob was controlling these Croakers and was willing to kill all of them if they so much as tried to turn on it, if they ever broke free from the mind control that is. It seemed a bit odd, but when it came to evil sometimes things were beyond understanding.

“I’m still trying to decipher the name of their mind controlling mastermind; all I keep getting is ‘feed me’ from what I’m translating and I’m not afraid to say that scares me. The written languages of the races in this system are completely different, but our spoken language and mathematics are practically identical with a few small differences here and there. That led me to some startling information, this sector of space houses species genetically similar to those found in the Lylat System, we’re basically offshoots of one another. Biggest difference between us if that they are shorter than anyone you’d see in the Lylat System that’s for sure.” Katt showed Fluttershy the data of the Croakers before and after the arrival of the mind control machine. Next on the screen it showed a cat that looked kind of like an inverse of Katt Monroe with long pink hair flowing from her head and tail that made her look like a princess in comparison to Katt’s tomboy appearance with her short white hair and her pink fur. “Who we’re looking at right now is a very distant cousin of mine; anyone who’s not a Croaker in this system has very little military presence in comparison. It’s a good thing that the Croakers aren’t as aggressive as they are dumb thanks to the machine that’s manipulating them. Suffice it to say, we went from being safe in the middle of a war that was about to end to being in the middle of another war that is still in progress, if really slow looking progress at that.”

“Is there anything we can do to help these Croakers and the captured slaves? I don’t know how to stop a war, but I want to help those affected by it.” Fluttershy asked tentatively as she wasn’t a soldier and this was a little beyond her ability to cope with or even understand all the cruelties going on here.

“Well we can possibly try and get the slaves off this ship, but I don’t think the Croakers will even want or acknowledge our help as they seem to hate any other species but their own race. It’d be much easier for just the two of us to escape alone.” Seeing the frown on her friends face Katt tried to think of something to say to Fluttershy to convince her that trying to save all the slaves would be a bad idea. “Look we’re only two beings and trying break free more than a thousand slaves at once only for the entire ship to suddenly vent all the air out killing you, me and just about everyone onboard would be a tragedy. As I said it’ll be a miracle if even we can escape safely. The slaves have a much better chance of survival if we were to just leave them be for the moment and rescue them later.”

“I know it seems like a bad idea, but I want to help them.” Fluttershy didn’t care how stupid it was to face such odds; she didn’t like seeing others in pain or suffering. Lying down on the floor of the vent she gave Katt what she thought was a stern look. “You can escape if you want to without me, I’ll figure a way to help them out by myself somehow.”

“Well if you want to help them cuddle toy, I’m with you even if I don’t like it. Fox paid me to keep you safe and that’s what I’m going to do until I can find a safe place to drop you off.” After saying that Katt had gained an amused smile and looked at Fluttershy while rubbing her back. This thing that called itself a pony was just plain adorable. “Of course if you’re going to keep running head first into danger like the stubborn ponies that I’m sure you’ll keep telling me about, then who am I to complain that nowhere is truly safe for you? I’ll start hacking into the systems visuals so we can get a look at the slaves.”

Fluttershy smiled as Katt was loyally sticking by her side. Instead of leaving her in a place she didn’t understand or know very well where there were all kinds of ways that she’d get herself killed. As a pony she believed in doing the right thing and sometimes it wasn’t the easiest or smartest thing to do, looking at the data pad screen she could see the state the slaves were in as Katt brought it up. A lot of them looked like rabbits; a few were cats, pigs, squirrels, dogs and even large baboon thing that was bound heavily in chains. All of them were bipedal with hands like Katt.

“Can you think of a plan that won’t hurt anyone Katt?” It wasn’t that Fluttershy knew of a peaceful solution to the problem at hoof, she was just hopeful that they wouldn’t have to hurt anyone.

“Well I do owe these bastards a bit of revenge for Catspaw; just know that helping those slaves without having to resort to violence is impossible. If the Croaker patrols see us at all, they will shoot. I’m not going to let them do enslave you Fluttershy and you must realize that you are in fact putting me in the line of fire when we finally do have a plan. Because I’m going to die before you do come hell or airless vacuum of space.” Katt didn’t see Fluttershy waver very much in her resolve; she just shook her head and laughed as she ran her fingers through the soft mane. “You’re really adorable. Another thing we have to consider is supplies, how are we going to feed them all or even get them medical attention, they haven’t been treated too well and let me tell you this means there’s a lot of angry slaves to watch out for that won’t listen to us. So we won’t just be dealing with the Croakers alone, but the people native to this system that they’ve captured if they don’t want to go along with whatever we plan.”

“Well we know where everything on the ship is… what if we can get a large enough ship and carry all the slaves to a safe place or find some way to get the supplies to them or do both?” Fluttershy wasn’t about to let this one thing go unanswered. “I don’t like the idea that these people are stuck in confined spaces while we go flying off into the unknown leaving them behind to be hurt and abused.”

“Good point, I don’t know my way around space in this system and we’d just as easily get lost as you were when you were found by Fox and his crew, lucky breaks don’t happen twice in a row in space. We’re not going to last very long on these ration bars and we really need a brilliant plan if we’re going to save all the slaves like you want to do.” Katt leaned back against the wall of the vent and looked up at her data pad she had in her paw and started to go over the specs of the entire Croaker mother-ship and the few other ships they had onboard. “I think I might see a way, but there would have to be quite a few of those in the hangar and we’d have to disable all the fighters since those things aren’t armed with any weapons.”

“It never hurts to help, maybe we can try… um… the slaves might have some ideas.” Fluttershy was stretching out her hooves while trying to come up with a concrete idea; she looked to the floor and sighed sadly. What good will her element of kindness be if it got her killed before she could help anyone? “If only my special talent was more helpful in this situation…”

“Fluttershy… I think you just gave me a really good idea. We’re going to need to get on the good side of all those slaves before we try anything and what better way to befriend them then with a friendly face. Especially one that can’t possibly be threatening like yours to help ease them into a plan I just might be cooking up.” Katt had a very evil smirk on her face; the innocent and adorable pony was going to be the head of one massive jailbreak and all she had to do was think of things in a slightly different way. Flutteshy had her special talent with animals and beasts on top of her shy gentle demeanor and infinitely kind nature. Katt Monroe had her own special talent when it came to stealing things and it was about time she started using her ability to its full potential. “I’ve been shot down nine times Fluttershy and I’ve been a bit weary of continuing on after the loss of my Catspaw, but now I figure I’ve got more lives in me to spare and I’m feeling a bit crazy. Let’s steal everything we can right out from under their noses!”

9

A gaggle of toads marched down the hallway past a vent and as they turned the corner, the vent opened up slightly leaving Fluttershy to poke her nose out and look both ways. She was shivering with fright, this was her suggestion and she had to see it through. The corridors were lined randomly with steam pipes and the color scheme was random green, grey and purple hallways. Taking small steps she looked around and started idle along the well lit corridor looking out for those visual devices, it wouldn’t do to be caught in their sight.

Turning down several hallways she came to a corner where she stopped when she heard voices, she crouched down and crept up to look around the bend in the hallway. She could see the slave pens from here, there were two of those Croakers talking to each other and watching screens that had nothing to do with the visual devices she had to stay out of sight of. It might have been scary, but she had a job to do and Katt was counting on her to get the slaves in on their plans. Why did outer space have to be so scary, why couldn’t it just be friendly and filled with fluffy cuddly little animals?

Crouching down to her belly she slowly crawled her way towards the two talking toad beings as they sat in their chairs and snacked away lazily at some consoles.

“The mammals are always moaning about something Frix; can’t we do anything about it?” The voice of the toad caused Fluttershy to jerk slightly before she squished herself into a ball out of their sight and hoped they didn’t see her behind the console. Sometimes being a really quiet pony really helped her out and this was one of those cases that it was extremely important that she not let out peep.

“No we can’t Frax; we are to keep a watch over them until we can deliver them to factories on our home world and then they’ll work there for the rest of their lives. We can’t just beat them up until they quiet down, they need able bodied mammals to work on building more climate converters elsewhere and the previous slave watchers beat them up too much. I heard they even badly mutilated a few of them fur balls.” The other toad sounded a bit angry that his snacking time was being interrupted. “Besides it’s not like they can escape, this is a pretty sweet gig all around I think. All the free Toad TV and food we can eat.”

Fluttershy uncurled herself and poked her head up over the console; the toads didn’t notice her as they continued to watch the screens and the strange things happening on them. She kept them in view as she backed away towards where the cells holding the slaves, they were far enough away that Fluttershy didn’t have to worry about being seen by the Croakers anymore. She just had to be careful to avoid the visual devices watching the slaves, Katt had called them cameras but they didn’t take singular pictures like one and would detect and see anything that entered their view.

Taking her first look at the slaves up close and personal caused her heart to go out to them, they were in worse looking conditions than the camera had shown. She wanted to cry for them, if she wasn’t already here to help them out of this predicament. She looked around for someone who was near to entrance to the first cell on her left.

They were all wearing bright orange jumpsuits and they were battered, bloody and some of them were cradling broken limbs, others looked to have been gutted at some point where their fur was patchy and the stitches were quite well below any form of competency. It was as if the Croakers didn’t know a single thing about medical practices and performed unnecessary invasive surgery. It was either that horrific thought or the slaves were given what little they could use to patch themselves up as it appeared one of them was using a ripped off sleeve as a makeshift sling. She decided to test the waters by getting the attention of a slave.

“Excuse me… hello.” Fluttershy tried quietly, a green male rabbit quirked an ear and he looked around questioningly. “Yes over here near the door, I want to talk to you.”

“What?” The male rabbit moved over to the cell door and looked around; he looked down and jumped in surprise as he saw a quadruped creature with wings wearing a strange headset. Her pink hair was fitting against her buttery colored coat and she looked up at him with the saddest soulful eyes he had ever seen on a creature.

“Sorry if I frightened you, my name is Fluttershy and I’m pony. I and my friend want to help get you slaves safely off the ship, but we need your cooperation. That is if you don’t mind cooperating with someone you don’t know very well.” While Fluttershy was here dealing with the slaves, Katt would be dealing with ways to sneak stuff to them for the break out and will figure out how to make a clear path to the hangar past the barracks loaded with armed trigger happy Croakers.

“A pony huh? Well aren’t you a weird looking thing, how did you escape the toads when they caught you? How many of you are there on this ship?” The rabbit was looking at her bandaged wing and the large bruise showing through the fur on her forehead, Fluttershy tried not to show she was as hurt as she looked to be.

“They didn’t exactly capture us, they got our ship but my friend blew it up so the two of us could escape and I don’t think they know we’re even here. My friend is really nice once you get to know her and she’s trying to come up with a plan to help free all of you.” Fluttershy noticed that the rabbit looked completely speechless. “My friend is going to help you escape with food, water and medical supplies on a ship or ships; she’s still working out the details on that. I’m here to find out what you need immediately and to help you personally, she and I can do a lot to help you if you’re willing to let us help you.”

“Are you for real… that’s… actually how is this friend of yours going to get us all by the security on this ship? It’s packed tight with those armed swamp loving fly eating slime heads that literally turned my home planet into a swamp when they invaded us; it used to be such a green and beautiful world.” The green rabbit sighed angrily rubbing his face slightly with a hand; he looked down at Fluttershy with hope filled eyes. “Well if you could get us some immediate medical help and some extra food, but anymore than that and I fear that you could run the risk of being caught. I’m sorry for saying this, but you don’t really look like much.”

“Even the smallest pony or person in the right place can make a world of difference, I’ll let my friend know what you’ll need and she’ll get it to you somehow. Can you spread the word to the other slaves with you that you need to be especially cooperative for a little while?” Fluttershy hoped they would listen to her, she noticed several other slaves coming over to look at her as she was a strange being in their questioning eyes that just promised them a lot.

“Yes, but why do we have to be cooperative? They viciously hurt a lot of us; one of those toads took sick pleasure in doing invasive surgery on us for no other reason than to show us our own organs. They destroyed an entire planets climate to fit their needs after taking it over, even if we get free where will we even go, the planet of Genus? They let this happen to us on Warren and if we were to escape where would we be safe from the toad menace?” A young humanoid squirrel asked looking overly pitiful in her prisoner jumpsuit and her tail was quite limp looking to have been broken at some point, her voice was simply loaded with despair.

“My friend said that they will be singing to her tune soon enough. Whatever she meant, I know it’s going to be a good thing. So please stay calm and be patient, I’m sure she has a very nice plan to get all of you safely off this ship without harm.” Fluttershy gave a brilliant smile to all of them and she tried to impart a part of her sincerity onto them. “I have to go now and tell her what you need; I Pinkie Pie Promise all of you will get off this ship and will be freed. A Pinkie Pie Promise is a promise that is impossible to break, so if I broke it the only reason why would be if I was in trouble already. Everything will be okay soon; you’ll see that all you have to do is stay strong.”

Elsewhere in the universe a pink mare serving cupcakes to her customers smiled brilliantly as she felt someone making a promise that they were definitely going to keep in her name.

“Did we just see an injured angel? We’re going to be free if we cooperate?” The slaves murmured out loud as they watched Fluttershy carefully went back the way she came with all the slaves blinking their eyes multiple times to make sure she wasn’t just a hallucination. They were still a little perplexed as they have never seen anything like her.

Fluttershy crawled by the still distracted Croakers again and made her way for the vents and she was careful to avoid the patrols. Once she reached the vent closest to where the slaves were kept, she quickly reentered the vent with no Croaker being the wiser. The vents weren’t as hard to navigate as the many twisting hallways of the huge ship, they were really quite straightforward. The reason for this was because of the venting the entire ship thing that Katt had talked about. As she made her approach to where their stuff was Fluttershy saw Katt smiling like she had just caught a big juicy bird. Not that Fluttershy would ever let Katt eat one of her birds after catching it.

“Katt, what are you smiling for?” Slightly wary Fluttershy wondered what got Katt so happy.

“These Croakers really are complete idiots. They may be on par with our technology in having plasma cannons and the maser weaponry is a bit backwards, but I doubt they’ve really ever met a hacker like me before and Fluttershy… I can do this without a single slave ever getting hurt and the Croakers will give us all the supplies we could ever need or want.” Showing Fluttershy the screen of her data pad Katt pointed out a singular small section higher up on the ship schematics that didn’t have any vents near it. “All I have to do is get to their main communications console that is located here and then I can mess this entire ship up completely. I need you as my lookout because breaking their communications network is going to take about thirty minutes, give or take a lot if they really are as stupid as they seem. After that well… you’ll see just exactly why I call myself Katt o’ nine hells Monroe. First how do you feel about grand theft fleet or as I like to call it reparations for hurting so many innocent lives?”

“After what I saw, I’m not going to complain about it Katt.” The sad look Fluttershy gave Katt didn’t dampen the cat’s mood at all.

“Good then I have nothing to worry about, except for one small crucial part. I have to get you on the ship they’ll hand to us for a steal and that being it’s free, you just can’t beat that kind of price. Unlike me you can’t just put on some prisoners clothes like I can and be put on with the rest of the slaves.” Katt hummed to herself and leaned back tapping her boot against the opposite wall of the vent. “In fact, I need you to steal me one of those prisoner uniforms or I can do it myself later, your call. Until then, did you hear anything interesting on your way to meet the slave and what did they have to say?”

“It was just awful; I heard two of the Croakers talking. I believe their names were Frix and Frax, I don’t think they were very perceptive. They were talking about how badly the previous slave watchers were and I saw the results first hoof, why would someone something horrible like that to another living being? They also said something about bringing the slaves to their home world eventually to work in factories until they…” Frowning, Fluttershy looked at the floor and the bit of her mane that stuck out from under her headset covered her face. Katt put a gentle hand on her shoulder and gave it a squeeze and started to rub her behind the ears softly, it gave her some courage to continue. “Anyway the slaves on some other worlds are also being forced to build these things called a climate converter; it turned a planet called Warren into a swamp world. The slaves mentioned a place called Genus we could go to that isn’t under the Croakers control, but whoever lives there let this happen to them. Oh and you get the clothing, I’m sorry but I don’t feel comfortable with stealing.”

“Interesting… that really rounds out my plan and how I’m going to get all the slaves off this ship. You’ve been a big help Fluttershy whether or not you know it, this is exactly what I needed to know. Now come on, we need to get moving. The sooner we get at the Croaker communications network the sooner we can have those slaves fed, cared for and happily far away from this ship as possible.” Katt’s attitude rose by volumes as she moved forward through the vents.

Fluttershy felt happy that her friend’s mood was so positive whereas hers wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic given the circumstances of the slaves. She ran into Katt’s butt and her tail flicked upwards tickling her nose causing her to sneeze cutely.

“Can’t you do anything that isn’t ridiculously adorable? Say, did those Frix and Frax characters seem particularly lazy and did they seem like they want to actively abuse the slaves?” Now the shy pony knew Katt was planning a long lasting prank of some kind, but she didn’t question it and decided to answer truthfully.

"I poked my head up in front of them and they didn’t even notice me, they were transfixed with watching something else other than the slaves. They didn’t seem too bad." The pony wondered why her friend wanted to know that.

“Oh that’s just absolutely perfect!” It was said rather joyously while she was clapped her hands together and started rubbing them. With a toothy grin on her face Katt continued onwards and started climbing along the vents, it made Fluttershy wonder if Katt had some form of sanity slippage due to the loss of her beloved spaceship.

If Fluttershy had to admit she had the same kind of problem when it came to her friends being hurt or injured, she became like a different pony that started staring danger in the eye and won without having to do a single solitary thing except calmly voice her disdain. Fluttershy shook her head and continued climbing up the vents; she eventually caught up to Katt who was waiting patiently for her.

The hallways was well lit as any other place in the large ship, they really had to have a good power source to be wasting so much energy on lighting everything. Fluttershy poked her head and didn’t do anything as her ears twitched slightly. She ducked back into the vent and waited a patrol of three Croaker soldiers walked on by a few seconds later. Poking her head out again once they passed, her ears twitched even more, she ducked back in and turned to Katt.

“They have lots of guards wandering around here.” Ever the worrywart Fluttershy didn’t like how many footsteps she could hear in the corridors, if being shot felt like her wing currently did then she didn’t want to be shot somewhere else.

“Then we better not get caught, you’re the one who wanted to do this without anyone getting hurt. Well the slaves need extra food and proper medical attention, if we don’t do this then they aren’t getting what they need which in turn is going to upset you. Which means I have to shoulder more responsibility, so do I have to force you down those hallways?” Katt received a soft glance from Fluttershy. The pony’s left wing drooped as she put her head up to the grating and raised an ear. “Can we move yet?”

Fluttershy held up a hoof and a single biped toad guard walked by looking around aimlessly stopping for a bit before moving on. She left the vent to carefully look around for any sign of a camera and then motioned for Katt to start moving as they were clear of any nearby guards for the moment.

Katt led them down the corridors and whenever she looked at Fluttershy and saw an ear twitching the pony would be the one to make a judgment call of whether to go or stop. It got to a point where Fluttershy needed some gentle encouragement to keep moving forward. They were easily navigating the rather blank looking metallic corridors randomly covered in bits of technology here and there, while deftly avoiding the dangerous patrols.

“Are we almost there?” Stopping the pony’s ear twitched and she looked behind them, the she poked her head around the corner in the junction in the hallway that led to the communications room there was another camera watching the area ahead of them. “There’s a camera and I hear Croakers coming behind us.”

“We’ll just have to move underneath it, we can’t slow down now.” Katt roughly grabbed Fluttershy by her mane and quickly dragged her underneath the camera where she crouched down and waited for it to turn. After it was pointed in the direction they just came from she pulled Fluttershy along to the door the camera was placed to watch over. “Sorry for pulling on your mane so much Fluttershy. Let’s see access code, one two three four five six? Wow, just wow. Alright inside before the camera comes back on us.”

Fluttershy didn’t need to be told twice as she entered the room and moved out of the doorway while looking around as Katt did the same. The door slid shut behind them before the camera could see that it had been opened. She idly wondered why there were no Croakers in the room; now all she had to do was stay near the door and warn Katt if someone was coming. The room had quite a few consoles and screens showing more of that weird stuff on them, it was pretty big and there were plenty of spots to hide in case of trouble. The area between a very dark corner and a quietly humming machine seemed cozy. Katt immediately went to work and she put her ear up to the door.

“Katt… someone’s coming and it sounds like there are a lot of them.” Pulling her ear away from the door Fluttershy quickly scampered into the corner and went prone, Katt having heard her quickly took cover behind a console as the doors opened.

Several Croakers came in calmly not having seen the intruders in the room. One of them was a large dark looking purple, green and yellow robot with triangular red eyes and a crossbones symbol on its chest. Fluttershy cowered away from it as she felt something was very off about the mechanical monster. There were several regular looking armed soldiers and a really short looking Croaker.

“We’re just not capable enough to advance into this other solar system; they are too heavily fortified and well defended unlike the UAC is here. Aside from that I want permission from Komplex to deal with quite a few of the more active thorns in our sides, my invasion of Warren went off without a hitch so I at least deserve a medal for that!” The whiny voiced toad didn’t seem like good news at all; he was stumpy looking and resembled a pickle wearing blue and bronze colored armor with lots of medals on it. He had an ego about him and seemed to be some kind of military commander; he turned to the large metallic monster and pointed at it. “I’m sure you’re presence won’t be needed here for much longer Toadborg. Once we have orders of what to do with the slaves we have onboard, I’m asking Komplex to give you something more important to do then just standing around breathing down my neck all the time!”

10

Fluttershy stayed in her corner and watched, only after a minute did she start squirming a bit. She hadn’t gone to the bathroom in a while and hasn’t exactly seen one to use it since the Catspaw went up in a fiery explosion. She could feel her bladder filling up for a release and she started to look around in a panic. She hadn’t lost control of her bladder since she was a little filly; it was the reason why the butterfly swarm hadn’t stuck around after catching her after Rainbow knocked her off the clouds.

“Oh mighty Komplex I have achieved much in your name, we have taken Warren and turned it into a paradise!” The pickle toad started off only to get an angry glare from the face on the screen that came down from the ceiling.

“What of our incursion into our sister system Air Marshall, how well did they respond?” The dark and twisted voice of Komplex caused Fluttershy to cower; she had a clear view of him on screen and his polygonal face with his red plus sign shaped eyes along with his toothy looking mouth.

“We managed to catch a few of their pilots, but we couldn’t get any of their ships as they were all destroyed. It’s not my fault, they are well defended and…” The pickle who was obviously called Air Marshall was going to continue making excuses for getting his butt handed to him several times, only he was stopped by Komplex.

“Stop your simpering, I want results! We will ignore the other system for now. I want you to think of a way to infiltrate the main UAC planet of Genus past their defense systems. As for…” As Komplex was about to continue it stopped, then stared curiously at the sight going on behind all the other Croakers in the room.

Fluttershy slowly crawled towards the door; she really needed to go to the bathroom. Standing up on her hind legs and looking back as she slowly hit the numbers trying to be quietly, she hadn’t been noticed yet. She was about to hit the last number when Komplex made itself known in a big way, it had more of a attention span then just about every toad in the room and was more aware of its surroundings.

“You let a mammal get into the communications room; your incompetence knows no bounds! Capture that avian mammal creature immediately!” Komplex yelled, causing Fluttershy to relieve herself from fear alone of being caught and she had a large blush on her face from the embarrassment.

The shy pony looked at the floor and then up to the Croakers with a sheepish smile. She turned and smashed a hoof over the last button as hard as she feasibly could given who she was, the door immediately shot up. Looking back the pony could see her friend Katt mouthing the word ‘go’ repeatedly and motioning to her. Despite the fact that she had already went, Fluttershy took off so fast that Rainbow Dash would have been proud. She had been barely missed by the stretching hand from the robotic Croaker as it slammed into the wall to her left given the angle it stretched its arm from. If there was one thing all ponies were good at, it was definitely running from danger.

The soldier Croakers ran for the doorway as the robotic Croaker pulled his arm back, they didn’t get through the door as they had all slipped on the pee Fluttershy left on the floor and became a pile of entangled limbs at the doorway. The slightly smarter Croakers just immediately opened fire on the poor freaked out pegasus.

It was one thing to pee all over the floor, but in public and in front of aliens? Fluttershy had never been so embarrassed or scared in her life, she’d probably have nightmares about this one for a while if she lived long enough to get a full nights rest again. At least she got all the liquid out of her in one go, she was also a bit parched though it mattered little in the current situation.

Fluttershy squealed slightly as alarms started blaring around her as a fresh batch of Croakers started firing on her as she randomly ran down the hallways without Katt to guide her. She was causing a lot of chaos aboard the ship at this time.

Tripping over her hooves Fluttershy fell down a hole that had a ladder down to the floor below, she slammed harshly to the metal flooring onto her back. It caused her to gasp and cry out as a sharp pain shot up her right wing, her left wing getting hurt was hardly noticeable in comparison. She was slightly stunned and slowly got onto her hooves; she shook her head and continued to set an impressive pace that even her chickens back home would be surprised at after taking so many bumps and bruises.

Why was Fluttershy setting such a frantic pace? Well the giant robotic monster that had managed keep track of her would be one of the reasons. It was fast for something so large and it was very scary looking. She skidded around the corner and passed through some doors that opened automatically, she stopped running as she entered the doorway and paused. Every Croaker in the room was eating something or getting some food, they all slowly turned to stare at her.

“Oh, um sorry to barge in like this… I’ll just be leaving if that’s okay with all of you.” Fluttershy turned around and almost ran into Toadborg, she would have been caught right there if it wasn’t for the wall of energy weapons discharging into his face blinding him and making him quite angry. She galloped between the robotic creatures legs while Croakers shouting angrily about mammals on the loose in the ship.

The energy weapons fire followed her down the hallway for a few feet before one was lucky enough to shoot her in the back of the head knocking her to the floor. Fluttershy wondered why she hadn’t felt pain and then realized she could no longer understand what the Croakers were saying; her translator had been struck and damaged.

Fluttershy stood up and would have continued running if one of the Croakers hadn’t struck a nearby steam pipe, sending a spray of steam at her causing to raise her hooves in front of herself reflexively. She disappeared into a cloud of steam that rose towards the high ceiling of the corridors.

Toadborg thundered forward and grabbed one of the Croakers to yell something angrily at him; he didn’t seem particularly pleased to have lost his quarry. He started pointing down the hallways and the Croakers started off searching for the mammal intruder.

Fluttershy felt relaxed, the steam cloud felt like a nice cozy blanket. It reminded her of the sauna back home at the spa. It was relieving her of all her of stress, aches and pains. Once it cooled down enough she was going to squeeze some water out of the cloud that had formed around her.

It was a surprise to the pony that the steam cloud didn’t hurt her, instead it had struck her hooves and given how pegasus magic worked, her intentions and needing a safe place to hide generated a cloud that lifted her from the floor. The croakers didn’t know she could stand on or hide in clouds so she was safe for the moment.

The reason Toadborg had lost her with his sensors was because the surrounding cloud had masked her body temperature for a short while. It was long enough to evade his sight, at least for the moment.

Reaching up with her hooves, the shy pony removed her translator device and saw the back left portion of it had been blasted open causing her to frown at it. She didn’t know how to fix it, maybe Katt or someone else could. She might even get someone to make another one for her, but now she just looked at it sadly before she placed it back on her head.

Fluttershy scooped up a bit of cloud that had cooled down and started squeezing fresh clean water into her mouth. After having squeezed more than half the cloud into fresh water, she wondered what Katt was doing right now and how she was going to safely get to the floor. A cloud held together or formed with magic tended to have staying power until the magic runs out or the cloud was dispersed by something else so she was stuck on the small cloud until she destroyed it and there was plenty of steam from below to continue feeding the cloud until they shut down the valve that was spewing it into the air.

Deciding to stay on the cloud for a while she watched as the ship was in a state of alert and there were Croakers actively looking for her everywhere. It was just a good thing none of them looked up or above the cloud hanging near the ceiling, Fluttershy didn’t know what to do as they were armed and everywhere, she very well couldn’t ask Katt to fix her translator and she didn’t even know where Katt was. Another thing that was a problem was getting back to her saddlebags and the food in them, not to mention what would happen if she needed another bathroom break.

Many would think Fluttershy to be a coward; they weren’t far off if there was no reason for her to be brave and or righteously indignant. So what would she do? She very well couldn’t turn herself in without getting shot at, there were armed Croakers everywhere and they didn’t look like they were in a talking mood. Unless you could think of something, she was going to be in a lot of trouble.

After a few minutes of thinking it over, Fluttershy decided it was a good idea to put her trust into some of the nicer Croakers. There were two of them who were less violent and more likely to just capture her without putting all too much effort into figuring out what to do with her. Frix and Frax seemed like nice Croakers and didn’t particularly seem overly violent or anything, now if only she could get to them where the slaves were kept without getting caught first. Turning to her left wing she test it by extending it fully, it was bruised but she could still flap it without feeling pain.

Carefully standing up, Fluttershy encased herself in cloud and broke herself off from the rest of the mass of cloud. While looking to the right she flapped her left cloud wing sideways while angling it upwards. It was a fish made out of cloud swimming lazily through the air moving slowly downward. Surprisingly the Croakers ignored the cloud fish and the obvious weirdness of it, which is for the ones who actually saw it and didn’t think much of it. They were looking for a quadruped mammal not a cloud shaped fish swimming around as if it were naturally supposed to be there.

Thanks to ignorance and good steering Fluttershy managed to get back to where the slaves were being kept bypassing a vent she had crawled out of earlier. There was a reason why she wasn’t using the vents now and Fluttershy had really thought it out, if the Croakers found out that their vents were being used then they’d find Katt or their stuff lying around. Since they weren’t going to stop being alert until they caught her, then catch her they will and maybe Katt could get away.

Poking her head slightly out of the cloud Fluttershy looked down the hallway to the two toads who were still sitting there as lazy as they ever were. Waving her left wing, she steered her cloud to the floor. As soon as her hooves were on the floor she gathered up the cloud from around her body and drank what little water she could condense from it and then started quietly walking towards the Croakers. She really didn’t want to spook them; even then they didn’t look like they had weapons of any kind and looked relaxed in comparison to every other Croaker on the ship that.

Every croaker on the ship were thinking she was going to head towards the more important sections of the ship or would be attempting to steal a fighter to escape the ship, not one Croaker would ever suspect her of going straight to where the slaves were being held much less that she was now standing behind the two most incompetent Croakers alive.

She just stood there out in the open and clearly within sight of the desk leading to the cells and waited, Fluttershy just blinked a few times as she went completely unnoticed. The two Croakers talked to each other and just focused on what was happening on the screen.

“Um… excuse me.” Fluttershy intoned, even if she couldn’t be understood she could still make noise to attract attention to herself. The entire ship was out to get her except in the one place where they would put her if she was taken alive, Fluttershy kind of felt bad for being so elusive like this.

The two toads said something to each other, the one on the left waved the other off and they continued to watch the screens excitedly. Apparently there was some kind of advertisement on the screen one that Fluttershy likely would never understand, the volume wasn’t even that loud so they must have heard and decided that she wasn’t important. Fluttershy just gave them a flat look with a frown on her face and just shook her head; maybe she hadn’t been loud enough.

“Excuse me, but I believe I’m to be taken prisoner now.” Again Fluttershy went completely ignored as the one Croaker turned to the other and asked something, the other shrugged. Even she didn’t think she was that quiet, she knows that she can be a little shy but this was a tad ridiculous.

Fluttershy decided to get their attention in a more profound way; she crawled up on top of the desk and stood there. It was about ten minutes later as far as she could guess of sitting on the desk did she frown again as the screen went to another advertisement, she laid down on the desk and wrapped her tail around her side and got comfortable. She might as well learn something about their culture while she was sitting here in plain sight behind the two watching the screens.

Many would think Frix and Frax were ridiculously inattentive; they just loved television too much to do their jobs effectively after having been drafted into positions of very low importance. To miss something as clearly odd as a pony sitting right behind or in front of you in a relaxed resting position would be impossible and pushing the limits of reality as it were.

They just kept eating their snacks and sitting there ignoring the pony within three feet of them even though Frax took notice of her once. After talking with Frix about something as if discussing her presence and something involving the fact that she was watching the screens with them, Frax shrugged and went back to watching the TV. Fluttershy just let her jaw drop in complete surprise, she had been spotted and they just… well at least they were nice enough to not bother her as long as she wasn’t doing anything to bother them.

The three continued to watch TV and Fluttershy learned a bit off the Croakers culture; apparently they were a bit weird and tended to enjoy what appeared to be shoddily made products. Their screens were showing what appeared to be plays and or talent shows, the Croakers weren’t very inventive and the writing sounded horrible but they were still proud about it. Fluttershy could understand that they were proud of at least doing their best; because otherwise she was taking in everything with humorous thoughts running through her head about how silly these Croakers were. This was despite their violent natures whether it is because of the mind controlling machine like Rob sixty four or otherwise.

Even if it was part of a mind control signal, watching it had absolutely no effect on Fluttershy and it was interesting that what was seen was something the toads had already been doing long before the mind control took place. After a while Fluttershy got bored with watching the screens and decided to take a nap. After a while she found the TV shows were a tad mind numbing after she got tired of watching it even when she could only follow things by body language, whereas it would be considered torture to any of the natives to this system.

After a while Frix and Frax noticed that she was falling asleep and shrugged, they’d later put Fluttershy away in a cell with the slave and they’d be both quiet and gentle about it. They didn’t even know what it was they were putting in with the other prisoners and were the sole reason why the rest of the ship couldn’t find the pony at all.

All the two toadies knew was that she was just like a mammal considering her fluffy nature and had wings like a bird making her a strange cross of avian; despite the mind control and the enforced hatred of all mammals by heavily controlled propaganda they thought Fluttershy was adorable and cute. They had no disgust with her at all and petted her without waking her up; they kind of liked her mane. They noticed one of her wings was injured and bandaged it up after getting rid of the old bandages. Having no malice for the pony they decided that since she was at least partially a mammal and all mammals were to be prisoners they would put her in with the others, they did so gently and didn’t even bother to confiscate the odd device she was wearing on her head and went back to what they were previously doing.

The slaves were all surprised to see Fluttershy be brought in and with fresh bandages on her wing no less. She was sleeping so peacefully, as she was placed on the floor sleeping comfortably without a fear in the world. The fact that she was treated so gently by the two Croakers was a bit of a shock to see for all the mammals in toad captivity. The slaves all gathered around the friendly angel that had told them everything would be okay, one even took notice of the damaged device and took it off her head and looked it over and figured they could fix it once they figure out what it did.

The slaves didn’t know what the device did but it did have a microphone and after a while of looking it over, the slaves figured it wasn’t a mind control device as Fluttershy had been wearing it previously when she came by to tell them all to be very cooperative. The device hadn’t been damaged then and after hearing all the alarms, it certainly was damaged now and the toads wouldn’t shoot at something that was giving them control of this creature. The pony looked the same as she had been last time if lightly bruised in several places and had obviously been capture given she was put in with them now. If what the pony had said was true there was one other person on the ship that was working on their collective freedom.

The slaves could only hope that the other being could pull it off. Thanks to Fluttershy getting captured Katt’s plan went off without a hitch, though Fluttershy being captured wouldn’t initially appear to have done anything until a few days later. In those few days Frix and Frax would become friends with Fluttershy and even actively resist the mind control and hateful propaganda within her presence treating the slaves much better then they previously had. In fact the two toads were helping the mammals with their injuries and giving them more food than normal.

11

The slaves didn’t know how Fluttershy got caught or how to fix her helmet; they only knew she wanted to keep it even if it wasn’t working. They now knew it allowed her to communicate with others because the first time she spoke it sounded like an angel was trying to communicate with them without speaking real words. She had been panicked upon waking up wondering where her headset was and it was still in the same broken piece it was when it was given back to her.

The living conditions had improved a lot since Fluttershy was placed with them and the slaves couldn’t be merrier until they were all being pulled from their cells and marched away, a few of the Croakers were surprised to find Fluttershy in a cell. It was that voice that made them lose that surprise. Apparently the one called Komplex knew she was in those cells the whole time which is why the ship had become less alert over the last two days.

Fluttershy found herself along with all the slaves being pushed towards the hangar on the upper floor under gunpoint of the Croakers, they weren’t willing to open fire as long as the slaves were being cooperative and Fluttershy was at the front keeping calm. She still hadn’t seen any sign of Katt, but she believed in her and believing in a friend was one of the things she can do even in the direst of situations. Such a situation was being shipped off to parts unknown to be forced to work and toil on machinery that will hurt others against her will.

The pony and the slaves were being forced aboard a large slave and cargo transportation vessel that was like a smaller version of the overall Croaker Mother-ship. They were all held at gunpoint constantly and walking up the ramp, Fluttershy could see that it would appear that every slave onboard the mother-ship was being crammed into this cargo vessel. It didn’t particularly sound like good conditions to be packed in so tightly when there were sick and injured everywhere. It was miraculous that not too many of the slaves had died yet, the few that had were before she came aboard the ship and the changes in how well they were being treated.

Fluttershy was sad for the loss of life and glad that she didn’t have to witness such brutality to keep these people in line, the Croakers were struggling with the big baboon until she start cooing and singing. It calmed his angry heart down really fast and she gave him a small smile and nodded for him to calm down. He allowed himself to be put on the ship calmly, it scared the crap out of the Croakers when it suddenly became really calm and they were already scared of it when it was raging against the chains that looked to be breaking apart due to stress.

As soon as they were all done climbing up the ramp, the Croaker soldiers started exiting the ship at the sound of a voice. A screen appeared and that face was on it, though something was very off about it to Fluttershy. It was that familiar digital toad face, it still had the same bar shaped mouth and everything about its cross shaped eyes were still intimidating. It yelled at the slaves and they packed tightly around her in a protective manner, she moved forward through the slaves and glared at the screen because it was being a big dumb mean thing.

The face gave a smile upon spotting her and then said something that sounded like it had a friendly undertone, which had Fluttershy wondering what was going on. The ramp at the back of the ship with the armed Croakers keeping their guns trained on them closed up and the entire ship felt like it was moving as it lifted off and exited the open mouth of the Croaker Mother-ship. This was seen on a secondary screen above all those onboard the ship and as soon as the mother-ship was a distant memory, the face of Komplex started giggling in a very familiar tone that turned into outright sadistic feminine laughter.

“Katt, is that you?” Fluttershy perked her ears up and stared at the screen in wonderment whereas the slaves were confused and frightened. She finally noticed that the face didn’t have red X shaped eyes anymore as it slowly morphed in front of them all, instead they were a gentle purple in color now and looked like minus signs. The inside of the mouth was also purple; in fact Fluttershy fluttered her wings slightly in excitement though it still hurt to move her right wing.

The toad shaped face on the screen pulled back and revealed Katt Monroe with a toothy smile. Her claws toyed with her data pad for a moment before she gave a wave to all the slaves and said something to Fluttershy. Deciding to let Katt to know there was a problem Fluttershy took off her headset and showed Katt the damage portion, the bipedal cat that was taller than every other being in this room frowned at the damaged headset and sighed. Fluttershy placed the damaged headset back on her head.

Katt started saying a lot of stuff and motioned to the surrounding crates, the people cheered in excitement as those were supplies for them from what could be seen as a few of them set about opening up the crates. Then Katt motioned to Fluttershy standing among the crowd and said something she couldn’t understand, one of the people tapped her shoulders and pointed forward and gently tugged her into motion.

Fluttershy was lead up to the bridge of the ship by two people, specifically the friendly green male rabbit and the squirrel with the broken tail that looked to be healing up a bit though her tail was still untreated. Walking through the door, they saw the captains chair pivot and there sitting in a rather lazy manner with an evil grin on her face was Katt who waved at Fluttershy.

Fluttershy ran forward and got Katt into a big snuggling hug, she needed the comfort of a friend at the moment. Katt spoke softly speaking kind words of which she couldn’t understand into her ears, but their meaning was not lost on the pony as her cuddling was returned with fervor. After she was done getting a bit of love from the large kitty, she felt the headset being pulled from her head and Katt looked it over. After a moment Katt pointed at the headset and then at herself.

Fluttershy shrugged at Katt and just nodded in acceptance; if Katt wanted to take a look the translating device then she was okay with it. The green rabbit from earlier spoke up and motioned to the device in a questioning tone. Katt spoke to him while pointing to the headset; possibly in explanation as to what it did and then motioned to Fluttershy given that she was the one currently incapable of verbal communication. After a moment Katt said something and then sung a single somewhat purring high note, Fluttershy blushed as she didn’t think she sounded like an angel judging by what Katt was implying.

The green rabbit rubbed the back of his head with a hand and pointed to the device while stating something with a bit of sadness. The squirrel said something that sounded positive and rather hopeful as he finished his statement, after a moment the rabbit smile. Katt said something that took away their positive feelings, but then she brightened them up by saying something while rubbing Fluttershy behind one of her ears causing her to lean into it and almost fall asleep.

It was quite noticeable that Katt was a lot larger than the people who lived in this system. If the green male rabbit was to be presumed an adult by the sound of his voice, his height from the top of his head not counting his ears was up to her belly. The squirrel was shorter and definitely female. They were more in range with pony sized beings then anything really, if these were the average heights of the people here. Even Pep and Slip were slightly taller than these people and Fox, Falco and Katt were definitely noticeably taller as memory serves.

Shaking her head from the bliss of having her ears rubbed Fluttershy was brought back to the present when Katt started to bring up several screens loaded with all kinds of data from the consoles. They were showing the systems they were in, alien letters showed mapped everything out in space and the surroundings planets and suns. After a moment, Katt entered some data and the Lylat System popped up next to the other systems and she looked to be telling the others where she and Fluttershy had come from previously. Fluttershy was happy her friend had a solid way home, now if only she could find one for herself.

Katt lifted a finger and pointed out their position, then pointed out a planet in and the screen brought up data of a planet surrounded by a bunch of floating objects. She was talking about the planet being shown and turned to the two others in the room.

The green rabbit shook his head no and said something, while pointed out the floating objects and then threw his hands up the air and shook his head sadly. The squirrel pointed out a different planet, but it had too many Croakers nearby it to really be safe so Katt had shot her down pointing out something in a serious tone.

The three looked to be wracking their brains over something and it hit Fluttershy that they were trying to figure out where to go, apparently the two planets the rabbit and squirrel talked about where not safe to go to for good reasons.

“Um… excuse me…” All the faces turned to her; she walked up to the screen and pointed to the other people onboard in the cargo hold. It took a bit of doing but she managed to get them to figure out that she wanted to ask the people where they thought they should go. The Croakers were patrolling the borders between this system and the one Katt was born in so they obviously couldn’t go back that way yet without being caught in their given Croaker ship.

Katt nodded, she started talking into a speaker and her voice could be heard coming from everywhere on the ship. Those who were busy opening the crates, along with those who were getting out food, water and medical supplies to the ones in need stopped what they were doing and they started talking amongst themselves. The ones that hadn’t stopped were busy trying to free the heavily chained up baboon creature, though that didn’t stop them or the creature from talking too.

It seemed like everyone was talking and nobody had any answers. Fluttershy was hoping one of them might come forward with a place where they could all be safely dropped off to go where they wanted to be. Of the people talking, one in particular seemed to be organizing them back into action and she had blonde hair and a tail with light purple fur that fanned out on her cheeks. She was quite a pretty bipedal cat and that wasn’t to say Katt wasn’t cute or nice looking in her own way. After a while that cat left the screen in the cargo area having managed to get them all back to working on getting everyone settled and she eventually ended up on the bridge with the three of them.

This cat started saying something in a calm manner to Katt who turned back to the map of the system and entered something into the computer. On the screen a planet appeared and some general data along with other long haired cats like the blonde one, their entire race seemed to be mostly comprised of females which kind of reminded Fluttershy of how the pony race has a sixty forty or at least a sixty five thirty five female to male ratio. To Fluttershy they looked really colorful like ponies too; maybe they had a connection with their own elements of harmony! She knew she could definitely feel something around the cat.

Turning to the cat, Katt said something that sounded questioning and the cat responded with a slightly desperate tone and pointed out that planet. Katt asked something in a flat tone and the other female cat nodded. Katt went back onto the speaker and announced something, all the people were talking again and together they all raised their hands apparently in agreement of some kind.

Katt turned back to the blonde cat and said something as she created a route on the largest screen heading for that planet; they had their next course of action and destination planned out. Fluttershy wondered how long it would take them to get there, until then she would see to the injured. Speaking of injured, if the poor squirrel was anything like the chipmunks and squirrels back home then she knew she could aid in fixing her tail so it was back in working order. Fluttershy having chiropractic knowledge that she had exercised blatantly with bears and other general large animals plus knowing how to be gentle with small animals would help immensely.

The vast galactic amount of kindness in Fluttershy would not let those who were hurting perish under her watch unless there was nothing she could do for them. Philomena had taught Fluttershy an important lesson that sometimes there were just things outside your control. She had been lucky thus far to not pick up some kind of space bound virus or illness. She thanked the magic of all ponies, the still very distant connection to her friends back home and all the goodness in the universe itself for looking out for her so far. She knew eventually that something would come along and she could only hope that she would endure when the time came to fight whatever ailment hit her with impunity.

Moving up to the squirrel Fluttershy carefully made sure she was clearly visible when she approached her, the squirrel tilted her head questioningly as Fluttershy motioned to her and her tail and then the medical supplies being unloaded on the screens. The squirrel smiled sadly and nodded, before the two of them could leave Katt called out to them making them stop.

Katt reached behind the console that the captain’s chair was sitting at, using her natural height and length of her arms she reached down to pick up something. She tossed it to Fluttershy who fumbled on her hooves to catch it and was knocked onto her still slightly bruised back and she looked at what was thrown to her. Seeing her saddlebags made her hug them to her form tightly and she started crying.

After Fluttershy had finally calmed down and wiped her eyes with her left wing she went about putting the bags on around her barrel. She gave Katt her best room brightening smile, for some reason it caused the pretty cat to flinch from the sudden warm feelings flowing into the room from the pony.

“Come on then, we need to go help those people.” Not caring whether or not the squirrel understood her, Fluttershy took her paw in a hoof and calmly left the room with a skip in her step. Her happiness at having a piece of her home still with her, she didn’t notice they left behind a completely befuddled blonde cat staring after the pony when she left the room.

Fluttershy wondered if all medical supplies were universal or if they all had the same Red Cross symbol, it was something to think about as it just didn’t seem very likely that every civilization in the universe have the same kind of medical needs fulfilled by a box with the same kinds of stuff. It wasn’t long before she realized that most of the medicine and medical supplies the Croakers gave them were completely different from what one would consider an average medical kit.

The problems Fluttershy had were how to use the medicine or read the labels to help those who needed said medicine. She would just have to trust there was a trained doctor or nurse onboard that knew how to use it or else things would get bad. Even the medical supplies from where Katt haled from had quite a few things that were different. There was, however, bandages, wrappings and stitching equipment that seemed like a universal staple in all forms of medical kits used by sentient beings and Fluttershy knew how to use those things. It kind of made her sad there were all kinds of medical advancements that the pony race had yet to stumble upon, they were amazing to watch even if they weren’t entirely natural and she bet that somewhere out there, there were probably beings that could just heal from injuries easily enough.

Finding a table to start on Fluttershy got the squirrel to lay down on her stomach, a good massage and some relaxing soft touches to her tail were just what she needed. After Fluttershy was finished she watched as the squirrel shook her tail once or twice but cringed in pain, the pony put a hoof on her shoulder and silently chided her gently making sure to point out moving her tail around right now was a bad idea for her health. The squirrel got the message and hugged Fluttershy muttering something in appreciation.

After the squirrel got off the table she patted to the table and pointed towards Fluttershy and then her wing which had been blasted clean through by an energy weapon. The squirrel carefully unwrapped the right wing and saw the kind of damage that was done to Fluttershy, it was healing pretty well given it scabbed over and the scab was covering a few of her feathers that needed to be cleaned out.

The squirrel started going over Fluttershy’s wing gently while giving slight tugs at what looked to be loose feathers. She made a happy sounding comment when she carefully rubbed her face against the wing she was working on, she didn't want to cause the pony any pain. A few of the other liberated people came over and started to help the unattended wing of the pegasus and a few were petting her behind the ears.

Yawning Fluttershy started to get really comfortable and soon fell into a restful sleep as her wing and bruises were feeling better already. The squirrel was gently prying off the scab and saw healthy flesh underneath that looked to be in the process of growing back some of the lost feathers and fur from being shot.

When kindness is given in full and is thus equally around turned. It will heal all the wounds in time, even the ones that were burned.

Author's Note

Fluttershy won't be the one getting gored very much, but she will be going through a lot of pain and suffering before she can return home.

Let's see... what happens when you unleash Fluttebat on a different world entirely? Especially one where a cure for the transformation is less likely to happen. Well get ready to say goodbye to Katt...

12

It took a day or two, but the Croaker ship was finally on approach to the planet. Looking at the screen at such a beautiful world filled Fluttershy with a sense of wonder; she had forgotten how long it has been since she has been within the atmosphere of a planet and it has been a while since she has had anything other than recycled air. It was covered in lush vegetation that were all forests, it also had plenty of rivers and oceans. Fluttershy couldn’t wait to spread her wings and get a lungful of fresh air on such a beautiful world, though her heart was a bit sad that some of the structures reminded her of her home back in Equestria.

“This is the recently stolen Croaker ship The Rampancy to Aldebaran defense forces. Do not shoot, we are carrying civilian passengers. I’m putting one of your people on the horn or letting them access to visual communications to confirm. Kim this is your home planet, you better get us that landing clearance and fast.” Katt passed off the communications to the blonde cat that was now know as an Aldebaran. Aldebarans were strangely reminiscent of ponies in so many ways or at least that’s what Fluttershy thought, they were colorful and quite beautiful in appearance with their long manes that would sometimes reach even beyond their fluffy tails. “How’s the patch job on the headset doing Fluttershy?”

“I can understand you at least.” Fluttershy received a tilted head in response.

“Can you at least understand what I’m saying?” Katt asked as she couldn’t understand what Fluttershy was saying, she however knew Fluttershy could understand her at least by the nod she received. “I’m sorry; I’m just not as good as Slip is with this experimental technology stuff Fluttershy.”

“It’s okay.” Fluttershy said reaching up to pat Katt on the shoulder softly earning a mildly sad smile from her.

“I understand you well enough to know what you mean through your emotions at least.” Katt sighed and turned back to piloting the ship.

“Captain Katt Monroe, ‘Of the Nine Hells’, our High Artificer wishes to speak with you now.” Upon hearing the blonde Aldebaran cat named Kim; Katt turned back to the console and started a conversation with the leader of their people.

Fluttershy could see an old Aldebaran cat that had white fur and slightly grey hair, a crown and purple robes. The High Artificer was still pretty despite her apparent old age and it showed. Her regal form reminded Fluttershy of Celestia back home, wise with age and really had a look that said she cared for everyone around her in a grandmotherly way.

“Thank you, we really needed to unload all these weary people or else I might have a small riot on my hand that even Fluttershy can’t handle.” It was only in that moment of Katt speaking that Fluttershy was brought back to what was going on, Katt hit the ship wide communications. “Everybody listen up; get your stuff together and be ready. We’re going to land on the planet of Aldebaran as they have so graciously offered everyone onboard asylum provided you follow a few simple rules. What you do from there isn’t my problem, but take care of yourselves you hear me? Fluttershy would be upset if you got yourselves needlessly hurt after she convinced me to come to your rescue. I didn’t have to rescue any of you and I could have just as easily escaped by myself or with her, so be sure to thank our mutual friendly four legged friend for having such a big heart.”

“Yes, she is particularly sweet and I’m glad she wanted us to escape dearly.” Kim the Aldebaran looked to Fluttershy who was minding her own business near them and was blushing a bit at the attention. “Still it is hard to believe the toads would be able to create such a monstrosity as Komplex. It explains why they have been so quiet for a long time in the Aniverse at least.”

“Well that guy isn’t that ridiculously complicated. Thanks to seeing him I made my copycat ruse which I would like to call Perplex and got everyone off the Mother-ship without a fuss. Of course it won’t work more than a few more times before some Croaker or even Komplex itself gets wise to what I did.” Katt noted the confused looks coming from both Kim and Fluttershy. She rubbed at her short white hair a bit with one hand and smiled cheekily.

“How is Komplex not complicated, he seems to be causing a lot more problems than just the toads to going to war!” Kim let out in a frustrated tone; she had even been there when they attacked Warren and it definitely ruined her vacation. She even told Katt and Fluttershy as much as they traveled through space.

“Well from what most of you people who live here in the Aniverse Systems tell me, the Croakers or Toads as you call them are known for three major things. They are lazy, highly incompetent and they have a penchant for shoddily made stuff. That is why all this is happening.” Katt could see the looks of surprise on not only Kim’s face, but Fluttershy, the green rabbit sitting at the scanners and the squirrel who was busy tinkering around with a nearby consoles a bit. They were all now staring at her in wonderment. “What? Am I the only one who could figure it out? Well let me put it this way. What would happen if they made a product that worked all too well and does exactly what it is supposed to, only in an extremely over the top manner. It all culminates in their one successful not so shoddily made product such as a one in a million chance known as Komplex.”

“Wait, are you telling me that the reason why the toads attacked my home planet to turn it into a swampy cesspool and are going to war is just because they made something that actually works!” The rabbit looked livid and why wouldn’t he be given the monster that was known as Komplex wrecked his home.

“Oh Komplex definitely works from what I’ve gathered with my little data mining operation, it was created to fix a lot of things wrong with the Croakers. It wasn’t programmed to lead a war and you should consider yourselves lucky that it wasn’t or else people would be fighting for their very lives right now.” Deciding to really give the people of the Aniverse Systems the really bad news Katt went on. “Komplex turned the Croakers entire planet into a factory seven layers deep, started a war and is building stuff like the fighters that are centered on protecting Croaker lives. Komplex is actively trying to better the Croakers by fixing all their problems in a rather unique manner and it scarily enough actually does care about the Croakers under its mind control, even if it is doing so in the most deranged looking way possible. All that and Komplex isn’t doing anything that it wasn’t already meant to be doing. It’s a pretty chilling fact that Komplex isn’t doing all this because it’s an actively malicious piece of artificial intelligence despite sounding like it should be from what I saw. If it was actively malicious it would have killed off the Croakers ages ago and would have been trying to take over the Aniverse System completely by itself instead.”

There was a silence after Katt finished stating the very haunting thought of what the Croakers managed to accomplish. A machine to fix their problems and it was going about it in such an esoteric way. It started by destroying their home planet to maximize their weapons production rate, then started off the war by stealing other nearby planets for Croaker to live on such as Warren. In general Komplex made the Croaker race a very credible and dire threat as a way to fix all of their problems and it was succeeding.

“This is all so horrible…” Fluttershy could already feel the tears brimming in her eyes; she couldn’t imagine something like this happening to ponies. It was a largely self inflicted tragedy, the Lylat Systems problems weren’t nearly as bad sounding despite all the violence currently going on there. It was rather easy to ignore the troubles in Lylat as she really didn’t see too much of the action, here she had actually been in the middle of it and wanted to help the Croakers and the rest of the Aniverse System dwellers find peace again.

“Hey don’t be sad Fluttershy, you can’t solve all the universes problems and you can’t be everywhere at once you know. All you really need to do is focus on getting home; it might seem cold to say this but this is the Aniverse Systems problem and I’m sure there’s someone out there that can handle it. Of course putting people like Frix and Frax in higher stations when I had the chance will seriously blunt the Croaker war effort immensely given how incompetent they are.” Knowing she was receiving sad looks from everyone other than the pony already in tears, Katt pulled Fluttershy into a hug and started play with her mane.“If it makes you any feel better the Lylat System might eventually come in to help out the Aniverse System once I get back there.”

“Well… there is someone that will not stand for his home planet being captured; his name is Bucky and he is our home planets greatest warrior and he won’t rest until Komplex and all the chaos it is causing is completely dealt with!” The green rabbit was directing this more towards Fluttershy than Katt who by his accounts was completely right; Fluttershy was a long way from home and was from a mostly pacifistic sounding race. This was not her war to fight and he wouldn’t feel right getting such an innocent creature involved in their problems keeping her from finding her home when her friends and family were all waiting for her to return. “Katt is right Fluttershy, let us handle the problem. You’re not obligated to fight our battles for us; you’ve already done enough by giving us hope that there are more heroes like you out there somewhere who are willing to help.”

“I’m not a hero though…” Despite her attempt at modesty Fluttershy had forgotten that they couldn’t understand what she was saying, but at least her headshake got through to Katt.

“Fluttershy, I would have left these people to whatever fate that would have befallen them if it meant keeping you safe or even saving my own skin. Instead you convinced me to save them all and you’re the one that nearly got shot in the back of the head because of it and you had already nearly lost your ability to ever fly again in the process of escaping capture; I hope you’re always going to do good things like this wherever you go and that you eventually find your way home.” This was one thing Katt wasn’t going to let go as Fluttershy didn’t think she was brave or heroic and it was clearly seen in the way she acted. Fluttershy just answered by nuzzling into Katt’s neck so the pink furred cat would start rubbing her back. After a minute or so, Katt turned back to communications while still holding Fluttershy close to her. “This is The Rampancy we’re coming in for a landing, all civilians prepare for immediate offloading, take all the supplies you want or need we’ve got plenty for everyone. The only thing we’re low on is food; the Aldebarans are definitely willing to share. Just leave enough to survive on for a month; I’m heading back to my home system to clue them in on what’s happening here.”

Ten minutes later Fluttershy stepped out onto a beautiful quiet world of Aldebaran, she was the first to step off the ramp and be greeted by the curious friendly pony like felines who were very colorful in appearance. She could feel the magic in the air and it was fresh and welcoming after being stuck in space bound vehicles and being so useless when it came to advanced technology that was mostly far beyond her comprehension.

After a massive amount of cargo was offloaded except for some food and the last of the people had gotten off the ship, the ramp closed and it launched into the air without warning to hover for a bit. Fluttershy turned back to ship wondering what was going on and what Katt was doing, she flapped her wings and managed to get into the air despite the still throbbing pain in her right wing. She flew up to a window and looked inside to see Katt working the controls.

“Katt what are you doing!” It was said as loudly as Fluttershy could get her voice.

“Sorry Fluttershy, but you’ll be safe here and I believe I’ve fulfilled my contract. You can take care of yourself from here on; you’re a big girl even if you do cry. I’m heading back straight into danger and for the Lylat System, might even start working on a Catspaw Mark Two when I get there.” It was hard for Katt to meet Fluttershy’s eyes, but she did and she had one last thing to say before she blasted off into the atmosphere in the large green ship all alone by herself. “I left you two presents when I was hugging you, one on your headset and the other in your saddlebags.”

Fluttershy was knocked from the air by the shockwave of the ship jumping straight up into the atmosphere and the pony held up a hoof sadly pleading for Katt to come back and stay with her. Even as she fell from the sky she knew she was being rather selfish in wanting Katt to stay with her, she hit a cloud and sat there staring at the bright skies of Aldebaran with tears in her eyes still reaching out for her friend with a hoof.

Wiping away the last of her tears from her eyes, she pulled off her headset and looking around for something unusual on the metallic white structure and quickly found a silver rectangular device with a button on it. Pulling the device off she pressed the button and it immediately emitted a holographic display of the Lylat and Aniverse systems in their entirety and overlaid them on a galactic map, she placed the headset back on and stared at the display. Below her hooves the clouds started raining.

“If you’re finding this now, that means I’ve ditched you on Aldebaran Fluttershy and you have just placed the headset back on. This recording will only play once so listen carefully, this is a map of the systems you’ve been to already. You might never find your way home as it’s a big universe out there and your home is a very small part of it, this map might help you find your way back to your home or any friends you might meet along the way in case you get lost out there. Press the button to turn this display on and off, this uses the battery from my laser pistol so it’ll last you for quite a long while. If you haven’t looked in your saddlebags yet you might want to now. I’ll give you a minute to think about what you find.” Reaching into her saddlebags Fluttershy found a photograph of a confidently smiling Katt showing her full body from her white shoulder length hair to her pink furred toes. She was wearing her vest, top and pants while giving Fluttershy a peace sign. “Aside from my destroyed holdout pistols battery, this is all that was left of the Catspaw aside from all the scrap metal, cherish it and keep hold of it for me will you? In case we never meet again, good luck out there cuddle toy!”

Turning off the thoughtful device, the pony leapt from the cloud and fluttered her way slowly to the ground while staring at the picture in her hoof. Her heart was broken, but Fluttershy understood she couldn’t form too strong an attachment or she might never want to go back to her home planet of Equus. Celestia forbid that she ever forgot her best friends in the universe that were missing her and probably held gatherings outside her cottage, this only broke her heart further. The squirrel and green rabbit walked up to her and wrapped her in a comforting hug as she slowly put away the picture on top of the one from Fox and his motley crew.

Eventually she was led to having a meal after watching the sunset, she hadn’t even paid attention to the food that was given to her but it was safe for her to eat as it was all fresh vegetables. The High Artificer herself welcomed those who were rescued and Fluttershy with open arms. While everyone else was happy it was quickly muted whenever one looked towards the four legged creature that sat alone and apart from them.

A few days later the High Artificer noticed Fluttershy was still in a deeply depressed state. The explanation from those that knew why she was like this stated that Fluttershy wanted her friend to stick by her side, in a way Katt did stay by Fluttershy by giving her a picture. Even with the thoughtful presents that were given, Katt had still fractured Fluttershy’s poor little heart by leaving so abruptly like that.

“I hope she will be fine after a while. What I wish to speak to you about is that she has some powerful form of magic in her. What should we do about it?” Kim asked the High Artificer almost within hearing range of pony that just sat there staring off into space.

“Do? Nothing, we will leave her be as long as the magic she has in her proves to be of no danger to our sisterhood. She is greatly saddened by the loss of a close friend… maybe meeting with Princess Felicia could cheer her up perhaps?” The High Artificer smiled slightly. It’s not like things could go horribly wrong with such an innocent and wondrous intelligent four legged creature that came from an entirely different magical world.

“Are you sure that is wise?” Kim asked raking a hand through her long blonde locks, while frowning at the poor creature that sat on her butt under a tree.

“Felicia needs more worldly experience as she’s way too headstrong. Meeting an outsider might actually help her calm down some and expend some of that extra energy that she has. She’s not yet anywhere close to being an artificer though, needs to practice a lot more what with her master off gallivanting about the Aniverse with that rabbit.” After a moment of keeping her hands folded in front of her in her lap while thinking of whether or not to allow Felicia to interact with the pony. She watched on as Fluttershy expertly communed with all of the nature around her even in such a state of dishevelment as she was currently in. The High Artificer decided a course of action. “Felicia could invite our guest to have some tea. From what I understand her headset allows her to understand what we say; only that it was recently damaged and that we can’t understand her because of it. We could use our magic to bridge the gap and get her to explain the kind of magic that shines within her brilliantly, maybe we can get her to enjoy a nice bath before sharing tea perhaps so we can sooth her pain. She obviously does not know of our secrets and yet there is so much magic in one so quiet, I find myself curious.”

“High Artificer, You know what they say about too much curiosity and what it will do to one of our people.” The blond cat sounded a bit worried about what her High Artificer was implying.

“We will not probe too far or do too much if she is unwilling, she is a guest who is beloved by those she sought to rescue and we will not harm the poor dears hurting heart any farther than it already is.” The High Artificer would live up to her words of not hurting Fluttershy, but she wouldn’t live up to not being the cause of a massive problem. “Get some maidens to work on a bath tomorrow morning and care for her in any imaginable way you can think of, I want her cared for as if she were one with our sisterhood. I think it will do her some good. As for now, if you will excuse this old lady, I must go seek my granddaughter.”

13

Aldebaran was a nice quiet world; it was the unlikeliest place for the Croakers to launch an attack. So far as Fluttershy was concerned, she was safe even if she wasn’t happy about it. Fluttershy held out a hoof as she sat on the ground underneath a tree with pale green and yellow leaves. A tiny foreign insect native to this world bounded onto the tip of her hoof, she smiled at it softly whispering sweet words to it before lowering her hoof to the ground and gently shooed it away after it hopped off.

The bath Fluttershy recently had was like a spa trip. They had treated her very well and all, but even that treatment wasn’t going to lift her mood. At least her mane was brushed, combed and very lightly trimmed, her hooves were cured and her body felt much better from all the Aldebaran hospitality. They were particular about their hair care which Fluttershy liked. Any product of Aldebaran make was good for the fur and left her feeling soft and snuggly. The thing that would really make Fluttershy feel better would be a spell to instantly end up back in Equestria so she didn’t have to deal with so much heartbreak. She would have also gladly welcomed a cupcake right about now.

The food on Aldebaran was for omnivores, never in her life did Fluttershy think that normal looking carrots could taste like blueberries. She preferred the red root looking vegetables as they actually had the consistency of broccoli. Fluttershy made sure not to eat any meat if she was offered, an Aldebaran was very much like a normal cat as much as Katt was in liking the taste of fish. The food was much better then what she got on Aquas or when she was riding around with Fox and his crew, not that the supplies from The Rampancy or the nutrient bar were too terrible.

The air was fine, the food was fine, her body felt fine, but Fluttershy knew she wasn’t fine. She could feel magic in the air and it was quite a foreign feeling, she remembered what it was like to be levitated around by Twilight and this was nothing like that. Sure she wasn’t feeling pain or getting sick, in fact Fluttershy felt great especially after the wonderful hospitality but the foreboding feeling of dread was something she couldn’t get rid of. It was as if the magic of the world was trying to tell her something and she couldn’t hear what it was trying to warn her about. This world was just not home, despite its beauty in many forms from the land to its people that Fluttershy enjoyed, the Aldebaran culture was truly amazing and colorful.

Fluttershy sat there quietly contemplating how she was going to get home, thus far she had been relying on the kindness of strangers for survival and usually said strangers had a lot of other things to worry about aside from getting a lost pony like her back to her home planet. One such thing was saving an entire system from beings that would just destroy everything.

A long time ago when she was a filly, Fluttershy had looked up at the stars and wondered what it was like to be among them all the way out there, this wasn’t that long after she earned her cutie mark by falling to the ground to discover the beauty of nature for the first time. Since she had been missing so much below the clouds on which she lived early on in her life, she had wondered what it would be like out in space except she was too weak to fly that high unlike Rainbow who could seem to go on forever straight up until she started getting too cold and came back down covered in frost.

It was only now that Fluttershy knew the answer as to what was out there, which was a predicament she didn’t rightfully know how to handle gracefully. Thus far she hadn’t really had the time to settle down and worry about it with her survival on the line. While there were so many wonders out here, there were also incredible dangers beyond all imagination. Suddenly the pony found herself lifted into the air by such a thing that could be considered highly dangerous if aggravated.

“Are use okay fluffy wings?” The pony squeaked and looked up at what was termed a Betelgeusian Berserker Baboon. It was the only being that was larger than Katt on The Rampancy and despite the name sounding like it belonged to a species of monster, not to mention their naming conventions for sounding tough and even the females of their species come with a generally malicious appearance. On the other hoof the baboons were known to be quite friendly if a bit gruff and her translators understanding of their language was only slightly skewed, she chalked it up the slightly damaged headset she still wore.

Fluttershy smiled up at Mr. Barge gently holding her in his arms while rubbing her belly with a single large finger causing her to go into a fit of giggles. He was quite a tough guy to have survived taking a direct hit fired from a plasma cannon. From what she had learned from Katt that was one of the main guns from the Croaker Mother-ship, the same kind of guns that took out the Catspaw’s shields so quickly before it was disabled. Croakers were quite terrified of Berserker Baboons and quite rightfully so if they can handle that kind of punishment, even Fluttershy didn’t want to make one mad after hearing about it. Not that the shy pony could think of or even have a good reason to get one angry on purpose anyway. The reality that they were big softies at heart made Fluttershy happy that at least some parts of the universe were truly wondrous when it came to friendly sentient creatures that were stronger than even Iron Will was.

The pony nodded at the big well muscled creature, she has been feeling emotionally better lately and he was so nice to watch out for her. He was always nearby being so protective, but giving her the space she needed. He just gave her a goofy smile, patted her on the head, sat her back down under the tree and promptly stomped off to sit down and look at some flowers; Betelgusian Berserker Baboons were quite unique in their ways.

Fluttershy would never imply a Betelgeusian was not tough looking or sounding, in fact it was inferred the angrier a Betelgeusian was the more likelier they were to survive just about anything. That possibly included the lack of breathable atmosphere because they could get so angry to the point where breathing is something they stopped needing to do entirely, the green rabbit native from Warren told Fluttershy that tidbit and it was regarded as fact by the squirrel that he was becoming closer friends with.

The pony sat there underneath the odd tree thinking of what Twilight would do, Twilight would have probably found a way home through mapping the stars and their locations and would then do something involving math with them to find her way home. Fluttershy wished she had been a lot more interested in studying astronomy, now that she was where those stars were.

The best Fluttershy could do was make a list of things she needed to get home, things like food, water, a good sturdy mode of transportation and a direction to head in to just get any closer. She had no idea where she was going to get a ship or how she would even pay for one. Getting a ship, a good mode of space transportation, would be expensive and having no money relevant to where she was currently. Suffice it to say Fluttershy considered herself at rock bottom. At least she was alive, had her health and was among friendly people that weren’t immediately hostile or willing to end her life.

“Excuse me… um hello! Can you hear me? HEY, listen to me when I’m talking at you!” Suddenly getting yelled at had spooked the pony straight into the air and into the nearest low hanging cloud. “Hey get back here; I had something important to ask you! Ugh, I should be training right now; oh Master Jenny is going to be so upset with me if I’m not doing my best. How in the world is she doing that?”

Fluttershy poked her head from the cloud and looked down at the impatient Aldebaran that had spooked her out of her peaceful thoughts about the future. Getting home would require technologically advanced modes of transportation that she might not be capable of controlling very well on her own, it would also require lots of bravery to go into the unknown and that was something Fluttershy thought she was always low in stock on.

Taking in the Aldebaran, Fluttershy smiled a little, she looked a bit younger than some of the other adult Aldebaran cats she had seen. She had grey fur with long blue hair with a silky looking blue tail, like most of the Aldebaran cats Fluttershy had met she had a helmet that was like a tiara or crown with a jewel embedded in it over the general center of the forehead. An Aldebaran usually wore similar jewels on their wrists or bellies. The clothing this one wore was looked light and probably breathed well despite looking like a skintight suit, Rarity would have had a field day designing clothing for every last Aldebaran if she were here.

Fluttershy had seen some Aldebaran who had more armored looking suits that were termed the guards of their home. This wasn’t a guard and it didn’t look like one of the nice maidens who wore skimpy clothing that coddled her so warmly while doing such an incredible job with her mane and tail.

“Hey get down here and stop doing whatever it is your doing to cause the cloud to act like that.” The Aldebaran speaking to Fluttershy had to point out that the cloud was protectively blanketing Fluttershy, enwrapping the pony in its soft countenance almost as soon as she made contact with it.

Slowly Fluttershy back flapped her wings several times to bring the cloud closer to the ground, once close enough she stepped off of it while giving the Aldebaran a sheepish look.

“Is that cat bothering use? Are you sure use don’t need me to rough her up a bit?” Looking back to the large and strong Mr. Barge, Fluttershy shook her head no twice and he accepted it at face value turning away to continue staring at clouds or whatever it is Berserker Baboons did when they weren’t being angry and beating the odds quite literally with their fists.

Fluttershy gave the cloud a push with her hind legs and it floated upwards slowly dissipating into the air. She turned her attention back towards the Aldebaran. The Aldebaran had been shivering at the sight of the large heavily muscled figure with what amounted to boundless fear from just his intimidating presence. Fluttershy was probably the only being that could get used to being near one after meeting such a large creature for the first time, then again Fluttershy had seen bigger given she had played with an Ursa Minor cub.

“Whew thanks, that guy really scares me. He’s the first Berserker Baboon I’ve ever seen, they’re a lot bigger than in the stories I’ve heard about them and they weren’t kidding about how scary they could be. My names Felicia, what’s yours?” Felicia tilted her head awkwardly as she saw the pony neigh back at her in a language she couldn’t quite grasp, but the sound of the creature’s voice was quite heavenly on the ears. “Oh right, you can’t exactly speak our language can you? I was told that, I’m sorry that I forgot about it. Anyway I was sent to find you and ask you if you would join my grandmother for tea…. it might actually be interesting for once because tea time is really boring.”

Fluttershy being curious as to what tea tasted like on other worlds nodded, the vegetable stew on this world was delicious as were a few of the other things she had tried that she considered safe for consumption. The reason why the vegetable stew was so good was because Aldebaran openly traded stuff with Warren… well at least until Warren was turned into one massive swamp. The green rabbit and the squirrel had talked about how Warren being destroyed really messed up the trade industry the other night.

Felicia seemed rather impatient with Fluttershy getting lost in thought, so she was rightfully quite a bit angry with the pony while trying to get her attention. After Felicia had finally managed to get Fluttershy to pay attention to her, the pony found herself being led to a nice table sitting outdoors in a well maintained garden where the High Artificer herself waited and didn’t looked nearly as testy as Felicia did.

“Ah, how does Aldebaran’s hospitality feel, I do hope our maidens weren’t too amorous in their cleaning of you. You know they find you adorable and I must say I can see the attraction.” The High Artificer chuckled at seeing Fluttershy dropped her tail, clamped her hind legs together and blushed furiously. She couldn’t understand what the quadruped was saying, but she could see the clear embarrassment in her features. The pony wasn’t the only one she treated this hospitality to, in fact every refugee received some tender love and care and none of them were a danger to their secrets except possibly this cute creature before her who brimmed with a magical power all her own. “You’re not quite what I was expecting, you remind me of the time I dated a pirate from Canopis Three. It would be hard for me to explain our relationship if you’ve never met one of those four armed feathered folk, they can be quite rambunctious and they wear their emotions on their sleeves a lot of the time. Oh did they ever have sleeves… and the things they could do with four hands.”

“Grandmother, did you not need to speak to this… pony was it… about something important!” Felicia looked at her grandmother aghast; she never knew her grandmother had been in that sector of space before. Given the number of pirates and ninja that operate around there, Felicia was a bit mortified to find out about her grandmothers preferences.

“Ah yes, sorry about wandering off into old memories of times well spent with some rather handsome billed fellows. I’m not as young and virile as I used to be, but there are some things I’ll never forget.” With a wistful sigh as she stared off into space, after a few moments the High Artificer decided to do as her princess of a granddaughter asked and turned to Fluttershy. “Yes, well. I called you here because I wanted to learn about your magic and in turn teach you something about our magic. Be wary as you must keep our secrets if we are to tell them to you if you wish to learn and we will in turn promise to keep yours to the best of our abilities. One such secret involves something that will allow me to understand what you are saying. You may even be capable of using this ability, which can only be used on biological minds only.”

Fluttershy was curious and she thought it over, well the nice cat lady was offering to help her out with communicating with other intelligent beings much easier. She understood little animals easily on a lot of levels, but something more sentient is a lot harder for her to see through.

“I’m sorry for asking this, but may I look at your magic? It would be rude of me to look at it without asking for your permission first to see if you are even capable of what I want to teach as a sign of friendship.” After a moment the High Artificer received a shy smile and a nod, after a moment she leaned forward and held out both her hands in a gentle manner which soon found too hooves in them. Her eyes started glowing and she looked into the eyes of the creature known as a pony. “Now open your mind and speak your thoughts unto me.”

“I Fluttershy hereby Pinkie Pie promise to keep your secrets to the best of my abilities, that is if you can truly help me learn to do this that is.” A fluctuation went from Fluttershy through to the friendly old high class lady. “A Pinkie Pie promise is the best kind of promise one of my kind can possible ever give, she is one of my greatest friends.”

“You are capable of doing this method of communication on your own and are quite gifted with magical powers of the likes I have never seen before, yet there is a magic taint amongst your being. It is strange, yet not volatile or evil, yet the shape is dark and foreboding this taint. You have also used this method communication before if even subconsciously and at a much lesser strength.” The High Artificer spoke with such calm and hoped Fluttershy would be as calm as she was otherwise things could go wrong. “There where spikes where you used this power to communicate in you that still ripple in your magic. A large fierce creature that breathes flames, three children who never want to listen to their elders and it caused this foreign taint with the help of an outside source. Your spirit is a wondrous thing Fluttershy, I will make a Pinkie Pie promise to keep your secrets to the best of my abilities as well and I will work hard in keeping them as well.”

Fluttershy gasped, she recognized the moments that the High Artificer talked about and they were very memorable moments in life, except for the ones where she became what her friends had called the Flutter Bat. Twilight’s magic had twisted her into a creature that was doing what the bats normally did, she was just glad she didn’t become a blood sucking monster.

“The stare…” Fluttershy breathed in sudden realization; she was trying to stay calm as she didn’t want Felicia to hear what it was called.

“Felicia, do you not have training to attend too? I believe Fluttershy and I will be quite a while.” Silently the High Artificer told Fluttershy with a look into her aquamarine eyes that she had just made a promise and she was not about to break it even for one of her own blood. She wanted to discuss what this power the mare had deep inside of her, it sang with a harmonious tune. That heavenly tune that sang seemed to be missing a lot of its parts and was a saddening sound against the backdrop of all the magic on Aldebaran. She could already tell that the tune wished to recombine with others from a vast distance through space; she would not dare touch such a connection so pure and loving.

The taint in this painfully positively peaceful passionate soul might be something the High Artificer would be taking a further look into. She would have to tread carefully as this magic, while similar, was not of their world.

Author's Note

Been reading Appledashery... plus a lot of other pony fan fictions, the Innortal Loops, fifteen Harry Potter fan fictions, playing Mario Kart 8, keeping up with youtube video accounts and Equestria Daily. Maybe even catching up with some Steven Universe. I really need sleep and three thousand words is much harder then two thousand five hundred to keep up with.

No guesses as what is about to happen to Fluttershy in the next chapter, only can you imagine what will happen with her being on a world with no apples when something like that occurs? I certainly can.

Sorry about goofing off if you actually care an iota about this story. I'm just not in a rapid writing groove mood and I'm trying to slide back into it.

14

“This stare you speak of, is there a problem with it and what does it do? Also what other magic are you capable of?” The High Artificer had to ask as it seemed to be the root of a problem for Fluttershy.

“Well…” Fluttershy went on about the three kinds of ponies and their princesses that control the moon and the sun, powerful magical artifacts and how any pegasus was talented in manipulating the weather and water. When it came to talking about her stare, Fluttershy was a bit bashful and slightly afraid of what would come of it as she sipped her Aldebaran brew. “As for my stare… I don’t like to talk about it after what happened the last time I used it.”

“I’ve learned much about you, but you still haven’t heard much of me. I’m the High Artificer of the sisterhood of Aldebaran, as you already know we can do magic and would be termed witches by those who don’t understand us.” The High Artificer went into a lengthy explanation about the history of their magic and how it worked, she even told Fluttershy about quark demons and why the secrecy was needed as others would doom the Aniverse should anything wake one of the bigger ones. Apparently the Aldebaran barely had enough power collectively to even pacify the bigger ones should they wake up, in fact ancient Aldebaran Artificers of the past died in the act of saving the Aniverse from one really enormous one. “To be frank we’re glad that we can keep it sleeping where it is, as long as no being bothers it the ancients can sleep peacefully and it stays pacified in slumber.”

“A being that can destroy whole worlds… it’s a really scary thought.” It was a bit too scary for Fluttershy who was ducking behind her mane. She couldn’t imagine the scale that was described by the High Artificer whose name she learned was Katrina Felicitous, but that it had to be kept in outer space in a very dangerous place to go to. The large quark demon was where only an Aldebaran or those with magical senses can enter safely, it sounded like a perfectly reasonable place to put it as if it were awake it’d be hurting a lot of people. She sipped her tea and picked up the cookie made from planet native nuts. “This tea is quite nice Ms. Felicitous and these cookies are a quite unique, but there’s something I’m wondering about. Why is every Aldebaran female?”

“Unless we birth males of another race, we’re not going to birth anything other than female Aldebaran… a side effect from the ancient battle with the Quark Demon as it left a large mark on our race. Still, procreation is capable between two Aldebaran females as it has become an innate magical ability of our race. I just hope my granddaughter Felicia doesn’t have her heart set on her master as her views are elsewhere.” Felicitous sighed; her granddaughter absolutely adored her master Jenny. “I worry about that girl she’s so headstrong, aside from being scared of the Berserker Baboon she is a bit foolhardy.”

“I don’t think she’s that bad… well as far as I know. I think you’d know better about it than I would.” A small smile crossed Fluttershy’s face. “She kind of reminds me of my friend Rainbow Dash, always trying so hard to achieve her dream.”

“Our magic may not be entirely compatible but we do share a lot of similarities. There are also a vast amount of differences; like these cutie marks do you know the history of what the first one was or when they started appearing?” Felicitous frowned sadly seeing Fluttershy look down.

“Nobody knows how the cutie marks started, just that they are always a reminder of what our special talents are. Mine is my connection to animals, it’s been said that it could be a reflection of a ponies personality.” Butterflies were docile creatures that flittered about peacefully in life and Fluttershy wouldn’t be overly violent with anyone. Well the Mane-iac was an exception as she was the Saddle Rager at the time and thus her ability to get angry was heightened. It showed how strong a character she was personally to not get angry throughout most of the comic book, at least until that firefly was added to the narrative for the purposes of making her save the day with force. She didn’t like that comic book. “You promised not to tell anyone else what I’m about to tell you, it’s about my stare ability and it’s a story I only know of because of what my friends told me.”

“You do not have to Fluttershy, only if you feel like you must mention any more as so far I’ve only seen three instances and you must have used it more than that.” The High Artificer Felicitous was truly wanted to help Fluttershy get this off her chest and did not want to force the issue if she herself did not want to go there. She studied the ponies hoof and traced the fur on her legs with her fingers it was so soft. Fluttershy gave her a feeling of calm and caring, she tried to return the feelings through their connection.

“Well that’s the thing… the third instance and the first two all have something in common and I didn’t truly like what I was using my stare for at those times. The third time was the worst as I didn’t want to disappoint my friends to the point I went against my cutie mark.” Fluttershy looked down into the liquid in her cup as Felicitous ran her fingers over a hoof in an exploring ticklish manner, causing her to giggle once or twice. It went against her cutie mark to force nature to change unnaturally, her friends didn’t care about that at the time and that is why things went so horribly from what she was told. “I’m beginning to wish I had disappointed my friends at the time, everything would have worked out anyway in the end.”

It wasn’t just Twilights magic that caused the issue that Fluttershy couldn’t even remember very well except for an explanation from her friends. She knew that she was to blame for not pushing her side of the issue harder; she could have even vehemently refused to abuse her ability to stare animals down. The end result left her with an increased maddening taste for apples that plagued her for an entire week after the incident, that and she could have sworn she had fangs in her mouth but the feeling eventually went away.

“What is the common thing among these times of using your ability?” Felicitous didn’t see a connection between a red beast who breathed fire, three fillies and where the rather benign tainting of who Fluttershy was happened. She figured the taint was that she used her ability for a selfish purpose at the whims of another and thus it was abused to a terrible end. She however could not rule out that breaking away from ones cutie mark sounded to have some consequences on a ponies psyche. It was surprising that the taint didn’t appear to be worsening or dissipating, it just was and it seemed to be at peace deep within Fluttershy’s being.

“Well the first time was on a dragon, it was actually intelligent and not an animal, it didn’t bother me much since I did it to save my friends. The second time was on the Cutie Mark Crusaders, it wasn’t at full power but I still didn’t feel right using it on them.” Fluttershy paused, inhaled a deep breath and decided to get it out there. “The third time I used the stare on something intelligent well, it was me and it was by complete accident that my friend’s magic caused an incident.”

“So your stare works on more than just animals, it also works on intelligent beings and I’m guessing this third time had some disturbing adverse affect on you because it was misused?” Being the High Artificer counted for something, she had a long history of looking into magic and she could already tell that something went horribly wrong the third time. From what she could tell Fluttershy was better at communicating with wild or docile creature, more so then any truly intelligent being. She was positively amazed by what she was hearing about these ponies from Fluttershy’s home. “I’m glad that I’m able to bridge the gap in our tongues with my magic without causing you a previous form of discomfort.”

“Thank you for being able to do this, even if I don’t learn how to communicate quite like this. That last time, I don’t really remember much of what happened but my friends tell me I turned into quite a monster. ” With the way Pinkie told the story Fluttershy should count herself lucky she didn’t become a bloodsucking vampire. She lowered her head and looked off to the side of the table where this world’s neon colored grass could be seen. “To think I could have been hurting my friends and I wouldn’t have even known.”

“It was alright in the end was it not; you don’t seem the type to harm needlessly or even on purpose.” Now Felicitous was wondering what it felt like to be caught in the stare that can wrangle a large red beast of flames, but should she ask something like that of her guest. How would Fluttershy even take her even suggesting it? “I wish to study the effects of this stare on myself.”

“But… I’m not angry at you.” Fluttershy mumbled shyly.

“Why, do you need to be angry to use it?” Being a High Artificer was a tough job especially when you were as old as Felicitous, she didn’t believe Fluttershy could hurt her or would even want to.

“No, but it definitely helps.” Often did Fluttershy wonder why she had to be so weak about it, it was her ability so it shouldn’t control her or even have any power outside what she wanted to do.

“Still, I would like for you to use it on me. I need to study the effects; you know by the way our race performs magic that we aren’t very good at hurting living things easily. Mechanical creations on the on other claw... anyways, I would like to see how this works so I can better teach future generations to defend against it should the need arise.” As she was saying this the High Artificer was already palming an Aldebaran memory stone, she held up the stone only its color was a soft pinkish red instead of the usual Aldebaran red. It was a stone that an Aldebaran would only give to ones they can trust implicitly and it was enough to prove Fluttershy had earned her trust in case something bad happened to her.

“Um….” Fluttershy said trying to think of what to say about what was placed before her

“If anything should go wrong when you use the stare, I want you to show them this stone to prove that you meant no harm to me. Keep it I insist, for it is a gift and it has some of the magic of our people in it. Know that no other would be able to steal it from you no matter how hard they try since it has been given to you and you alone, it is called a memory stone and it’ll memorize the one who owns it and stay with them no matter the circumstances.” It wasn’t like Felicitous had never trust another being before Fluttershy, but this was a special occasion of meeting a sister of innate magical prowess from beyond the veil of deep space. “It will also always have a connection with Aldebaran the place it was made, as such I or anyone else I trust may be able to contact you. I know you are not staying on our planet forever, but you are welcome to rest here for long as you need as a guest and know that as you travel the voids of space that you’ll never be alone as long as you have the ears of our sisterhood in your… hooves as it were.”

Fluttershy looked at the stone that was gently slid into position on the table in front of her, it reminded her of what the element of Kindness looked like before it turned into a butterfly shape only it was a rounder shaped stone and less angular. It was quite a beautiful shiny stone thing and it was a gift. Fluttershy took it and held it aloft looking at it in the sunlight. She looked to High Artificer Felicitous and she nodded as she stowed it in her saddlebags. It was hard for her to find any words to say, it was just given to her freely and she couldn’t really think of anything.

“Well okay… if you’re sure about this.” Receiving a smile from the old cat that leaned back releasing her hoof and simply looked her in the eyes, Fluttershy worked up her courage to launch a stare. Closing her eyes Fluttershy built up the tension in her body, her stare was a powerful thing and she only learned how to activate it manually after the defeat of the cockatrice in a staring match.

Opening her eyes Fluttershy stared directly into High Artificer Felicitous’s eyes, then the world around them warped slightly so their eyes were the only things they could see. They were locked in an eternity with each other; Fluttershy can see a kindly grandmotherly creature before her who had never wronged anyone if she could help it. There were a quite a few things that Fluttershy could see in those eyes that caused her to blush profusely as there was a twinkle of raunchiness about them.

“Well… I can say this much. The eyes are truly a window into the soul.” Peace, calm, kindness, friendly disposition, it overflowed High Artificer Felicitous like a steam train, the pony’s innocence and strength of spirit were beyond all measure of powerful in its own unique way. Her mind had no defense against it, she couldn’t call up any magic and it kind of scared her that her heart was laid bare to the mare staring so deeply into her very being.

“Um… excuse me for asking this, but is it okay if I ask right now if you can understand me?” It was odd for Fluttershy to see the regal looking figure seem to be like a scared, but overall, highly curious kitten and could see her offer of friendship as genuine as what Fluttershy was willing to give in return.

“I can, it is rather intriguing and you scare me somewhat. After a while I do believe you can learn to say all you need to with a simple gaze like this one.” They both relaxed and were at peace with one another, being a High Artificer and at the top of her craft would never have prepared Felicitous for an experience like this one.

A sphere, small in size barely bigger than an average sized rubber ball that would fit into the palm of someone’s hand flew in front of their sights glowing random colors. This tiny sphere of raw energy was a Quark Demon, used in the Aniverse famous Aldebaran sensors. A small Quark Demon such as this one would normally be consider harmless, at least to an Aldebaran. Flying into the foreign energy coming from Fluttershy and her stare, it wasn’t so harmless when it caused a backlash of magic to hit Fluttershy. The Aldebarans had a lot of time to build up immunity to little Quark Demons as they were native to the surrounding space around the planet, Fluttershy being a foreigner was not and was very much unprotected in this instance.

Fluttershy screamed out in pain as she felt like a hot iron was just driven through her eyes, she fell from her seat and grasped at her head with her hooves. Felicitous was immediately at her side and trying to talk to her, but she was being so loud. After a few moments she felt the pain slowly fall away and something strange overtake her, slowly she felt some movement in her mouth moving her tongue around she felt herself growing sharp canines.

Opening her eyes she started to panic and looked to her wings, she could vaguely remember this feeling and she didn’t like it one bit as the feathers started to conjoin together turning into the type of membrane one would associate with a bats. Her wingtips were warping to have clawed thumbs. She could only guess this is what her friends had described as what she looked like when she became flutter bat.

The most horrendous part of all of this for Fluttershy was that she was completely aware of all the changes going on in her body and it was very traumatizing to her. Her bones snapped, her ears crunched and expanded, her eyes felt like they were becoming bloodshot, her hair was becoming wild, her fur was getting ragged, she had fangs and she could feel herself slowly losing control over her body. It wasn’t a pleasant moment to be a pony on the planet of Aldebaran.

It was only but a moment after the transformation was complete that Fluttershy hissed dangerously at Katrina Felicitous while snapping at her with her fangs scaring her off as she got to her hooves. In her head Fluttershy could see all this happening; only she was no longer in control of her body or her actions and she felt a deep hunger that she didn’t feel she could satisfy.

Slowly Fluttershy lost track of what was happening to her, was she attacking that Berserker Baboon? Ay-yoo-gah? There was a flash of blue hair. Her head was getting fuzzy, she needed to concentrate. Blasts of energy, Katrina pinning her to the ground she was quite spry for an old lady only she gets free for a moment. Metal monsters trying to capture her and gave chase, she dance amongst them and wreaks havoc on them. She tried feasting upon everything that was colored red or looked even relatively juicy, something tasted like pineapple, why was her mouth full of copper all of the sudden?

The hunger was unending, she needed to feed, she needed food and the taste of apples was on her lips but there were no apples to be found or had anywhere to satisfy her lust.

A vortex... emptiness, darkness… monster, she was lost once again and had become a… sleep… she needed rest…

Author's Note

I really need to get back into the swing of things and stop reading other peoples fan fiction.

15

A gasp… eyes snapped open… they surveyed the darkness around them unsure of what was going on, the being felt so very weak and sickly. The smell of bile from ones stomach contents permeated wherever this location was.

It was hard to see when everything was so dark, the body was so weak and with a mind that was so heavily muddled. A vast ocean of pain threatened to swallow the figure, the taste in its mouth was horrid and septic in nature. Slowly the pain eased up.

It inhaled once, the air tasted just as awful as the rest of the figures mouth. It was stale and things felt so heavy that it was almost impossible to move.

“Mm… where...” Fluttershy started off, she didn’t have a clue as to where she was but her throat was dry and raspy. Now that she had a coherent thought in her head, she was starving and slightly dehydrated again. She couldn’t remember much, but she felt horrible about it all the same with only the bits and pieces she could remember before her mind drew a total blank.

Twitching Fluttershy felt her hair was pressed tightly against her body and something was shifting around her, after a moment she realized that she was upside down and that her surroundings was entirely made of dirt. She had been buried alive! Had the Aldebaran people thought they killed her and then buried her like this?

Fluttershy felt something push into her side and she shifted a bit. She was still wearing her saddlebags at least, how long had she been buried in the ground like this? Where was her air currently coming from? This was a rather highly claustrophobic situation for the shy pony and she usually like enclosed spaces.

Wiggling around she wasn’t packed in with the dirt and she felt a small breeze hitting her face, something was very odd about this. If she was upside down and there was air coming from below her, did that mean she was in a tunnel? Okay Fluttershy had to remember how she got here.

Fluttershy’s mind went back to a simpler time, her mother and father trying to encourage her to be more like Rainbow Dash. She clearly wasn’t anything like her daring friend as she was her own pony and preferred peace and quiet. She earned her cutie mark after singing about her love of everything to be found in nature and taking away the fear of all the nearby woodland animals. Well at least her memory wasn’t messed up.

She went through the memories of her and Rainbow Dash as they went through school, her move to Ponyville to live in the outskirts because she was too shy to live in the town itself. Rainbow Dash soon followed after still praising the Wonder Bolts as usual keeping her body in tip top shape.

Speaking of shape Fluttershy ran her tongue along her teeth. The right side of her mouth was fine, but the fang she felt in the left side of her mouth was foreboding. She fluffed her wings; she felt feathers from her left wing and membrane from her right. At this point Fluttershy was beyond the point panicking and crying, she was quite excepting of the fact that she was in a lot of pain and that something about her body was thoroughly messed up.

Continuing the memory diatribe, her little angel and all the little critters that live at her house, the Cutie Mark Crusaders and her friends back on planet Equus were all quite well remembered. The memories of her more recent friends followed, Fox and his brave crew facing the odds, Katt Monroe and her broken yet revived pride from the Lylat System. After that was her memories of the Aniverse Systems, the green rabbit, the squirrel of similar bipedal build, the friendly berserker baboon was something she could scarcely forget and the friends she made on Aldebaran. From that point however there was a huge blank in her memory with only bits and pieces there, flashes of what she hoped wasn’t blood.

How could she still be surviving whatever she was currently suffering from? She couldn’t exactly tell what her injuries currently were. Wincing Fluttershy wiggled toward the air that was filling her tightly enclosed space that quickly started to loosen, despite it being downwards it was the only way Fluttershy considered was towards safety and not being buried in the walls of some alien world. Her need to play, enjoy and spend time with her beloved friends urging her forward.

If she were an earth pony she would be okay with being stuck in soil, rock and dirt like this. A pegasus usually likes wide open spaces like the sky. With her current mindset of being buried alive and the pain she was in wasn’t helping her be calm at all. Most importantly Fluttershy hoped to any pony who would listen to her mental pleas that she didn’t hurt her alien friends before ending up here, wherever here was.

The soil started loosening at a fast pace, Fluttershy felt her weight start to shift downward in her struggling. Well she didn’t feel particularly good about was going to happen to her in the next few moments because she didn’t know how far it would be till she hit the ground and if her wings were truly mismatched then it would be much harder for her to fly. She really didn’t have much choice in the matter as her supposed gravesite gave out from beneath her and she fell into a very dark room head first in a slight angle.

Fluttershy grunted as her back slammed into something causing her to flip and land on her belly, she was really disoriented. Aside from the disorientation, hunger, thirst and generally unpleasant stiffness in her body she lifted her head from where she landed slowly taking in her surroundings. She carefully pulled her hind legs up onto what was solid metal flooring by flopping forward away from the edge.

Before her was a shaft of light that suddenly sprung up from where she had previously hit a wall back first, she didn’t see any wall now which was odd. Behind her, in the dark hallway she had fallen into, she could see a ton of bright little red eyes and heard the shrieks of what sounded like bats. Another thing in the darkened hallway Fluttershy could barely make out was smears of blood on the walls and considered her position on going in that direction. She did not want to go near those things while she was as weak as she was and they seemed to be avoiding the light, they didn’t seem particularly friendly from what she could tell.

Fluttershy continued to study her surroundings the corridor behind her was made of some strange purple stones and ahead of her the room that was filled with light seemed to be metallic in nature the same kind of metal of the walkway she was currently laying on leading into the next lit room. Looking above her she didn’t see any indication that she had been previously buried in the ceiling that looked like solid stone, in fact Fluttershy was pretty sure she might have been losing her mind as she didn’t see any dirt from her fall around her hooves either.

The pony struggled to stand, she was going to walk into the next room and then study herself to see how badly off she was. She was also going to look into what she still had with her in her saddlebags; maybe she could find a clue as to what exactly happened after she had lost her mind or was she still losing it? She couldn’t rightly tell at the moment whether she was mentally sound.

Instead of walking, Fluttershy could only limp forward as her entire body felt bruised and breathing was slightly hard at the moment. She really didn’t have to go very far; Fluttershy felt her heart sink once she finally stood at the edge of the drop off into the room at the end of the small cylindrical hallway she stood in.

The first thing Fluttershy noticed was that she found herself inexorably stuck in a dead end. She didn’t think whatever all those glowing red eyes were back in the corridor would leave her alone if she asked them nicely, considering the stale smell of blood they were probably hungry. The drop off in the corridor was the same height as the drop off in this room about six or so feet to the floor below, she didn’t know if she could currently handle a fall.

Surveying the well lit room from her perch that looked to be the only entrance to it, Fluttershy could see the walls were lined with metal and strange constructs. Even if the construction looked worn and ancient, it was very much consistent with intelligent beings having once lived here. Finally looking to the floor of the lit room she flinched, there were pieces of something lying scattered about the room where there were a few scorch marks on the wall. Whatever happened here had decidedly been pretty bad.

Lying against the metal cylindrical wall between the corridor and the strange small metal lined room; Fluttershy unstrapped her saddlebags and searched them. The pictures were okay; her headset was only slightly almost unnoticeably bent out of shape and… there was the Aldebaran Memory Stone. Fluttershy sighed, she had no way to get food, she didn’t see any nearby source of water and she was stuck in a dead end trapped by flesh eating creatures of the dark. To top it all off she might have been going insane as she could have sworn she popped out of the ceiling that looked to be made of purple solid stone bricks without leaving any dirt on the floor.

Looking to the many small red eyes in the corridor they hovered around the middle of the corridor where the light couldn’t touch, Fluttershy would have to make a decision on whether or not to try to bypass them. She put her saddlebags back on after placing her headset back on her head; it gave her some comfort but not much as she checked herself over.

Fluttershy definitely still had a fang in her mouth and her right wing was still like a bats. Reaching up with a hoof she felt that both her ears were a lot larger than normal so she still had the hearing of a bat which would explain why she could still hear all those shrieking red eyes in the darkness and the flapping of their wings against the air. They might sound small, but they would have swarmed her effortlessly in the condition she was in. Her hair was half ragged and half silky smooth, her body was covered in bruises and light cuts.

What had Fluttershy done to anyone to have deserved all this? She had just wanted to live a quiet life taking care of animals, have tea with friends and maybe break out of her shell once in a while to visit a Pinkie Pie party. Now, she was horribly magically mutated and that might be what was causing her the most pain and this was only the physical side of things. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before her body started ripping itself apart in a much more messy fashion from the mutations it was likely still undergoing.

Fluttershy was no psychiatrist, but she was pretty sure she was mentally snapping at the seams. If she wasn’t sure her friends would accept her no matter what she looked like, well she would have given up all hope right here and now. She had to wonder when the suicidal thoughts would begin to set in or when they would even start. No pony was supposed to handle so many levels of trauma dealt to them this quickly. The only reason why Fluttershy could do it was because she had friends, family and people who believed in her not to take the easy way out.

After a while of thought Fluttershy couldn’t come to a decision about what to do, something caught her right eye and she focused on something in the distance of the stone lined corridor. Her eye was probably warped like the rest of her body that was at war with itself. A blue circle in the distance disappeared and she could hear the sound of something moving towards her resting spot. She could slowly see three sets of yellow glowing eyes that showed intelligence were coming at her quickly and they were being ignored by the tiny red eyes floating around the corridor.

Standing up Fluttershy edged her way backwards and nearly fell into metal lined room with the destroyed fragments. The creatures of wherever she was obviously could jump or fly really well to have a corridor and the room behind her conjoined by a small cylindrical hallway that was several feet off of the floor below without stairs leading up or down into both areas.

Several beams of yellow energy flashed and Fluttershy didn’t have the wherewithal to really dodge or even the reaction speed to make a good effort of doing so.

A splash of blood erupted from Fluttershy’s shoulder as she was blown backwards spinning with the first shot that had ripped a bloody hole in her shoulder. Another ripped its way through her torso as she fell, of the five fired shots she had been only hit twice as she present a small target for her attackers.

Fluttershy’s shrill cry of anguish was quickly interrupted by her landing in the middle of the floor with a cut off scream in the metal lined room. She laid there in agony as a chunk of whatever it was laying about the room dug sharply into her left hind flank spilling, more of her vital life essences all over the place. Simply reacting to the pain she clutched at the wound through her barrel with her front left hoof trying to stem the flow of blood.

Fluttershy knew she was going to die one way or another at this point, she could see three tall black figures with dark green and grey carapaces taking up position around the entrance between the corridor and the room she now laid in. Their language was scary and she was quite sure one of them even cackled at her bleeding form.

Struggling to push herself into a standing position Fluttershy knew of only one thing that would save her in this situation and that would be a righteously angry stare to pin them. Even then once the stare failed… well she can’t say that she didn’t try and give it her all, all her friends would have been disappointed in her otherwise.

Putting pressure on her right hoof with her wounded shoulder caused Fluttershy to bleeding to worsen, but she tried to ignore that as she pushed herself into a standing position. She started to slowly back away with her tail between her hind legs and tried to raise her wings in a threatening posture, considering who she was and knowing her current condition she didn’t think she could really scream threatening in any meaning of the word.

The three beings hopped down and sauntered up to her cackling at each other they raised their clawed arms towards the pony taking aim to end her existence.

Fluttershy closed her eyes. She tried to block out the pain and focus on using her stare, what could she use to get angry at them for? Well the shot through the torso could have messed up any one of her organs with how she felt. Why they could have even just taken away her ability to ever have… okay it wasn’t so hard for her feel the anger welling up in her now.

Fluttershy’s eyes snapped open with raw fury; they dare take away that which was precious! She wanted children someday to dote on, she wanted to become a grandmother, she had baby animals back at home she would like to nurse back to health if they get sick and if she died who would carry on her work in her place? Kindness needed to be spread to all those in need. If she had just lost her ability to bring life into the world then these beings would pay somehow, it didn’t matter whether the crazy magically bat inclined mutations would have done the same thing to her in this case. Fluttershy was angry beyond all measure and didn’t feel like being entirely rational at the moment.

Even in her injured state Fluttershy still couldn’t think of killing as a viable option, even if those beings were the ones who have just grievously harmed her to the point that she might never have foals. She pressed home her anger as hard as she could to make them feel her pain.

The three bipedal crustaceous monstrosities had been about to fire on her when her eyes snapped open and a pressure wave of unknown force diverted all their shots into the ceiling where their arms became immobile. Their bodies were frozen in place and they couldn’t move no matter how badly they wanted them to aim their guns at the creature that suddenly became defiant. Their bodies weren’t responding, the onslaught the little pony was unleashing upon them could have very well turned them to solid stone.

Fluttershy felt herself getting weaker and weaker, she couldn’t keep this up forever. In her waning strength she saw a fourth pair of eyes that were rather curious about this situation. They connected with hers and her unstoppable anger, this pair of eyes didn’t freeze under her onslaught. Instead Fluttershy’s onslaught seemed to strengthen within them a powerful anger as well, but it wasn’t directed at Fluttershy. It was also directing its anger at the crustaceous monstrosities, ones that had wronged it as well.

A tiny one fanged smile crossed Fluttershy’s face and she sadly only had two words to say, one was a contraction and the other was completely heartfelt even in its simple brutality. Her words would be understood, she would make these crustaceous aliens understand what she had to say from the bottom of her heart. There was some consideration for an infinitesimal moment on what exactly was going to happen next. Would any of her friends think any less of her for this? Would they hate her if they knew what she was going to do in this moment, that even as she was dying that she could actually be so incredibly vindictive?

Maybe her pony friends or anyone else Fluttershy had met really didn’t truly know her so well after all.

“I’m sorry.”

16

Fluttershy had a very good reason for apologizing to these three sentient crustaceous bipedal creatures. She was the cause of their deaths after all and she had to make sure they understood that it was all her fault.

The light in the crustaceous trio’s eyes died a little. They knew what she said, why she said it and what she meant by saying it. They were going to die and there was no stopping their deaths. Weirdly enough they were forgiving Fluttershy for all this as they ceased their struggles to move.

The first to die was at the front of the triangular formation, three powerful raptor talons burst through his chest splattering the room with his blood and organs. Fluttershy stayed unblinking even as the alien blood and organs showered her in gore. The creature that just killed that crustaceous being pulled its right leg out of the dead corpse and turned to the other two, looking from the one on the right to the one on the left.

The large deadly creature leapt onto the bipedal crustaceous being on the left ripping off its clawed arm and started to rend the body limb from limb in a messy fashion. Even then the last crustaceous being didn’t fight back or resist what was coming; it slowly lowered its arm and waited patiently staring into Fluttershy’s eyes.

Fluttershy refused to avert her gaze. The creature’s powerful legs were stained with alien blood and it moved towards the last crustaceous being, once close enough it shot its head forward and it decapitated the last being with its beak. It was a quick clean jerking motion resulting in a splatter of more alien blood.

The only thing Fluttershy could think of at this moment was that at least their deaths were quick. She stared into the creatures eyes and then her eyes began to wander the form of the tall creature. She had thought the creature was some form of reaper, that its blood red eyes and immediate action of slaying those crustaceous beings with energy weapons meant it was a monster that finally came to end her suffering.

On a second glance Fluttershy noted that its eyes were pink, it was covered in green fur or were they feathers? It had a strange mohawk shaped crest sticking from its head. It was definitely avian in appearance and it slowly walked towards her on two incredibly well built legs that had a heavily packed musculature. It was hard to tell if this thing had wings or not, because if it did then they were really small wings and it resembled a cassowary or ostrich only a lot more powerful in appearance.

Fluttershy closed her eyes and let her body fall to the side, she laid there bleeding out on the floor waiting for her demise. Something gently pressed against her face and cooed at her softly with a long sad sounding trill. She was dying and she didn’t think the bird creature could help her, she felt its beak run through her mane gently and then she felt it messing with the feathers on her left wing for a bit.

It was after a few moments of bleeding out that Fluttershy realize the creature wasn’t going to end her life, instead it seemed very reluctant to if the soft touches at her bleeding shoulder meant anything. It even pokes at the leg covering the torso wound that went in one side and out the other. As she felt the beak wrap around her body she lost consciousness.

With a gasp Fluttershy woke up again. She didn’t know where she was or how long she had been out, but the pain she was in seemed currently muted. How could she still be alive? Her head was burning up, she probably had a fever at the moment and with her injuries she knew walking was impossible at the moment.

She opened her eyes slowly, taking in the light around her. Despite the dull nagging pain, Fluttershy was really in a comfortable position with something pressed up against her body. She was in what appeared to be a nest located in an open enclosed space with what appeared to be a large white object sitting in a corner underneath a strange circular shape in the ceiling.

Why wasn’t she hungry or thirsty and was that warm feeling that was pressing up against her belly? Shaking her head Fluttershy’s vision blurred a bit, she wasn’t feeling very well but she could still think clearly enough to take in her surroundings better.

The nest she was in was made of what she figured to be foreign bits of what she assumed was an alien form of wood, she was laying at the edge of this nest with something smooth and snuggly placed against her form. With her head propped up against the edge of the nest she didn’t have to lift it to get a good look around at what was around her.

Looking down at her body her mane fell a bit into her face and she couldn’t lift a hoof to move her mane out of the way. At least it looked particularly clean of any blood that it would have been covered in considering her last memory of falling to the floor and waiting for the large two legged bird creature to end her.

With her mane covering her right eye, Fluttershy’s left eye spotted what the smooth object pressed against her body was. It was a relatively big egg and it was lying against her fur. Upon further inspection around her waist was what looked like large plant leaves somehow meticulously bound together by some form of strange sap. Turning to her right shoulder where she was shot there was even more leaves wrapped there.

Was the creature that killed those aliens with beam weaponry intelligent and did it really just leave her alone with it’s… a loud clang sounded out drawing her attention away from the nest. Her vision once again passed the large white object sitting underneath the circle in the ceiling and towards the wall the clanging sound had come from.

Slowly the metallic wall started shifting out of the way and Fluttershy could see the green bird pushing it open with one leg. It had opened a passage into this room with its physical strength; it was quite amazing to watch the leg flex its prowess. It looked at the nest and looked clearly surprised to see her awake. Turning back and moving through the open doorway the bird creature bent its head down to start dragging something towards her carefully.

After it reached Fluttershy, the large green bird turned around and gently nuzzled the egg with its large beak and then carefully moved the pony’s mane out of her face while cooing at her softly.

“Thank you.” As soon as Fluttershy said it the bird nuzzled her cheek, then it turned around to what it dragged into the room, a giant leaf loaded with bizarre number of strange plants. It started to take some of things in the huge leaf into its beak. Several crunching sounds were heard and it turned back to her then gave her a rather suspicious look, Fluttershy head was rather fuzzy so she could have just been imagining it.

The bird quickly lunged forward and jabbed its beak into Fluttershy’s shocked mouth that had opened for a scream, it parted her lips and she could hear it start retching. Was it really going to do what Fluttershy thought it was going to do? She felt her mouth fill with pulped alien plant mush. This might explain why she wasn’t hungry or thirsty anymore and the bird obviously didn’t want her fighting its attempts to help her recover. So it had lashed out quickly to pin her to the nest with one foot and had got her mouth open to spew the already chewed life giving food into her.

With her mouth full, Fluttershy felt a gentle rubbing of a single curled talon that had pinned her on her throat from the birds left leg and her reflexively swallowed in reaction to the touch. Now Fluttershy fully understood what it was like to be a baby bird being fed by its mother with already chewed food being regurgitated down her throat. It was a bit slimy, not to mention a tad disgusting even if the taste of food was welcoming. She didn’t think this experience would come quite like this with a large alien bird that she knew was obviously female at this point. Fluttershy didn’t think she’d ever forget this experience for as long as she thought she would live, which she figured wasn’t long if she died of sickness or her magical mutations, not to mention all kinds of bodily and mental trauma that could still befall her in between then and now.

Fluttershy hadn’t been paying attention to the bird as it shoved something else in her mouth, it tasted nasty and horrible. Not that tasting regurgitated food from an alien bird was any better, but this stuff wasn’t already chewed and it was being forced down her throat. The bird wasn’t going to let her spit it out and it was giving her a firm look and after she roughly swallowed it rubbed its beak against her face cooing happily and started singing a foreign song to her.

Fluttershy’s eyelids drooped at the foreign song as the egg was pressed further into her side by the left leg again. She tried to fight going back to sleep after having only woken up for a short time again, but the bird was persistent in singing so softly and calmly in a melodic manner. This was the creature that had slaughtered three crustaceous beings that were armed with weapons without hesitation? It was downright odd, then again when was anything Fluttershy experienced in the universe not odd.

The pony curled around the egg and her eyes fully closed, the lullaby fully petered out. She felt a caressing touch running through her mane, petting her softly until she lost consciousness again.

Waking up again Fluttershy felt an agonizing pain in her shoulder, her eyes snapped open and she saw the most curious of sights. It wasn’t the female green ostrich thing that was for sure. It was a small blue green monkey creature with no tail and two cute little antennas poking out of its head. It was hard to definitively tell what color it was in this lighting, but what she could see was that it had a thick fur around its neck like a lions mane only smaller.

It squeaked and jumped at seeing her eyes snap open and in its right hand it held a blood covered leaf. In its left hand was a fresh leaf with some strange form of sap on it; was this the thing that tended to her wounds earlier? She heard two other sounds and it turned to the two other beings like it in the room and they then all performed a synchronized musical chatter.

They were small, but they had a strange camaraderie about them. One was panicked so they collectively sung to calm down the one Fluttershy had spooked. Now calmed down a bit the creature then moved over to her and quickly slapped the leaf against her shoulder as the other two gathered more leaves to finish wrapping her shoulder and most likely to get started on her torso.

Fluttershy had a lot of things running through her mind. What were these creatures? Were they friends with the bird? Seeing that they didn’t move the egg from her body, they most likely were given they were tending to her wounds even if that sap was causing a burning, itching and overall painful sensation in her shoulder.

One of them shifted the egg from her grasp and if she wasn’t so infirmed Fluttershy would have fought against it. The egg didn’t go far, it was just put on the far side of the nest and Fluttershy relaxed as two of them worked together to force her body upwards. They were dexterous and strong little creatures to have lifted her up as much as they did, the third one went about fixing up her bloody leaves with need sap covered leaves that caused to her to wince as they were slapped into place. She doubted these three alien monkeys would have been capable of taking on those more intelligent looking crustaceous beings.

Memories of the crustaceous beings were going to be giving Fluttershy nightmares for quite a while; they were clearly fully sentient and armed with incredible technology geared towards causing harm. Even if they cared little for her existence, Fluttershy still felt sad for them and how they died.

Fluttershy felt herself being dropped back into the nest; they stared at her curiously as she did to them. She opened her mouth to inhale and a rasping sound came from her throat when she did, her throat was so dry and her nose felt like it was rubbed raw and she most definitely had a burning headache. One of the three monkey being pointed at her while squeaking something to the other two, they all looked identical so it was hard to tell which one was the leader or if there were supposed to be any differences between them. They were all friends and seemed to be keen on working together for a common cause.

The alien monkeys went over to the several large leaves filled with various plants that now littered the room; one hefted out a large heavy looking purple pimply gourd and had a little problem with its weight almost falling down. The other two monkeys assisted, coming to its aid and then they were all chattering to each other in a relatively fast manner and every once in a while their beady little eyes that reminded Fluttershy of a newborn foal looked back towards her.

After a moment all three of them started to do something odd, they gnawed the top off the gourd and started eating the insides of it. They hadn’t looked particularly hungry, but they were quick to consume the food as fast as they could and all that they had left was empty hollowed out gourd. They all turned to her and chattered something unintelligible to each other before they went over to the wall dragging the gourd with them and started climbing on top of each other’s shoulders.

These three creatures were a marvel and quite intelligent as instead of using strength like the large ostrich creature, there was a clicking sound and they pulled the metallic door open slightly peering through the opening. From what she could see the next room over was the lit one that she had stared the crustaceous being to their deaths, she knew because she saw the headless corpse on the floor from her position in the nest. The three dead crustaceous creatures were likely moved out of the way.

Looking to the three monkey creatures Fluttershy saw that while in the dark their fur looked green, but in the light it was a happy bright blue color. The three little alien monkey creatures scurried out having seen no danger apparently, one quickly poked its head back in to gaze at her before the door closed shut leaving Fluttershy to the darkened room. Where were they going? Why were there so many leaves with food in them, it was like they were preparing for something.

Fluttershy felt her vision blur slightly and blinking she found that the three creatures were back in the room and the egg was once again pressed up against her body. When had they come back? Did she fall asleep again? One of them crawled up to her and held up the gourd they emptied earlier to her lips and tilted it forwards slightly. Water flowed into her mouth and she drank it greedily, without an ounce of hesitation. Once she finished it all, the creature pulled it back chattering happily.

“Thank you.” Giving it a smile Fluttershy didn’t care if it understood what she said, it excitedly started chattering with the other two and they sang something in unison. Yawning and ignoring the cheerful little friendly things for the moment, Fluttershy tried to stay awake this time.

Looking towards the white object Fluttershy saw something she hadn’t noticed before. It was larger than she thought it was and so was the cube shaped room and the circular indent in the ceiling above it was larger than that. She wondered what it was; her question was partially answered as the she watched the three monkeys gather around it noticing her staring, they opened a door on the thing and started dragging food filled leaves up the ramp into the large white object.

Fluttershy stared in wonder, how had she not noticed these things earlier? Oh right, she was sick, injured and not feeling very well at all. A clang was heard and she slowly shifted her gaze towards the wall as the three alien monkeys quickly made their way over to the wall and quickly got it open with panicked looks on their faces. At least she now knew the bird and the monkeys were friends, slowly she nodded off having lost the strength to stay awake.

The blaring of sirens, lots of unseen explosions, the entire room was shaking and there were red lights flashing all over the place. These were the things a confused Fluttershy now woke up to and she heard multiple clanging noises, she looked towards the wall and tried to get up. Her head spun and she stumbled dizzily still clutching the egg in her left hoof, she laid back down as standing up had not been a good idea.

The doorway to this place obviously wasn’t opening for some reason and Fluttershy could hear the shrill cries of alarm from her caretakers. This was even above the loud siren currently threatening to make her go deaf; something very bad was obviously going on here. Her new sensitive bat ears twitched at something, she heard a soft hissing noised under all the louder noises taking place. She looked towards a corner of the room towards where the softer sounding noise was coming from.

A sickly yellow substance started eating through the floor. Fluttershy’s pupils shrunk as the room started to slowly fill with the acidic liquid, as if the world coming to an end wasn’t bad enough for her.

There was too much going on for Fluttershy to concentrate, but there was one thing she knew she had to do. She held the egg in her one good hoof and tried to push herself away from the acid starting to flood into the room at exponential rate with her hind legs.

Fluttershy barely got further than a foot or two as it was close enough to start eating into her tail hair. An explosion of rainbow colored light ripped through where the doorway used to be. Fluttershy was dizzy, terrified and not the most sound of mind at the moment, so she could be forgiven for thinking someone had just fired Rainbow Dash through the door at the speed of light to save her life.

Through the destroyed doorway Fluttershy saw a tall figure that was most likely her savior, said being turned around and ran off at incredible speeds as her four caretakers ran into the room in a panic.

The large green bird grabbed her by her mane and started dragging her quickly towards the white object just as she lost about a good third of the hair from her tail to acid. Fluttershy stared sadly at the nest as it melted; she clutched the egg protectively to her chest.

The three monkeys were busy opening the door on the large white object and as soon as Fluttershy was pulled in, the monkeys made it slam close and ran forwards. The bird followed still dragging Fluttershy until she could see through the glassy substance from her position on the floor in the front of this large thing that the circle above had opened up to the sky. There was movement and they passed by the circle in the ceiling, they were rising and only now did Fluttershy realized that this was a spaceship.

The caretakers who were nursing her back to health all had grim looks on their faces, all their eyes were glued on one of the monitors as they left the planet’s atmosphere.

Witness to the end of a world, Fluttershy went catatonic as she just couldn’t handle the stress anymore.

17

Fluttershy was laying there on her right side in a black void with a blank, almost completely dead look on her. Her face was unmoving and just staring off into space as she lay there on nothingness. Anyone who could see her here would have known that she had mentally shut down, seeing an entire planet full of life and promise explode in the monitor sent her over the edge. It might not have been Aldebaran, but it was still a whole planet with tons of life on it. It was as if her illness, injuries, excruciating magical mutations and previous heartbreak weren’t enough already to get her to this state, this was the straw that finally broke the winged pony utterly.

The sound of hooves could be heard moving towards her and they stopped behind the unmoving form of the pony casting a shadow onto her that had a horn.

“Fluttershy… darling… are you okay? She’s rather, what’s the word for it? Oh the poor dear looks positively dreadful and her dream seem to be lacking, well anything really.” The first shadow said as a second shadow joined the first, this one had wings and a horn.

“Never have I seen a ponies mind so… lost… what has she seen that would have led to her being like this?” The second shadow said and then a third very misshapen one popped in.

“Sorry to jump on the dream bandwagon you two and I do mean that sincerely, but I believe I have an answer to that. First off take a closer look at the kind of state she’s in, our poor dear Fluttershy isn’t exactly herself at the moment. Another thing, this is the kind of reaction you’d expect of someone who’s seen too much, like say… a whole planet full of life and little critters going up in one huge explosion.” The thirds misshapen shadow paused and held a claw up to his chin; it was also casting the shape of a banana for some reason. “While I do like that it was positively chaotic to watch, I’m glad she got out of that situation in one piece. I must say that her new look is rather fetching; I would like it more if it weren’t currently causing her so much pain and misery. Hey don’t glare at me like that; I’m just being honest as a banana about her looks being a peeling. I really should have taken up universe watching years ago, I had no idea there was so much chaos out there to peruse.”

The first shadow turned back to Fluttershy shaking her head at the third shadows intrusion into Fluttershy’s busted mind and making jokes at a time like this. The shadow rolled Fluttershy onto her back and gasped backing away slightly; Fluttershy blankly stared off into space and ignored the fact that Rarity had just entered her vision or was looking over her mutated form.

“My word, her hair, her wing, her ears, her eye and is that a fang in her mouth? I knew Twilight and Applejack still haven’t entirely forgiven themselves for the thing with the vampire fruit bats. Why, if they hear of this... they’d simply be devastated.” Rarity wrapped her hooves around Fluttershy and brought her into a hug. “I just wish that even one of us could physically be out there with you right now to comfort you in your time of need. Why even your tail looks positively messed up given a bit of it is missing and those injuries are certainly marring that natural beauty you have. Now that I look at it her cutie mark it is horribly warped as well, I’ve never ever heard of a pony’s cutie mark becoming so twisted like this.”

“Well I’d like to see how your tail looks after getting covered in acid and you were shot up by vicious alien crabs. Given our fandom, they would love to see you in this situation Rarity and I don’t recommend letting those crabs go anywhere private if I were you. That planet was quite the deathtrap if I must say so.” Discord popped into view with a smile that quickly turned south and he sighed. He looked at the catatonic pony being held by what he considered to be the biggest posh upper crust twit of the year. Why did that pony want to sully herself with ignoble idiots like the so called nobles anyway? Discord was in the middle of juggling crabs playing little violins in a sad manner at the moment. “If I were you I’d be giving her my all to try and pull her back out of the state she’s in, but no do go on about how utterly hideous you think she is. Some friend you are Rarity.”

“Discord you will be quiet or I will force you to leave! Dreams are my realm and while they are most certainly chaotic, I hold more power here then you do. I will admit though that you are in fact correct, she is in need of more attention than any of us at this moment and here you are trying to get us to start bickering with you.” Luna trotted forward stepping up next to Discord and she put a hoof on his shoulder. “I know that you are greatly saddened, but that is no reason to lash out. The only reason we are capable of making such a connection is because the dreams of ponies have no measure of distance as to be beyond my reach. Do you wish to be a problem or are you actually going to help us get yonder Fluttershy out of this state?”

“Love forty to Luna. Match point, very well played. At least you understand and know I have feelings too. Now move over Rarity I want to hug her.” Discord was popping a Rainbow Dash shaped tennis ball up and down on a racket made from his tail for a few seconds before reforming and getting in on the Fluttershy cuddling action. “I miss our wonderful tea parties together; that grumpy March Hare hasn’t been the same at all without you being our Alice. That rabbit has become so downright serious about carrying on your work Fluttershy and I personally miss my job of being your ever charming Mad Hatter.”

“I would like to personally see what has caused her such mental breakage first hoof, but it may take inducing a nightmare and I’m not willing to do so without the consent of her friends.” Luna was ignoring Discord and his shenanigans as he put on a green top hat with a picture of marbles on it. She was looking towards Rarity for approval to do this; she wanted to assist the return of the soft spoken Fluttershy to happy dreams.

“Doesn’t stop you from interfering in dreams anyway, you never asked Scootaloo or Sweetie Bell for consent and I don’t want to even get into what happened with Apple Bloom.” After a moment of silence Discord zipped his lips once he realized he was being glared at by Luna. After another moment the princess of the night chuckled dryly.

“I would welcome your input into this situation as well, once the nightmares start they won’t stop and we will experience a lot of what she has been through.” If there was one thing for certain, it was that Luna didn’t like her nightmare powers and she didn’t like using them on those who couldn’t make that decision for themselves. Fluttershy was a special case as she was neither dreaming nor having a nightmare, she needed something to restart her mind. It was a sad thing to say that pain was a good way of doing that, but pain truly lets you know that you’re alive and Luna knew Fluttershy was alive but she wasn’t trying to feel anything anymore.

“I say go for it, I can handle trauma quite well or I wouldn’t look like I currently do. Or was it that I look like I do because of the trauma? I can’t remember so well, happened so long ago I’m sure it has nothing to do with being turned to stone while being completely aware of my surroundings either.” Discord flicked at his goofy large saber tooth style fang causing it to wiggle back and forth a bit as if it was made of rubber, he pulled out a photo of himself without a mouth and looking uglier then he currently did as his charming wonderful self. “No mouth, but I must scream? Eh, whatever. I am certain I would like to take this course of action, we currently can’t make Fluttershy feel any worse when she can’t currently feel at all.”

Rarity opened her mouth to deny that course of action on the principle of who Discord was, but then she closed it and gave it some thought. Discord was truly worried about Fluttershy and she has noticed him appearing more and more haggard as the days go by. He was just as upset as all of the animals and friends Fluttershy had waiting on her to return home from being so vastly far away. The posh mare couldn’t even begin to fathom the distance between Fluttershy and the planet that she had once been a part of.

Even if Rarity had all the fancy string and cloth on Equus tied together end to end, it wouldn’t be able to span the distance between to Fluttershy who was hurting and scared. Whether or not it was a good thing, Fluttershy was never alone out there as long as she kept her friends in her heart. Rarity let this thought sink in and looked to Discord; she smiled a bit as he has recently become friendlier with them. Sure Discord was a nuisance, but then when weren’t the Cutie Mark Crusaders or the many other ponies at times?

In fact, Rarity was willing to call Discord a true friend already. Discord made about as much sense as Rainbow Dash or Pinkie do. So Rarity could truly get used to the idea of helping Discord cope better given she generally liked disorganized chaos around her workspace, she should probably invite him over to tea after this and it might make Fluttershy happy to know he’s been getting along with the rest of them the next time they decide to connect to the shy pony’s dreams. She even had the idea that she could make a completely ghastly dress she wouldn’t wear otherwise while she was at it to make Discord feel more welcome when it came to having a tea party.

“I agree with Discord. Let us as he says, go for it.” If only Rarity had a camera here she could have caught the look of surprise on both of their faces in pure unadulterated shock. Luna opened her mouth to say something only for Rarity to cut her off, making Discord look even more dumbfounded then he already was. Was Mr. Chaos himself getting confused? Well it was bound to happen eventually. “Yes, I’m quite sure this is the right course of action. As Discord says she’s not in a state to actually feel anything one way or the other, if making her relive her memories will help her recover then I say we should do it.”

“Then it is decided; now please be quiet and try not to interfere in her memories. By which I mean don’t you dare do anything disruptive Discord or would you want to harm Fluttershy any further?” After a moment of staring at the chaos bringer who held up his talon and claw in a defensive gesture, Luna’s horn lit up and suddenly a nightmare born of memories started up.

The bubble that started it all that must have come from Twilight Sparkle, ending up on the ocean planet while a few days or so into starvation causing her to fight for survival. The pollution and poor creatures that exploded because of her just trying to survive was pretty bad. To hear that there were wars that spanned beyond multiple worlds, evil mind controlling machines, enslaved people beaten and battered and a friend who couldn’t stay and broke Fluttershy’s heart that needed some form of stability. Fluttershy has been through quite a ride thus far, she was put into so much danger that being shy was quickly becoming something she couldn’t afford to do.

After all that, things became a tad darker. Fluttershy fully turned into Flutter Bat because of a thing called a Quark Demon and was unleashed upon a peaceful world, the magic that caused Flutter Bat started to twist the pegasus into her current form. The Aldebarans sent her away using their magic as they couldn’t physically harm or pacify her, not that they wanted to harm her at all. She ended up buried alive near in the ceiling of a room of flesh eating creatures in the dark, on a world with bipedal crabs creatures with what looked like weapons grafted into their arms.

It was all very chaotic and quite nightmarish experience; Rarity wished she could throw up after watching poor injured Fluttershy pin them with a stare and was witness to them all dying. To top off all the nightmares, the big finisher was the world shaking with an earthquake. There were red lights flaring everywhere and a horrible shrieking alarm, a sickly acid was spewing out of the very floor everywhere while Fluttershy clutched protectively to an egg too sick to run or do much of anything else to defend herself. The last bit was from the ship she was dragged onto by the same creature that had killed those crabs, she stared at the monitors from her position on the floor and it showed the planet she was just on and how it collapsed slightly into itself before exploding violently.

“That… was quite a lot to take in. Even if all that wasn’t me I’d be much in the same state Fluttershy is if I went through all that personally, technically I’d be in a worse condition as I’m not exactly great at camping or even survival like Fluttershy is.” After a moment Rarity considered what she said and underlined it as a huge understatement. She knew Fluttershy was good at communing with nature and she was able to adapt to any situation as long as there were animals to be had in said environment. Looking to Discord he seemed oddly quiet and was staring down at the still form of the catatonic pony he held, his best friend.

“Yes, but did you not see the good in the middle of all the bad? It seems Fluttershy has made a great number of friends, one of which isn’t even technically alive and looked like an ancient golem only made of metal instead of stone.” Luna looked at the distorted cutie mark and actually paid more attention to it now, it now looked like a distorted Yin Yang symbol. The center of the now circular cutie mark distortion was half bat and butterfly stretched into a curved line through the center, the ends of the bat and butterfly wings created a circle around a clear bat symbol and a clear butterfly symbol. It was like the cutie mark stopped in the middle of becoming a different cutie mark. “Her mutations might stabilize. Unless she comes back to us she will be stuck like that for quite a time, possibly the rest of her life if she never reaches us and maybe even if she does reach us.”

“Luna, why didn’t Twilight’s magic fully cure Fluttershy of her bat problem?” It was a good question Rarity had to bring up; she ran a hoof over Fluttershy’s forehead as she was held by Discord. The shy pony laid there blankly staring off into space in the void they were in, the only time Fluttershy had reacted at all during the nightmares was when she took the shots through her shoulder and torso.

“If I must guess, Twilight only reversed the effects of the magic on Fluttershy. She didn’t remove the magic that caused those effects in the first place; the transformation would be benign if the magic didn’t overlap her mind with that of a vampire fruit bats mind.” In fact Luna couldn’t help but wince at seeing Fluttershy like she is now and not think of her night guards who had no such problems with being bat ponies. “I hear tell that Twilight used other forms of transformation magic upon all of you and your friends Rarity. I worry that Twilight might have left similar marks on all of you that may have unforeseen consequences such as this. If you don’t mind, I will visit you in the morning when we are done here.”

“I would be delighted to host you Luna; I don’t want to turn into a breezy all of the sudden if I can help it.” Rarity turned back to Fluttershy who was still being cradled by Discord, the guy was actually a big softy after all if you could overlook his horrid manners. “Discord, would you like to come over for some tea as well?”

“Ellipses” It was Discords rather strained answer as he was trying to make a joke of his own silence in all this. After a moment he looked up at Rarity after realizing what she had said. “I’d like that a lot Rarity.”

“She is still unresponsive? This is quite troubling, there must be something…” Suddenly a cracking noise was heard and Luna shifted uncomfortably. Then she said something that no one wanted to hear a master of dreams say. “What was that?”

“It sounded like something breaking, sounds awfully loud like it’s really close to her ears for us to hear it even while she’s asleep.” As Rarity said this some life came back into Fluttershy’s eyes and they stopped being so dull.

A bright shaft of light shined down on Fluttershy from an angle as she squirmed in Discord arms. Her eyes started to fill with life once more and she struggled out of Discords grip falling into a cloud that appeared out of nowhere in the black void.

“I think she may be waking up. Fluttershy, please be a dear and always remember that we’re waiting for you to return home no matter what happens.” The pegasus looked at Discord like she was a bit drunk; in his excitement he created a river and dove into to do a backstroke. The crabs were back, only they were now playing fiddles in a jaunty tune while dancing on his body. “Oh and do try to cheer up and get better soon! We’ll try to contact you again the next time you go to sleep so we can clear up this bit of confusion. To think the most chaotic thing in the universe is what brought you back from your mental vacation, no wonder we get along so swimmingly together. As they say, life is but to dream.”

“Discord… Rarity… Luna, what? Where am…” Fluttershy suddenly said finally noticing those who were with her; it filled her with happiness to see familiar faces. The world around them all started to shift into the form of a meadow and a weeping willow. The cracking sound was heard again and Fluttershy eyes widened in realization, she knew what that sound was and would recognize it from anywhere.

Feeling her heart thudding in her chest, Fluttershy was swiftly ejected from her cloud. She flew through the void into the light with a confused look on her face; this caused Rarity, Luna and Discord to disappear back to their respective minds.

19

It had been three weeks, quite a long time for Fluttershy to be traveling aimlessly around in space and learning a lot of new facts about the section of space she currently occupied. She was currently in the middle of an area of space labeled a deathtrap by her personally as at anytime her life could be ended by any number of strange happenings.

To start off Fluttershy had made contact with every one of her pony friends in her dreams, they were happy to see her and only Applejack and Twilight were really bad off emotionally, they almost spent their entire time with her apologizing about what happened to her. The bat mutations were a very sore point as a conversational topic and Fluttershy was getting quite tired of them being mentioned by her friends, especially coming from Rainbow who thought they were awesome.

Twilight and Luna had really helped Fluttershy learn about the history of the creatures known as the Chozo. The Chozo were or are a race of hyper intelligent birds that were good at technology as much as they were at being unobtrusive to the nature of any of the worlds they lived on, in fact they meshed quite with and sometimes became part of nature on the worlds they visited and settled down upon.

How did ponies know about the Chozo? Well one had to look at the griffon race, which are remarkably the descendants of Chozo and Fluttershy had knowledge of the griffon written language. Apparently a few of the Chozo fell in love with some sentient lions long ago. A few of the lions may have been sphinxes of old as determined by the increased magical nature of some griffons at times. The birth of the griffon race was before Celestia and Luna’s time, but around the time of the three tribes.

It was a good thing Fluttershy understood how to read griffon as it was a derivative of the Chozo language, therefore getting the information off the computers of the Chozo passenger ship, known as The Vagrant, wasn’t all too difficult. It was amazing to learn how the culture that Gilda came from was the mixture of an omnivore and a carnivore. It made her wonder why the griffons weren’t more technologically advanced, but then again it seemed like all Chozo preferred not to mess with the natural flow of things and the ones on Equus probably destroyed their technology to proceed living on Equus in harmony with nature until they perished.

This knowledge prompted Luna and Twilight to start researching into griffons and then a lot of history came to light. Discord was also mentioned that he remembered those old quacks that traveled the stars when they came for a visit; he found them to be entirely boring since his chaos magic was highly ineffective against them. This is why Discord started bothering ponies in the first place since the Chozo protected their selves with spiritual magic.

The Chozo aren’t the only creatures Fluttershy learned about, the Etecoons really helped her with downloading information into her universal map. Unfortunately the Chozo who previously owned The Vagrant had not been to the planet of Equus. The maps she acquired were quite old and compared to where they were now. They were currently headed to a place called Horus IV as it seemed like a nice planet to stop for food and possibly live on until another mode of transportation could be found.

Fluttershy was a long way away from the Aniverse and Lylat systems; distance was hard to measure in the vastness of space but it was quite clear how far she had gone. She was amazed that she was still alive to see it and would probably earn a world record for the most distance traveled by a pony if she ever got back to Equus.

The Etecoons were almost fully sentient beings for the most adorable monkey aliens Fluttershy had met thus far, aside from the Dachora chick which had eventually managed to jump out of the egg and slam into the ceiling much to Fluttershy’s shock when it happened. The chick was perfectly fine, but there was a dent up there where its beak had hit the solid metal; its tiny beak was perfectly fine and was apparently as tough as the material the ship was made out of.

An Etecoon was an extremely curious creature and knew how to work advanced technology, the more Etecoons there were together the quicker they figured out things. They were attracted to most forms of machinery, especially machines that gave off a humming sound. They were like mammalian insects except they didn’t have a hive, but could put their minds towards a single goal of figuring out what something did and it was made clear that they could share their minds with each other through their antenna by being within a close distance of one another. Sometimes it caused them to become stuck together in packs which didn’t stay separated for very long, but could do things individually. On a mental scale they were almost always like children as far as Chozo could tell, exceptionally bright friendly children but children nonetheless.

The Dachora were quite different, in fact one would say their biological makeup was completely absurd and Twilight hadn’t held back her opinion when Fluttershy heard of what the Chozo had learned from them. They were asexually reproducing hermaphrodites, so it didn’t matter what gender you called them because it would be right. The most amazing thing about these creatures was how fast they could run and exactly how high they could truly jump and fall without injury. These creatures could become invincible once they entered a full straight run and unless they were stopped by a wall anything in their path will definitely end up getting ripped apart by the sheer force that was being generated when a Dachora rammed into something that wasn’t as solidly built.

The reason why Twilight couldn’t hold back her opinion was because she didn’t think a land based creature could run at least more than three times the speed Rainbow could fly or could even gain that kind of acceleration so quickly. Fluttershy had yet to see a Dachora running full speed, but she had seen how powerful the mother’s legs were. Whatever armor the Space Pirates had was completely ineffective against a Dachora’s leg strength.

Space Pirates were one of the races in the surrounding bit of space that had no qualms when it came to killing and stealing. The fact that she even survived one encounter was enough for Fluttershy to immediately start running should she ever see them again, they after all were one of the reasons the Chozo were on the decline or disappeared from this section of space entirely. She still felt sorry for her involvement in the death of three of them as her heart was still aching about it.

Meeting any race that was part of the Galactic Federation was something Fluttershy wished to avoid entirely, they all had weapons and there was a large grey area with most of the government and how they treated meeting new races.

Chances were that even if Fluttershy were to be determined entirely sentient by the Galactic Federation, they’d still feel like they’d have to capture her, strap her down to an operation table and would proceed to do many nasty things to her. The least nasty thing they would do is shave her completely bare, the worst would likely involve brain surgery while she was completely aware of what they were doing and not on any anesthetic at all. Getting her wings surgically ripped off would have also been another horrible occurrence and they wouldn’t put them back either.

Only when the Galactic Federation felt they were finally done torturing Fluttershy, would they even consider releasing her in a less then mentally sound state with incredibly cheap words of apology about it.

The Chozo who previously owned The Vagrant had recorded enough of this actually happening to other sentient beings who could communicate quite clearly enough to make Fluttershy entirely wary any being of the Galactic Federation doing the same to her as well. In fact it was an obvious reason why many Chozo chose to live in out of the way places and observe things from quite a fair distance away.

Fluttershy was quite sure that someone in the Galactic Federation only needed to make up a single excuse about trying to fix her broken appearance to do this and would get away with it completely free of retribution as it would be a logical excuse. At least with the Space Pirates you knew what they were about, if it couldn’t be turned into a weapon or used productively in some way to further their own goals, then they weren’t interested. They would also terminate anything if it was seen as being intelligent enough to even remotely get in their way and Fluttershy definitively met that criterion whereas the Etecoons and the lone Dachora at the time did not.

If there was one species Fluttershy would rather run into more than any other around here, it would have to be a Vhozon. A species that would never hurt anything that was clearly innocent. It really depended on how far their definition of innocent went for their entire race as to whether or not Fluttershy would be safe to even be near one. They made for great prosecutors in a court of law and were at odds with the Galactic Federation a lot of the time because of some of the things those in power tried to get away with.

Which brought Fluttershy to where she was now, she was walking around the upper deck of the seed or egg shaped ship. Her right foreleg was hard to walk on as her shoulder ached with every step she took. She moved up to the consoles and got a status reading on the ship, the Chozo built things to last and this ship was impressive in that its power source would likely never run out. Not that Fluttershy knew even a half of how any kind of advanced technology worked, but at least the Etecoons certainly did as they had a talent for it.

Fluttershy checked the fuel on the ship as it was pretty low to start with since the planet they left behind; then she moved on to the gathered food that was very well preserved because of all that sticky sap her alien animal friends had gathered. Seeing the food in storage on the ships internal cameras which weren’t entirely obvious, she could see they were quickly running low. They were truly in what was considered safe territory of Galactic Federation space nowhere near a planet where a Vhozon could be found and Fluttershy was wary of meeting anything else out here that wasn’t an animal that she could easily befriend.

The ships current heading was going to take them near a planet known as Horus IV and with no inkling as to what would happen once they got there. Fluttershy was worried, the Etecoons were less so but picked up on her feelings quite well and tried to be reassuring that everything would be fine. The Dachora was too busy caring for her young chick all the time to truly worry about what was going on around them or the fact that they might start starving to death soon and the growing chick needed a lot of healthy food.

The one good thing about this ship was that it had a toilet; Fluttershy didn’t want to know how the Dachora or Etecoons dealt with her leavings previously nor did she ever want to question it fully. The Etecoons were strangely toilet trained most likely because they figured out the purpose of the toilet early on. They had to help the Dachora when it came to using the alien toilet that had no toilet paper, but it did have a cleansing station that still had soap like fluids.

The Chozo used toilets somewhat similar to those found in Equestria so it wasn’t hard for Fluttershy to figure out how to use one and the ship had its own water system, only it didn’t have a shower. The Chozo obviously kept themselves clean through several other possible means. Toilets weren’t universal, though Fluttershy wishes they were as much as math was.

After musing about the wonders of alien technology, Fluttershy hit a few things on the interactive screens that the Chozo used and looked out into the stars as the ship slowly moved through them. Fluttershy considered other problems, like currency and linguistics.

Even if she had her translator fully working, it would take some time for it to translate the dialect of any species and if it came up that Fluttershy needed to verbally communicate then there would undoubtedly be problems.

She only had a smattering of some of the languages in the Galactic Federation and plenty of them were all centered on rather exceedingly violent moments from the information stores in The Vagrant. The same reason why Fluttershy was scared to be caught by anyone as she didn’t take the idea to keenly of being sliced open to see what made her tick.

Currency was not a likely thing to come by; if it really came down to it Fluttershy could possibly trade the ship with all its valuable information for another one fully fueled if of poorer quality along with some food. Bartering was a universal thing as long as the ones you were bartering with wasn’t part of a race of that shoots first and questions later.

Sighing to herself, no matter where Fluttershy would go there was always going to be some form of way for her to die a quick painless death or one long ruthlessly brutally painfully drawn out one. Her continued survival despite the odds was leading her to believe the second one was and would be ongoing until she got back to Equus, because of all the violence she had seen in the universe thus far.

Fluttershy had to admit that despite all the violence, the universe had many strange and wondrous things to explore and see that were breathtaking. Things that were so beyond the imaginations of anyone back on Equus; it was hard for even Celestia or Luna to contemplate how they would go about forming peace treaties with even half of the beings Fluttershy had learned about because they were so technologically beyond ponies.

All in all it was very quiet, almost too quiet, not even Fluttershy thought space could be so desolate or quiet for long. She reached up with her left hoof and hit what was called the scanners; they had entered the sector where Horus IV was located. There was a lot of activity going on around here, she could only wonder what it was all about and hopefully it wasn’t a Space Pirate attack. The Vagrant wasn’t made to be very fast or evasive, just heavily armored to take quite a pounding which was not saying much if a young Dachora can dent the ceiling with its tiny beak after flying out of its egg like it was shot from cannon.

“Sir we have an unknown signal on the long range scanners, there doesn’t seem to be a signature for weapons and it doesn’t look anything like a Space Pirate scout for an incursion. It is too out in the open and not trying to hide anything.” The being sitting at the scanning station turned in his chair to the captain. “What should we do sir?”

“Try to keep it on the scanners and tell me where it’s currently heading.” The captain said after a moment of thought. “Also, we need to keep an eye out on anything else suspicious going on out there.”

“It seems to be on course for Horus Four Sir.” The scanners person answered.

“These might be the smugglers we’re looking for, when the ship gets in range hail it and tell it to stop. Everyone we are now on red alert as we have a possible enemy contact on radar. This is not a drill.” The activity around the ship at hearing the captain’s words immediately increased at this.

“We’re also picking up a few signals; they look to be trying to hide their signatures from us. They are sending out the correct form of Galactic Federation IFF signals from them, but those signals don’t match the type of ships they are coming from and they appear to be on a direct course for Horus Four as well.” The moment the communications officer said this, everyone knew that things were about to get a lot more hectic around Horus IV.

“Shields up, arm all weapons and electronic countermeasures!” The captain shouted.

Fluttershy sat looking at the scanners and listening to the noise that was obviously a lot of vocal communications; her slightly broken translator would hopefully translate what she was hearing eventually. Then there were these other ships on the scanners and a long distance view showed that when they got close enough to each other they were firing on one another. Fluttershy hit the ship wide communications.

“Um… can I please get an Etecoon up here? Please come to the bridge quickly, I don’t mean to be an alarmist or anything… not that the situation we’re flying into isn’t alarming enough. We’re about to come under attack and I’m certainly not okay with this…” Fluttershy drifted off as they were getting closer and closer to the battle ahead.

The three Etecoons and the two Dachora were quickly on the bridge, all of them having entered into a slightly frenzied panic given the tremble in Fluttershy’s voice had set them off. Well almost all of them went into a slightly frenzied panic. The little Dachora chick didn’t know what was going on as it rested upon its mothers back, but it was definitely not happy about the sudden panic.

The Etecoons tried to steer The Vagrant away from the action, unfortunately they couldn’t get it completely clear of it. The Vagrant had finally completely run out of fuel and they were on a collision course for the really big ship fighting several other large ships that were smaller then it. Beams and missiles were flying everywhere between the vessels.

“This is the GFS Valhalla, unidentified space vessel you are to stop you’re… what in the world? It’s on a collision course with us now; we need to shoot it before it rams us!” The voice on the other end of the communications sounded quite panicked and Fluttershy’s large bat ears wilted at was about to happen, she just knew somebody was going to die soon.

Thinking of how to get out of this situation, Fluttershy remembered there were these things called escape pods. This was the exact time and situation to be using them.

“Escape pods!” Fluttershy screamed as she turned around and burst into a hobbling gallop through the open doors leading off bridge, the animals were immediately following knowing exactly why she screamed it. They all were all heading down the corridor towards the back of the ship where the escape pods were, from what little she knew about them they were made to be safely dropped onto habitable planets even if they had very little in the ways of maneuverability.

The Vagrant shuddered violently sending everyone aboard flying into the air. By happenstance the mother Dachora tripped and she flew forward over the pony with the Etecoons and her chick clinging to her back, the animals had safely made it by tumbling into one of the escape pods. It was immediately launched when Fluttershy slammed into a button specifically for that pod.

The pods had an internal launch control and an external one. Fluttershy had just set off the external one and she sat up to watch blankly as two doors closed between her and her animal companions. The pod shot down towards the planet without her on it and the sad looks on the faces of her alien animal friends would be stay with her for quite a while.

Quickly turning for another escape pod she didn’t have time to get in, for when she looked towards the bridge and saw the other ship become very large through the bridges viewing window and The Vagrant seemed to be spinning out of control as it got closer. Fluttershy’s pupils shrunk as The Vagrant crashed into what she could only guess was the GFS Valhalla. She had managed to sigh before being flung forwards by the impact towards the cracked viewing glass that had survived the impact while the ship pierced the larger vessel.

Surprisingly The Vagrant mostly held together despite the fact that it was took so many glancing hits from beam weaponry and had been hit by a rocket a few seconds ago. Luckily enough it hadn’t exploded as it bored its way into the side of what Fluttershy thought was the ship called the GFS Valhalla.

There was but this one sad thought on Fluttershy’s mind before her body was to impact with the cracked glass like substance. Why did this have to happen when she had finally just gotten used to walking again?

20

Fluttershy sat underneath her favorite willow tree, she didn’t know whether she was dead or not from the crash, but she was definitely in a place of relative comfort.

“Fluttershy you are asleep earlier than usual, is there a problem where you are?” It was Princess Luna, a good sign that Fluttershy hadn’t died in the crash.

“Um… Luna I have an unusual question to ask if that’s okay with you.” Broaching the subject that she may be dead would have been a bit weird if she was only knocked out or in a coma.

“Yes Fluttershy, what is it?” Luna though she heard something in Fluttershy’s voice indicating she has been through another painful experience.

“Does my dream body always match my true form when I’m aware that I’m dreaming?” As Fluttershy mentioned it she looked at her body, bruises were started to become visible even through her fur.

“Surprisingly yes, if you’re aware that you’re dreaming. You can make yourself look like you currently… oh.” The lunar princess noticed why Fluttershy asked, her body looked like one giant bruise currently. “What has happened to you now my friend? Are your companions okay?”

“Well I’m sure my alien animal friends are okay, they got on this thing called an escape pod and I’m sure they made it to the planet alright. It’s a habitable jungle world so they should be fine.” Obviously Fluttershy was avoiding the other question, which is why Luna was giving her a disapproving stare. She hid behind her mane while poking at the imaginary grass with a hoof and winced. “I’m sorry Luna, I’m not feeling alright. I’ve just been in a horrific crash that knocked me out and I think I’m inside a large Galactic Federation vessel. Um… here let me show you, if that’s okay with you.”

Luna gave Fluttershy a nod and the pony dreamed up the memory for Luna so she could see what happened before Fluttershy became unconscious.

“Your alien animal friends should be fine. That you are mostly okay is also great news, but to not wake up anytime soon could be putting your body in danger even if your bruises would cause you agony. Did you not say that there are beings in the Galactic Federation that care little for those they are supposed to rule over and might do horrible things to you if you were caught by them?” If the Galactic Federation hurt one of her little ponies, Luna the princess of the night would not rest until they were brought to justice.

“I’m sorry I’m so weak princess, but being injured again is something I don’t really want to deal with right now.” Two large wings wrapped around the now crying Fluttershy and held her close, making her feel all warm and cozy in them.

“Rest, you are not weak Fluttershy, you just need time to get back on your hooves.” Luna cuddled Fluttershy until she went to sleep in her dream world. “Be safe Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy inhaled and then exhaled, her body was throbbing in pain at the moment and she was on her back. Opening her eyes she found herself in an enclosed space once more, dull red lights covered her form as it lay partially sticking out of a vent. This would count as the second ship she had woken up inside a vent on for the first time and her head hurt from where she destroyed the grating with her body.

Before she made any movements at all Fluttershy studied her surroundings, she was surrounding by small shards of alien glass from The Vagrant. It was a good thing she hadn’t immediately tried to roll onto her hooves. Rainbow Dash would have been covered in glass upon waking up by struggling unnecessarily, maybe Applejack and Rarity too. Pinkie might have seen the crash coming with her senses or possible chance of injury and Twilight would have already been home by now.

Slowly Fluttershy sat up avoiding the shards of sharp alien glass; she got to her hooves shakily and found that her right foreleg wouldn’t support her weight given the bruising done to her still healing shoulder. At least her torso wound felt better or was as bad as the rest of her body.

Flicking her ears, Fluttershy listened for any surrounding commotion as she sat at the edge of the vent and looked around herself, below and above. The vent opened into a desolate but roomy grey lined corridor, one of which that had the front of The Vagrant sticking into it across from her. In comparison to the ship she was on now, The Vagrant was probably not nearly as large a problem as the fight that had been going on before the crash. What was the name of this ship again, GFS Valhalla?

Fluttershy stretched out her wings, they weren’t too badly hurt and she wiggled her rump in an adorable manner as she leapt onto the nose of the crashed ship from the vent and crawled up the downward slanting slope to enter it. Her right shoulder started causing her grief about all these actions, but she continued on and made her way down to storage in The Vagrant. It was quite hard to maneuver around the ship that was sloped as it was.

After finding her saddlebags in the storage room, Fluttershy started gathering as much as the well preserved food left that she could carry in her right saddlebag which was now lined with a few leaves. Her alien animal friends wouldn’t need the food on the planet they went to and she knew they wouldn’t want this food to go to waste. She picked up one blue white speckled vegetable in particular that tasted like cheese; it was one of the more peculiar plants that she had enjoyed eating and sat down to enjoy it. She was going to be leaving behind a lot and getting her fill now was prudent.

After she was finished getting some food into her stomach, Fluttershy took a few leaves and wrapped them around her shoulder and torso using the sticky sap substance to hold the leaves in place. She even folded up three leaves into a makeshift pouch to carry some extra sap with her for when she left. She was now stocked full of stuff in her right saddlebag and her left saddlebag was carrying all her mementos.

As she turned to leave the ship Fluttershy stopped and saw a bright green feather laying on the floor, she picked it up and stowed it away in her left saddlebag as a reminder of the Dachora and Etecoons. She wondered if she’d ever see them again, shaking her head she made her way off the ship and wished they’d stay safe wherever they were now.

Idly Fluttershy wondered why no one was coming down to investigate the crashed ship stuck inside another ship. Were they still fighting or was the fight over and they were assessing the damage from the fight first before they got around to The Vagrant? Whatever the cause, she shook off any bit of glass that might have been on her and hopped back to the vent from the nose of The Vagrant despite the protest her shoulder gave her for doing it.

Once in the vent Fluttershy looked for a big knife like piece of glass and picked out a particular long piece that was sharp on one end and almost bluntly circular at the other and stowed it away in her left bag. She would mostly be use it for utility functions, never knew when a tough sharp object could be put to good use. Her hair was beginning to get to be a bother, so she might soon chop off a bit.

Notably the vents on this ship were much smaller than those of the Croakers mother ship and Fluttershy didn’t exactly have a full map of this ship. After checking all her things to make sure they were in place, she crawled deep into the ductworks to look for any signs of life.

If Fluttershy was going to be stuck alone in unknown territory she may as well learn something while she was here, she had been learning a lot lately. Being quiet as a mouse and incredibly shy was very helpful when it came to being sneaky. She still wasn’t quite sure how Rainbow Dash knew she wasn’t a tree that one time and considered that the root of the problems might have been the roots of the tree costume not digging into the soil around it. This situation also reminded her of Trixie and her spy costume which was more eye grabbing then anything.

Shaking her head Fluttershy tried to get it back on the task at hoof, she was in an unknown place with beings of an unknown capacity for love or hate. She looked like a monster and was sporting an almost fully bruised body… yeah she’d shoot at herself too if she was seen in the parts of the ship that were dark and filled with red lighting and was an intelligent alien being. It was best that she kept her head down and out of sight; intelligent beings didn’t react well to surprises and she looked like a big one.

The next thirty minutes of half limping, half crawling around in the small vents was rough on Fluttershy’s body. She didn’t know where she was on the ship or where she was going. Her ears twitched trying to listen for voices and after a moment she could smell something that reminded her of roasted carrots, she immediately started to follow her nose. The smell of cooked food was where she’d find life on this ship; she wished she were still hungry.

Fluttershy followed her nose sniffing the air and sighing wistfully at the attractive smell, her ears started twitching fiercely as she could hear voices. The dented translator plus her new supersonic hearing allowed her to hear quite a lot of beings speaking ahead of her from further away than she would normally be capable of.

Not once had Fluttershy wondered why she could handle her new senses so well, now that she thought of it her ears should be ringing or hurting from any loud noise near her. Her only problem was that there were a lot of voices and it was hard to separate them all invading her ears, they were in a large cavernous room ahead of her with a lot of tables, chairs and what she knew had to be a kitchen.

How did Fluttershy know this despite the fact that she couldn’t even see this alleged room yet? Her ears were giving her echolocation feedback that allowed her to physically see what she was hearing; it was as disorienting as it sounding seeing both the vent and everything the sound was bouncing off. The room was positively full of intelligent beings of a mostly biped persuasion judging by their echolocation forms that her eyes were seeing through the walls of the vents.

When she went to sleep again she would have to talk with Luna about this ability, maybe she knew a way to make this all less weird given she worked with naturally occurring bat ponies. She could see all kinds of movements and gestures, hear the shifting of clothing, the clinking of utensils and being able to visualize it all despite clearly seeing the actual vent in front her was amazing.

While being mutated into being part vampire fruit bat was horrific and Fluttershy still did feel that she needed to be returned to normal, it seemed the mutations had some form of a silver lining. One that made it so Fluttershy would always know what was going on around her within hearing range and getting caught was less likely now, in her low state of health this was a good thing as she was going to be moving very fast and she couldn’t fly with her wings mismatched like they were.

The closer Fluttershy got the more obscenely loud it was, it was hard picking out individual voices from masses in the lunchroom styled area that reminded her of what you could do if you didn’t bring your own sack lunch to school. The voices thundered in her ears.

“Took us forever” “so good today” “we need to” “Yeah I know” “Damage to Valhalla not all too bad” “All the smugglers” “It launched an escape pod before it” “got all of them” “potatoes for next week” “the technicians will look into it” “the captain wasn’t too” “this week was a rough one” “since she was rebuilt” “carrots are good today” “can’t we get anything decent” “then he was like, oh crap” “how come the hit sections didn’t decompress” “stayed entirely intact” “new experimental” “I would like to see that” “we have yet to test the newest model of Vic Viper and its AI systems” “working our asses off lately” “took so much time to capture them all and get them into holding” “Stiletto-class fighters are about to become highly obsolete” “but so much could go wrong, haven’t we dealt with enough AIs causing us problems” “what are the chances of that happening” “I don’t want another Aurora-313 incident, it’s bad enough we have so many problems with all the Space Pirates” “hey, can I get more green beans here” “oatmeal are you crazy, my health isn’t that bad and I can do my job perfectly fine” “ugh, I’m beginning to doubt our government” “not like we haven’t had worse than this before” “that bounty hunter is always causing planets to explode everywhere she goes” “the captain is so mad that the ship managed to ram into us” “I need a drink” “this missions sucks”

There were so many voices that Fluttershy had to put her hooves down on her ears to handle them better, it was becoming so loud the further forward she moved. It was too much information and her head was starting to really hurt. Keeping her ears pressed against her skull with her front hooves she propped herself up on her mismatched wings and crawled forward slowly.

Looking to her right through the slots in the closed grate she could see the lunchroom and it was packed with so many bipedal beings that were Twilight’s description of humans. Except their skin was less colorful then what Twilight had told them from the world she visited. Also by what she was currently seeing she wondered if these were the humans Lyra was always going on about, except far more technologically advanced then the world Twilight visited. Did this mean there were multiple kinds of human species out there?

There were also a lot of aliens in the room, but not many as there were the human creatures that reminded Fluttershy somewhat of Iron Will. The vent was high in the ceiling so it was unlikely that anyone would bother to look her way, these beings were also too big to fit into the vents which made her feel all that much safer. It did make her wonder how they kept the vents as clean as they were though. Maybe they used some form of technology to keep the vents cleaned?

Looking down at the lines picking up food Fluttershy saw what looked like the same kind of vegetables ponies at home enjoyed like carrots, broccoli and asparagus. There were also fruits and one of those fruits called out to her, there were apples here and she could smell them, she felt a gnawing hunger inside herself to fly out there and drain them dry.

Fluttershy wasn’t nearly stupid enough to expose herself now and fought her urge and need to stab her fang into some fruit to suck them dry, if there was an onboard plantation maybe Fluttershy could visit it for some fruit when there was nobody around. Until then she was going to resist temptation that may result in her inevitable doom, she’s survived thus far and she wasn’t going to stop surviving now by being stupid. She knew she was in no condition to be caught out in the open and that was the only reason why she managed to squash the instinct to break out of the vent and go for the tantalizing, succulent, juicy and tasty looking fruit.

Violently shaking her head Fluttershy back away from putting her face to grating, her mind wanted it but she logically knew she couldn’t have it. Also taking her hooves off her ears was a horrendously bad idea. She crawled forward as quickly as she could as all that noise in her ears might soon cause her to go deaf; it certainly was giving her real headache now. She fought against her bodies craving for fruit and pressed onwards.

A side effect of the bat mutations made Fluttershy crave fruit like nothing else and it was infuriating that she knew there was fruit like an apple nearby and that she couldn’t very well couldn’t safely touch it. It wasn’t her fault that she felt angry about it, she knew the cravings were a part of an effect of her twisted body and wished that it would go away. If it was twisting her mind then she would find it hard to trust herself anymore and she knew she was thinking clearly at the moment.

Carrying on her exploration of the ship Fluttershy found lots of hallways with lots of different beings doing different things of the likes that she had no inkling the purpose or the cause for doing them. She knew that keeping a space bound ship in tip top shape was important from her time on the stolen Croakers transport ship. If you didn’t care for that which was between you and a vacuum of space related death, you were definitely asking for a quick death.

Fluttershy needed to find some way off this ship and soon, she did not want to be caught dead on this ship and if she were caught she’d really be dead then and there. She noted that just about every being aboard this ship was armed with some form of weapon or another. Chances of finding a friendly face that wouldn’t shoot at her were less than likely and she had been shot three times already in the last few months. She was barely recovering from the last few damaging shots to her unprotected body.

Fluttershy eventually found a relatively safe and comfortable corner in a vent around what she figured to be the crew quarters on this massive ship. She would ask Luna for some help and wisdom on what to do in this situation when she next entered her dreams. Even if her friends back home didn’t have any advice to offer, it was still nice to hear their voices and know that they were waiting for her return.

Stopping to eat some of her food, Fluttershy hoped she was near the crew quarters as she figured might be able to find access to a toilet, a shower and some water to drink around here. She licked her hooves clean of sap, it wasn’t very tasty but it was sustaining.

Once finished with her meager meal, Fluttershy curled up and laid down for a nap. When she woke up she would go on a quest to look for a bathroom. She would need to use the little filly’s room eventually and she really didn’t feel like leaving her leavings lying around in the vents as the smell would certainly attract unwanted attention.

Author's Note

Fluttershy will soon get her main mode of transportation, but there are a lot of problems and strings attached to holding onto something like it.

Especially if it happens to cause her to get a bounty planted on her head.

21

Fluttershy was awoken from her dreams about ice cream and chocolate rabbits by the sound of something humming in the vents and smacked her head against the ceiling. She grunted slightly as she rolled her bruised and battered body into an upright position began to twitch her ears to hear what the problem was.

“What’s that noise?” Rubbing her tender head Fluttershy had forgotten where she had gone to sleep. She was in the corner of a small vent in the middle of a giant space fortress of some kind, one that was full of armed bipeds that would shoot her the very second that they saw her, assuming they weren’t too shocked by her appearance to pull out a weapon that is. She crawled forward twitching her mutated bat ears listening for what was causing that humming noise.

After a moment she saw something that took up the entire vent ahead of her, turning around and not wanting to be near something that was possibly dangerous Fluttershy crawled in the other direction. She was still looking for a little pony’s room even as she slowly crawled away.

Once Fluttershy came to a junction she crawled off to the side and watched as the machine went past her cleaning up the entirety of the vent, which answered her question on how they were kept so clean. She would learn to avoid those boxlike machines in the future, they didn’t seem particularly friendly with their sweeping lights.

An hour later Fluttershy had managed to hit jackpot with a toilet, what she assumed was a shower and a faucet. It certainly took a while to find a room that was easily accessible by vent; she crawled out and looked towards the door. She went about pulling off her saddlebags and her damaged translator; she planted her rear end on the easily recognizable toilet. The seat was rather warm and didn’t feel cold at all. There was probably some technology that was made to make sure the toilet stayed nice and warm, she sighed softly as she released her wastes into the toilet.

The lid had been down to start with so no one has used it recently, Fluttershy remembered to put it back down after flushing it. After finishing her business while hoping no one noticed she used some toilet paper, it took Fluttershy some time to figure out how to get the soap out of the dispenser at the faucet so she could wash her hooves. She flicked her ears at the door and heard no movement on the other side; she heard a lot of movement beyond that with the tapping of feet against the floor as people moved along the winding corridors.

Well as long as she was relatively safe, Fluttershy figured she could use the shower without too much trouble. She sniffed the bottles of various chemicals in the small rather vertical rectangular stall after learning how to open them and tried to mentally figure out what was what. They certainly seemed to be shampoo judging by the sweet scents. Another problem for the pony was that she didn’t know how to turn on the shower or if it would alert anything to her presence, she was already pushing it bad enough by using the toilet and she didn’t think anyone would hold it against her for seeking the comfort of familiarity.

Why did all aliens seem to have toilets anyway? Not that Fluttershy was going to question anything in the universe anymore after seeing toilets in so many other places. It seemed like bathrooms were a completely universal thing which she was completely thankful for, even if the bathrooms were all unique to their owner's biology.

Fluttershy made a mental note that she would have to make sure she didn’t come across something that only looked like a toilet and was actually a sacred spring of an ancient people who would lynch her for using it as a toilet. It would be a completely honest mistake at this point; it even made Fluttershy wonder if there was a race of sentient toilets and she shuddered at the horrible thoughts and images that popped up because of it.

Speaking of toiletries and the like, Fluttershy peeled the sticky leaves off of her injuries carefully and placed them on the floor outside the shower. The slightly swollen wounds still looked generally bad and were oozing slightly. At least she wasn’t bleeding from them profusely, she sighed at the damaged shoulder and the now slightly recovered hole in her torso. Her body bruised and battered, breathing sometimes hurt and her mutations were messing with her head. Overall this pony was not having a good time of being the first equine in space; she preferred the magical dangers of her home world where her friends currently were.

There didn’t seem to be handles in this shower, just three buttons colored blue, grey and red. She closed the sliding door to the shower behind her and continued listening for anyone who would catch her; thinking once again that she did not fancy the idea of being cut open and having her organs played with.

Fluttershy lifted a hoof and carefully pressed the grey button, she guessed red was for hot and blue was cold. So by process of elimination the grey button turned it on and she wasn’t disappointed, but the water that suddenly started spraying her was room temperature and neither hot nor cold. It stung painfully, though not nearly enough to make her pass out as it hit her exposed wounds. It seemed that Fluttershy needed to adjust the temperature by pressing the other buttons; the middle button was basically to turn it on and off.

While she hadn’t felt particularly grimy, what with the mother Dachora bathing and caring for her all the time, she felt that she had to take every opportunity to stay clean. Fluttershy knew that if she were to survive to make a headway into getting home it mean that she need to have less scruples about how things were, but that didn’t mean she was going to be wasteful and she cleansed her body as quickly as she could. Coming out of the shower minutes later she was feeling completely refreshed, the warm water and the combination of shampoo had her feeling nice even if her body ached in protest to the scrubbing she just gave herself. Now if only she knew how the aliens dried off, apparently these beings didn’t use or seem to need towels.

Sighing to herself Fluttershy decided to drip dry, until she could put on her saddlebags and be on her way back into the vents which she now knew were clean or at least were cleaner then the Croakers vents were. Right now Fluttershy wished she could be home using a hairbrush and a comb on herself because she always liked taking care of her mane, she felt just awful knowing that she couldn’t do a thing with it at the moment. Shaking off any leftover excess water, the shy pony got her stuff and crawled back into the vents while making sure she didn’t forget anything.

Exploring the ventilation systems was fun and all, but Fluttershy really wanted to find a way off this spaceship soon and she really didn’t think the beings that lived on it were going to be highly accommodating good hosts. That thought was mostly because of her general freakish appearance, one that Discord apparently liked. Getting off the ship with control of where she was going would have been the best possible scenario; Fluttershy knew it was not likely to happen.

Being of ambiguously sound mind, Fluttershy knew something bad was going to happen to her here and she’d have to live with the trauma of whatever it was this time. So far she was safe and she was becoming very wary of losing a leg or one of her wings even if she couldn’t fly with them as they were. So far she had been lucky that she was even healing from the injuries she’s been dealt, then again having a small hole shot through her torso without it hitting anything vital was pushing the boundaries of how lucky she thought she should be.

Optimistically speaking, the bat mutations probably saved Fluttershy from dying of blood loss somehow. As a pegasus pony she wasn’t a master of magic, though she has a pretty good knowledge of all forms of animal anatomy not to mention the anatomy of ponies. Her mutations had to have shifted her insides around and would probably account for why she was still alive. That or those space pirate things that shot her were really bad shots given how close to her they were when they fired on her.

As Fluttershy crawled forward her ears twitched and picked up something from her translator, given her advanced hearing range her translator could pick up languages at a much safer distance.

“…sending them to the BSL Research Station, the galactic federation data shows them as being semi sentient creatures known as Dachoras and Etecoons.” Fluttershy’s ears were immediately erect and sharpened in the direction of the voice, she turned and crawled in that direction while listening in. “They were the only ones found in the escape pod. They were all quite healthy too, but they seemed greatly agitated by something. They are normally not known to be highly aggressive and I think they were just trying to protect the older Dachora’s chick. At least I know they’ll be okay where they’re going. As for the ship that crashed into us, it was too damaged for us to figure out who previously owned it. We did manage to mine some information from the alien computers that proves something very wrong is going on in the Galactic Federation. It is some rather disturbing news and we’ll look into it to see if we can verify this information, GFS Valhalla signing out.”

Well at least Fluttershy knew her friends were safe, relatively speaking. It didn’t sound like they were going to be mutilated and she could only hope they would be safe wherever they were being sent, it was good to know that they were all doing okay. Crawling forwards she looked through the grating and saw a bunch of bipeds sitting at desks typing away at computers with one male overseeing them.

Said male overseeing everyone was looking at someone on the really big screen. The screen was much bigger than the movie projectors screens back home, with that idle thought Fluttershy watched as it winked out and turned into a map that showed the sections of the universe the Galactic Federation inhabited and protected.

“Captain, how goes the testing on the new Vic Viper? Will we need to decommission all of our stiletto fighters?” One of the people at the desk asked, female judging by her voice and appearance.

“It’s costly to even make one of them; the stilettos will still be in use for quite a while as they are still cost effective. Project: Gradius is still in its experimental stages; our Vic Viper M.A.X. unit may be costing a fortune, but it is said that even just one is designed to wipe out an entire flotilla of space pirates on its own. The most costly thing is greasing the wheels so that the F-Zero racer parts manufacturers stick to the military contracts, can you imagine what would happen if they sold us out to the space pirates? Do you have any more questions, you may speak freely if you have concerns you need to share with the rest of us.” Fluttershy could see the female bite her lips as if questioning whether or not she should speak, she obviously chose to speak freely.

“After the Federation has had so many problems with Artificial Intelligences captain, do you really think it’s a good idea to put one on a fighter that can feasibly do the job of a battleship? Especially after what happened to the previous GFS Valhalla?” Fluttershy had little clue as to what they were talking about, but she had no other place to be at the moment.

“That is what the pilot interface is for; it can’t use its weapons without pilot authorization and they’ve taken every precaution to make sure that it can’t possibly go rogue or be stolen. If the Space Pirates even think of stealing it like they did Aurora Unit Three One Three, they’ll be in for a huge surprise. We’ve got everything completely under control.” Fluttershy was getting bored and started crawling away, nothing she heard here would be helpful for getting off the ship. They weren’t talking about her alien animal friends anymore and they found out about what some of the federation was doing to intelligent beings, so Fluttershy hoped that things would turn for the better in the Galactic Federation.

Fluttershy had no idea where she was going in the vents, she wish she had a handheld computer like the one Katt had for hacking into things to tell her where she was going. She eventually popped out in what looked to be the kitchens she had passed by before. Looking around, it seemed to be deserted except for a few beings loitering around. They weren’t really attentive looking and she was near what looked like a refrigerator, her hunger for apples was slowly breaking her mental strength and it might eventually drive her to do something she wouldn’t like very much.

Shaking her head Fluttershy realized that she had crawled out of the vents, something was niggling at her to look for something red and juicy. Being as quiet as and small as she was, she wasn’t likely to be seen.

Fluttershy didn’t hear anyone coming towards her or any energy weapons discharging in her general direction. She knew she was lucky to have survived being shot at quite a few times and the pain of getting hit was always excruciating, Fluttershy was just not a naturally violent pony and didn’t like having violence directed at her either.

Looking to the nearest thing that resembled a very large refrigerator, Fluttershy looked over her right shoulder and flicked her ears. She was still getting used to her new sense of hearing. Neither hearing nor seeing anyone approaching via echolocation sight, she lifted her left hoof and carefully pried at the door to the refrigeration unit. Under normal circumstances Fluttershy wouldn’t even consider stealing, if not for the gnawing hunger that the food she was carrying wouldn’t satisfy. That and the second fang that sprouted from her mouth within seconds of seeing a label with a familiar piece of fruit on a four gallon bottle of brown liquid. She had been searching for apples; she had hit a jackpot with the first fridge given it had a variety of fruit drinks stored away in it.

The entire world faded from Fluttershy’s mind as she licked her lips and moved her head forward, she tilted her head and opened her mouth in an unnatural manner. She bit down at base of the container creating a loud crunching noise and the sweet flow of fruit juice started to fill her mouth. A part of her knew that what she was doing was wrong, that she was stealing all this lovely poorly guarded fruit juice from some highly advanced bipedal aliens and that she should be feeling bad about doing so.

Knowing that there would be no way to justify her actions later and that she currently didn’t care about what she was doing in the present, Fluttershy dropped all her precautions and mentally let go of all her worries. This was a moment of weakness where she started slurping down the fluids like no tomorrow not caring if she was heard or even caught, the taste that entered her mouth was fulfilling her every desire in oh so many words that she lost all sense of her surroundings as she chugged her way through half of the bottle. Her boundless thirst just couldn’t be quenched well enough.

“What the hell!” Fluttershy slowed down in her frenzied cider drinking, she pulled her fangs from the bottle with a loud audible popping noise while tilting it so it didn’t spill. She turned to the uniformed human who was just staring at her blankly. She hissed in defiance and clutched the bottle to herself protectively as it still had some of that stuff in it that called to her. The man immediately pulled out a device that Fluttershy instantly recognized as a weapon.

It was about this point that Fluttershy came to her senses and looked at her bat wings, then to the bottle she cradled like it was a little baby bird and her pupils shrunk to tiny dots. She had really lost control of herself and now she was going to die if she didn’t move and fast.

“Oh Celestia…” Fluttershy exclaimed before throwing herself to the side. The gun discharged several times nearly blowing her head off; it instead hit the bottle she threw splattering its remaining contents all over the person who shot at her temporarily blinding him. Natural instinct made Fluttershy take to the air and despite having her eyes closed due to fear of how fast she was moving, she could clearly hear where she was going.

Fluttershy slammed head first into the wall above the vent at a high velocity and fell to the floor. Dazedly she opened her eyes and stumbled around a bit, she quickly crawled into the vent being chased by several blasts that scorched the floor around her as she scurried to safety.

Fluttershy was in full control of her body, which was now fully mutated into bat form except there was no vampire fruit bat consciousness. The pony currently crawling away from the mess wished the vampire fruit bat side of her was in control, because she had been moving way too fast when she started flying and didn’t know how to handle that kind of speed. The bright side of this situation is that she had at least escaped without needing another shower and with only painfully bruised forehead to show for it.

Fluttershy reached up and touched her other fang with a hoof, she spread out and looked over her wings and checked her three pink bats cutie mark. So this is what she looked like when she went full on bat.

Fluttershy whimpered sadly as she felt like a real monster now and was almost completely ashamed of her actions. Did her survival really mean she had to stop being who she was? The beings all throughout this ship would certainly be much more alert now because of her not being entirely in control of her faculties. She at least knew they weren’t as inattentive as the Croakers, she had been caught red hoofed so easily. Fluttershy thought she had only been drinking from that large bottle for about ten seconds.

The little pony was shy of meeting anyone else on the ship given she was in hostile territory and all alone. Even her friends in her dreams couldn’t help her escape from this waking nightmare where she would be hunted down and killed if she was spotted again. Physically turning into a monster was the least of her worries, just because she looked like one didn’t mean she had to be one.

Author's Note

I think I've simply stopped caring about writing entirely... that and I got back into playing Monster Hunter again. I've also been perusing Hyrule Warriors and there's also Smash Bros. that will cause further delays.

Not many people are reading this story anyway.

23

It was a big spacious room filled with many smaller space traveling ships that were meant for combat, it was a place known as the hangar. Fluttershy sat in the vent overlooking this mass wide open place where tons of beings ran to and fro working on damaged space fighters, in a sense these being were just protecting their section of the universe like Fox and his friends did.

“Why did I ever let you two even get started?” Fluttershy lamented as she listened into to the ongoing discussion while she looked throughout the hangar for a damaged stiletto fighter to explore. She slowly moved along towards another vent she was going to enter the hangar from.

When both Katrina and Twilight introduced with one another they didn’t stop their talk about magic for quite a long while and were in fact still going since yesterday much to Fluttershy’s chagrin that they forgot they were both connected through her. At least she had a pair of people she could listen to that she knew personally and it made her hunger for companionship ease off by a large margin. Though the fact that they were still holding a conversation after she woke up from getting some sleep that involved a nice chat with Applejack was quite a surprise to her.

Apparently the talk about magic had gotten worse and even less understandable from the shy ponies point of view when the Aldebaran brought up a place called planet Rat with mystical rodents that had abilities that would match the powers of earth ponies. Despite being old Katrina didn’t seem to want to stop or rest in the conversation on the pursuit of universal knowledge of magic with Twilight, they were both too fascinated by the intricacies of the other to really pay attention to what Fluttershy had been doing since then.

“Um… could you two maybe quiet down a bit?” Fluttershy hated to put a damper on their hours of constant excitement and the fact that Twilight now had a new magic consultant, but she needed to sneak into a wide open noisy place while sticking to the hiding spots she was trying to take note of from the vents. She spotted a stiletto fighter she wanted to peruse, one with damaged weapons that the engineers needed to replace.

“How can you want to be…?” Twilight yawned quite thoroughly and then there was a gasp of sadness from said pony. “Oh right, you’re still stuck out there… Fluttershy I’m so sorry I forgot you, I was just so excited to…”

“I know Twilight and its okay. You’ve just made a new friend and I can certainly understand your excitement as she’s my friend too.” Fluttershy muttered as she knew all too well how excited Katrina and Twilight had gotten into hearing about each other’s theory of the relativity of magic as an existential constancy throughout the universe. In fact their theory that magic was the key to why life existed was intriguing, not entirely as dull as Fluttershy had thought it would be when they were still talking about it approximately three hours ago.

“Oh my yes, I too am so sorry to have forgotten your plight my friend. Magic is such an exciting topic to discuss when there are many other beings out there that have their own form of it.” Not that Katrina had truly forgotten that Fluttershy was the owner of the memory stone, but the conversation that had completely drawn her away from the poor mutated mare was her talk with Twilight about how the stone connected them as races. Ponies were amazing creatures to her as were the Rodentian’s of Planet Rat that she hasn’t heard much of, but knew they were an equally magically gifted people from what her people did know. “I think we should adjourn this meeting of the minds Twilight, you are still young but I’m quite old and could use some sleep.”

“Oh, okay… sorry to have kept you up so long Ms. Felicitous.” Twilight sounded as tired as her new Aldebaran friend did.

“Think nothing of it and please call me Katrina. It has been a wonderful experience so far Twilight.” Katrina chuckled dryly as she cut the connection to the stone, one that both Luna and Twilight could connect to at any time they wanted.

“Good luck Fluttershy, hope you meet some more magical races. I want to hear more about what you’re seeing and please try to stay safe, Rainbow Dash wants to be a space explorer instead of a Wonder Bolt now because of you. She even wants to start writing a book about your adventures. She says you’re already cooler then Daring Do in or out of her books.” With that Twilight cut her own connection to the stone and it went silent causing Fluttershy to sigh in relief.

Fluttershy did not think she would be able to sneak through the hangar with those two going at it; their budding friendship was so amazing despite the fact that they couldn’t talk face to face. All that was left was the sound of several conversations as people repaired ships and the hum of machinery that moved things around.

She slowly worked the vent covering she stopped at loose with light pressure and some help from her glass knife; she eventually popped it open so she could crawl out. This particular vent was behind a few cargo containers in the upper hangar area. She snuck a peak around the containers and ducked back as she notice someone look up in her direction before they went back to work on the stiletto fighter they were fixing.

The pony had to wonder how that person could have possibly thought they heard her with all the other noises of work going on in the hangar. Why exactly weren’t nearly as distracting as they should be? Some of these people had to have a good sense of something being out of place to have even notice her, it was kind of amazing to Fluttershy that one even almost caught sight of her.

Then again Fluttershy realized that with her enhanced sense of from her bat mutations she of course was hearing things as being much louder then they naturally were. So maybe it was her imagination that things were to loud for her to be seen or heard, taking even more precaution she clamped her ears down onto her head and carefully worked her way through the upper hangar on hoof.

Fluttershy kept the fact that she couldn’t fly on her mind constantly, mostly to remind herself that unless she could find some more of that sweet cider she wouldn’t be capable of it. Even if she was capable of flight, she’d be going far too fast to really control herself which was not a comforting thought.

Deftly avoiding the sight of everyone while moving about the hangar, Fluttershy found a stiletto that looked to be in working order if still particularly broken. The entire line of damaged stilettos looked almost exactly the same as the next. They were all mostly grey with two adjustable looking stubby wings that from watching others come and go, the long lance like portions protruding from them provided both extra thrust and held powerful laser cannons. They looked to have fins at the back, which would mean they were meant for atmospheric maneuvers. Using fins in space seemed kind of pointless otherwise to Fluttershy since there was no air resistance. The blue shaded bulb shaped canopy window was most likely designed to protect against bright light.

The one that the pony was interested in was the one with the damaged weapons, but the engines still looked to be okay or at least functional. She didn’t exactly know how to get into this ship, was there a door in the back or did you open it through the canopy? She slowly moved around slowly for the ship while making sure to duck out of sight in case there were eyes constantly on the lookout for her.

“This is the captain speaking!” The pony froze and looked around frantically before seeing a button on the small doors underneath the middle thrusters at the back of the slightly damaged fighter, Fluttershy hit the button and the doors popped open. She quickly crawled in with her heart shooting up her throat in fear that she had been discovered. The doors closed behind her once her tail cleared them completely and her heart was thundering in her chest. “We have just intercepted an SOS signal from a nearby asteroid field and we’re changing our heading to intercept the signals location. All pilots currently on duty prepare for launch, we have no idea if this is an ambush or not and are now currently on high alert.”

Fluttershy calmed down at the announcement not being about her and she had made it inside a stiletto so she could study it’s systems to see if she could actually pilot one. She wasn’t exactly ready to steal one quite yet. Now if she could only catch her breath and stop hyperventilating at the suddenness of that voice being heard, she didn’t think anybody saw her panicking and crawling into one of the obviously less then capable fighters. Well less capable when it came to combat, but it could still fly.

Sitting up the quiet pony moved towards the front of the ship, it had a small cargo hold for supplies in case the ship crashed and had emergency rations inside. Fluttershy made a note to take some of the dried food before she left the stiletto. It was not entirely cramped and could easily fit at least three or more of those creatures that Fluttershy was still debating on whether to call them humans or not. They were more to Lyra’s description of humans and less of what Twilight had described.

Of the few problems to start off with of learning how to fly a ship, the first would be how to work one. Another is actually getting it into the air without anyone noticing, which would be clearly impossible at this point since a bunch of people were filtering into the lower hangar and jumping into their fighters through the open canopies. Fluttershy moved to the front of the stiletto she was in and looked down at them entering their ships preparing for that SOS. If she knew anything about naval vessels back in Equestria, that meant someone was in trouble and needed help.

While Fluttershy went over the controls to the stiletto and planted her flank in the seat, the Valhalla had arrived at the area where the distress beacon went off. She looked out from the pilot’s seat and didn’t see much but an asteroid field. She looked over the confusing control panels and wondered what exactly did what. The reason why she was even interested in this particular ship was because of the fact that she couldn’t accidentally kill someone by firing its weapons. Since the weapons were completely broken unless they exploded and knowing her luck something like that might happen, she really couldn’t do much except ram it into another ship and it was still tethered down so the damage would be minimal.

Fluttershy tested a few of the buttons and didn’t get much more then the diagnostics screen, some lights and an open channel to Valhalla communications which she didn’t bother to turn off. As she was fiddling around with the ships internal systems, twelve stilettos shot out of the hangar towards the field of floating rocks in space. She idly thought about how Maude would have loved to explore them.

“Sir we’ve found the distress beacon, we’re getting an ID on it now. It’s the famous bounty hunter Samus Aran’s gunship captain, it appears to be incapacitated. It has a damaged reverse thruster, one of the cannons looks to be offline and it seems to have… well, the ship looks to have blatantly rammed itself into an asteroid. There are life signs still onboard, which is presumably Samus and they seem to be giving off very odd reading, I’m receiving no response to hailing frequencies. What should we do sir?” Fluttershy didn’t see any of this and accidentally found the button that activated the engines and quickly turned them off hoping that nobody heard or even saw that.

“We’ll tow her in under high quarantine protocols, as we don’t know what has happened to her. Her life signs are getting weaker so she’s probably become sick somehow. Direz, since you’re already up and going through systems check, we’ll refit stiletto thirteen with a tow cable to bring her in, acknowledge!” After a few moments of silence the captain started grumbling. “I said acknowledge stiletto thirteen!”

Fluttershy yelped as the voice got louder in the ship she was in and she looked around and her ears drooped. She was rather superstitious especially since she just realized that she was in stiletto number thirteen judging by the number she could see on the heads up display of the now active screen before her.

“This is flight leader tango three, Direz the captain is giving you orders so stop slacking off! I can hear you breathing in there! I swear you’re married to your fighter and you better not have been sleeping in it again after what happened last time. Maintenance, attach a tow cable system and reroute power from the damaged gun controls, after that give Direz the go signal to start her mission. Apparently her comm is still on the fritz, we know she’s receiving but she’s not broadcasting very well. We’ll look into it later, now get her out there.” The different and much angrier voice caused Fluttershy to shudder, why oh why did these people have to think she was someone else. “You heard the captain, get a move on fitting the stiletto for the operation procedure!”

“All other stilettos are to patrol the area and watch for hostiles, all ships defenses are now on standby. I’m not willing to rule out foul play, Samus is one of the toughest bounty hunters in the galaxy. Expect space pirates or any of her enemies to make an unannounced appearance, I know they’d love to end her life at this juncture.” The captain’s voice petered out on that pale note.

Feeling a jerk of the stiletto she was in, Fluttershy watched the console show a screen of what was going on outside as several of what she technicians were moving something to the bottom of the ship she now occupied. The docking claw had moved it into position so they could attach what was apparently the tow cable module which was the size of the lance like guns on the stiletto she was in. She did not like where this was going and what may happen; if any part of this ship was exposed to space she’d die immediately as she didn’t have a spacesuit.

After a few minutes of panicked waiting Fluttershy heard three rapid bangs against the side of the ship. On the screen she could see everyone was backing away and the claw was in the process of moving to release the stiletto. If she didn’t do anything and the ship dropped to the floor she’d be found out. The pony hit the button that started the engine and the stiletto dropped a few feet and started hovering.

Looking at the more obvious controls now, Fluttershy saw the handle on the right and the stick in front of her with. Gulping audibly she put her hooves on both of them not knowing how to really pilot this thing.

“Now whatever you do Direz don’t…” Fluttershy freaked out and pushed the handle on her right forward as far as her hoof could get it and the stiletto shot out of the hangar like the rocket powered vehicle it was, with her squealing all the way in fright as she shot towards the asteroid field. “Yeah something is definitely up with her comm. Direz don’t you dare go showboating, this is a serious rescue procedure!”

Fluttershy after a few second of having fired out of the hanger finally managed to come to terms to what she had just done and her heart was beating faster then set of bongo drums. She looked around herself in a panic seeing everything moving around her at incredible speed. Looking down around her seat saw some straps, slowly but surely she loosely strapped herself in and tried to figure out how to steer this thing before she slammed into an asteroid. She now knew how to make the ship accelerate, but she didn’t know what the other stick was for until she leaned it to the left and her entire view turned left.

The poor butter colored pony was now even more disoriented and her hoof slammed the stick sideways and to the left. This sent her current mode of transportation spiraling out of control curving towards the asteroid just where an orange football shaped ship could be seen.

“Oh god damn it all Direz, don’t you ever listen to me?” Not that Fluttershy wasn’t all ears at the moment and was currently in the midst of a panic attack, but apparently whoever flew this ship was likely insane. Yet the fact that that person was still allowed to fly, it made Fluttershy balk at the reason her bad flying hadn’t tipped them off yet that she was not this Direz person. In fact her balking at the absurdity of this situation is what brought her back to the present. “Ugh never mind. This is flight leader tango three; stiletto thirteen is almost on top of the target. Continue to scan the surroundings for trouble. Tango to thirteen, I would advise you to ease up on your speed and get a bead on the bounty hunters ship to fire the tow lines, remember that minimum distance needed is two thousand feet.”

A whimpering Fluttershy quickly pulled back her right hoof, but not past the white line that had an arrow pointing forward and an arrow point backwards. The stiletto immediately slowed down to a crawl as it fired some retro thrusters, she gently eased the stick in her left hoof to the right and lined it up with the football shaped ship that was designated as her target, well at least she was out here to saving someone and not killing anybody. How did Fox and his friends fly things like this? It was scary and she had a bad enough time of it from seeing the inside of Pep’s arwing that one time.

“Am I really doing this?” Muttered Fluttershy clearly shocked that she was actually piloting a spaceship, one that did not have an autopilot and had hooves on controls that weren’t heavily complicated. A more complicated ship seemed to have better ability to travel greater distances. Still this would be an interesting story to tell Rainbow Dash later if she survived this little excursion, Rainbow definitely wasn’t the fastest pegasus in the universe anymore. It took a moment to get control of her soon to be a chronic nervous breakdown, she had come this far and she really didn’t feel like dying right now. She better do what she was supposed to, but how was she supposed to fire those tow cables?

After flicking the things on the console with her hoof, a targeting reticule appearing on the screen in some cross hairs centering on the ship Fluttershy was supposed to be towing back to Valhalla. Hitting another button the ship lights lit up, okay she could now remember what buttons made lights shine from the stiletto and saw a vaguely familiar figure through the green tinted windows.

“We’re getting visuals from thirteen that the pilot is confirmed to be bounty hunter Samus Aran and she looks to be unconscious. There’s definitely something very wrong with her.” Fluttershy decided that hitting anymore buttons without thinking would be a bad idea. “You have a firing solution Direz. Pull the trigger already; you don’t need to get a close up of Samus! I know you have your preferences, but now is not quite the time for you to be daydreaming.”

Trigger? Fluttershy looked around for something was supposed to pull and looked at the stick in her left hoof. Seeing the little switch on the centralized steering stick and shivering slightly, she reached up with her right hoof and hoped this was the right thing. She pulled on the small switch thing and four cables with clamps immediately lanced out to snag the bigger ship. Fluttershy perked up, nothing went wrong and now all she had to do was gently turn this thing around and…

“This is stiletto six we’ve got incoming hostiles, it’s the Space Pirates and there is a whole ton of them coming at us!” Why did Fluttershy even bother to get her hopes up that things were going to go smoothly? To compound the problems further Fluttershy just realized she didn’t exactly know how to land this thing or what to do with the ship she just grappled. She also realized that she was now entirely responsible for this Samus persons well being.

Author's Note

If you must know I've been having computer problems lately, aside from that I read too much fanfiction.

In fact I read a metric ton of fanfiction last one being seven hundred thousand words long, other then that halloween is my month to be me. I'm not promising a faster update schedule after halloween either, but I'll try to pick up some slack.

The extra downtime let me tweak this chapter a bit.

24

Fluttershy didn’t like all the red dots that just appeared on the readouts and compared to the number of blue dots which were the already deployed stiletto’s well… she didn’t need to do any math to know those space pirates were out in force and seem very oddly focusing all of their forces to right on top of her.

Of the things Fluttershy knew, she knew wasn’t an expert pilot. Another of the things she knew was that flying through an asteroid field in a fighter wasn’t the best of ideas, Fox and his friends could feasibly do so because their ships had energy shields. She was still trying to get a grasp of the control system and was lucky thus far that nobody had figured her out.

Among all of her pressing thoughts going through pretty little head as she sat there shivering in her seat, Fluttershy was most worried that she might be the cause of the deaths of those flying around her because they’d have to protect her from all those numerous red dots.

Shaking her head Fluttershy tried to force herself into action knowing she was nearly frozen with fear, she felt like she couldn’t do anything and she was in the middle of all this. She just had to; she just had to get out of here!

If there was one thing ponies were great at, it was running for their lives and Fluttershy had a unique fight or flight response. The fight response Fluttershy had involves staring something into submission. Given this wasn’t a situation where staring at something harshly would help, she instead had a flight response. Fluttershy tended to forget she had wings whenever she was scared and had to flee from something, in this situation she had nowhere to run but everywhere to fly and while dragging along a possible infirmed living being.

Fluttershy twisted the stick in her left hoof to the right and it turned. She lightly pulled back on it and the ship pointed upwards, then she lightly pushed forward and it now pointed downwards. After nodding to herself that she understood the concept of how the controls work, she pushed the throttle of the likes that would be common to see on an airship back in Equestria. She had to keep in mind there was no up or down in space, aside from that she has never personally flown a vehicle before now, much less an airship and now wasn’t quite a good time to be learning while you were zooming deeper into an asteroid field while being shot at.

In all Fluttershy was flying blind, dragging behind someone who was possibly dying, sick or just unconscious and there were plenty of other beings out here that would soon die one way or another. There was nothing she could do to prevent any death from happening at this point no matter how hard she wished they wouldn’t occur; then again she didn’t think she could worry about every single life in the universe all at the same time which was impossible. So she would just have to focus on herself and her needs, which was admittedly very hard for her to do because of her her inclination towards kindness and helping others in need.

These thoughts truly didn’t sit well with Fluttershy given she currently held someone else’s life in her shaking little hooves as she steered around several large pocketed lifeless rocks floating around in space barely getting used to maneuvering the stiletto around before she came under attack.

“Direz what are you doing, is she insane? Flying into an asteroid field is incredibly stupid.” One of the stiletto pilots intoned seeing Fluttershy drag her cargo further into the asteroid field.

“Actually I think she knows what’s she doing, she’s leading them off of us as they’re after the bounty hunter who’s been a thorn in their backsides since forever. Given she was the only survivor of that pirate attack on the colony she was born to, that’s actually saying quite a lot about how scared of her they are considering how dangerous she is.” The current flight leader of the stilettos watched as several large space pirate ships and their fighters turn to give chase as Fluttershy delved into the asteroid field, while others launched an attack on the Valhalla. “They are the ones who are suicidal for blindly chasing after stiletto thirteen into that death trap. Form up four wings of three they are actually taking some time to launch an attack our way, we should feel so lucky they decided to give us the time of day. We need to give the other squadrons time to launch and assist with the time thirteen bought us.”

“What about Direz, will she be okay in there by herself.” One of the other twelve defending stiletto’s chimed in.

“She’ll be fine, she’s a crazy good pilot and with an emphasis on crazy. I doubt she’d let someone like Samus ‘freaking’ Aran down. This is stiletto one, all wings form up! We’re moving on the defensive. Valhalla I would advise you get all other flights in the air now! Also would it be too much to request the Vic Viper do something other than sit around collecting dust?” The twelve fighters split off into four groups and took off for a swarm of space pirate fighters that were about to begin pestering the Valhalla which had immediately started firing back.

“I really don’t like where this is going.” Fluttershy muttered to herself as she dragged the ship with a living person behind her through and around asteroids at a relatively slow speed, she really did not feel like kicking into high gear quite yet. She had been listening to their chatter it, sounded like she was going to be alone out here and didn’t like her odds of survival. It was seconds later that she kicked her stiletto into high gear by putting the ship on full speed as she could get it with her right hoof when the entire stiletto shook from an energy blast that struck it. She was not a happy camper and was most certainly not alright.

The mass of Samus Aran’s ship was what had been keeping Fluttershy from going too fast as she dragged the other ship carefully around through asteroids before she came under heavy fire. It was all a bit hard for one pony to take in; she was to be mindful not only of herself but her passenger she was dragging along. Now she was moving at a quite a clip and barely avoiding the asteroids scraping against them every now and then, she didn’t even know what was causing the ship to roll at times and knew that she had no weapons with which she could defend herself. Not that she would have used the weapons at all or even attempted to kill her tailgaters.

A small part of Fluttershy knew that the ones shooting at her or mostly the tethered ship behind her were aiming to kill both of them when they couldn’t fight back. It was a really upsetting thought that they knew she couldn’t fight back and were taking every opportunity to let her know it given the large amount of poorly aimed fire in her general direction. The asteroids and the general toughness of the ship behind her were the only thing currently keeping her from dying in a fiery explosion.

Going into a particularly sharp turn around a larger asteroid, Fluttershy looked back and saw fifteen other fighters trying to put a hole in the ship she had tethered to hers before she turned back to what was in front of her, an endless sea of rocks slamming and bashing against one another slowly.

Poor Fluttershy was really having a hard time keeping up with all the things going on around her. An asteroid was floating down into her path from above which she swerved around; a group of fighters were trying to pincer her from both sides and that included the ones still behind her trying to poke holes into the rear of the stiletto that she was piloting pretty well for a being with no fingers.

Somewhere along the line Fluttershy lamented that if Rainbow Dash were in this situations, she’d probably have them shooting themselves considering how frantic they were with firing off shots. She was barely even compensating for the mass of having to drag the other ship through the weightless environment. At times like these Fluttershy prayed that the pegasus ability of incredible spatial awareness to see her through this.

Fluttershy twisted the control stick awkwardly and it sent her ship into a downward spiral between two relatively large asteroids she hadn’t seen, her ship passed through the space before the two asteroids before they slammed together. She halted her ships forward momentum by cutting the throttle and looked back to see the space rocks drifting apart from one another. She was happy that the tethers hadn’t been cut and were apparently made of stern stuff; the other ship was also okay and it was a saving grace for her sanity to see it intact. The whole universe was seemingly out to get her at this moment and Fluttershy knew it wasn’t just her paranoia talking.

She pushed the throttle back to full when the rocks floated far enough apart to squeeze her cargo through and she was once again on the move, apparently the three groups of chasing space pirates had been stalled by a few asteroids when she went into the awkward spiral. The space pirates had taken to trying to shoot through the asteroids so that they could reach the temporarily stalled Fluttershy before she could get too far.

“Oh my goodness, oh my goodness…” It was the mantra that Fluttershy muttered as her eyes darted about wildly as she had to pay attention to more than one thing at time and she wasn’t handling it well. The stiletto took several more shots, the readouts turned slightly red most likely telling her something was going to break soon and everything in the cockpit was shivering or was that just her and her nervous breakdown? She had to find a way out, she had to escape, why was there nowhere to run? She was in space for crying out loud!

“Fluttershy, are you okay?” Luna’s question was completely drowned out and unheard because of the most shrill and positively loudest scream Fluttershy had ever given in her entire life was heard.

The overly panicked Fluttershy jerked her left hoof jerked back on the control stick sending the stiletto into a U-turn that resolved into a full on death spiral as the other ship gained momentum having been swung around too hard. This sent fluttershy and her world spinning as she lost complete control of the situation.

The fighters that had been hounding Fluttershy up to this point suddenly went into a panic trying to avoid the self made bolas maneuver that Fluttershy had just pulled. End over end the two ships twisted until the cables came into contact with a small asteroid. As they both wrapped around the asteroid twice the tethered football shaped ship had managed to smash into one of the attacking fighters causing it to go careening into a larger asteroid which exploded violently.

The destruction of the asteroid sent shrapnel everywhere taking out five more pirate fighters while the others were slightly damaged by the debris of the asteroid, which still left at least seven fully operational fighters with many more converging on Fluttershy’s position. The stiletto and the other ship were now bound to opposite sides of the same asteroid they were now stuck to.

Fluttershy just whimpered as she was dizzy, confused, scared, about to barf when she couldn’t afford to not knowing when she would next be able to eat and was just one more incident shy of completely snapping mentally. The glass of canopy was struck by a chunk of asteroid and it cracked.

“Fluttershy are you okay? Please calm down, tell me what is going on.” The worried tone didn’t get through to the pony in question staring at the crack in the glass with a deep rooted fear in her heart.

“Luna… I’m not in a good position to really talk right now, please hang up and try again. If this number will continue to still be in service or even alive in the next few seconds… well you’ll definitely be the first to know about it.” This was the moment Fluttershy would follow the teachings of Pinkie Pie, take refuge in the complete audacity of the situation when you had no hope left to give. It was all going downhill from here and she could really use a bit of humor right now. Looking up through the canopy through the many asteroids blocking her sight she could see the stars, the stars that had multiple ruthless space pirate fighters closing in with a larger ship that had carried them this far and was taking care to blow away the surrounding asteroids leaving her wide open for the coming assault.

The crack in the canopy grew slightly as a blast sent chips of destroyed asteroid at it, but it didn’t let any air escape. Fluttershy held her breathe fearfully staring at the crack. The ship shook as more beams of energy struck the stiletto peppering it and the surrounding rock, the ship on the other side of the asteroid was probably getting just as damaged in the bombardment. Fluttershy wondered if the person in the other ship was even still alive at this point and if they were wearing a space suit, if it was open to vacuum then that person most likely had a limited air supply even if they were in a space suit. She feared the worst and hoped for the best.

Fluttershy was a pony and would never abandon someone even in this situation; at least if she died she’d have someone else to talk to about how hard she had tried her best. She was feeling quite useless right now, she was even ignoring Luna’s plea to talk about what was going on. It was a surprise that the armor on this ship had even held out as well as it had or that the thrusters were still in an operational order at all.

The large ship descended and fired several more blasts, one of which took out the right booster of the stiletto and shook the entire ship. Fluttershy closed her eyes and tried to smile despite the rapid beating of her heart and the fear of imminent demise, she was trying to focus on her happy place in such a stressful situation. Only she certainly didn’t feel herself being exposed to the vacuum of space. The shuddering of her damaged ship stopped and the sounds of warnings that she didn’t understand were still going on throughout the semi-operational stiletto.

Opening her eyes Fluttershy watched as a very temporary small star was born of the large space pirate vessel exploding from five large beams of solid blue energy ripping through it as if it was made of tissue paper. A scorched mark covered white forked arrowhead shaped ship shot out of the explosion followed by four glowing orange spheres of light.

The ship that had just saved Fluttershy started to bore large holes through the asteroids and pirate fighters in front of them alike with beams of raw energy that Fluttershy didn’t think even Twilight could compete with given their obvious power. It was downright scary and they weren’t even aimed at her and here she thought she couldn’t be any more afraid for her life.

At the same time the bright orange orbs of light separated from the incredible ship and started to move and fire on the pirate fighters with the same ferocity that the ship did on their own accord. The pirate fighters tried to fight back, but they were clearly outclassed by this fighter’s weaponry and incredible speed that made Fluttershy feel like she was slow again.

“I’ve got you covered; now get back to the Valhalla on the double! You’re ship looks like it’s holding together on a wing and a prayer.” The strong voice said and despite the strength of conviction in it, the ship the voice had come from looked pretty badly damaged after obviously having dealt with the other large space pirates ships. If it still had that kind of power even looking as bad as it did, Fluttershy didn’t want to think about what it would be like to have something like that thing as an enemy.

Fluttershy blinked and turned to steering stick and the ship slowly rotated since the added mass of being strapped to the asteroid was slowing it down. She looked at the console and saw an arrow pointing back through the largely opened hole in the asteroid field. Despite being slightly slower missing one booster, she would get out of the asteroid field unmolested thanks to that person who just rescued her. Her ship was slowly limping its way towards a slightly battered Valhalla. Taking the glowing memory stone out of her saddlebags, Fluttershy held it up to her face.

“I’ll be fine Luna… things… just got really complicated for me for a while. Don’t worry; I think everything will be okay. So we’ll be able to talk later if that’s alright with you and I’m really sorry that I currently don’t have the time to do so at the moment.” The even tone Fluttershy spoke made it clearly known that even she wasn’t so sure that everything would be okay, she was after all going to be involved in a crash landing once she entered the gravitational field generator onboard the Valhalla.

Sighing as she put the stone away Fluttershy realized that if the person in the other ship on the other side of the asteroid was in fact still alive, even if the possibility was very little after all they had just went through, she was going to have to crash the Stiletto upside down to give them the best chance at survival. This meant that she would have to pop the canopy very quickly and leap to safety or else she’d be crushed by the full weight of an asteroid, that or rely on the completely unsound structural integrity of the stiletto after what she had just put it through.

Looking at the cracked canopy Fluttershy was completely certain that she did not trust the structural integrity of this ship with her life, she’d also need to look for a place to escape to before she flew into the hangar and inevitably crashed. She wiggled herself out from the chair straps and wiped at her sweaty forehead with a hoof, she went to the back of the ship and raided its meager stores of some thickly packed clear plastic packets of dried fruits and nuts. Nobody would question if they went missing if the ship was crushed right? Fluttershy was getting tired of having to raid hydroponics section and the very impressively stocked kitchen for food, the bathrooms were always an ample supply of fresh water so she didn’t have to worry about that at least.

Getting back into the seat she saw that she was on approach to the Valhalla and hoped that she could do this without serious injury to herself. Oh Fluttershy already knew she was going to get hurt, it was just the matter of how badly she got hurt doing it. Taking a deep breath she put on her game face, the pony’s game face looked very much like a horrified grimace as she slowly inverted the asteroid so that she was upside down on the approach of the very much right side up hangar.

The following crash didn’t kill or get Fluttershy caught, but she’d definitely be feeling it for the next few days. In said following days the famous bounty hunter Samus Aran was given a peculiar vaccine and was given a ship on loan from the Galactic Federation because her ship was in the process of being repaired onboard the Valhalla. The ship under repairs was thankfully clean of whatever had infected Samus.

Unfortunately for Samus, she wouldn’t be seeing her old ship for a long time if at all. Many people tried to cover up the fact that something had happened to it for the fear of reprisal from the bounty hunter. Everyone came to wonder the same thing, who in their right mind was brave or stupid enough cross a person who was noted for her unstoppable determination and causing entire species to go extinct? Not to mention this was the same person who had a tendency for things like entire planets blowing up around her while she survived said explosions every single time.

Of course the most feared and famed bounty hunter in the Galactic Federation systems known as Samus Aran had other problems to worry about and wouldn’t find out her old ship, one she cherished and had for quite a long time, was stolen.

Author's Note

For all of you who guessed Samus Aran's intergalactic traveling chozo/federation mixed technology ship as being Fluttershy's mode of transportation, you all get a cookie.

She can read griffon well enough, so operating a ship meant only for people who know how to read the Chozo language seems an easy enough stretch right? Doesn't mean she'll ever be an expert pilot, Fluttershy is going to go off to Lala land and discover knew and surprisining things about how the universe works.

25

Fluttershy felt bad enough about stealing the necessities of life, such as four gallons of water and enough food to last her a few days that wouldn’t spoil easily as she had found a cold storage device. Stealing an entire ship and getting away with it so easily made her feel worse than stealing what was necessary to survive. She just really had to get out of the Galactic Federation and Space Pirate systems; she didn’t think a Vhozon would be very forgiving of her theft at this rate. Her first and best opportunity to do so and make a clean escape was the gunship of a highly dangerous being that may or not hunt her down to the ends of the universe for stealing this ship.

For the first time in since forever, Fluttershy actually had a choice about where she was going once she managed to break away from the Valhalla. The Vic Viper was thankfully still in need of repairs after battle and couldn’t be launched to stop her from making her escape. She had tons of choices as the ship had a lot of auto-pilot coordinates to go to within the galactic federation.

Samus was apparently a very busy person since she already left on another ship; Fluttershy was less worried about stealing something that could be easily replaced. There were very few places that were outside of the jurisdiction of the Galactic Federation that Fluttershy could head to in the ship she stole; it was called The Head Hunter. It took Fluttershy a few moments to figure out there was a space between head and hunter, it was appropriate somehow considering she was hunting for a way home.

The place she was heading off to was a strange set of coordinates that where at an unknown destination outside the Galactic Federation space, Samus only visited the place on the trail of a derelict Space Pirate vessel where all the pirates onboard had been killed off by creatures known as Metroids. A species of creature which only left behind desiccated husks after they were done draining all the life out of something. They were thought to be extinct and Fluttershy certainly hoped not, especially since she understood messing with nature tended to lead to unintended consequences that were far reaching. In any case she still hadn’t worked out every single little thing The Head Hunter could do and the access to readable information in semi griffon script helped her learn more lore to share with her friends.

Fluttershy chose these coordinates because there were quite a few interesting things about it; based on the recordings she found the planet had a sun and moon that revolved around it in a system with several other planets. It sounded like Fluttershy was one little trot from home and thus The Head Hunter had been in transit for a while. Fluttershy stared out into space as thousands of specs of light zipped by as small streams instead of as the dots that belonged to other possibly inhabited worlds. There was life out in space and plenty of it was learning how to travel the distance, bridging the gap to meet knew beings and see other worlds some of which were obviously more violent than others.

A beeping sound was heard and the tired pony sat up and looked at it for a moment. After Fluttershy took in the function, if she was translating it right, she hit a few keys on the Chozo controls of The Head Hunter. It seemed to have stopped speeding through space and had slowed down because they were nearing the planet where the derelict Space Pirate vessel had crashed; she was now in the outer edge of the system. Fluttershy could only hope because of its relation to the Chozo that this world was the planet of Equus, not that there had been any history of an eight foot tall bipedal armored alien sent to destroyed voracious parasitic creatures in a frozen region where the parasites were greatly weakened.

The ship started scanning the system for any signs of danger that were so far away that Fluttershy couldn’t see them with her naked eyes. It quickly found something… it looked to be a large blue airship with oars, a mast and a lot of five point star shapes on it. It was detected shooting off into space and not heading in her direction so Fluttershy didn’t think much of it, but she still wondered why it was detected as a possible threat as it didn’t look like a very threatening ship. In fact it looked like a pretty comical mode of space transportation to Fluttershy instead of all the hard scientific looking stuff she was becoming used to, there was always more than one way to travel and by bubble was the least safest as she would tell anyone she met.

“Katrina, are you there?” Said the still half mutated pony airily, she was safe and could get to any habitable world to pick up supplies as long as she didn’t run into a hostile situation or crash the ship. Space travel was very perilous and Fluttershy almost didn’t feel safe falling asleep in this ship, this was after witnessing said ship took a pounding from various sources and held together admirably. She was on route passing by several other peculiar planets, one that looked to be a planet sized city of metal that reminded her of the sad tale of what became of the Croaker planet.

The toilet aboard The Head Hunter worked quite well, as did the sink which was fed water from a small tank that circulated all the basic hydration needs. The leavings Fluttershy had were taken care of, but she really needed to figure how exactly they were being taken care of as she knew very little about the ship she was on except what she has already found out or learned through a tiny amount of trial and error. Aside from that Fluttershy needed to be mindful of her food supply, to find out what fueled this ship and if it would need more, plus she would eventually need the knowledge of how to make repairs as she was not exactly a mechanic.

“Yes I am here my even more lost friend; Fluttershy how is your situation? I take it you’re feeling much better?” It was nice to hear the voice of the old cat matriarch, one who was inquiring about how Fluttershy felt about stealing a ship that was combat capable. Even Fluttershy’s friends had pointed out she wouldn’t have gotten very far in a stiletto considering how damaged the one she took had gotten compared to the minimal damage that The Head Hunter had received throughout the whole thing with the asteroid field.

“I think I’m alright for the most part, I still feel very guilty about stealing this ship after they went through all that trouble to repair it. I’m out of the Galactic Federation systems… I think. At least I haven’t run into space pirates and I’ve found a planet that has a sun and moon that revolve around it, but I’m not sure it’s Equus.” Even if it wasn’t, Fluttershy was going to land and have a look around. Maybe she could find someone who knows of other worlds like this one and how to find them since they had space travel already.

“It is good to hear you can still feel guilty about stealing. I feel something weird from wherever you are heading and the feeling is getting stronger. Whatever planet you are going towards, it would be wise to be wary of surprises. There are many dangers out there vast and unknown that come in all forms even the most innocent looking.” Hearing Katrina made Fluttershy feel a bit better about the grand theft spaceship, but the wandering equine would not forget it. “Don’t be afraid to contact me at any time, even if it may wake me up.”

“I really don’t want to be a bother to you Katrina.” Fluttershy batted at her mane with a hoof, it was still ragged looking in comparison to her tail which looked silky smooth. She really did need someone to talk to, but not at their expense. Now that she thought of it, she didn’t want to take up a majority of her friends lives worrying about her wellbeing among the stars themselves and if she didn’t talk to them they’d worry all that much more.

“Why you’re no bother at all, now Felicia on the other claw. She is eventually going to cause quite a mess of the Aniverse Systems one of these days I just know it!” The cat matriarch chuckled about her rambunctious grandchild. “I hope you’ll still be around to hear about it, because I know I will and she’s eventually going to get over that kitten crush she has for her mentor Jenny. All our neighbors in the surrounding systems will weep once she finally starts getting that wanderlust that took me when I was a kitten her age.”

A giggle escaped Fluttershy’s lips, despite being old Katrina sounded enthusiastic and quite spry for an old lady. She wished she could be that active when she got older and speaking of which… Pinkie Pie was going to miss throwing a party for her next birthday, not that she liked a room full of ponies or surprises. Lately she felt that she couldn’t afford to be shy with how lonely she was out here in space.

“Thank you, I needed that. I’m coming up on the planet now. I hope I don’t have as much trouble as the last few planets I’ve been on, except that would be asking for too much of the universe now wouldn’t it?” Aqua planet she landed on while nearly starving to death, Aldebaran where she became mutated because of a magical space demon that somehow ended up with her looking like she did, plus there was that one planet that exploded that she didn’t know the name of. Here Fluttershy was contemplating landing on planet on purpose, knowing full well that there were going to be all kinds of possible dangers at hoof the second she touched the ground. At least she could take comfort in knowing that nowhere in the universe was perfectly safe or equally perfectly dangerous as all get out.

“Indeed it would be, remember to call me anytime you need my council and don’t forget your friends can still hear your voice out there no matter how far away you are from them.” A yawn was heard from the stone and Katrina sounded like she was shuffling off to do something as the memory stone dulled.

Before she headed down to the planet Fluttershy decided to get a few scans of it, after she figured out what those controls were doing given she was still having a few issues with figuring out this ships different internal configuration. She was unsure how the planet exactly worked and there was something extremely odd about it. Like the one fact that the scans said the planet was round, but her eyes were telling her it was a five pointed star shaped yellow planet with large colorful rings surrounding it. Yet the surface scans didn’t show very much yellow at all. It was an oddity that either the planet created an optical illusion or the planet really did look like that and was round at the same time which was quite mind boggling.

This strange planet definitely felt magical and that might explain its weird appearance, even from orbit Fluttershy could feel a strange tingle and it was usually unicorns that could feel out or visualize magic. From what she could see from the monitor, there were several realms with very defining features. The one that caught her eye first was the green grassy plain that looked very inviting, given Fluttershy noted what looked like apples in the trees in the surrounding thriving forests and there was a few nearby lakes that looked to be filled with incredibly pure water. It kind of looked like a proper idea of paradise and it didn’t seem there was any sign of sentient life aside from the large castle and a building or two.

Looking to the other realms Fluttershy saw a vast ocean? Clouds filled with what looked like ancient ruins and gardens in the sky? That definitely warranted some looking into from a safe distance given the purple tinted clouds made her wary. Mountains and sandy dunes she was going to avoid as it looked like there were volcanoes there. She took note of a frozen wonderland where the coordinates she used to get here led to, she would avoid that as well as she didn’t want any trouble with whatever happened there the last time this ship was here. She might even visit the many nice looking resort styled islands on this planet, but otherwise to the nice and quiet looking grassy plains it was then!

At this point Fluttershy didn’t care if it looked too good to be true, she just wanted to feel some grass beneath her hooves again and maybe she’d even snack on it a bit. She just wanted to start off in the most calm and serene looking environment around, while trying not to think of the trouble she caused and left behind in her escape. Silently Fluttershy once again was mentally apologizing for all the trouble she brought to those people on the Valhalla who were just trying to make a living out in space.

The Head Hunter came close to the ground and entered a hovering state. Fluttershy wondered what set the ship down on the ground or did this hovering technically count as a landing? The ship was at the top of a grassy hill next to a forest overlooking some vibrant and colorful plains where strange, decidedly not equestrian, creatures roamed about. The revelation that this wasn’t her home world didn’t upset Fluttershy as much as she thought it should.

Getting out of the chair, Fluttershy walked to the back of the ship to the circular platform and stood on it. She stamped her hoof down daintily on the platform twice and it floated upwards until she found herself on top of the ship overlooking the lands from the outside. She took in a deep breath while closing her eyes, the air here felt so alive and so weird yet familiar. This world definitely had magic and it felt very inviting, much more then Aldebaran had and it was making Fluttershy feel giddy.

Opening her eyes a thought just occurred to Fluttershy, how was she going to get back on the ship once she got off and how was she going to get off in the first place. It was hovering quite a few feet above the ground and she couldn’t very well fly, she’d have to figure out how to turn off the jets and set it down. She quickly went back into the ship and got back into the pilots seat to look over the controls, eventually she managed to angle the four jets straight down and slowly turned them off to land the ship without trouble. Now there was only the minor matter of security.

One of the things Fluttershy knew was that if she left the ship unattended, then anything could happen to it despite the seemingly large lack of any danger of it being stolen a second time. She didn’t know how to lock it down or even prevent someone else from taking it, but she needed food so she’d have to eventually leave it by itself. It wouldn’t be a coincidence if it was stolen again, by someone else and Fluttershy would rather keep a hold onto it until she could feasibly figure out a way to return it to the person she stole it from. Yes, Fluttershy never stopped considering how to return the ship with an apology note written in griffon or a magically preserved cupcake made by Pinkie Pie.

Sighing sadly to herself, she once again exited to the top of the ship and looked around as she slowly trotted down one of the sloping sides of the ship. Once she first touched her right hoof onto the soft grass, Fluttershy looked around in a slight panic for a few seconds. She quickly calmed down when the world didn’t seem to immediately implode upon itself, but didn’t stop worrying about her surroundings.

In slight relief that nothing bad would happen, Fluttershy walked out onto the grass and felt the vibrant sun on her fur. She quickly checked her saddlebags to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything. She had her knife made of alien glass, some water in a portable container, her Aldebaran Memory Stone, a few of what she assumed were carrots from the GFS Valhalla and her still damaged universal translator in case she ran into any intelligent species. She left behind her souvenir photos and a small piece of the stiletto that she had gotten crushed under an asteroid.

Looking across the grassy plains and seeing nothing nearby, Fluttershy then turned back at the ship that got her here and made a note of where it was and would try to not wander too far off. That plan didn’t last long as in the distance she saw something that her tongue really wanted to get a taste of and they looked like big juicy succulent apples. Only after she felt both her fangs in her mouth did she realize that her lust for apples was messing with her head once again, so it was for the better part of valor that she tried to resist the urge to head in the direction of the forest where she could easily get lost or attacked.

Much to the pony’s sadness, her hooves were already in the process of moving her towards the largest looking tree at an easy gait as she stared at the red orbs of delight hanging in them calling out to her to feast like no tomorrow. It was like a sirens call going off in her head, she couldn’t ignore big juicy red looking fruit if she tried to right now and she desperately wanted to. The first thing about survival was safety, if she was too focused on the fruit she’d miss the wildlife that could or would possibly rip out her throat.

Fluttershy was a natural when it came to surviving in hostile environments and so far this one didn’t seem so particularly bad. When she got close to the tree she could see a hole below the lowest shortest looking branch sticking straight out of the tree. The tree was much bigger then she thought it was and so were the apples which were all the more enticing as they were huge. Above the branch were two more holes that seemed like carved lines at that level there were two larger branches that looked to be sticking into the air like arms, it made the tree look like it had a face was raising its two branches to the sky as if they were arms praising the sun.

The only thing Fluttershy could see that was wrong with this picture was the lack of animal any noises nearby, aside from that she couldn’t fly in her half mutated state to reach the tantalizing fruit. Shaking her head Fluttershy realized that this didn’t seem like a safe place to be and she knew something was very wrong with the nature around here. Fluttershy tried to ignore the delicious morsels hanging on the much higher branches and turn away, her resistance lasted for about five steps before she turned around and went for the tree.

She stuck her hoof into the circular hole to climb up onto the nose of the imagined face. Suddenly the hole snapped shut around Fluttershy’s left hind hoof just as she got a good grip on the nose with both her front hooves. She heard a snuffling sound as the branch her front hooves were wrapped around wiggled and then the two line shaped holes she was going to use to climb up to one of the two branches pointing upwards suddenly widened to become circular and the they seemed to blink before they looked down at Fluttershy.

The tree, it was living being and it wasn’t just Fluttershy’s imagination. Somehow the pony didn’t think giggling at this tree would make its face disappear like what Pinkie did back when Nightmare Moon was a problem. Feeling her ears fall backwards, Fluttershy gave the tree her best goofy apologetic looking fanged smile she could as the two eyes narrowed down on her with an angry glare.

Author's Note

Internet Explorer finally crapped out on me and kept giving me this message -> Error signing string: ReferenceError: 'btoa' is undefined

Thankfully I have a few backup browsers that actually work now that I realize that having them and not using them is stupid. I have been trying to post this chapter for the last few days, please enjoy this while I hammer my computer with a sledge.

For those who don't know where Fluttershy is now... as if it weren't obvious... a fun fact of this planet is that Samus has actually been here before and that's a big enough clue aside from all the other humongous ones. Samus has obviously never reported this planets existence to the Galactic Federation.

26

Far from the world Fluttershy was on, four beings were currently somewhere else solving an entirely different problem. One of the four said beings was small round and pink, with stubby arms and two half circle or oval shaped feet, he was the smallest and most dangerous of them.

At the same time this pink being was naturally quite innocent of aggressive tendencies and was overall incredibly friendly, unless he was angered badly. Currently he was exceedingly angry and that equaled to becoming completely unstoppable by anything.

Despite his small stature the pink spherical creature was capable of destroying gods with such relative ease that many omnipotent gods who knew of him both good and evil stayed very far away from this particular being. They also stayed out of his home of the dream systems knowing very well that wandering too close or messing up the peace of his world ever so slightly might stir his improbably powerful wrath. This being was known as a star warrior, a being of incredible potential and unstoppable cosmic might packed into a really small package. All he wanted to do was eat, protect his world and make the dreams of all beings in the universe happy ones.

Now back on the magical star shaped planet with Fluttershy who has just annoyed a living breathing and very much intelligent tree with a history of incredibly violent tendencies.

“Um… I’m sorry for climbing on you?” No one could say Fluttershy never tried for a peaceful solution to this situation; unfortunately the tree was less understanding considering her left hind leg was still stuck in its mouth.

A powerful blast of wind caused Fluttershy to scream as her hindquarters launched upwards. Her death grip on the tree’s nose with her front legs kept her from being launched into the air and the end result was her rear end slamming bodily on top of the branch causing her to grunt cutely. Once she regained her senses, she quickly had all four of her hooves tightly wrapped around its nose and she might have hurt the tree a bit by accident when her entire body flopped on its nose. Fluttershy was willing to admit to feeling a bit of pain herself at the moment.

“Can we talk about this, you look like such a nice tree and…” Once again Fluttershy tried to find a peaceable solution for everyone, one that ended up with her getting the much vaunted apples and the tree happily going back to its nap. She had been stopped mid sentence by the tree when it took its next action.

The tree shifted its face to the right slightly and then spun its face around in a circle to the left really fast. Fluttershy wondered how the tree could spin a full three hundred and sixty degrees without breaking its neck and realized it didn’t have a neck at all to really worry about. That and its face seemed to be capable of sliding along its own body easily enough without actually twisting itself up.

Fluttershy tried to hang onto the branch, but her grip quickly was weakening and she was slipping down the nose until she had barely any grip on the tip of it between her two hooves. Once she lost hold of the tree’s nose entirely she went flying in an uncontrolled tumble through the air until she slammed into the ground bouncing and rolling a few times before coming to a very dizzy and bruised stop.

Picking herself up Fluttershy barely managed to stumble to the side just in time to avoid being speared by a large brown spike that jutted up from the ground at an angle; the shockwave from it erupting from the ground still managed to knock her over again. The pointy brown spike looked like one of the tree’s roots and probably was.

If there was a type of tree that Fluttershy would have wanted to be, it would have to be one that was like this one that can move around. Only she’d be far less dangerous and angry. She idly wondered if eating her own apples counted as cannibalism if she did become a highly animate tree. She scrambled once again to her hooves and ran to the side avoiding another root that spiked upwards from the ground.

“I know I upset you, but this is a little much. Can’t we just be friends? I really like trees and I’m really good friends with quite a few of them.” The tree had Fluttershy dodging around as it seemed to be big on disproportionate retribution for even touching it at all, especially by spiking its roots upward in an attempt to skewer her. She decided to try and call for advice as she continued to avoid the roots and the holes they were leaving in the ground that were attempting to trip her up. “Luna, Twilight, Applejack, any pony, I could really use some advice right about now!”

“What is it Fluttershy… I was having a right good dream until… huh, where am I? I must still be sleeping and my mind must be playing tricks on me again, though I have never had a dream where an apple tree of mine was trying to murder you.” Applejack appeared from out of the forest looking about in a daze and her form didn’t appear very solid which was confusing to Fluttershy that she was even present at all.

“I’m sorry to be a bother, but I don’t think your dreaming!” Fluttershy wished she was sleeping, because she was literally feeling quite a bit of pain at the moment as a gash was lashed into her side from the tip of a now blood covered root after getting a solid hit in as it wiggled wildly in her direction. Fluttershy whimpered in pain as she clutched at her side with her right hoof and back away from the tree on three hooves the best she could, but she couldn’t get far before a wall of roots popped up behind her preventing her from escaping.

“Well I don’t reckon any of this is real, but if it’s real to you then I guess I better buck this ornery varmint into next week since I know how to handle a bad apple!” Applejack charged forward spun around on her front two hooves and bucked outward only for her hooves to phase into the tree. “What that hay?”

While Applejack may not have connected with her buck, it distracted the tree from skewering Fluttershy for a moment and it just unleashed a blast of air that sent Applejack rolling away. The farm pony wasn’t hurt, but she did feel disoriented and a little confused by all of this. If she couldn’t hit the tree then why was it able to knock her away?

The tree took a deep breath and spat an eggplant, if Fluttershy hadn’t been so busy dodging roots she would have gawked at what was coming at her instead of running to the side and avoiding a direct hit by the volatile exploding vegetable that struck the ground next to her. Fluttershy gasped in pain as a shotgun blast of plant matter knocked her to the ground onto her right side where her blood started covering the grass; her pained whimpering was a lot more vocal now.

“This is one quirky nightmare if I ever saw one.” Applejack didn’t like all the nightmares that had occurred because of how she was part of the reason Fluttershy turned into a twisted mutant bat pony. This one seemed particularly horrible because she couldn’t do anything but watch Fluttershy get hurt.

“It isn’t a nightmare Applejack, this is actually happening. We’re asleep, but Fluttershy is not and I admit to being confused by the situation.” A ghostly Luna appeared trotting onto the scene having felt a dreaming pony’s consciousness rocket off into the universe because of some strange magic and she finally figured out how to access Applejack from whence she went to. Applejack and she were both asleep, but Fluttershy she wasn’t asleep and this was really happening to her as far as Luna could tell. “Fluttershy is very much in real danger and we are witnessing that danger as it is.”

“What, there’s got to be something we can do to help her! I mean the tree blew me back when I tried to buck it one, maybe we can do something to get it to stop attacking Fluttershy.” Even as she said this, Applejack watched as Fluttershy feebly roll out of the way of a large spike that burst from the ground almost impaling her through her cutie mark. “She’s getting roughed up something mighty fierce.”

Fluttershy had no idea what was going on, but it was really weird as she could see both Luna and Applejack. While not exactly fully physically here, Fluttershy wasn’t about to let her friends watch her perish and she struggled to stand up while holding her bleeding side as the tree inhaled again.

Fluttershy quickly cantered to the side in a limp as the tree exhaled firing a huge carrot like it was a cannon ball, the carrot even created a small trench in the ground causing her to shiver. This tree was far more dangerous then she had originally thought if it could do that with a carrot on top of everything else it was doing already. Nightmare Moon had only made those trees look scary, this tree was more terrifying just in what it could do alone than its goofy appearance would belie.

“I really would like some advice here… that is if you’re not just hallucinations brought on by how much stress I’ve been under in the last few weeks or because of the situation I’m currently in right now.” Fluttershy squealed and ducked under a root that shot over her head where it used to be a second ago.

“Couldn’t you just… oh right you can’t fly and that varmint is keeping you trapped tighter then a pig in a pet carrier.” The odd saying aside, given no pony has ever seen a pig in a pet carrier before, Applejack looked at the tree blankly. “Well I got nothing, maybe you could use the… oh shoot I’m sorry for even coming close to suggesting it Fluttershy.”

“It’s okay Applejack… it probably wouldn’t have worked anyway…” Using the stare was how she got turned into a mutated twisted pony in the first place and she really didn’t want to hurt the tree when it was just being really cranky. A smaller quicker tree root shot up and grabbed her by her hind legs and hauled into the air screaming as she was brought towards the face of the tree which started inhaling. Fluttershy was sniffling quite audibly as tears tracked their way down her face as she was held upside down trying to cover the wound in her right side with both her front legs.

All Fluttershy had simply wanted was some apples; she even knew and saw this coming as soon as she got off The Head Hunter. She actually wanted to explore the world around her and now this happened. Was it so bad to want to see all the wonders another planet had to offer without something disastrous happening to her?

“Fluttershy, Luna you got to do something!” Applejack turned to the saddened looking Luna.

“We are not physically here nor are we physically in the waking realm we are seeing; there is little we can do.” Luna lowered her head tears brimming in her eyes. She could connect to her subject at such vast distances and yet she can’t do anything to help or save her. “I wish I could save Fluttershy, but my hooves are tied in this matter.”

“I wish there was something we could do to save Fluttershy to.” Applejack despite being a known tough pony started crying, if Fluttershy was capable of flight she wouldn’t be in the mess and it was her fault that she ended up in this situation while flightless.

An eerie glow overtook both of the ghostly ponies causing them to look at each other, everything froze and even the tree stopped inhaling to look curiously at the vibrant glow. Just as quickly as it came, the glow faded into nothingness.

Shaking its face the tree turned to exhale a giant metal pine cone that would completely shred Fluttershy to pieces. A yellow star rammed into its face before it could, its tree root loosened and dropped Fluttershy who fell on top of something that felt really squishy. It softened her landing considerably and she soon felt herself being placed gently on the grass.

Both the ponies blinked owlishly at what they had seen. Whatever they had just done caused a pink blob like creature to come in from out of the sky riding on the yellow star that it had just leapt off of to catch Fluttershy.

“Chu!” The cute little pink creature screamed aggressively, it had a pink bow on the back of its head and rosy cheeks, it looked angry as it sat protectively in front of Fluttershy. It didn’t look very dangerous by any stretch of the imagination and was incredibly adorable.

The tree shivered, it didn’t like this situation knowing about the creature in front of it and started to shake its branches wildly causing a bunch of apples and spiked balls to fall toward the blob that protected Fluttershy by slapping the objects away from them with an extending pink tentacle.

While the defender was distracted the tree quickly uprooted itself and crawled off as fast as its roots could carry it with a frown on its face. It did not want to fight the pink blob and feared it excessively for some reason that the watching ponies couldn’t fathom.

Fluttershy smiled slightly as there were so many large apples, she could taste them already. She tried to reach a hoof towards one that landed near her, but the blood loss over time from the deep wound had quickly caught up to her and made her pass out before she could get her teeth into it.

“Excuse me; I thank you for saving my subject. Now I would respectfully ask that you save my subject again before she dies of blood loss!” The pink blob Luna was addressing looked to her and then to the pony and squeaked in a shocked manner, she quickly let out a shrill cry and five strange animals quickly came running out of the surrounding forest.

Immediately the little pink blob took charge of all the strange creatures and the one weird, largely out of place on land, hopping fish that showed up. They gathered and ate a few of the apples not wanting them to go to waste at Applejack’s behest and they worked together to start moving Fluttershy for some reason.

Curious as to what they were going to do, Luna and Applejack followed them as they carried their universally lost injured friend away from where the onslaught took place. The pink blob seemed to be the leader of the strange band of creatures. It was hard to tell what species half of them were, but the purple owl, the tiny green bird and the large calico cat with the closed eyes were easy to define. Luna had no idea what the fish, the large rodent bear or the cute pink thing was and she was just happy that her and Applejack’s wish came true. It made Luna pause; she wondered why that had exactly happened as it seemed too fortuitous to be true. She closed her eyes and felt around for whatever it was that took in their wish and granted it.

“Applejack, stay with Fluttershy. There is something important that I must attend to.” With a flash Luna teleported away before Applejack could respond. She reappeared in a large cavernous space; the wish she and Applejack had made, the energy that was pulled from their dreams came to here and Luna followed that pull. What Luna saw was breathtaking.

It was a well crafted fountain and there were all forms of what Luna recognized to be dreams flowing from it in the waters that spilled from its bountiful basin. There were no nightmares to be found here and it was as peaceful as it was beautiful. In the center of the fountain stood a white and red swirled rod with a simple sparkling five pointed yellow star on top of it.

Luna quickly divined its purpose by trying to scan it with magic and she felt the entire world Fluttershy was on turned its magical prowess towards her, it really spooked her quite a bit. The world told her through its magic what she was looking at. It was simply a star rod, a mystical rod of good dreams, one of the many of its kind found in fountains of dreams. They were artifacts of the star people, those who are warriors, nomads and all who are named of the stars. Its purpose was to allow dreamers of the dream systems part of the universe to have nothing but good dreams.

In essence it would have been a bad dream for Applejack and Luna if Fluttershy were to die in front of them and the fountain had acted accordingly by creating a warp star next to a being of Dream Land that would immediately heed its call.

“Thank you for hearing our pleas, Popstar was it?” Luna bowed to the fountain, the rod within and possibly to the entire planet for aiding her subject in a time of need.

Luna was given something else, as information came to her that Fluttershy wouldn’t be entirely safe on this world. It was only allowed to interfere for the sake of the dreamers as long as they were here. It wasn’t perfect as waking nightmares could still break in and disrupt its powers. It idly mentioned that some of the creatures of this world were also quite dangerous if disturbed and couldn’t interfere with them as much either because they were wakened beings as well. The last thing the fountain did was give Luna a warm fuzzy feeling that she was welcomed for saying thank you and that her dreams would be pleasant for her and her subjects as long as they were visiting.

It was quite stunning for Luna to learn of this and hear mention of the star races that Fluttershy has only mentioned in passing as being a possible key to her getting home. She tried to talk to the magical locale to learn more, only it was unresponsive to her questions and seemingly remained so as the rod had stopped sparkling. Her and Applejack’s possibility of having a bad dream having passed, she guessed it became completely inactive and would only stay active for so long after having done its job. How efficient of it, Luna wryly thought.

It was still a glorious sight to bear witness to; Luna had much to tell her sister about the incredible happenstance that had saved Fluttershy’s life. Yawning, the dreaming princess laid down in the warm waters filled with tons of happy dreams as they ebbed and flowed around her, a smile came to her lips as she rested easy and simply vanished into the fountains spilling waters.

As long as Fluttershy was in the dream systems, all the ponies that lived on Equus and the humanoid cats of Aldebaran would sleep soundly.

Author's Note

Whispy Woods abilities.

Whispy is usually first boss in many of the Kirby games and steps up his fighting by learning new tricks every single time you see him.

His first type of attack is just shaking things out of his branches and curiously enough angling the dropping objects bounce arcs at intruders or simply spitting bullets made of air which is what likely earned him his name. This is his most classic fighting style.

Kirby's Dream Land 2, Whispy is a little odd for wearing a mask and this is the first instance of him using his roots in a fight.

Kirby's Dream Land 3, Whispy has stopped goofing around this time and has learned to spit more then just air bullets, he spits fruits and vegetables now and is much more dangerous. After his life falls low enough he actually chases Kirby down. This would explain why he always appears in a different places Kirby goes to in every game he's in on the ever shifting planet of Popstar in the world of Dream Land.

Kirby can wield a star rod to shoot stars, the rod can't exactly wield itself now can it? It makes a good waking nightmare buster though, otherwise its powers are vastly limited to just aiding those who are sleeping. There are multiple fountains of dreams across all of the planets around Planet Popstar.

Correct me if I was wrong anywhere in my notes. What's next? Fluttershy wakes up to a Bright and Shine day.

27

Applejack watched as four of the animals had moved Fluttershy into a house and were taking turns in watching over her. The large cat and the strange hopping fish were nowhere to be seen as they had scarpered off to who knows where at the insistence of the feminine pink blob.

Now the four animals were waiting for their friends to return, the bear sized rodent and the pink blob were tending to Fluttershy and her injuries with wet rags after having stowed the apples away at the front door in a pile, the two birds stopped in a tree near the house and watched the surrounding areas.

The little green bird reminded Applejack of Rainbow Dash in its impatience, the purple owl looked wiser and much more patient then that. They were intelligent animals and Fluttershy always had a way with animals and these animals seemed to know what they were doing even though the house they were at didn’t seem to belong to them given it was a one bed home. They could see her and weren’t entirely ignoring her existence, but they weren’t doing much about her because she could just walk through the walls of the house and couldn’t do anything to help anyway.

The house they were in was small, even if it was large enough for an average sized pony it only had one bed so they either obviously knew who this house belonged to or it belonged to one of the animals. It least likely belonged to the fish, no way was that thing that hopped around on land like that was natural and Fluttershy was on a different world entirely so it made as much sense as the purple bug winged flying things that zoomed around the grassy plains.

The house was white and covered in small blue five pointed stars. The house had a small wooden sign with two stars on it out front and a fireplace judging by the chimney. There was a small bed inside where Fluttershy was brought to rest and it was sitting next to the small window Applejack was peering through sadly. There were strange star shaped objects set up around the house on the rocks and seemed to ward away every other creature from approaching it. Everything in the area seemed incredibly calm, alarmingly so for a world where a tree could attack you for just wanting some apples.

Applejack knew that Fluttershy wanted the apples as was the case that caused this incident, having seen both of Fluttershy’s fangs in her mouth one of which was slowly disappearing. Fluttershy hadn’t been shy about telling her friends the fact that she had an apple addiction that had almost got her flank blasted with a laser weapon; said laser weapons were defined by Fluttershy as really painful and could easily cause fatal wounds.

“Coo?” Applejack jumped turning around towards the hovering purple and white colored owl with black tipped wings that was giving her a sympathetic glance.

“Whoa there partner, you startled me. Is she going to be okay?” Applejack kneaded her front two hooves agitatedly only to simply get a nod and a smile from the purple owl before it went back to the tree to continue surveying the area.

It took maybe five minutes but the large cat creature was coming back and he appeared to be rolling something along while being followed by the hopping fish. Applejack stared at the large red object with what looked like a W, M or one of them fancy symbols Twilight uses in her mathematics, it was hard to tell.

In any event the large cat was rolling the large fruit along the ground towards the house with a happy grin on his face; the fish looked equally happy bouncing along and was slightly wet as was the fruit. Apparently the two had worked as a team to get whatever it was back to this place or that was what Applejack could assume given the cat was completely dry while the red fruit looked to be drying as it was being rolled towards the house through the grass.

The green bird shot off from the tree and let out a loud crow to get the attention of the ones in the strange simple looking half circle shaped house as the bear sized rodent opened the door. The cat rolled the fruit on through the door and was followed by everyone else and Applejack.

The pink blob that had a blood covered tentacle looked up from her position sitting on top of Fluttershy to hold her worst wound shut by stemming the flow with a taught tentacle pressing down on it. Upon seeing the red fruit a bright smile appeared on her face before a frown quickly crossed it.

“Chu-chu?” The pink blob pointedly asked while looking at her five male friends, they all looked between themselves and they started blushing and looking anywhere but in the blobs direction sparking her ire. “Chu!”

“What, what is it? Is that thing going to help my friend, what’s all this hoo-ha about? It’s like there’s something I’m not quite getting here.” The five more decidedly male animals blushed and looked towards Fluttershy while the pink female blob creature sat there looking rather irate with them.

The birds quickly pointed out their beaks and shaking their heads no denying something, the fish looked particularly agreeable but was shot down by the other animals including the pink blob. This left the pink blob or the two large furry animals, the cat and the other similar sized animal made denial noises based on something while pointing to their mouths and the pink blob sighed with tears poking from the edges of her eyes.

Toughening up while rolling her eyes the pink blob quickly stretched out a pink tentacle with incredible speed and swiped the large red fruit into her mouth and there was a squishing sound as her cheeks bulged outwards. The blob looked to be troubled with trying not to swallow and it gave a hop to get its face on Fluttershy, was she really going to do what Applejack thought she would?

The odd tentacle forming creature exhaled half the contents in her mouth while swallowing the other half, a rather unique food sharing technique pioneered by the being who owned this particularly odd house that he built all by himself in the most adorable of manners. The owner had help and didn’t do it entirely alone, but he did a lot of the work even if he was of a slightly infantile mindset.

Fluttershy woke up to the feeding and didn’t panic, this wasn’t the first time this has happened to her and she just swallowed what was being forced into her throat. A strange glow flowed over her body and her injuries immediately sealed up and she felt incredibly healthy within seconds.

“Thank you…” Fluttershy muttered as the pink blob hopped off her chest and smiled at her sheepishly. She sat up and patted herself with her hooves checking herself, her injuries were all gone now and she was not hungry anymore. She was still a horrifically mutated half vampire fruit bat pony, but the gnawing hunger for round red fruit had fled her completely.

“Well now, I’ve just seen about everything.” Applejack’s voice caused Fluttershy to jolt and look at her along with all the other friendly animals.

“Hey, Applejack... um… how did you get here?” Fluttershy was still pretty high off the power of what she would later learn is a Maximum Tomato.

A Maximum Tomato was one of the most powerful native foods of the dream land systems that was quite delicious and so freakishly nutritious that it magically healed injuries within seconds of swallowing even as much as half of one. Only swallowing half of one was hard enough to do given how delicious a Maximum Tomato was and eating the entire thing in one go was what usually happened, it took a lot of strength to resist temptation to swallow it all in one go. While it could heal all physically injuries to the point of possibly even up to growing new limbs, it couldn’t heal magical maladies much less the one that was still inflicted on Fluttershy.

“I’ve been here since you called me a while ago, I went to sleep at Sweet Apple Acres and I find myself here hearing you call out to me sugar cube. I’m a little confused as you are and Luna still hasn’t come back from whatever it is she had to do.” Within a moment of being mentioned by Applejack, Luna flashed in from out of nowhere yawning while looking unusually perky for a mare that was still asleep.

“Sorry, it’s just that this world makes resting and dreaming so easy, it is no wonder the living tree was angry to have its sleep disturbed. I’d be cranky too if I was having dreams like that and it was hard enough for me to break away from my own to check on you Fluttershy, it is miraculous that all of your injuries have disappeared, yet I see no medical facility.” Luna looked much brighter then Applejack for being a ghostly image, in fact she seemed quite pleased and well rested.

“These guys got some kind of strange fruit and gave it to Fluttershy, healed her up right quick too though I have no idea how it did it. Huh would you look at that… even all your scars are gone too.” Applejack was scrutinizing Fluttershy closer then she was comfortable with and she flopped out of the bed backwards and into a pair of fuzzy strong arms. Applejack backed away for spooking Fluttershy like she had.

Hearing the loud friendly sounding squeaking noise Fluttershy looked up at the friendly smiling face of the creature that had carried her back to this house, which was kind of cramped with all six animals and her inside of it. She was being held by the biggest hamster she has ever seen and she was pretty sure it was a hamster, in looking around Fluttershy was able to identify each of the six creatures. The octopus was the hard one to figure out for her, but she eventually figure it was this world’s version of an octopus. All the other animals had close resemblances to several kinds of animals that Fluttershy knew of, they were of course vastly difference in nature and were all large, round or fluffy in some form.

Luna chuckled slightly and shook her head watching as Fluttershy was set upon her hooves, she took note of the little pink octopus as it hopped by with a blood covered blanket and a slightly sticky tentacle that it used to cover up the worst of what that tree did to Fluttershy.

“Luna can you please tell me what’s going on… um, if that is okay with you?” The five male animals gathered around to stare wonderingly as Fluttershy addressed what looked like a ghost or some form of spiritual guide to them.

“Yeah, like where did you go and what did you find out, how in the hay did we eve end up here like this?” Applejack was more than a little curious as to how she went to bed one second and found herself watching Fluttershy dodge around the attacks of really dangerous tree on another planet that was really far away the next. In a sense Applejack was kind of glad her farm was a small place in a vast ocean of the universe as it added some perspective to it all, she didn’t think she’d be able to run a planet sized apple farm and especially not with sentient apple trees that bucked back.

“Yes I was getting to that; it seems Fluttershy has stumbled upon a world of great interest here. I have learned that Star Nomads have…” Pausing Luna noticed an odd reaction in the five animals seemed to look excited at the words and they were now looking at her curiously. “Do you know what a Star Nomad is?”

The two birds, the giant hamster, the large cat and the rather odd fish all started making various noises between them while looking to each other chattering in a quick and rather hard to follow conversation. While the animals were busy debating something of which Fluttershy was listening to attentively, Applejack turned to Luna.

“So about how about telling me how we ended up here? You know, while their busy getting themselves figured out.” It was an interesting reaction to say the least and if Applejack remembered correctly, Fluttershy hadn’t heard much mention of Star Nomads aside from what they were capable of. Beings who could navigate their way around universe with incredible ease to anywhere someone could want to go, Applejack would have scoffed at the existence of such a creature that could figure out their way around the universe much less one planet. She would have scoffed if not for the fact that there was mention of them again on an entirely different planet far from the one Fluttershy had heard that they had been on.

“It is the simplest to say that this world is in fact physically a world of dreams or close to being one where the borders of reality are relatively thin. In other words and a much simpler way of putting it, Fluttershy summoned our dreaming minds across the universe to where she is because this planet has an odd magical nature about it. It is because we’re currently connected to her through that gifted stone and happen to be asleep that we are here at all. The planet is almost physically alive from having so much magic in it and it seems to have the ability to spread its influence through our connection to Fluttershy.” Luna hoped she explained that well enough, because it was a headache just figuring out how it was all possible. “We’re asleep, but at the same time we’re awake. We are very distant astral projections aided by the powers of the planets magic which is the closest I can get to an idea of our current situation. This planet is called Popstar and the world here is actually appropriately called Dream Land and is the center of the worlds of good dreams.”

“So we are asleep, but… not? I’m just glad to see Fluttershy is doing okay and not being killed by a tree.” Reaching for her head with a hoof Applejack stopped when she realized she wasn’t wearing her hat, she shrugged since she couldn’t make that particular gesture without it.

“I don’t think I ever want to be a tree like that one.” Fluttershy was physically healthy, but the trauma would forever remain with her and she might never look at a tree the same way ever again. “I think they are done talking and are trying to get our attention, oh and the octopus is back.”

Turning to see what Fluttershy was looking at, the little pink octopus with the red bow was indeed back and placing clean blankets on the bed with a bright smile and patting them down with care. One of the animals had been gently tapping Fluttershy until it had her attention completely; it was the little green bird and it had garnered the immaterial Luna and Applejack’s attention as well.

It chirped something and then led Fluttershy outside, these animals were fully sentient they just didn’t have a unified language and she understood animal speak well enough already to not need the use of her translator to understand a bird when it was trying to tell her something. Luna and Applejack just followed the other animals as they all exited the house and the little pink octopus closed the door to the quaint little house following after them.

The little green bird rested on the sign out in front of the house and was chirping about the sign and pecking at it.

“So what you’re saying is that this, what was his name? I’m sorry Pitch, but your dialect is a little different from the birds I’m used to back at home.” It was no surprise that Fluttershy could understand this bird as it was the most normal looking of the six animals and the only odd thing about it was the green coloration.

The bird chirruped and continued on before it poked at the sign again.

“The home of the Star Warrior named Curbing? Is that anything like a Star Nomad? Where is he?” Receiving a negative shake Fluttershy listened as the green bird chirped in a slightly angrier tone, the tone quickly changed to a more somber one and she blinked. “Oh, his name is Kirby and he’s the Star Warrior who lives in this house and is a good friend to all of you. You also don’t know whether or not if he is a Star Nomad and he’s currently dealing with some trouble elsewhere? So who are all of you then and how long will I have to wait to meet this Kirby, he might be able to help me get home if he is a Star Nomad.”

“Chu…” The octopus sighed dreamily at hearing the name of the hero of Dream Land, after a moment she realized something and started vocalizing it to Fluttershy while hopping up and down. It seemed the octopus wanted to know more about her.

“Oh right, hello my name is Fluttershy. It’s very nice to meet all of you and Miss ChuChu too. These are my friends Applejack and Princess Luna, they’re on a planet very far away from here and aren’t exactly here with me.” Her large bat ears drooped, was this as close as Fluttershy could ever get to her friends now? It was nice to see them while she was awake at least, but the inability to touch them was disheartening. At least she had large cuddly animals to snuggle against if she felt needy. “Well in anything other than spirit at least and I’m not exactly sure what will happen to them when they wake up, but I’m hoping for the best that they end up back on Equus instead of being stuck here with me like this.”

Applejack felt like she would deserve to be stuck as a spirit from just seeing Fluttershy getting beaten up by a tree. In fact she was sorry for a lot of the things that happened to Fluttershy from the point she disappeared to when she was getting roughed up by the tree; she felt she was to blame for quite a few things that had gone wrong for the poor shy pony. She was glad that Fluttershy kept meeting animal creatures in the universe to befriend because the sentient beings tended to be more violent or volatile thus far in comparison to all the creatures Fluttershy befriended in a matter of minutes with just her own little presence and lovely personality.

Luna lamented the fact that she couldn’t trace her way back to her body, otherwise she could have just give Fluttershy a general direction back to Equus and even then that might not work as the entire universe moved and going in a straight line would mean Fluttershy would only end up somewhere else other than Equus or end up getting sidetracked on the way.

That did not mean that Luna couldn’t bring ponies metaphysically to Fluttershy… in fact Luna had wanted to speak to Katrina face to face and show other ponies what she looked like. Aside from that Luna just hoped for Fluttershy’s continued safety and mentally checked the rest of the ponies she usually linked to Fluttershy and could feel them, she could even feel the Aldebaran people as well. It was just unfortunate she couldn’t find Equus from here or she would have given Fluttershy the answer to finding her way home.

While Luna and Applejack were having their introspective moments, each of the animals came forth and introduced themselves to Fluttershy.

Their names were Chuchu a Dream Land octopus, Pitch the bird, Kine the sunfish, Coo the owl, Rick the hamster and Nago the cat. Together all six of them were the Dream Land Defenders, the menagerie that took care of smaller problems that popped up while the Star Warrior known as Kirby was away doing something or other to protect Popstar from the usual impending complete and utter destruction that tended to pop up regularly along with the dark gods that got their quickly nonexistent flanks regularly handed to them. They had no idea when Kirby was going to get back from his latest adventure, especially since he ran off with the self proclaimed king of Dream Land, an unusually active Waddle Dee that wielded a spear and another Star Warrior named Meta knight.

To Fluttershy it sounded like they were the elements of harmony for this planet, but despite the similarities of their worlds she quickly wrote it off as a silly notion. It was after a moment after their introductions that Fluttershy spotted a few succulent looking large apples sitting by the door. It didn’t take long for Applejack and Luna to connect her stare to the large apples the size of or bigger than her own head and they quickly cast a quick worried glance at their distracted friend.

Author's Note

Fluttershy learns more about Popstar, I think she'll have some time to explore while she waits for Kirby to show up.

Maximum Tomato's heal all physical injuries, Smash Bros. versions are weaker as they are not Popstar native Maxim tomatoes.

These magical fruits should have a strange side effect of making someone incapable of eating for a while, with the exception of Kirby who always has room given his stomach contains another universe.

I have to sometimes wonder why Kirby hasn't sucked the entire planet dry of oxygen yet given how often he inhales but rarely ever exhales.

28

“Fluttershy, are you okay there sugar cube?” The stare on her friends face had Applejack pensive about what was going to happen.

Fluttershy simply walked up to the apples sniffed them and turned towards Luna and Applejack with a strange look that just crossed her face.

“I’m fine, for some reason I don’t feel a gnawing hunger or craving for these apples.” It was odd that after all the trouble she caused trying to get some, now she didn’t seem to want them at all and as perplexing as that was she was alright with the fact that she wasn’t having those rather disastrous cravings at the moment. “After all that trouble and now I don’t want them and they’re right in front of me?”

Pitch chirped something to Fluttershy and she tilted her head.

“Oh, is that his name? Well not much for it, I already tried to apologize for disturbing him and I really don’t want to meet Mr. Woods again.” In fact Fluttershy was going to be looking for trees that have a face from now on as long as she was on this planet. It took a moment of silence for Fluttershy to realize that she couldn’t feel the weight of her Saddlebags anymore; the root hadn’t damaged her saddlebags because they simply weren’t on her at the time and it was only now that she noticed that they were missing. “Oh no my saddlebags, where are they!”

“Do not panic Fluttershy, you’re new friends picked them up after your bad scuffle. They were knocked loose from you when you weren’t paying attention; you were certainly quite busy and preoccupied at the time. Now if you will excuse me, I am going to summon a conference while someone retrieves your belongings.” After watching the purple owl fly off, Luna’s horn glowed and she used her dream magic to bring more astral projections to this world. This world seemed to bend reality, it was responding as if to aid her in her endeavor, before long a surprised astral projection of Katrina, Celestia and Twilight appeared.

Only a second later was it that Pinkie Pie popped out of nowhere looking around with wonder and excitement, that wasn’t Luna’s doing. The planet had likely felt Pinkie through Luna’s and Fluttershy’s connection to her, why the planet brought her here too was a question Luna was curious about.

“Wow I must have finally crashed from all that sugar. Hey, this isn’t candy land!” Upon spotting her, Pinkie leapt for Fluttershy and passed straight through her cringing form. Fluttershy had her eyes closed as if she was expecting Pinkie to somehow actually connect with a grand hug as she believed her perky friend personally capable of anything. While it might not have connected it did leave the mutated pony feeling slightly warmer. The pink pony flopped uselessly onto her back from where she painlessly landed on her head. “Oh phooey, you really need to stop being lost soon Fluttershy so I can throw you a birthday party! In fact once you get home I’m going to throw you so many parties you won’t go an entire week without me being within five feet of you!”

Fluttershy shuddered at what sounded more like a threat then a friendly remark, Pinkie never liked missing the parties that could have been and her possibly overcompensating for it later was just a way to show that she cared.

Celestia just stood by blinking a bit in confusion before she looked to Fluttershy, then to Katrina sizing up the tall old cat lady and slowly leaned her sights towards Luna and Applejack after taking in the situation she opened her mouth only to stop for a moment. She looked at Twilight who was still blankly awed by her surroundings; shaking her head she opened her mouth again.

“It seems as though my dreams of a room full of banana cakes will have to wait…” She said slowly taking in the surrounding landscape and the five strange animals that seemed to resonate strongly with one another, a sixth one joined them carrying the saddlebags that obviously belonged to Fluttershy in its talons.

“And it seems my dreams of a room full of willing strapping handsome males will have to be put on hold.” Katrina had never seen so many blushes before and she smiled like a cat that caught a canary, she still had it after all these years to be embarrassing even to a magical race of four legged creatures. Looking to Fluttershy her ears wilted and her tail drooped, she felt sorry for what has become of the wayward pony and anyone else under the same circumstances would have cracked by now.

Coo held out the battered saddlebags to Fluttershy who graciously took them and this time tightened the straps a little bit stronger around her body after she got them on. She checked her supplies and noticed all the carrots and some of the water was missing, she looked to the animals and could see three of them were smiling sheepishly at her. Her glass knife was perfectly fine, made of alien substances it was tougher than some metals she had come across on the Valhalla. Her universal translator was even more damaged than before and she sighed sadly as it looked to be completely totaled this time.

“It’s okay; I forgive all three of you for eating my carrots and drinking some of my water.” At the moment Fluttershy wasn’t really hungry anyway, she took a sip of water from her container and quickly stowed it away. ChuChu looked a bit angry with her friends and even started to berate them verbally. “No really, it’s fine. You don’t have to get angry with your friends on my account ChuChu.”

The pink octopus calmed down slightly. She was still angry with Rick and Pitch, though Kine tended to do badly when he went without water for too long so he gets a pass unless he ate one of those carrots. She’d slap them with a tentacle later, she was more interested and distracted by the strange nice sounding four legged visitor. Fluttershy didn’t look or even act evil, just strange and alien to this world. She thought something looked off with Fluttershy in comparison to her spirit friends.

“Where are we?” Twilight finally asked once she had come to her senses, she was far from coming to terms with what she was seeing.

“On another planet as ghosts Twilight, I mean duh! My right ear flopped, back left leg twisted to the left five degrees, my heart sped up and my eyes watered.” Pinkie stated as if it were simply the most obvious thing in the world.

“Wait a minute… you’re Pinkie Sense works even while you’re asleep?” It was actually Fluttershy that asked this question much to the consternation of the ponies that were here and this made a still quite befuddled Twilight even more mentally broken. It made her wonder if Pinkie had any trouble getting some sleep because it woke her up at night or did she just sleep through her Pinkie Sense twitches? In any case Fluttershy would look into this if she ever… when she got back to Equestria.

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it? It means I made a new friend that’s the size of a planet… kind of odd as I’ve never had a planet sized friend before, so where is it?” Pinkie was hopping in place excitedly at seeing Fluttershy not being so riddled with injuries and scars; she then stopped hopping and looked at the ghostly Katrina. She leapt at the humanoid cat and actually connected this time knocking the old cat lady to the ground, Katrina started laughing as Pinkie snuggled against her. “You must be Katrina, hi I’m Pinkie Pie!”

“We are most likely standing on your new friend Pinkie, it is kind of impossible to miss.” Luna stated flatly, she liked Pinkie’s enthusiasm but it was kind of making them all lose focus of the situation. The princess of the night idly wondered if a pony could really befriend an entire planet as bizarre as Popstar was. They were at least finally meeting the mysterious voice known as Katrina face to face. Luna could only pull other beings into sharing Fluttershy’s dreams if they were within close enough proximity of her body. “I have called all of you here for a reason. Except for Pinkie Pie who may stay if she wishes.”

“I’m good, feeling really good actually. A little higher, yeah right there.” Pinkie said from her spot curled up on Katrina’s lap as the Aldebaran rubbed one of her ears with an amused smile.

“Not that I dislike your presence Pinkie, but why do you think you ended up here?” The planet would not be nearly as forthcoming and Luna was itching to know the answer as Pinkie might have been able to give it.

“I was dreaming about really wanting to see Fluttershy so I could cheer her up some about having to borrow that spaceship without asking nicely and then I got an invitation in my head! I lit up like a hearths warming tree when I accepted and here I am!” Well it explained Pinkie’s presence; it was just Popstar aiding dreamers in having good dreams.

If seeing her friends in pony was a good dream for Pinkie, then seeing her for real instead of just imagined would have been even better dream come true. To Luna, it seemed like Popstar had a thing for granting dreamer’s wishes to the best of its abilities and it tied in quite nicely into its single minded goal of producing good dreams. Even the less friendly creatures living on this planet most likely loved sleeping because of all the good and happy dreams that came to them so easily.

“Um, if it’s okay with you… I need to go refill my water container and to check in on the Head Hunter. In fact I might bring the Head Hunter here; this seems like a safer place to put it.” This world was quickly becoming one surprise after another and Fluttershy was feeling rather crowded with so many astral projections around, her shyness was in full force as one of her hooves pawed slightly at the grass. She figured that no one would mess with the Head Hunter if it was next to the heroic sounding Star Warriors rather humble looking house.

“You may go Fluttershy, we have much to discuss that doesn’t require you’re constant presence for the time being. Please be safe and wary of danger. Applejack you must stay, for I wish to test something.” Getting a nod Luna quickly gathered the other murmuring astral projections attention with her usual favorite method of gaining lots of attention. “BE THY SILENT! Ahem, we will begin discussing what is going on here and I believe this is an opportunity to continue the swapping of cultures with our Aldebaran friends.”

Fluttershy cowered when Luna got really loud; her bat ears really had some rather big downsides at times and they were ringing a bit. She stood up slightly dizzy and was about to go searching for water only to see Kine sitting on his lower fin in front of her with a dopey wide smile. He asked a question with a gurgling noise if she wanted to know where some good water was and if he could escort her to it, he was going in that direction anyway.

“I would like that.” After a moment Fluttershy giggled, she was a pony being led to water. Aside from that humorous thought she was quite impressed that Kine could survive out of water for so long, then again all the creatures of Dream Land likely had these kinds of quirks that one wouldn’t expect of a similar looking creature from any other planet.

“Chu!” ChuChu hopped onto Fluttershy’s back and offered her protector and guide while the pony was here, she knew a lot of the areas of Dream Land from riding around on Kirby’s head and the only better guide would have been the well traveled Rick. ChuChu wasn’t about to leave Fluttershy alone on this world after that nearly catastrophic run in with Whispy.

Sadly the Dream Land Defenders did have lives outside of protecting the peace while Kirby was away; like Nago who wanted to spend time with his girlfriend whose name was Shiro as an example. They were all now dispersing to continue about their lives, they’d look out for Fluttershy if she was seen in any danger but otherwise they had other things they would be doing. Only Coo stayed behind on a branch to watch the conversation that started with Luna explaining where they were.

“Okay then, let’s go.” A few feet later Fluttershy’s ears twitched and she stopped.

“Hey wait for me! I didn’t come here for any old reason, I came here for you!” Pinkie quickly caught up to her. “So… how are you feeling Fluttershy, is there something wrong?”

“Maybe… this world is so much like our own and at the same time it’s so alien. The sun and moon revolve around the planet; the air here is so much like that of Equestria that it’s vibrant and full of magic. There are so many familiar creatures with many incredible differences from all the other worlds I’ve seen and the lands here are beautiful, but it’s just not home.” Shaking her head and smiling lightly, Fluttershy stopped as they came upon a lake sparkling in the sun which proved her point about the beauty of this world. She watched as Kine wasted no time jumping in and swimming a small circle before diving. “I think I’m mostly upset with myself because my apple cravings got the better of me again, it was much stronger than even my better judgment at the time.”

“Well gee Fluttershy, no pony is perfect and you know I crave cupcakes all the time. You just need to do a hop, skip and a jump so you can move that little rump to getting back home, I’m going to make a ton of cupcakes all just for you!” While Pinkie was happy to see Fluttershy was physically okay, she wanted her to be okay mentally too and it was sad she couldn’t give Fluttershy a hug. Stupid reality for getting in the way of happy snuggles!

“Oh, you don’t have to do that for me Pinkie.” Kneeling down on her left hoof at the edge of the lake, Fluttershy slapped her right hoof into the water and a cloud sprung up from it, ChuChu stared at the cloud in wonder and jumped on it. Amazingly the friendly little native didn’t fall through the cloud Fluttershy had made. “If you don’t mind me asking this of you ChuChu, but could you please get off? I was going to squeeze the cloud for water and I’ll make us another one we can take a quick ride on.”

It was an odd thing to hear and now ChuChu was curious. Hopping off of it the octopus and Pinkie watched in awe as she squeezed the cloud into her open container in a solid deluge of water as if it were from a faucet.

“That’s a neat trick Fluttershy, how come I don’t see pegasi doing that more often?” Though Pinkie really wanted to cheer up Fluttershy she was getting distracted by the bright colorful lands, the strange creatures wandering around and the abnormal objects like the odd yellow blocks with little five point stars on them sitting everywhere.

“It helps me get water from any source no matter how polluted, not all clouds have to be made in a weather factory you know. Rainbow taught me how to do it when we were little and went camping on the ground before I even met any of you. It’s helped me survive quite a lot, I’m thankful that every place I’ve been to has edible food or else I would be…” Trailing off Fluttershy silently slapped both her hooves on the surface of the water and a slightly larger cloud was made. “Any pegasus can create a cloud, but it takes a factory to make one to do something specific.”

“I’m sorry; I’m not really helping you at all am I?” There was a slight deflation noise coming from Pinkie’s mane.

“Actually, it’s nice to remember where I come from and to be visually reminded of what I have to live for. I really miss your cupcakes Pinkie, come on ChuChu.” The pink pony brightened up as Fluttershy sat there and waited for the octopus to stop bouncing on the cloud like it was a soft bed in childish glee, it actually made her sad smile widen to see such simple joy on ChuChu’s face. She started flapping her one feathered wing while gripping the cloud and it rose into the air. At about twenty feet she stopped it and looked around. She saw Applejack disappearing in the distance with a circle of curious onlookers and looking to her left she saw Pinkie was floating in the air; she guessed astral beings weren’t exactly bound to the ground. “ChuChu do you remember where I was attacked, I need to go somewhere near there.”

ChuChu didn’t know why Fluttershy wanted to go back there, but she obliged and started giving out directions with helpful tentacle pointing. Fluttershy was good at understanding the directions at least and upon reaching the area where she parked the Head Hunter; she saw something that was definitely trouble.

“Hey, look at all those wheels! Do you think Trixie knows about them?” Pinkie pointed a hoof directly at a ton of strange wheel shaped creatures ramming themselves into boulders with a hint of excitement.

Fluttershy took note of and started studying the wheel creatures.

There were a lot of small plain black round ones with eyes jutting slightly out from the sides of their circular bodies rolling around at incredible speeds. They seemed to be the young of the flock of living wheels.

The older looking ones were slightly larger and had red metal carapaces that protected their front as they shattered boulders with what looked like their version of eyebrows that were small handlebars. Fluttershy had no clue as to the purpose of the four pipes that poked out their backsides. They looked to be slightly more aggressive and a few of them were using the Head Hunter as a ramp to launch themselves into the air. These were the most numerous and they all looked like adult wheels, some looked feminine while others looked masculine based on their eye colors.

The ones with the odd shaped green carapace looked rather docile, they had what looked like a small flashlight from a mining helmet with small handlebars attached to a very small horn on its forehead and had fewer pipes that were small. Fluttershy surmised that they were good at getting around at night and were more active then. They all looked rather feminine given the brown soft thing that looked like a cushion sticking from the top of the green metal carapace. Fluttershy wasn’t really sure any of these wheels even had genders to begin with.

The last were the scariest and thankfully the fewest, they were slowly puttering about seemingly guarding all the other wheels with their imposing large size. They had large black heavily armored carapaces and had what looked to be sharp fangs poking out their fronts and Fluttershy was pretty sure these where for pouncing on unsuspecting prey as much as slamming it down on intruders with lethal intent or just skewering them by running them down like a minotaur. They had what looked to be an oblong chunk of glass sitting on their crowns and it was noted that they seemed to be in charge of all the other wheels given they could stop the smaller ones without carapaces from fighting one another with a simple large roaring noise; they were like the kings of their herd and extremely masculine looking.

All these wheels were gathered around the Head Hunter and Fluttershy frowned not knowing what to do as she stared blankly at them, she didn’t want to disturb them when so many of them looked to be dangerous or rather aggressive beings. She also couldn’t take the risk of them damaging the Head Hunter and knew she would have to disturb them to get it out of there.

Author's Note

May need to do some touch ups on this chapter and yes I'm definitely going somewhere with all this.

The naturally occurring Dream Land fauna, the ever popular biomechamagical Wheelie.

Wheelie- Looks like an average tire with eyes.

Wheelie Rider- Red armored adult Wheelies.

Wheelie Scooter- Green armored easy going special Wheelies, can be slightly smaller then the red at times.

Rex Wheelie- Big scary and powerful engines, but overall slow acceleration due to weight and size. Lot's of pony power this one.

29

Fluttershy sat there on a cloud with Pinkie and ChuChu, going over her options of how to deal with the wheels that the cute little octopus called Wheelies. They were a rather nomadic high speed species of naturally occurring Dream Land creatures that while they didn’t look quite biological, they were capable enough to reproduce in such a manner. Dream Land has plenty of mechanical, biological or just plain magical looking creatures and the Waddle Dee would be a big example. How do those cute little waddling creature survive without mouths? Didn’t they need to eat? If they did eat, then how did that work? ChuChu was also an oddity given her face was on the top of her body and only an octopus on this world could look like that.

“So is that your ship down there?” Frowning at the loud squeak and nearly spooking her friend right off the cloud, Pinkie just sat there quietly and watched as ChuChu pulled her back up. “Sorry Fluttershy.”

“Oh it’s okay, I actually needed that.” Well she wasn’t about to attack the Wheelies. Not with a glass knife anyway, she wasn’t a violent pony and would prefer a more peaceful solution. Fluttershy was quite curious about what they ate and how they ate it. Some of the creatures in Dream Land only made half as much sense as they normally would. These wheels for instance seemed to like wide open long spaces to roll around freely on. “Well I don’t want to attack them, ChuChu thinks they’ll attack anyone that bothers them and I really don’t want anybody to get hurt. After my incident with Mr. Woods and all the things I’ve seen before, I’ve just about had it with how violent things always keep getting around me.”

“Who’s Mr. Woods?” Tilting her head questioningly, the floating Pinkie hadn’t heard about the tree that attacked and injured Fluttershy. The tree actually had a good reason for it.

“Oh it’s nothing to worry about… Pinkie can you do me a favor?” Fluttershy hadn’t taken her eyes off of the wheels rolling around at high speeds. She finally turned and smiled at the pink floating specter.

“Like what?” If there was a pony that aimed to please and it was within Pinkie’s many great talents to achieve it, she would do so for her friends if they asked it of her. Usually what was asked of her was throwing a party and nothing she could complicate needlessly.

“Do you think you could you distract all of the Wheelies for me please?” It seemed like the easiest solution to the puzzle to have Pinkie distract the Wheelies. They couldn’t do a thing to hurt Pinkie and she wasn’t physically here, so Fluttershy didn’t have to worry about her safety. ChuChu and herself on the other hoof… well she wasn’t a fighter and she had no clue as to what ChuChu was fully capable of, aside from deflecting bouncing projectiles with her stretchy pink legs.

“Is that all? Well of course I can, just you leave it to your old aunt Pinkie Pie as I’ve got this covered Fluttershy!” Pinkie flew off before Fluttershy could point out the fact that she was still a year older than her.

Sighing Fluttershy started to quickly aim the cloud so it hung close to the grounded Head Hunter. At this point Fluttershy was pretty sure she was good at not attracting attention and being stealthy, she doubted she’d ever really like a job as an assassin or a ninja though. ChuChu was staying quiet and sitting on her back looking more like a wad of bubblegum then an octopus, she knew it was serious time and she looked ready to defend Fluttershy if need be.

Fluttershy waited to see how Pinkie would go about distracting them; it didn’t take long as Pinkie did several different things that were likely impossible for astral projections. The things Pinkie did included having astral musical instruments, a giant astral sound system and astral cupcakes. Even Applejack didn’t come with her hat when she came here. Even then, Fluttershy wasn’t about to question Pinkie about this, it was likely to attract the attention of the wheelies.

Pinkie sent a wink in Fluttershy’s direction before she played a single note on the astral instrument causing an uproariously loud noise. It had definitely garnered just about every wheelie’s attention, causing them all to turn and move towards Pinkie.

Fluttershy lowered the cloud and poked her head out of it and looked around, all the while Pinkie was busy playing a solo rock concert. She had always thought Pinkie was always extremely talented, even when it came to playing ten instruments at once. She crawled out of the cloud with ChuChu watching her backside while she watched out for whatever was in front of them. Slowly she made her way up to the Head Hunter despite being impossible to hear with all the noise that Pinkie was dishing out as a cover, not to mention it was really giving her a headache having to hear all of it.

Just when Fluttershy got to the top hatch of the ship she heard something other than Pinkie’s noisy music, she swiftly pried ChuChu off her back and placed her on the top entrance to the Head Hunter. Down the octopus went into the space vessel with a surprised look while Fluttershy turned around to investigate the noise of what sounded like an injured animal. If there was a need for kindness, then Fluttershy would heed the call to help the sick and the injured in any way she could. Her bat ears flicked in the direction she heard what sounded like a cry for help.

Over on one side of the hill she parked on, Fluttershy saw a red armored wheelie lying on its side causing a soft squealing sound that sounded just awful. Fluttershy wondered why any of the other wheelies hadn’t helped it before Pinkie started her distraction. It was blowing air from its round flattened rotating part. It had a hole in its tire, not that Fluttershy knew that that was what it was called. Its one visible closed eye opened when it felt her shadow cast over it, it began to panic by revving out loudly.

“It’s okay; I’m not trying to hurt you. Calm down and I’ll help find a way to patch you up.” Fluttershy softly told the strange creature, it slowly calmed down at her gentle tone. Trying to lift the thing she noted it was really quite heavy, she slowly trudged back up the hill while shouldering the injured wheel. It revved softly in pain at having a flat tire and from hearing that noisy music, it was just too weak to fight Fluttershy just spiriting it away. “Don’t worry, you’ll be okay. You’re in good hooves.”

Fluttershy would always stop for an injured animal and she was strong enough to flip an entire bear. While it was hard to carry something as heavy as this wheelie was, it was nothing Fluttershy couldn’t handle. Even if her back and spine was going to protest it every step of the way until she was inside the Head Hunter. She carefully laid the Wheelie out on the floor and patted it softly in a caring manner.

ChuChu looked ready for a fight at seeing Fluttershy bring a Wheelie inside with her; it was only seconds later that she noticed it was injured with a flat tire. Wheelies hardly looked out for their own if they were old enough to take care of themselves; their young however were more carefully considered. It was also an oddity to the octopus that this creature was just injured. Usually native Dream Land creatures exploded into stardust, that’s what happens when Kirby gets involved with them at least.

“I’m going to fly us to Kirby’s house now, please watch over… um is it female or male?” Fluttershy figured that ChuChu would know, looking into the eye the octopus told her what gender it was. “So he’s male? Don’t worry Mr. Wheel you’ll be rolling around in no time!”

Fluttershy sat down in the seat and her hooves hovered over the controls and started to manipulate them gently. The ship lifted up into air swiftly and she spun it around to see Pinkie waving goodbye to all the hopping happy Wheelies as she floated into the Head Hunter.

“Thanks for waiting for me Fluttershy, whoa… so this is a spaceship? How do you ship space anyway? I know you can put a space between letters or as Rarity says between my ears, don’t honestly know why she thinks I have space between my ears when Rainbow is always being called an airhead. Airheads are really yummy and chewy fruity candy, so Rainbow Dash must taste like getting caught in the rain. Almost as good as the mystery flavor of cupcakes I made for Applejack the other day. Wouldn’t you know it? She figured out they didn’t taste like cinnamon at all!” Pinkie was just a solid stream of random consciousness at this point. “You know this thing kind of reminds me of Time Turners, only with less time travel and more space travel! Hey what’s wrong with that guy?”

“Oh Mr. Wheel is hurt and I just couldn’t leave him by himself.” Fluttershy was steering the ship lazily over the forest and was looking for Kirby’s rather cute if humble home.

“I don’t see what you’re worrying about so much Fluttershy; you’re still you and you love caring for others! You’re never going to be a bad pony in my book, even if this ship isn’t exactly yours.” No matter the distance Pinkie never gave up on a good friend being true to who they were.

Fluttershy didn’t say anything, Pinkie was right that she was still herself. She was reminded of the time she stole a bite of an admittedly yummy cake, but she had apologized for that and Pinkie forgave her for it in seconds. The capacity to steal was still within her. She remembered getting away with munching on Applejack’s orchard by eating a ton of her apples without paying for them. Even if she had mutated fully into a scary bat pony at the time, that was no excuse to get away with it. Fluttershy stealing a spaceship made her feel like she was getting progressively worse with all of her criminal acts, which included the time she became nastily assertive and that little joyride with the destroyed stiletto fighter didn’t help any. At least she could say she helped saved a life, well… the life of a being that was paid a lot to end the lives of other beings.

Shaking her head from the morbid thoughts, Fluttershy finally spotted the humble little house and steered the ship towards it for a landing. She could already see the interested astral form of Rainbow Dash staring in awe of the flying machine among several others as it came to the rest on the ground. The landing went much more smoothly then the first one had, given she was getting much better at controlling the ship with time.

Fluttershy got up from her seat and moved to the back of the ship to see ChuChu gently rubbing the Wheelie’s red armor in a friendly manner. It was nice to see that Mr. Wheel wasn’t fighting them about this and she hoped that he’d be perfectly fine in a while.

“Come on let’s get you outside and I’ll see to your injury. ChuChu you wouldn’t happen to know anything about medical practices?” Releasing a sigh at seeing the octopus just tilt her head in confusion, Fluttershy had her work cut out for her and she’d have to dip into the medical kit that was onboard to see if she could figure out a way to patch up Mr. Wheel. She really didn’t want to bother ChuChu’s friends with finding another Maximum Tomato.

Speaking of Mr. Wheel, Fluttershy hefted the mechanical looking being up in one hoof and got him onto the platform, afterwards she had ChuChu carry a slightly heavy white box with a red cross on it. Once they were all aboard the platform, it easily lifted them to the top of the Head Hunter. Fluttershy had wondered where Pinkie went as soon as they arrived and hadn’t noticed her leaving through the metallic walls of the ship.

“I still can’t believe you have those instruments, we’re astral projections and it’s not possible for inanimate objects to have astral projections!” Poor astral Twilight Sparkle was already getting into Pinkie about the instruments she was still wielding.

“No its not, if it weren’t possible then why do I have them?” With Pinkie’s logic Twilight was immediately quiet and her hair looked a bit frazzled at trying to make a comeback. All things considered, Twilight was still having problems from the last time Pinkie broke the laws of magic, physics or whatever it was Pinkie did that didn’t make a lick of sense.

“Hey Fluttershy, welcome to the party. Whoa, what in the world is that thing? Also nice spaceship, would you let me take it for a spin when you get home? I wish I was there with you having these awesome adventures, is it anything like what you thought it would be Fluttershy?” Rainbow Dash was immediately at Fluttershy’s side talking up a storm as the bashful pony carefully placed the Wheelie on the ground.

“Oh it hasn’t all been fun Rainbow; it’s been quite horrible and painful. ChuChu do you think you can get this box open? I haven’t been able to because I can’t manipulate the latches on it.” Having hooves was a disadvantage at times, but Fluttershy had always made do with what she had to work with. The medical kit was one of the things she easily recognized for what it was; she just couldn’t get it open because of how it was designed.

Fluttershy paused to think while she watched ChuChu work through the puzzled of how to open the box. The creatures of Dream Land while not entirely dumb, they weren’t exactly that bright either. It made her wonder why there weren’t any real signs of civilization here; it was like this world didn’t care much for progress and was generally okay with the few buildings it did have. There had to be some form of manufacturing capability somewhere on this planet if the cute little red bow ChuChu was wearing was to be believed, there were very few signs of higher intelligence like Kirby’s house on this planet.

“Fluttershy, I hate to take your attention away from your friends…. um, what is that thing?” Celestia had lost her train of thought and was more interested in the Wheelie that Fluttershy was shouldering at the moment. ChuChu continued to fiddle with the latches on the human style medical kit.

“Oh he’s a Wheelie, I found him injured around the others like him. It didn’t seem like any of his family or friends cared that he was hurt and injured. I’m hoping ChuChu can figure out how to open the medical box so I can use what’s inside to help him.” While Fluttershy waited for that to happen, she tried to make sure the Wheelie was comfortable.

The Wheelie was in too much pain to be aggressive at the moment and he felt safe being held by Fluttershy. He didn’t have the wherewithal to gather speed and ram anything that might threaten him at the moment. Everything around him was really confusing and he felt a gentle if glowing spirit coming off of the one that held him.

A Wheelie that couldn’t gather any speed wasn’t worthy of note to the other Wheelies. The only reason why it was this way was because the Wheelies tended to have no inclination towards finding medical aid, especially on a planet that in general didn’t have any to begin with. The exceptions were for the lucky ones that did become injured only to eventually stumble upon some grease, a power battery or a maximum tomato to absorb while still being functionally mobile or aware enough to take in stuff to repair itself. An injured Wheelie either got better naturally or they ceased moving entirely. Not being able to move at all while still being alive was one of the worst injustices that life could deal to a Wheelie.

“What an interesting creature, this world is not too far removed from Equestria in appearance and yet it’s so vastly different.” Even as the astral form of Celestia said this, the astral form of Applejack popped into view while Luna’s horn was glowing.

“Ah, so we will return to our bodies upon awakening, at least that’s one problem we have little to worry about.” Luna was not about to tell Fluttershy she was worried about them being stuck in the sleeping realm disconnected from their bodies. Well that would have been the problem for the other ponies and Katrina; her and her sister would have eventually found a way back to their bodies given their immortality.

“I’m glad to know that I’m getting a full nights rest at least, I wouldn’t have wanted to miss my granddaughter annoying the palace guard robots again in the morning.” Having made contact with another magical race had made Katrina open up to them quite a bit; they had talked about various subjects some of which involved this world that Fluttershy now found herself on. One important topic of discussion was the idea that making advancements too fast or just being handed space travel without learning to build it personally. That kind of thing tended to have a large negative impact on the development of any race.

“I reckon I can handle a few more hours of shuteye.” It wasn’t even Three AM yet back in Equestria and Applejack needed those three extra hours of rest for a long day of hard work.

“CHU!” Triumphantly holding the medical box in the air above her with an open lid, ChuChu smiled cheerfully as Fluttershy took it from her tentacles.

“Thank you very much ChuChu, now let’s get you looked over Mr. Wheel. You’ll be feeling better in no time.” Injured animal treatment mode was activated and Fluttershy drowned out all the background noise of the multiple astral projected friends and gently prodded the Wheelie until the hole in his tread was visible. He whirred slightly in pain, but aside from that he was being a good patient and most Wheelies definitely weren’t known for their patience.

They all stayed relatively silent watching Fluttershy consider how to treat the wheels damaged tread as she pulled out all the strange things in from the medical box. Everyone was silent until the sun seemed to drop out of the sky in the distance; it immediately took on an orange spherical floating form with hands and a face. It stretched out and yawned, not noticing a silent audience watching it do so. It slowly shook a sleeping yellow crescent shaped creature awake, it had legs and arms. It blinked lazily, before looking at what woke it up for a moment. The crescent shaped being leapt straight into the sky and suddenly it was nighttime, the moon appeared exactly where the sun was moments ago. The sun shaped creature closed its eyes after grabbing a chunk of wood to sleep on; it looked just like an average campfire after a moment.

“Whoa… the sun and moon here are actually alive? Now there’s something you don’t see every day.” Despite being the only one to put it in words at the moment, Rainbow noticed that Fluttershy hadn’t look away from the Wheelie to see said amazing sight. ChuChu was even assisting her in applying the patch to the hole in its tread; she had seen Mr. Shine and Mr. Bright trade places many times before and also ignored it as if it were an everyday thing.

“So this world has physical embodiments of the sun and moon too, how quaint.” Tittered Celestia as she thought about how fast they had swapped positions, Dream Land had so many surprising magical things about it. Now if she could keep Fluttershy’s attention long enough to tell her that she couldn’t stay on this world for any longer than two weeks. There were definitely consequences of this world being connected to two different civilizations and they could eventually become dire.

“Yes, I too see it in humor as well sister. There is much to this world that mirrors our own; though it definitely has its own unique spin on things.” Luna joined her sister in watching as the moon shined across the world.

“There you go Mr. Wheel, now don’t be too rough with your patch. You wouldn’t want it to fall off and you still need to give your injury some time to heal. So don’t go too fast okay?” Standing up the wheel after having laid it down to put a patch over the hole, Fluttershy smiled as the Wheelie took off and sped around Kirby’s house a few times in a relatively slow manner. When he was done, the Wheelie came rolling back up to Fluttershy. While his hole still hurt, he felt much better than he had previously. He rubbed up against Fluttershy gently in a friendly manner while purring like a well kept engine. “You can go now Mr. Wheel, I’m sure your friends and family miss you.”

Unfortunately for Fluttershy the Wheelie didn’t look like he wanted to leave. In fact he revved slightly in a negative sounding tone, before taking up his position next to Fluttershy with smiling eyes. His patch was made of gauze and bandaging that was now being proudly displayed on what was once a really painful flat for him. Once the patch was in place, he inflated his tread all by himself and was raring to follow this pony to the ends of the universe.

Fluttershy didn’t know it quite yet, but she wasn’t about to get rid of Mr. Wheel anytime soon or if at all if he had any say in the matter.

Author's Note

Say hello to Fluttershy's new friend Mr. Wheel. Next chapter, Kirby returns home from his adventure with Magolor.

Peely?

30

After having patched up Mr. Wheel, Fluttershy started talking with her friend’s astral projections. It wasn’t long before almost all of her friends projections disappeared and Celestia decided to interrupt the ongoing conversation between Luna and Katrina.

“I believe it is time I have to tell you some grave news my subject, you cannot stay on this planet. You’re connecting two different species entirely to this worlds magic and I fear the negative effects if you are to dawdle to long. You are to leave as soon as you come across this information these star warriors may have, I pray that you can find your way home Fluttershy.” Celestia was actually worried for Fluttershy and all of her little ponies. Popstar’s magic in the short term wouldn’t harm her little ponies, but Luna made her worries well know. It is feasible that long term effects of being magically connected to the distant world would be considered lightly damaging before getting worse, even Katrina seemed worried when she brought up the logical dangers involved.

“I’ll be sure to be off this planet as soon as I can Princess Celestia; if it’s alright with the natives here I would like to stock up on food a little before I leave. I’m sorry if I’m causing a problem be being here at all.” After saying this Fluttershy dug her fangs into a large apple and a slurping sound was heard and slowly the apple that was bigger than her head started to slowly wither and shrink down. She wasn’t having hunger cravings for it, but she wanted something tasteful as she was thirsty from conversing with her friends while she grabbed a few clouds of fresh water to stash away in the Head Hunter. Her feathered wing slowly morphed into a bat wing once more much to her discomfort and Celestia’s sad visage at seeing it happen.

Coo hooted that she was no trouble at all, it was just a bad that staying on this planet was a bad idea for her if her worlds leaders were wary of bad things happening. The purple owl figure they had things to be worried about as this planet was frequently attacked by demons, gods and living nightmares. The owl shuddered at the thought of one of the monstrosities that Kirby dealt with easily enough ending up on those other worlds he was only learning about in passing.

The owl knew Meta-knight and Kirby came from the stars, but Coo and the other defenders were born on this planet. He didn’t know much about space travel beyond the time he and several dream land natives idly watched as Kirby violently ripped apart Meta-Knight’s battleship known as The Halberd. Nobody really had an idea as to what had exactly set off Kirby at the time, but Meta-Knight had certainly mellowed out greatly afterwards and only bothered with testing Kirby from time to time.

“We believe in you Fluttershy, now please get some rest. I’m going to miss the good dreams once you leave, but I would prefer the reality of you returning home to your friends and family to being stuck on this strange world.” Katrina just smiled and flicked her fluffy tail as she faded out of astral form and into peaceful slumber.

Celestia sighed and followed the Aldebaran’s lead and slowly faded from existence. Luna trotted over to Fluttershy.

“My sister and Katrina are not wrong that prolonged exposure to this foreign magic may have an adverse effect on our two races. While dallying is a bad idea, it is worse to never find out what you can when you have an opportunity to find your way. At least you don’t have to worry about the weight of the world sitting on your shoulders like me and my sister.” Luna closed her eyes and slowly dissipated as well.

Fluttershy frowned thoughtfully and went back to the Head Hunter to sleep, while Chuchu went into Kirby’s quaint little house. Coo was about to fly away when a revving noised was heard and he stayed his wings for a moment to watch as the Wheelie that Fluttershy had aided rolled up to the Head Hunter and laid down upon the sloped to slowly power down in a slow purring noise before it drifted off into nothingness. The Wheelie didn’t seem to have any ill intention, so Coo didn’t bother it and wondered if it was related to one of the Wheelies that had aided Kirby in the past.

It was early morning on the world of Popstar and Mr. Bright was leaping into the sky to exchange places with Mr. Shine to start his day of just hanging there above the brightest star in the Dream Land Systems. A large ship flew in and dropped off four beings that had gone on a grand adventure together.

Kirby was walking home from his latest adventure with a happy smile on his face; he had aided his four new friends. After helping out the four dragons he was going to spend the rest of this day getting some well deserved rest. Opening the door to his house, Kirby yawned and made for his bed. After going through a long adventure without very much sleep he needed a good nap, Magolor hadn’t been very nice alien monster and the situation had vaguely reminded him of something he couldn’t remember very well.

As soon as he blindly tossed the covers aside and jumped onto the bed, he landed on something rather squishy and highly familiar to him. It seemed Chuchu had snuck into his bed again; Kirby had no idea why she kept doing it and thought she must have really liked sleepovers. In fact he felt his face heat up when their faces met, he liked Chuchu and she liked him. They must have been very good friends if she spent so much time around him!

Chuchu wrapped her tentacles around Kirby and brought him into a tight hug while shouting merrily at the heroes return from defeating another being of darkness. On an intelligence scale Kirby was more childlike then most beings on this world, but that didn’t mean he would ever hurt Chuchu while in his right mind and he would always welcome her into his home. Once he pried the happy Dream Land octopus off of himself, he hopped into bed again and immediately went to sleep. He didn’t bother to shoo Chuchu out of his home, because his friends were always welcome.

The exception of Kirby’s hospitality was a hammer wielding penguin that got him cranky every now and then for stealing his food. They were friends and he’d rescue the penguin if he was in danger, but other than that they really didn’t like spending time around each other very much.

On a nearby hill a masked and caped individual similar to Kirby chuckled as he was about to settle down underneath the tree to start meditating when something caught his eye. It was the large ship shape object sitting behind Kirby’s house, sighing Meta-Knight swirled his cape around himself and disappeared. He would find out what this new intruder was all about, it didn’t seem like they meant any harm by parking behind Kirby’s home. Kirby needed his rest after defeating another all powerful dark god without really thinking all too hard about the power in his tiny little arms, Meta Knight wanted Kirby to rest so he’d be ready for the next threat to this world.

Fluttershy stretched out and yawned, her dreams had been so vivid and wonderful. Her disappointment at waking up to the surrounding metal walls was incredible, at least looking at the apple she had waiting for her when she woke up didn’t give her any sort of craving. She hadn’t had any hunger cravings since she had that Maximum Tomato, she was hopeful that it cured her entirely of the need to forcefully drain any apple shaped fruit of their juices.

She made her way to the top of the ship while her fangs dug into the incredibly large fruit and she popped up on top of the ship to walk down one of the sloped sides as she drank. She took notice of the Wheelie, but didn’t bother its rest and didn’t question why it hung around her. As soon as she made contact with the ground, she was about to start walked around the house when a distortion in the air appeared. With the sweep of a cape Fluttershy suddenly found herself being held at sword point.

“Who are you and why have you come to this world?” Meta Knight held the tip of his sword pointed towards her nose and she cowered and whimpered. She was obviously not a being of an aggressive nature, then again neither was Marx and Meta Knight remembered that incident. It was interesting, especially considering Kirby hadn’t remembered it when it repeated with Magolor. Her obvious cowardice only made his eyes narrow at her, was she another fool who thought they could deal with powers that were not earned by blood and tears?

“Chu!” ChuChu wasn’t happy to see Meta Knight threatening her new friend, especially after she just got finished tucking in Kirby. She was soon near them and glaring angrily at Meta Knight while wiggling her two tentacles looking for a fight she knew she wouldn’t win, he was one of the top three strongest beings that live on Popstar after all and was in fact a star warrior.

Despite his momentary distraction Fluttershy didn’t take advantage of it and managed to swallow the remains of the large apple she had been draining. Dream Land apples were really tasty and she was hungry in an average way this morning.

“It’s okay ChuChu… um, are you a star warrior?” Fluttershy studied his silver mask, the dangerous looking sword and the fancy cape he was wearing, his armored shoes added a bit of the warrior vibe to him. She hoped he was friendly, because she really needed help as otherwise she was never going to find home within her lifetime.

Meta Knight’s eyes just stared into hers and the gleaming golden colored sword he held pointed at her forehead gave off a soft glow and slowly he sheathed it. He wasn’t about to kill a mostly innocent being and he was curious as to how she knew what a Star Warrior was anyway.

“Yes I am. What is your purpose for coming here?” Meta Knight’s eyes changed color in curiosity as Fluttershy sighed with relief and she shyly pawed at the grass with a hoof.

“Well… um… I’m looking for a star nomad, any star nomad really. I heard that they can find any place in the universe and they might be able to help me get home.” Fluttershy wilted as she stared into the eyes behind the mask and notice a negative feeling in the pit of her stomach. “There’s not one here is there?”

“No, this world has no star nomad residing here presently and it is unlikely that you will find a star nomad who will settle down. One hasn’t been seen here in a long time, I am Meta Knight one of the few star warriors left in this part of the universe.” Meta Knight was being truthful, this section of the universe hadn’t seen a traveler of the stars in a long time and warriors of the stars were a different thing entirely.

Meta Knight had personally once considered himself and Kirby the last of their kind, but he was smart enough to know that there were always possibly more of them out there somewhere doing what they were meant to. Any being in the universe could become a Star Warrior and the being before him wasn’t one, but she had a strange calming energy about her and it radiated with warmth of the likes that he had never seen before. Said warmth dimmed slightly at his words and he almost felt like apologizing to her immediately.

There was also the surprise that ChuChu would come to this beings defense against him, even when she knew she wouldn’t win the fight. The end result of a fight like that would have greatly upset Kirby. Kirby’s justified wrath for one of his friends being injured would have been unstoppable, even with the interference of multiple beings of universal power. The armored warrior of the stars shuddered, Kirby was someone Meta Knight feared slightly and his caution was highly warranted. It was entirely based on the fact of how fast Kirby could rip a dark god apart, especially when it was just a stolen slice of cake that was spurring him on a warpath.

“Oh… well, thanks anyway. I’m Fluttershy; it was nice meeting you Mr. Knight.” The drooping form Fluttershy presented was pitiful to look at and Chuchu tried to comfort her as she started to slowly canter away.

Something twitched inside of Meta Knight spurring him forward; he slowly started walking as something overcame his willpower. The need to protect this four legged being was a curious feeling. He needn’t be around to watch over Kirby as he slept as things were currently peaceful at the moment and disturbingly so. He stopped walking when he heard a puttering noise and a Wheelie zipped by him and up next to this Fluttershy. He now found himself unusually attracted to the idea of protecting this fair lady and the Wheelie wasn’t a threat, but its patched tire clearly showed a story of kindness.

Fluttershy sighed; she was not heading back to the Galactic Federation territories. Being a dissection subject was not something she thought of as a pleasant way to spend the rest of her life. For now she was just going to stock up on food and then she would just choose a direction to fly in, hopefully she would find a habitable planet on the way to pick up more supplies. Not once did she question how Meta Knight could speak her language, she chalked that up to the magic of this world. Maybe it was because he was a Star Warrior or it was just something else; Fluttershy didn’t care very much at the moment as life was becoming quite a chain of disappointments when it involved heading home.

Silently Fluttershy gathered food and brought it back to the ship, while she had three sets of eyes following her and watching as she did so. ChuChu and the Wheelie tried to assist her and she accepted their help, Meta Knight just stood by and watched silently. After two hours of gathering long lasting food supplies for herself, Fluttershy finally decided to lie down in the grass near Kirby’s house and rest while warming her body in the sun.

“Milady, I feel unusually guided to aid you in your endeavors. Even if there are no star nomads here, I can tell you of what they are like and maybe give you information on star warriors while I am at it. I also might be able to give you a map of some star sectors I have traveled through before I ended up here, I have lived a long life and there are still things that surprise even me to this day.” Not that Meta Knight would ever say that anything Kirby did was always surprising.

“If you don’t mind me asking then, what exactly does a Star Nomad look like?” Fluttershy rolled onto her back and decided to enjoy the day while she had still had time to spend on this world.

“That is a bit hard to describe. Any being in the universe can become a being of the stars, no matter their appearance. As long as that being has the spark in them to be one, they will eventually achieve the ability to do incredible things. The abilities always manifest in impossible to imagine ways. You are thankfully not a star warrior, as a star warriors life is always perilous and not for the faint of heart. Time will never claim me as the people of the stars will never die of old age, so much time has passed and I have lost so much. That is no reason for my heavy heart to dull my blade or stop me from extending a hand in friendship, down the path of paranoia lies a dark place I have been to several times.” Meta Knight looked away from Fluttershy to the cloudy skies and the sunlight that filtered through them. “We are the battlers who protect the universe from those who would see everything in it destroyed, we will never know rest until the end of all or we perish in battle. I have seen the fall of many great star warriors due to a horrible war, their spirits were grand and their wills never bent as they fought for the future with their broken bodies until their very souls were completely destroyed.”

Fluttershy’s ears wilted and her heart went out to Meta Knight as he stood with his back to her, he sounded so sad and has probably seen more then she could ever really guess at. He sounded like he has been at this for as long as Celestia or Luna, possibly even longer then both of them combined. Chuchu made a sad chirping noise and even the Wheelie revved noisily in a solemn way.

“I thank you for your feelings at my plight, milady, but I assure you they are misguided. Now, as for a star nomad, they are always strange beings and work in mysterious ways with their magical natures. They always seek to aid other travelers or those around them, usually without asking for anything in return. If they are unable to find someone to help or they are halted from their travels for too long they will start becoming desperate to perform what they live to do. They are incredibly hard to physically harm in a permanent fashion, their attention spans are seemingly short, but they are always much smarter then they first appear. As you already know they can find any place in the universe that you would want to go to and this knowledge is possibly why they are so strange.” Meta Knight remembered the first time he met one, they were ridiculous in their ways and even then they were highly effective at achieving what they wanted to do in the end. He thought of them as pure hearted beings, even Kirby could have been one if he hadn’t become a star warrior first. “A warning I know you will heed, never attempt to kill a star nomad and always try to stop beings that do. The end results of trying to kill one will never be in your favor. Should you actually succeed in doing so, horrible things will befall you and there are grave consequences for harming someone who became a child of the universe itself.”

“Is there anything more defining then that about a star nomad? Maybe you know a direction I can fly in so I could possibly find one; you must have traveled around a lot if you’re a defender of the universe Mr. Knight.” All this information was something Fluttershy had to remember, after thinking a bit she decided to ask one more question. “Do you have a map of the universe or even a small section of it hoofy?”

“The sign of a star nomad is more easily seen if they have a follower, partner or a guardian accompanying them in their travels. This one being will be nigh impossible to separate from the nomad for any great length of time. Through a bond of great friendship and understanding, the follower will unknowingly walk endlessly with immortality alongside the nomad.” Sighing Meta Knight turned to Fluttershy, their eyes locked and an inkling of understanding passed between them. “I hope you are successful in finding one milady. I have no idea as to a direction you should go, but I do however have a map; it will require a device to hold the information.”

“Thank you Mr. Knight. I have just the thing to hold the information; I have this thing called a universal map that a friend gave to me. Thankfully it hasn’t been damaged yet and she pulled the battery from her weapon to power it.” It was the best Fluttershy could hope for, she’d spend the next few days on this world before leaving. She hadn’t seen the other star warrior yet and wondered if he was just as sad as Meta Knight. She was in for a surprise when she finally met him later in the day, but for now she was blushing slightly at be addressed in a highly regarded fashion and she had yet to really do anything to earn it.

“Excuse me milady, I will get the information for you swiftly. Await my return, Fluttershy.” With a slight bow Meta Knight swiftly swept his cape in front of himself disappearing from sight. As he teleported away, he considered it odd that he was entirely open with someone so strange and yet he felt himself compulsively addressing her with a high regard. He felt pleased that he managed to perk her up out of her funk slightly; if she stuck around long enough he just knew Kirby would befriend her immediately despite her oddly distorted form. Beyond said outward appearance was her real birth form hidden from natural sight, the hidden elegance was so beautiful as to be a gift of the universe itself. She was filled with a boundless kindness and Meta Knight actually felt his heart beat in his chest for once in a very long time. He had thought his tears had long stopped falling and that his heart had hardened to the task ahead of him. Spending so much time around Kirby was making him soft... it wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

The knight felt better after the hidden angel touched his heart without really meaning to.

Author's Note

Meta-knight mysterious and chivalrous, also sad because he's seen the death of millions and survived hardships the likes of which makes him angry at the laziness of Dream Land. This is a guy that defends the universe, he had to go a little crazy eventually and thus the 'Revenge of Meta-Knight' was born.

Personal theory time!

Meta-Knight can sometimes see things that others can't, this is likely why he always sits on the sidelines and sometimes challenges or helps Kirby. Kirby is always less skilled, but more powerful then him. When using Nova to summons the 'most powerful warrior in the galaxy', Meta Knight oddly gets Galacta Knight to fight.

The irony of this summoning is that this means that Kirby might just be the 'most powerful warrior in the universe' or something along those lines given his track record for wrecking evil that even Meta Knight would have problems putting down without grievous injury. This makes Kirby exempt from the wish as Meta Knight actually wished for something less powerful and more closer to him in strength, otherwise Kirby would have appeared after he made that wish unless he was out of the galaxy at the time.

Kirby in 'Triple Deluxe' kills a zombie-god level enemy that just wouldn't stay dead and said boss was managing to keep fighting him through sheer determination, all the while trying to strangle all the life out of Popstar. You can truly tell this was something that greatly upset Kirby, the very look on his face before he lets loose on the final boss of that game is downright chilling and something you'd never normally see coming from him.

31

Well Fluttershy had found a star warrior at least; he wasn’t what she was expecting him to be. He was so small and yet had a grim fierceness in his rather diminutive form. She would have called him cute if she didn’t have to worry about him running her through with that magical sword. Even after he said he wouldn’t attack her with it, Fluttershy really didn’t want to push it.

So a Star Nomad was a friendly being and usually traveled with a partner. They were always moving around, must be hard to find even one out there. Fluttershy had wondered if the reason they had partners was because they hardly ever run into one of their own kind, to forever be wandering the stars. It would have had a poetic feeling to it to see infinite beauties and horrors for the rest of her life, if Fluttershy wasn’t finding it to be the most bothersome thing about her predicament in the universe at the moment.

Feeling something nudging her Flutter looked up at the wheelie that revved softly as it leaned against her. She had befriended something that was quite heavy and could move faster than an average earth pony could run and mind you a team of strong earth ponies could drag entire trains at quite a good clip. She didn’t even know how it was biologically possible, but she would believe this planet up to being capable of anything considering how big or weird all the animals could get.

“I’m okay, why don’t you trot… um… roll on back to your family now? I’m sure they miss you and I wouldn’t want to separate you from all of your friends. I’m sure your injury will heal with some time, so don’t push yourself to hard.” The wheelie made no movement to leave Fluttershy or stop snuggling into her side making purring engine noises. Obviously Mr. Wheel liked her and strangely his metallic skin wasn’t cool to the touch, it even felt alive as it seemed to be breathing in and out. It made Fluttershy curious as to whether or not if this is what a slug or snail would be like if it had a round foot. “You really don’t need to thank me that much.”

The wheelie seemed rather insistent about not leaving and Fluttershy sighed, she just rested in the grass and didn’t really plan to do much or go exploring. If she couldn’t be on this planet for very long then she wasn’t going to go looking for adventure. She just preferred staying safe and sound right where she was. It gave her time to think of all the wonders she was seeing, there was so many of them and everything was much more incredible than just seeing the ground for the first time.

Idly the Fluttershy noted that ChuChu had gone off in the direction of the lake. ChuChu figured that since Fluttershy was sitting right outside Kirby’s home, what was the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen to her? In any case Coo was still around and just sleeping in the nearby tree, if anything went wrong the owl would lend his aid.

It was a bright day out, everything was rather peaceful and slow. Even the odd blue bandana wearing Waddle Dee walking by just waved at her and continued about his way, he seemed more energetic then most of his kind, he was using a spear as a walking staff and looked to be simply enjoying the day. Fluttershy found the beings known as the Waddle Dee to be a strange if highest reoccurring somewhat sentient race on the planet.

Speaking of planetary bodies, Fluttershy wondered just how the sun and moon covered the whole world if they only stayed above one part of it. They only lived on one side of the planet and didn’t seem to rotate around it, but that’s what it looked like was happening at a distance in space. Now that she was up close and witnessing it from being on the planet things made even less sense then they previously did.

“Excuse me Mr. Wheel; I’ve got to go test something out.” The wheelie revved in a questioning tone as Fluttershy quickly galloped off, a minute later the Head Hunter lifted off and flew away in a straight line. It was a few hours later that it came from the opposite direction and then settled down right behind Kirby’s home once more.

The waiting wheelie watched as a completely befuddled pony slowly meandered her way back to her resting spot just to lie back down. Fluttershy had even more questions then she had previously, this world was kind of a mad house of inconsistent mind boggling illogical workings and if she were Twilight her brain would have snapped from the strain of trying to wrap her mind around it.

She had flown around the entire planet twice, the mind boggling thing is that it was daytime everywhere with the exception of a section of the world where it looked to be under a constant sunset. Fluttershy hadn’t the foggiest how this was possible and logically it wasn’t, but this world was called Dream Land so obviously anything she saw here would be completely possible if it were a real dream.

Fluttershy wasn’t going to worry too much about how this world worked, as she had figured out that it just did and that thinking about it too hard would call into question her slightly taxed sanity. She would like to continue with the illusion that she wasn’t lost in a completely insane universe where stuff like this was not caused by a self proclaimed lord of chaos, one of the main reasons she was still sane was because she had met Discord. This was not taking into account Luna’s revelation that the world itself might be a living entity which was even further compounding the problem with the living physical representations of the sun and moon that slept on the very planet itself.

This world was beautiful and as the name of the world might have implied, it was like the world was a living dream. Oddities abound, this world would take forever for some pony scientists to just try and rationalize why the grass was the most average thing about the world. Fluttershy put a hoof to her head and rubbed it and inhaled, counting to ten she exhaled slowly. There she was all better now; no more worrying about a world that was completely round and still getting one hundred percent sun coverage. She would also ignore the planet being a flattened five pointed star shape and obviously having two sides meaning that it should be impossible for one sun to cover the entire world with light all at once.

The wheelie revved loudly wondering why Fluttershy looked slightly catatonic and had shocked her out of it, it had been a few minutes and it looked like her breathing was slowing down. He was of a simpler mindset and as such never thought of the laws of physics being ignored by the entire planet itself alongside the beings that generally lived on it. He was just happy to live on a world with long stretches of land to roll across and was living a very simplified existence, until this tire patching pony came along and helped him when his days of rolling around looked to be at their end.

“Oh, I'm sorry Mr. Wheel. Did you need something?” The wheel revved negatively, Fluttershy flicked her silken tail and sat back to stare at the drifting clouds in the sky. “Okay then, it sure is a nice day at least.”

“Poyo!” A voice next to her said in a happy go lucky agreeing tone that caused Fluttershy to almost jump out of her fur. Catching her breathe from the sudden fright, Fluttershy hadn’t noticed a pink little being had taken up a spot next to her to watch the clouds too. The wheelie curiously enough was peeking out from behind the house and shivering in pure fear at the sight of the one called ‘the likeliest destroyer of all existence’.

This was obviously the ever friendly and childlike, yet highly horrific destructive powerhouse known as Kirby. A star warrior whose most notable feats in life is surviving being stuffed into a black hole by a monstrous creature named Marx, defeating several god like beings of pure darkness or evil and being implausibly cute while violently rending the life from his enemies without a second thought mostly on instinct.

“Oh my goodness, you scared me.” Clutching at her heart with a hoof Fluttershy couldn’t help but note that this creature didn’t look very dangerous and she knew looks could be deceiving. She has met parasprites and quite a few more deadlier creatures since then that looked really adorable. “Um, hello there, my name is Fluttershy.”

“Hiiiii!” The being known as Kirby said with a cheery smile and waving his arms at her, he crawled into her lap and started to cuddle up against her. Kirby thought she was a friendly looking creature that was very warm and fuzzy. She also gave off an attractive energy of the likes that he had never felt before; it was a really inviting feeling.

Kirby, being the naive creature that he was, had already forgotten about the events of what had happened with Magolor and was welcoming this new stranger he had found outside his home without a second thought. In his mind the only thing that was going on was the very thought that she might know how to make a cake. There was also the idea that she might be willing to share some with him if she did. Other than that, hugs!

Fluttershy giggled, it was so childlike and adorable she couldn’t help but cuddle him. She wondered where his parents were or who he was. He wasn’t much of a conversationalist it seemed and he was male as far as she could tell. It kind of looked like Meta Knight except less armor, grouchy and sad. In a sense this being looked a lot like Meta Knight and was his complete opposite. He didn’t have a hardened outer exterior to match Meta Knight’s appearance, which Fluttershy thought was a rather visibly symbolic of his star warrior nature. In a way this guy was equally visually symbolic as he was soft, squishy and adorable.

After a while of letting the creature sit on her back as she walked around smelling the flowers around the grassy area and just in general admiring the surroundings, Fluttershy’s stomach finally gurgled in hunger. Looking up at the sky, the sun was in the exact same position as it was previously. She figured it was best not thinking too hard about it, even if it made it really hard to tell time on this world. She’d fly around the world twice later tonight; the spaceship was getting easier and easier to understand on a basic level. With a little more practice she’d be able to avoid more possible death and dismemberment with slightly better piloting skills.

“Poyo?” Reluctantly hopping off the pony’s back as he had been enjoying the ride, Kirby ran off to find some food for his new friend.

Fluttershy shrugged, she went to the nearby lake and puffed out a cloud to drink from and came back to the house of Kirby the star warrior. Was that pink being Kirby? Mr. Wheel rolled out and revved in a scared tone, seeing as Kirby was no longer present to scare the oil out of him.

“There’s no reason to be scared, I don’t think he means me or even you any harm. If he tries to hurt you I’ll just have to be firm with him.” Despite reassurance Fluttershy took in the wheelie’s reluctant form as he took up a position beside her. “Mr. Coo sorry I’m to disturb your nap, but was that Kirby?”

Coo yawned and looked opened his eyes and ruffled his feathers a bit from his perch; he nodded sagely and then went back to snoozing. Kirby was around and awake, that meant anything relatively less dangerous was already wary of coming anywhere near his house. Many Dream Land creatures had immediately evacuated the general vicinity for about three miles around the house; the wheelie was rather brave to still be around even when it hid from Kirby’s sight at first.

Fluttershy really didn’t wonder how Kirby was a star warrior despite his innocent nature, she’s already seen multiple cases of things being more then they appeared to really make a good judgment call on him except that he was adorable.

Kirby returned carrying all kinds of fruits and strange foods all piled up on a large silver platter, Fluttershy didn’t even bother questioning where the platter came from or how Kirby got it as some of the food on it looked familiar to her. The pudding was definitely something nice as she hadn’t had a dessert in a while and she avoided the foods that looked like they had meat in them.

Now that she was nearly full Fluttershy felt Mr. Wheel cowering at her side and looking at Kirby, apparently he was something worthy of fear for some reason if her friend was acting like this and he was likely only still here because of her. Kirby didn’t seem to be paying attention as he was stuffing his face with food in a gleeful manner. Fluttershy honestly had no idea where all that food was going to and he seemed to have a black hole for a stomach, if only she knew it was the size of a universe.

“Um… I hope you don’t mind me for asking this, but what exactly do you eat Mr. Wheel?” As she asked this Fluttershy saw Kirby look up from his food at the wheelie and then just went back to eating. The wheelie shuddered at his horrifying casual glance, after a moment of determining whether to roll away at high speeds it finally revved at the idea of something that looked nice on the platter. “Oh, okay. Let me get that for you.”

The wheelie wasn’t disrupting anything and it was a friend of his new friend that gave piggyback rides, so Kirby was continuing on with his little feast. Ignoring the armored wheel’s presence, he was happy to have another friend to share a meal with.

Picking up the potato salad, Fluttershy was curious as to how exactly most Dream Land creatures ate. There was obviously lots of food in Dream Land though she didn’t exactly see anyone cooking it, it did lend to the fact that the beings without mouths must have eaten in some way.

“Now what Mr. Wheel, I’m afraid I don’t know how you eat or drink exactly.” A quiet puttering noise was a response and Fluttershy had this oddest look on her face as she did as she was asked. Fluttershy didn’t like the idea of wasting food, but for the sake of curiosity she dumped out half the potato salad into the dirt. She was still a little bit hungry so she nibbled at what remained a bit. It taste like potato salad with mustard and yet she hadn’t seen any widespread farmlands or grand civilizations since she got here, the mustard had to be manufactures somewhere right? Unless mustard naturally occurred on this planet as much as cooked food does, it would explain the hot vegetable lentil soup at least.

The wheelie zoomed over the chunky food and it disappeared into nothingness. Well that explained why the bigger wheelies had fangs pointed towards their fronts, they ate with their tires which makes up the most of their body. Kirby just clapped as he never seen a wheelie eat before, it was interesting to him to see something new and exciting.

“Well that was interesting, can you eat anything?” If her interest in an animal was piqued, Fluttershy would naturally want to know what the animal thought was nutritional to it and what it ate.

The wheelie answered in an overly complicated series of chirps, puttering, revs and growling noises. Wheelie’s in general liked soft mushy substances, what they disliked was anything that was hard or crunchy as apparently that led to getting a tire popped. What they usually ate by Mr. Wheel’s description was mushrooms, moss, oily foods or substances, plus the occasional unfortunate creature that is reduced to carrion that was affectionately referred to as ‘road kill’ by the wheel.

“Can you tell me more about yourself or your kind?” All Fluttershy had to do was ask and the wheel went into the grand history of rolling and speeding around at incredible speeds.

All of wheelie kind was nomadic in nature and tended to like temperate weather. Cold weather was a bit of miss for them and warm weather was generally okay for them. Overheating and or freezing up were sicknesses a wheelie tended to avoid by staying in motion or rolling over cooling puddles of water or slowing down. Wheelies didn’t like slowing down, but they tended to do so when their health was at risk because overheating was more damaging then freezing to them.

Kirby just sat back and enjoy the lesson on what wheelies liked. He liked riding armored wheelies, but for some reason they didn’t like him coming near them and he couldn’t fathom why that was. The day was quite peaceful and he liked it when Dream Land was this way, only he saw something that was about to ruin his day and he frowned slightly as a cloud drifted over to the point that it stopped above their picnic casting an ominous shadow.

A second later a colorful four legged figure appeared from out of nowhere and she smiled as she came over to Fluttershy. A faint rumbling was heard and it went mostly unnoticed by those at the makeshift picnic, Kirby tensed up and a slight glare came to his eyes.

“Hey Fluttershy, how’s everything been going so far on that star planet you're on?” Rainbow appeared to be in good spirits and Fluttershy would have answered her, if it weren’t for the sudden monster attack.

Kirby managed to push Fluttershy and Mr. Wheel out of the way of the explosive ground sundering blast of lightning with a mighty leap. Kracko the cloud had reformed once again and it was challenging Kirby and everyone near him to a fight. In general the cloud was always ready to rough house and always attacked Kirby, this time it actually sought him out instead of waiting for Kirby to travel through a sky world again. Kracko was a large white cloud with large yellow spikes poking out of it and it had an equally big dark eye that was glaring down at the flash charred food and slightly fried Kirby.

“Oh my goodness, are you alright!” Fluttershy was about to go up to Kirby when Mr. Wheel got underneath her and wheeled her out of the way of another lightning bolt.

“Whoa, that’s one angry monster cloud thing.” Rainbow didn’t seem particularly worried that it was attacking Fluttershy as she was paying too much attention to how awesome an intelligent cloud creature would be to have as a pet. Shaking her head once she realized this, Rainbow glared at the monster for attacking her friend. “Hey, stop attacking my friend you big jerk!”

All Rainbow Dash got for her effort was distracting Kracko from sending another bolt at Fluttershy and the wheel that carried her to safety of the nearby trees. Kirby shook off his soot covered body and stood up. Not only had Kracko just charred his food, it had just also attacked his friends.

Kracko couldn’t have dug itself any deeper in the span of a few seconds that it had started attacking. Insert angry faced Kirby mode, because that was definitely something that would set him off.

Inhaling the ruined food into his mouth with a powerful vortex, Kirby leapt into the sky and released three spiraling five pointed stars of varying sizes into Kracko’s eye with maximum force. This caused the attacking cloud monster to flinch and become temporarily stunned. Looking around for more ammunition Kirby turned to Fluttershy and the wheel, focusing on the wheelie he dashed forward and when he got close enough he started inhaling.

The wheelie being smart enough to know what Kirby was going to do, rolls away frightened at seeing that angry visage coming towards him. Fluttershy, having no idea what Kirby was doing or how he even did it, was swiftly sucked into his body and swallowed whole. The astral form of Rainbow gawked as her friend was swallowed alive by what looked to be a creature she was friends with a minute ago.

Within the span of a very short time Fluttershy had somehow ended up behind Kirby shivering. She didn’t know how she ended up in outer space a second ago only to reappear behind Kirby after being swallowed alive by him. She was mostly just glad that she somehow didn’t die by her blood boiling or sudden asphyxiation. Looking at Kirby she noticed something odd about him, he was floating high up into the air and his white glowing angry eyes brought out a sense of familiarity within Rainbow and Fluttershy.

It was seconds later that Kirby launched a massive rainbow beam at Kracko whose singular pupil shrunk to a tiny speck before the beam bigger than it encompassed its entire form.

At least Fluttershy could honestly understand just exactly why Mr. Wheel had been so very wary of Kirby now.

Author's Note

Yep, Kirby just inhaled Fluttershy by mistake then Elements of Harmonied Kracko as if he was Crash Kirby. Only Rainbow Kirby's attack is more focused and directional, it's definitely a one-shot ability in every sense and meaning.

Almost to the end of Dream Land, the next crossover is going to be an interesting choice as it is one of those out of left field things except the characters that would normally be involved with this place are not going to appear.

32

It had been a short while after the rainbow beam incident, Fluttershy was being comforted by Rainbow Dash about being attacked by a cloud and it was only her second day on the planet, the first she was assaulted by a tree and she would be sure to leave as soon as Meta Knight got back. She certainly didn’t want to see what would attack her if she stayed longer than three days; at least the cloud monster hadn’t been after her. It was after Kirby and it certainly got him in the most fantastical of ways when the harmony beam evaporated it.

Kirby had gone about being himself after the incident without a care in the world. The left Fluttershy to realize that while he was a star warrior, he wasn’t exactly the most thought provoked creature in existence. He knew how to fight and build a house, but otherwise he was as cute and innocent as the second Fluttershy had met him. It was a bit of a mood whiplash for Fluttershy; did she hug him or run screaming because he somehow replicated the powers of the Elements of Harmony?

Coo came forward after Rainbow was done telling her it would all be okay and that she wasn’t the one to kill the cloud monster thingy. Coo told them that Kracko wasn’t dead, but it would sure be a while before it could reform after that defeat, he went on to explain that it was an immortal dream land monster that consistently harassed Kirby and had been destroyed numerous times. It would never die or give up on attacking Kirby as long as there was a cloud in the sky to literally rain on his parade.

Fluttershy didn’t feel a sense of relief to know that the monster wasn’t dead or that it hadn’t exactly died, she was utterly confused and felt that was where she would stuck at for a while. She asked Coo what it was that Kirby did and how did he do it.

Coo was very forthcoming with the explanation; the owl knew a lot of things about Kirby. Kirby’s basic ability was to inhale things and copy their abilities; he could even share the abilities in conjoined attacks with his animal friends. This copy power evolved and changed drastically at times to do new or more impossible things. How it worked was something Coo didn’t know, but he has seen it in action a lot of times and Kirby was a very powerful if childlike creature. His once upon a time temper tantrum was the stuff of legends on Popstar, because nothing in the universe would help you if you stole or destroyed food in front of him.

“If he copies the power of whatever he swallows… then why did he get the ability to fire a rainbow from me instead of my other abilities?” Fluttershy was curious as to why Kirby hadn’t gotten her stare, wings, bat related powers or even magical cloud creating powers.

Coo told them the likeliest explanation was that he got a single defining feature of what he swallows. An example was the descriptions of Bomb Kirby ability versus the Crash Kirby ability. Kirby swallowed explosives to get both abilities, but the defining feature to cause Crash Kirby to appear was an exceedingly more powerful explosive object or being. Crash Kirby explodes violently and can only use that destructive bit of cosmic power once; Bomb Kirby however had the power to generate hundreds of explosives but they were always at the same general strength and less cataclysmic.

“The most defining feature in our lives is firing rainbow beams at evil things Fluttershy, so it makes sense that he’d copy that bit of concentrated awesomeness!” Rainbow was awed that such a cute little guy could be so explosively dangerous and cool. “So, star warrior huh?”

“Yes, but does he have to look so innocent about it afterwards?” Fluttershy whined slightly as she watched Kirby chase the native version of a butterfly. Mr. Wheel was once again at her side and warily watching Kirby for any sign of possibly getting inhaled. It wasn’t likely to happen as Kirby hasn’t hurt her or Mr. Wheel yet and Fluttershy had already given Kirby a slice of cake which made the little guy so joyous.

“Some warrior, he doesn’t look all big and scary.” Yet there was some hesitance in Rainbow’s tone, she definitely did not want Kirby to be her enemy. “You know it could have been worse, he only copied your power Fluttershy. Imagine what he could do if he copied all six of us…. hmm…. Discord would be so jealous that we’d unleash a horrible rainbow powered abomination on the universe that likes hugs and cake.”

“Can we not talk about it anymore? Also that that wasn’t the full power he could copy is a scary thought.” Fluttershy could hardly wrap her mind the thought, something bigger than the one use rainbow beam of imminent demise the cutie like Kirby fired? She had gotten the ingredients to make a cake from Kirby who had gotten what she asked for to make it, it was hard to think of him being so deadly given his cheerful disposition.

Kirby’s happy face was much better looking than his serious face and he didn’t know how to make cake and was amazed by the process if highly confused considering his many failed attempts to make one. It was with much deliberation that Kirby noted that everyone else’s cake always tasted better especially when it was freely shared. So he had let Fluttershy hoof it out, he was happy and decided to frolic his happy little sugar filled heart out, so he was chasing after the wondrous fluttering creature before him.

“So, I take it something interesting happened while we were trying to live our lives?” Astral Twilight trotted up to them and watched as the little pink puffball chase after the fluttering bug. “It’s really hard to not have you around Fluttershy.”

“I could say that for all of you as well. I’m still waiting on the other star warrior to get back with his information and this one isn’t nearly as old or well spoken.” The two questions on Fluttershy’s mind was how much weirder this planet could possibly get or when exactly would Meta Knight get back to Fluttershy with his information. In comparison Kirby wasn’t exactly dumb, more like he was stunted in his ability to learn things as if he had never had a mother. Likely if Meta Knight wasn’t around, he wouldn’t have a father figure to look up to either.

“Oh you should have seen it Twilight, that little guy swallowed Fluttershy whole and then fired off a rainbow beam and it destroyed this cloud monster!” Gesticulations aside, Rainbow pauses in thought as she continued to flap her wings despite not needing to as an astral projected pony. “I wouldn’t appreciate it if a cloud came to life and tried to zap me, Fluttershy here was almost toast before that lightning fast wheel thing carried her off.”

“Things haven’t stopped being eventful for you Fluttershy, I’m guessing you really want to leave the planet now after getting attacked again. I hope you know we’re all glad you’re okay.” Twilight gave Fluttershy a sad look and leaned towards the strange magical armored wheel creature. “Can you look out for her? She really needs more attention, as she’s seems a bit stir crazy without us to physically be around or an animal to care for. It must truly be frustrating that animals are the ones mostly caring for her and themselves, she could really use a good friend that can be there for her. We won’t be able to astral project anymore once she leaves the planet and until that happens can you please try to keep her in a good mood?”

The wheelie revved a promise that it will protect Fluttershy as long as it is capable of doing so. Not that Fluttershy understood the full scope of this declaration as wheelies tended to lead aimless lives and she was the most interesting thing to happen to him, plus her ship went really fast and he liked fast things like her rainbow colored ghost friend that zipped around incapable of staying in one spot.

Around the evening more of her friend’s astral projections appeared and they spent some time together hoping to keep Fluttershy from hitting a depressive state. Luna also managed to bring Angel along who looked apologetic the entire time he was there and could also his silent sobbing could almost be heard.

A few minutes after the moon leapt into the sky, Fluttershy halted all conversations she was holding with everyone. She felt an unbridled joy of seeing her precious little bunny was doing well and taking care of things since he became the man of her house. The reason she had stopped the conversation was because she decided to go check something out, once again she flew the Head Hunter around the planet twice and came in for a landing. She was actually perking up because she could tell her friends about the wonders of this world, along with some of the dangers she spotted from the air.

“I still thought it was odd that that portion of the world was in a constant sunset, so I flew back there to check it out and it still looked like a sunset only it’s the moon setting now. Still it’s a rather well lit part of the world.” Talking about the physical impossibilities was one of the ways Fluttershy was dealing with the stress of being attacked on this world for a second time by a dangerous creature, one she didn’t even provoke this time. Twilight admitted that she would have more or less at least snapped by this point after hearing about all the fantastically illogical impossibilities Popstar presented. She was especially happy that the second monster attack ended with her friend less battered then the first one.

Coo idly made a comment to everyone about Kirby’s strength seeming to be directly proportional to the danger involved, plus his determination to protect his friends and the planet at large.

“This world doesn’t cease to amaze.” Luna had little to say aside from the fact that every single pony, aside from the astral projected ones of course, were all having a good night’s sleep because Fluttershy was on this planet. She didn’t have to walk through dreams helping others, so being a princess this free time was a small vacation. Unfortunately said vacation was at the expense of one lost and consistently endangered pony she couldn’t protect across the vast distance of the void. The dreams themselves could easily become nightmares for her closer friends, because they wouldn’t know what was really happening to Fluttershy because all their dreams would only be good ones. “I thank you star warrior for looking out for our friend.”

Kirby just smiled and looked at all the ghost ponies who couldn’t give him piggyback rides; they were still nice to have around even if he couldn’t interact with them. He yawned it was getting pretty late and he wanted more sleep he’s had a long day of playing and blowing up Kracko again, it was a day well spent.

“Excuse me, but I think Kirby might enjoy it if I put him to bed.” What Fluttershy wasn’t saying was that Kirby likely has never had the chance for his parents do something like this for him.

Judging from what Meta Knight said about there not being many star warriors in this part of the universe, Fluttershy kind of drew a sad conclusion to what that meant. She wanted to give Kirby a slight act of kindness by being something akin to a mother for him for at least one night, by telling him a bedtime story and tucking him in. He was a child who fought monsters and didn’t understand much of what was going on around him aside from an emotional standpoint, he held little to no logic in his head except what was right and wrong.

As such Fluttershy was less scared of Kirby and more to the point felt sorry that he didn’t get a chance to know his parents. She was sure that they would have been proud that he was called the hero of this world and that he could be as strong in the face of adversity as what Meta Knight hinted at what being a star warrior entailed. Likely Kirby didn’t know what he had lost to be sad about and while it was cruel to give him a mother for one night only to take that feeling away, it was better for him to know what it was like then to have never known at all.

Kirby did not know what a mother was, but he was friends with a large bird named Dyna Blade who had cared for smaller friends like her that came from eggs. He didn’t know they were her children and that was the closest he ever got to knowing what a real family looked like. What this four legged creature was doing for him felt like what his friends did when it came to him having a bed to sleep in, only Kirby felt it was more intimate and warmer. It was a feeling he liked as he slowly drifted off to sleep when Fluttershy finished singing him a lullaby.

Walking outside Fluttershy sighed and her wings drooped, she didn’t care if her friends saw her slightly depressed state despite their best efforts which had largely worked for the most part. She came to a stop when a swirl of darkness appeared in front of her and out of it stepped Mr. Knight. He looked around to all the astral projections and then to Fluttershy.

“Hmmm… where is this device that has the map, I have what you seek and I would like to add to it Milady.” Meta Knight was led to the Head Hunter and before they entered he stopped her, for being such a grumpy sad old being who has seen many atrocities, he was speaking with a particularly light and slightly upbeat tone. “Thank you for doing that for him, but I fear that it will break his heart if you don’t say goodbye first. He knew not the touch of a mother until now and he would be gravely upset if you decided to leave without doing so, I know you can’t stay here and we may come to blows if you do not give him the courtesy. Stay one more night, then say goodbye to him tomorrow. He remembers all who have earned a place in his heart and what you have done for him has cemented that place.”

Mr. Wheel backed up the dark one with a squealing chirp; he didn’t want to see what a cranky or sad Kirby could do to the world. He lay upon the slope of the ship and started to close his visible eye and softly puttered off to sleep.

“I will Mr. Knight, now wait just a moment please. If it’s alright with you that is.” It was quickly done and Fluttershy now had an even further expanded map of the universe once Meta Knight got done with the map she got from Katt.

“I will keep watch this night; maybe talk to your friends who are still milling around.” With a swift sweep of his cape, Meta Knight turned around and walked away slightly. He stopped for a moment without looking back and said something that caused Fluttershy some amount of surprise. “I know you’ll eventually find a way to return this ship to its rightful owner. Even if you can’t, you will not be tainted for doing what you thought was necessary and prudent.”

Meta Knight continued walking away from a surprised looking Fluttershy; he passed by the wheelie in a slow march giving it an affectionate rub and then slowly disappeared around to the front of Kirby’s house.

“You’re friend may just find her way home. That is, if she doesn’t become a star nomad first. Hope and pray that she is never doomed to wander the universe for eternity, for she will never stay in one place for little more than a year if that were to happen. She’s almost close to becoming one; it scares me as much as it should you.” Meta Knight turned to look Luna in the eyes from behind his silver mask. “Worry not; darkness will never consume her. It may eventually end her trying to do so, but it will never be able to hold onto such a bright light.”

Luna tried to say something only for Meta Knight to disappear with a sweep of his cape. What an enigmatic armored being that looked so much like Kirby, yet the differences were there like night and day. He was far wiser than any being Luna had ever witnessed, he seemed to be even older then Celestia and she combined. His name was strange in that ‘meta’ could also mean ‘beyond’ or ‘after’, a knight in dark armor that could see things beyond any normal beings vision was truly someone to pay heed to. There was a lot of unknown power sealed away behind that small masked figure with so many hidden scars.

“Hmmm… that is rather troubling news.” Discord muttered from behind Luna thinking on what Meta Knight said without an ounce of humor on his face. Now there was a being so old and serious that Discord actually felt incredibly young in comparison. If Fluttershy became a true star nomad, she’d be able to easily come home. The unfortunate implication behind gaining the ability to find home so easily is that she wouldn’t want to stay. Discord knew he had a lot of power, but even he didn’t think he could fight the entire universe for the right to keep Fluttershy where she wanted to be.

The next morning it was the third day and last day on Popstar for Fluttershy, she took a long groaning yawn while stretching out her hooves before she crawled out of the bed. She’d eat a large meal and say goodbye to the friends she had made on this planet and then she’d be on her way, she’d really miss the good dreams that she had here.

It was a bright sunny day, exactly like the one she saw when she arrived on this planet, she didn’t see Mr. Wheel anywhere it was a good thing he wasn’t sleeping on her ship. It was of no matter to her, he likely finally went back to all his wheel friends. Kind of sad that he didn’t bother to say goodbye to her, oh well he had his own life to lead and she had already humored him well enough.

Going down to the lake Fluttershy got Kine the fish to call the rest of the Defenders, Kirby was happy to see all his friends but he wondered why they were gathering around his house. It was soon found out why they were here after they had all shared a big breakfast, half of which was taken up by Kirby’s black hole for a stomach.

“Okay everyone I’m leaving, I’ve gathered you all together to say goodbye and to thank you for all the wonderful hospitality you’ve shown me. I’m sorry I didn’t get to know you all better, but I can’t stay here. I’m trying to find my home and if I can somehow manage it, I’ll try to come back and visit sometime. This might be goodbye forever though.” It kind of broke Fluttershy’s heart that Kirby ran up to her and hugged her while crying; he obviously didn’t like the idea of her leaving so soon. Fluttershy smiled as she pushed Kirby back slightly and kissed him softly on the forehead. “It’s okay Kirby, you’re a big boy. You can take care of yourself, you don’t need me.”

Fluttershy eventually gave everyone an affectionate nuzzle or hug to all of the animals she had met. Chuchu was also a bit sad as she clung to the top of Kirby’s head in comfort and was adorably cuddling the sad little warrior. When Fluttershy was about to board the Head Hunter with her saddlebags bulging with extra food, she stopped and turned to the nearby tree that a dark figure was sitting in.

“Well aren’t you going to say goodbye too? You really shouldn’t keep a lady waiting!” Asked Fluttershy in a mockingly demanding tone, she wasn’t leaving until she gave him a goodbye hug as well.

Meta Knight chuckled darkly and with a flash he appeared before Fluttershy, he let the pony entrap him in a hug. He liked it, but he would never admit to it out loud. He silently stood by watching while Kirby waved goodbye with a sad smile on his face as Fluttershy boarded the ship, she was leaving with a few extra supplies that Chuchu and the five other animals gathered together for her trip to wherever she was going to next. He silently wished her luck.

The Head Hunter lifted off the ground and slowly turned and shot into the sky leaving behind a smiling Kirby. He might not have liked to say goodbye to a new friend, but he was happy that she said goodbye as a real friend should. He didn’t worry about whether or not she would come back, he would just enjoy the memories and she would become a part of his dreams.

Author's Note

Let's be honest here, Kirby is a child soldier and quite a universally powerful one as well. He's a happy go lucky little fellow despite the underlying darkness surrounding his life and all the destruction he tends to cause.

I wonder if that theory that he is the king of all nightmares is true?

Next up: The next crossover. It will be an interesting one, but guessing what it is won't be easy since none of the main characters that belong to it will show up.

33

Out somewhere in deep space Fluttershy sat at the controls to the Head Hunter, she was going to scope out some of the sectors Meta Knight has visited before. They weren’t in the direction of the Galactic Federation with all the dangerous aliens and mentions of horrific visual dissections of living beings. It had been a day or so since she left Kirby behind to do what he did best, now she was just staring out into the void as the instruments continued to keep her on course.

One of the biggest and most dangerous problems with being in outer space was the rampant boredom. Boredom would lead to laziness. If something went wrong or something broke and you were too lazy to fix it, well you weren’t going to have a good day. Fluttershy was occupying herself with the scanners and tried not to doze off, she had been awake for a few hours and staying still wasted very little energy. She wouldn’t need to eat for a while unless she decided to get up and exercise a bit; she didn’t need to because she now had a small supply of those highly nutritious tomatoes to keep her fed and healthy.

Fluttershy was glad her glass knife would get some use; she could peel a small chunk off a maximum tomato when she needed to keep her stomach occupied with such a delectable treat. Said treat had such a ridiculous nutritional value packed so tightly into a red fruit that it made her incapable of eating food for a while for eating even just a sliver of it. The wonder fruit had thankfully cured her of her apple lust entirely.

All physically negative ailments involved with her mutated form were stripped away by the nutritional overload the first time she got half a foreign magical tomato shoved down her throat. Too bad it couldn’t cure the magical mutations, diseases and the like, but at least she’d be more in control of herself and her specific fruit related food cravings were no longer an issue. Even if apples still tasted like pure ambrosia to her that she was almost addicted to them, but not to the level that her mind was overridden with the need for them.

Snapping out of her introspection, all the lights in the ship started flashing red and an alarm sounded causing Fluttershy to pin her ears to her head. Writing popped up on the screen and Fluttershy quickly read the half griffon script as well as she could.

“Either this says I’m about to meet an ark full of banana headed monsters or… spatial distortion detected, warning imminent collision.” The space around the Head Hunter started distorting wildly and Fluttershy immediately slammed her hooves onto the controls to stop the ship. It was not a moment too soon when a highly corroded steel colored wall appeared in front of the ship covered in some ugly plant matter. She was a bare millimeter from crashing into this wall.

“It was the second one… that’s nice to know…” Fluttershy breathed out dazedly while shivering, with a slight whimper she tried to calm down her pounding heart after another near explosively volatile death. Well it was a possibly explosive end as the ship she was in could take quite a pounding, her body on the other hoof couldn’t take near as much a beating. The ship might have survived slamming into the wall at the speed it was traveling, but not without becoming inoperable and stranding her wherever she was now alongside possibly crippling her. She quickly set the ship down on the surrounding flooring of the small room that had enclosed her from out of nowhere.

“Oh dear, what am I to do? Oh right, I need to use the scanners!” Fluttershy had learned more about the scanners while she was piloting around Popstar, she decided to check the biological scanners first. It showed several levels of biological entities, from plant to animal and up to beings that were sentient. The scanners were quite powerful and had quite a good range to them.

The scanners showed tons of random mostly non lethal vegetation in a vast area all around Fluttershy wherever she was, as for animals there was only one, the last biological sign was that there was one biological sentient being. Both biological beings were currently located… on the Head Hunter?!

Fluttershy was starting to panic. If she was obviously the sentient biological the scanners indicated… then what was the animal? She checked the scanners for the location and found that it was in storage. Carefully she crept towards the storage space on the ship and opening the door she saw nothing. Slowly she craned her head towards the ceiling on a whim when something dropped right on top of her. Her heart almost stopped given the thing that landed on her was making a very scary, but rather familiar sound.

“Mr. Wheel, what are you doing here?” Well at least that other biological sign wasn’t some flesh eating monster, then again Fluttershy knew this creature did end up eating carrion once in a while.

The wheelie revved something closely relating to its purpose in life was now to follow and protect her. After that he just squealed out a question of what was going on.

“Oh we’re in some unknown location and… I really need to check the other things the scanners can pick up. Remind me to give you a stern talking to later.” Fluttershy went back to the pilot seat of the Head Hunters and went over the energy and motion scanners, while the wheelie idly watched on. There was a high energy reading making it hard to pinpoint any other smaller energy readings in this place. There was a lot of motion being tracked moving throughout the place her ship was now wedged into; at least none of it was nearby.

The only way to get the ship out of this room would be to blast a hole and fly out, but Fluttershy didn’t know what the repercussions of two plasma beam cannons going off in such close quarters would be. She was glad she figured out how to activate them out in space where she wouldn’t accidentally hit anyone with them, she really didn’t like the weapons even if they were quite necessary with the unknown dangers of space. One of the unknown dangers of which she now found herself stuck inside of along with a wheelie that should have really stayed on his home planet.

Fluttershy waited for the environmental scans to complete, a nearly clean nitrogen oxygen based atmosphere. At least the air was breathable and not poisonous. She checked the motion scanner activity again, but only what was going on within close general vicinity of the ship. Aside from her and the wheelie, there was not really much moving towards or away from her position in a timely manner. It was likely that the unknown cause or reason for this sudden predicament didn’t know Fluttershy was here. She would have been under attack by now otherwise, given it’s been a few minutes since this obviously space bound vessel appeared around her in a form of teleportation.

The map that came up on screen didn’t give Fluttershy a full comprehension of where she was, but it did at least let her know that she was close to the some kind of large power source. This is why the other energy readings were hard to get information on and firing the plasma cannons in that general direction would have been a very bad idea. Thus far all the pony could see was a deteriorated wall and she couldn’t turn the ship in this enclosed space.

“I’m going out to have a look around, please stay here Mr. Wheel. I really should think of something better to call you, if we’re going to be stuck together for a while.” Despite the fact that there didn’t seem to be any hostile life around, Fluttershy knew that didn’t mean there wasn’t anything dangerous. Normally Fluttershy would be against exploring or going to really dangerous places, she just currently didn’t have the luxury of avoiding danger as it was going to come to her if she didn’t try to move about. She wouldn’t be paralyzed by fear with her survival at stake.

The wheelie growled in a questioning tone before squealing that it didn’t like the idea that she was going somewhere alone, but a firm look from Fluttershy made him calm down. He would stay put, but he didn’t like it.

“You still need time to heal… I think I’ll call you Roller as you remind me of a few of my bird friends back home. Now stay here Roller and try to get some rest please. I’ll be right back after I’m done looking around and by then I might have a solution for how to get us out of this situation.” While gathering stuff to go out, Fluttershy eyed the wheel to make sure he still had his patch in place. She packed some food, water and her glass knife for protection; this was all she was going to take with her. Everything else would stay onboard the Head Hunter.

Ascending to the top of the ship she looked up at the flickering dim lights and the dilapidated walls that were partially covered in a mossy substance, she wondered why this place looked like it does. The lights were on and barely at that, but nobody was apparently home. Her ears twitched at the sounds of sparking electricity and a faint humming noise she could barely hear. She wished she had a flashlight right about now, if it came right down to it she’d have to rely on her ears for navigation.

Walking down the sloped side of the Head Hunter, Fluttershy stepped onto the metal flooring and made her way for the only doorway to this room. It was much too small for the ship could fit through. She stopped short of the rectangular hole, it looked like the ones back on the Valhalla where a sliding door would be only this one was damaged around the edges.

Peering carefully out of the doorway and looking in all directions, Fluttershy saw the lighting was equally spotty and the corridor beyond was as damaged as the room she had come from. The technological design looked on par with that of the Croakers and the walls, floor and ceiling were all a rather dulled metallic silver color.

Just seeing the random bits of damage here and there had Fluttershy on edge about it all. She felt that she should be clutching desperately at the knife in her saddlebags and feared the actual need to use it. She was a pony that wouldn’t harm a fly if she could help it and would only use a knife to defend herself in the direst of situations.

Fluttershy crept out into the hallway silently trying not to make a sound with her hooves. Of the things she noticed upon moving down the hallway, the other rooms she looked into were in disrepair as well and didn’t have much except for scattered chunks of scrap metal lying around. Her ears were alert and she was looking everywhere for danger. She made one very loud noise with her hoof by accident and stopped when she heard movement. Jumping back, she scrambled into a nearby room as something disc shaped dropped to the floor with a clinking noise.

The white turtle shell shaped disc quickly sprouted four small spindly legs and a small T-shaped protrusion with a red light on one end popped out of the top of its shell. It swiveled what passed for its head around three times sweeping its general surroundings for something. Once it was done it then crawled its way back up the wall and came to a rest on the ceiling where it went dormant folding back up into itself. Fluttershy had ducked out of sight when the red light was pointed in her direction and used her ears to keep it in her echolocation sight.

The thing did little else but return to its position on the ceiling where it now sat, this at least let her know that there was something to look out for. The pony had seen defensive mechanical systems like this before and this one seemed to have an intelligence driving it. The intelligence behind this was definitely not biological in nature given how it searched a small area around itself several times in a methodical manner while slowly looking in all directions before giving up.

Fluttershy carefully made her way around the mechanical thing, there was nothing biological about it and it was likely dangerous despite its general size being smaller then her. An active security system was a lot more dangerous than one that just spotted you and set off an alarm to let everyone know that something was amiss. That robot actually looked like it could stab her with its sharp pointy little legs or whatever else it was capable of and it wasn’t the only one hanging on the ceiling. In fact there were several inactive discs on the ceilings just waiting to drop down on her, she tried to make sure not to be anywhere beneath one of them as she carefully crept along.

She eventually came to what looked like a destroyed door with a hole in it that led to a shaft, Fluttershy peered down and then up into the darkness. Apparently whoever had been here previously had some pretty big elevators. She looked at the lit buttons near the destroyed doorway and thought better about activating the lift, what if she got attacked for turning it on or making it come to her? Sighing Fluttershy looked for a nearby doorway, she quickly reared up and hastily struck at the buttons and then evacuated to the nearby room with her tail between her legs. Inside was a small partially dismantled cylindrical looking machine, it had a cable with a rounded end lying limply on the floor.

A second later the whirring of the lift made a clunk sound as it came to a stop and the destroyed door tried to shift a bit as if it was attempting to open. Fluttershy didn’t hear anything aside from the frantic beats of her frightened heart when nothing else happened. She was on edge and she really couldn’t calm down very much. The strange claw like marks on the wall of the room she was in left an obvious sign that there was danger and that she should be wary of her surroundings. Whatever the danger was, it wouldn’t be biological in nature and she wouldn’t be able to stop it with a stare.

Taking a second look at the markings, they seem to have been involved in the reason that the roughly cylindrical machine looked like it was in the process of being taken apart. It didn’t look complete and upon further inspection, it had been slashed in two by something. Fluttershy wondered where the other portion of this thing was and shook her head, she had to keep moving. She wondered if Roller would really stay put the further along she wandered.

All the walls weren’t clean, but they didn’t look ancient or all too old. Whoever dealt with upkeep of this place wasn’t here anymore though. The shy little pony kept her ears twitching as she entered the elevator through the destroyed door and looked at the buttons. There were several floors along with the lit one showing which floor she was on. She didn’t know which one she wanted to head to and she memorized the floor number that the Head Hunter was trapped on.

Fluttershy quickly asked herself what was she more scared of, the attic or the basement? She immediately hit up one floor and the elevator started moving upwards, it came to a stop and the door to the next floor up opened with a swift hissing noise.

Exiting the elevator Fluttershy noticed the lighting here was a bit more messed up then the floor below, it was dark with a few spots of lights here and there flickering in and out of working order. She hadn’t seen much of anything in the rooms she passed on the floor below; she just chose a random direction to go down a hallway and could have just as easily went the other way. There was still a lot of random vegetation and strange forms of damage all over the place; she stopped for a moment once she saw something that looked like a symbol. It was red in color, a faded bent oval shape on the paneling of the wall where a few small dots of fading lights were weakly blinking on and off.

Shaking her head after trying to figure out what the symbol was, Fluttershy continued to explore looking for a computer or something that would tell her why or how this space vessel appeared around the Head Hunter. She hadn’t a clue as to what she was looking for yet and there weren’t any large ventilation systems near the floor; this was problematic for getting around undetected. There didn’t seem to be airlocks in the wide hallways which could easily hold eight ponies standing side by side with some extra leg room for movement.

Looking into the next room on her left she saw a…. a filled swimming pool? There were a lot of roots from the random vegetation sticking into the pool leading into the small vents. The room didn’t have much else aside from a few plastic lawn chairs and what looked to be the remains of some rubber pool toys. These highly recognizable normal objects were a bit out of place compared to the technological walking discs things that hung on the ceiling that she was constantly on the lookout for.

There was nothing in the room worthy of note and Fluttershy continued down the hall peeking into other rooms while paying attention to her surroundings. She was afraid and quite wary of what would pop out on this foreign vessel, taking a peek into a room on her left she saw a mat and what looked like… things she easily recognized as exercise equipment? Well at least she knew biological beings used to live here at least. There was nothing in this room that she would want to carry around as it all looked too heavy for her, so she moved on.

After a time some closed doors started showing up in the hallways, Fluttershy went up to a random one and hit the button to open it. It automatically slid shut once she went in; she quickly turned around to open and closed the door again to make sure she wasn’t trapped in the room. Inside there was a couch and some kind of shattered object that it was facing. The broken object in front of the couch had bits of broken glass and the top part of it was sunken inward slightly, with two metal mangled rods sticking out.

There were also two odd mechanical objects with buttons, dials and other things on it that were sitting on the couch; one looked like it could connect to the object that looked to have exploded. Of the two objects she saw on the couch, one looked completely destroyed and other had a slightly damaged wire.

Fluttershy didn’t bother with them as she didn’t know what any of this stuff did or if they could do anything anymore. Even if she was a more curious pony now, she wasn’t about to do something that could get her hurt and was overly cautious given her near lack of medical supplies. Maybe Fluttershy should have just given a small chunk of tomato to Roller so he’d heal immediately, that might be her first order of business when she got back to the Head Hunter then.

Deciding to explore the room further as it was well lit, in trotted Fluttershy towards the bunk beds against the wall that looked to have been in disuse for a long time. Opening one of the two other doors in the room she came upon a stainless steel toilet, a working faucet and what looked to be a bathtub. Yep she had found a classic looking bathroom for bipeds and everything that would be somewhat familiar for a pony. It still had running hot water and the drains worked perfectly fine. Though the décor looked a bit iffy, Fluttershy thought it was okay to use these facilities as they were.

After a refreshing shower and shaking the excess water off and taking note that she really needed to find a brush sometime sooner or later, Fluttershy set out once again wondering why the disc things hadn’t heard her. Most likely they had a limited range with which they would react to intruders; none of those discs were in the area she was now in and she was rather thankful for that. The last door to explore in this room was a closet with nothing of interest inside of it.

As she went back into the hallway, Fluttershy felt this place was dark, creepy and incredibly lonely. It wasn’t hard to explain why she was so frightened considering her situation. Watching the door shut behind her, her ears twitched she heard something was coming her way. It was a slight clanking noise, two legs and it looked like a metal wingless chicken in her echo sight; once it got closer she could physically see it with her eyes. The thing had stopped a good ten feet away under a working light, while she stood shrouded in the shadow of the dimly lit corridor staring at it curiously.

The top part of it had a lit yellow bar that was part of its head, it seemed to be tilting its head at her ever so slightly and after a moment the yellow bar turned a sickly red color. It let out a frighteningly loud screeching howl and charged for a stunned Fluttershy who was clutching at her ringing ears. With its toothy metal maw wide open, the little metal monster lunged for a chance to take a bite out of some rather pliable pony flesh.

Author's Note

So this is a technological place on par with the toads from Buck O' Hare, along with a few things that even Fluttershy can recognize?

The metal chicken is a big clue as to where Fluttershy is now. That this place is still operational will not be a big mystery for long, it is quite a marvel considering how many things this place has survived already despite being crippled multiple times.

Why is it here? Well, something that was not properly dealt with previously in this particular crossover will become a problem for Fluttershy. As this particular problem was never truly destroyed, it's quite a feasible situation to wander into her path instead of her wandering into its path.

The crossover travel chain thus far.

My Little Pony > Star Fox > Bucky O' Hare > Super Metroid > Kirby's Dream Land > ? (Current crossover starting this chapter)

34

Being quite prepared for the incoming attack, Fluttershy quickly stepped backwards out of a lunge that would have had left her missing half her throat. She also swiftly avoided the second bite before it tried leaping at her again; she dived underneath its high springing lunge getting behind it.

The machine was like a wingless chicken or turkey in body, but its head was different because it was round like an egg and opened into a maw of deadly sharp metallic teeth. How deadly were these teeth? Well the machine had lost sight of Fluttershy and turned about looking for the pony and then it scanned for the pony and tracked her through the nearby wall, so it quickly ran up to the nearest closed sliding door with its mouth wide open and bit into it. It easily tore a chunk of metal out of the door with a painful screeching noise and began chewing; it was quickly on its way to making a hole that was big enough for it to fit through.

Fluttershy gripping at her ears in pain was surprised that she had been found so fast. She had ducked out of its sight into a nearby room with the express idea that it would be more like the ceiling clinging machines and had a limited operation range. This was not like the sentry machines that clung to the ceiling and somehow despite moving out of its sight, it almost immediately knew where she was despite her being stealthy, so it didn’t track by sound like the sentries. The light on the top of its head was some kind of scanner and the fact that it changed from yellow to red after giving her a once over meant bad news, plus it could somehow see her through walls.

At least Fluttershy now knew why there was a large hole in the doorway one floor down on the elevator. Whatever this thing was it likely could eat through just about anything and it was just seconds away from tearing a large enough hole into the darkened room. She tried to keep breathing calmly and pulled her glass knife made from alien materials out of her saddlebags, she tightly gripped it in her left hoof holding it in front of herself. She had to try and remind herself that this thing was not alive and did not have anything resembling a soul. The beating of her heart and the noises from metal being torn and shredded rung through her ears, the room was empty and the only way out was past that little monstrosity.

The current crisis on hoof wasn’t the only thing bothering Fluttershy; she still needed to find a method to safely dislodge the Head Hunter from the bowels of this place and learn more about it while doing so. On the bright side of things, at least the little metallic monster swiftly eating its way through the door didn’t seem to be summoning the other sentry robots to assist with ending her faster. She couldn’t let that thing get even a single inch of herself into its mouth or else she’d be in for another agonizing experience in massive amounts of blood loss, that is assuming it didn’t get it’s maw on her head and immediately bite out a piece of her skull.

Experiences as painful as being shot by space pirates or being tossed for a loop by an explosion were the kind of things Fluttershy was actively trying to avoid. She didn’t exactly immediately recover from crashing the stiletto fighter and she got badly roughed up by a tree not to long after that with very little medical aid between those two moments. Her body needed rest and if this thing was going to be relentless, then there was no point in running and she had to face it head on.

Fluttershy shuddered at the thought of having to destroy a strange machine that was quite simplistic looking for a technological marvel; it almost felt like she would be stabbing one of Twilight’s books and ruining the words on the pages. From experience enchanted books could do nasty things, like what happened to Rarity with that cursed book that had her creating things out of control that would have eventually destabilized the balance of the world if it went on long enough. So in essence, it would be like Spike destroying the book by eating it and not letting things get worse because she was still too much of a coward to actually kill something that was not even remotely close to looking alive to begin with.

Speaking of looking alive, the machine finally got through the door and Fluttershy cringed. She shoved her knife out in front of her and backed away from the charging mouth on two backwards bending legs. Why did it have to remind her so much of her friendly chickens back home? It was just making it harder on focusing her need to destroy it before it killed her, survival instincts came first when there was no one else around that needed help. A fighter Fluttershy most definitely wasn’t which is why she went with the flight option and dodged around the machines attempts to bite and rip her legs off. Being a lot faster than the machine, she managed to evade around it easily enough and duck underneath the remaining upper half of the eaten door and back out into the corridor.

The pony upon leaving the room quickly stuffed the glass knifes hair wrapped handle into her mouth. If there was one thing a pony was good at, it was definitely running a marathon when they were panicked and Fluttershy went away from the direction the Head Hunter was in. She was not leading that thing back to the ship where it could destroy something important, she was much faster than it was and would likely be able to outrun it. Outlasting the mouthy machine was a different story as Fluttershy wasn’t running on endless energy here and she assumed it was a tireless automaton. She’d rather find out if it was actually tireless or if it would eventually get bored with her first before she did anything like attack it.

In her haste to escape the single dangerous machine Fluttershy had temporarily forgot the ceiling sentries, they quickly made themselves known. Four of them dropped down around her causing her to skid into a halt between all of them. They made clinking noises as they hit the floor and popped out their small legs and T shaped heads pointing their circular lights directly at her, a soft humming noised could be heard emanating from them which obviously meant imminent pain. Fluttershy didn’t really like how common energy weapons were in the universe.

Fluttershy jumped forward as high as she could manage and over the sentry that had dropped directly into her path. Four powerful spiraling beams of vibrant orange energy shot out, one had passing beneath her mid leap before they all crossed paths heading for each sentry. Upon landing on the other side of the sentry, Fluttershy turned her head back and watched as four orbs of spiraling light slammed home into the four machines. The spiraling beams of energy wrapped the machines in rings of chaotic sparking light and they began convulsing for a bit, after a moment they all exploded violently.

Sharp pieces of metal flew everywhere and one of the bits of shrapnel ripped into the left side of Fluttershy’s muzzle causing her to back away whimpering in pain as a splatter of blood flew off of her face. Reaching up with her right hoof, Fluttershy tried to knock the bit of metal out of her face only to yelp in pain as it had become quite wedged into her flesh. Taking the knife from her mouth into her left hoof she sat down and carefully maneuvered the knife to dig out the piece of metal from her face trying not to injure herself further. She successfully got the chunk of metal out and wiped of the blood from her knife with a hoof while draping her long mane over the wound, then she tossed it into her saddlebags and was galloping away once again. The metal maw was still coming for her and it was already literally snapping its sharp metal rending teeth at her heels, she made a mental note to not be hit by those spiraling beams of energy from the ceiling sentries in the future.

Running through a sparsely lit hallway in the dark being chased by a large metal oval headed chicken bodied monstrosity, being as fast as she was she had gained ground once again and was looking around for a place to hide. She was also trying to keep track of how far she was going so she could remember the way back to the Head Hunter, there were so many closed doors and none of them looked thick enough to stop the thing pursuing her.

Fluttershy was passing by a spot of exposed damaged wiring on the wall and faulty blinking ceiling lights and slowed down, the symbol on the walls here wasn’t as faded as the previous time she saw it. It was a red bent oval and had a few dots above it, she looked down at her muzzle that was still bleeding and causing her a lot of pain. She once again started to move faster seeing that symbol several more times; it vaguely reminded her of an animal’s footprint.

Shaking her head as she ran, Fluttershy was going slightly deaf from all the loud noises as her ears were ringing painfully and she was constantly on the lookout from every direction getting more paranoid as she went. Hopefully her wound would scab over quickly, but she’d need to find a way to disinfect it or cover it with medical supplies eventually. She managed to slowly bypass another set of sentries without activating them, which let the metallic mouth catch up with her and by then she was already running past a large opening into an equally large room with what looked to be several fighter ships in various states of disrepair.

The pony stopped running to make sure the door to this room shut behind her, the control panel for it was still luckily active and it slammed shut with a loud clang. How much more abuse could her ears take? One of them even felt like it was bleeding. She turned around and spotted movement from one of the small metallic looking ships. A bipedal figure at least several feet in height looked up from its position of messing with something on the wing of one of the bulky looking space shuttle style fighter ships.

It looked human, but it clearly wasn’t given its elongated head. Yellow glowing eyes of were the only thing visible of its face. The rest of its head was covered in a purple mask with what looked to be angry frowning face motif as a central appearance that spread out to its shoulders, chest and back. It had a tight black shirt that covered the upper half of its body that the purple mask didn’t cover all the way to its waist where a short purple sash was wrapped tightly around it. The sleeves of the shirt went down its gangly looking arms until it reached the uncovered flesh colored hands and the arms also had two metallic bracers strapped to them that had dulled, worn or broken spikes. The five fingered hands were the only visible thing representing the hint that it might have been alive, had there not been distinct bit of sparking electric wiring poking out one of its hands that had two broken fingers proving that it wasn’t a biological being and was just as mechanical as everything else Fluttershy had seen so far. It’s slightly loose pants were the same shade of purple as the sash and mask it wore, leading to a pair of uncomfortably tight looking black boots covered in bindings.

Fluttershy shivered as it stared blankly at her, the expression beneath the mask unchanging. It tilted its head curiously. She was distracted when she could faintly hear the clanking noises of the voracious mouth coming up behind her, it was a surprise she wasn’t completely deaf at this point from being in close proximity to so many loud noises. She turned halfway around and backed away from the direction she came and the figure standing on the ship, she was intent on trying to keep this new active possible threat in her sight. What started ripping the door open was not one metallic mouth on two legs, because now there were three of them. If they were this relentless Fluttershy was likely to perish because she couldn’t run forever and they were already slowly making short work of eating through the thick metal door.

Looking fully back to where the tall being was, it had disappeared after Fluttershy had taken her eyes off it fully. This caused her to look around in a panic, she decided to go for the doors on the far side of the hangar before the three mouths could get her and she had to move now as they were already through the door.

As the pony fled the room into another corridor, a pair of curious yellow eyes watched from the shadows of an entirely different ship that was more decrepit then the one it had been standing on. It silently faded into the shadows as it watched the pony ran blindly into another corridor. The three dangerous metal mouths still giving chase began eating through the second heavy metal door the pony shut behind herself.

This part of the vessel was much different than the previous; it was well more lit and a little less dilapidated. Fluttershy was fortunate enough to be able to see where she was going in this well lit hallway and her bleeding facial wound had finally staunched thanks to her mane as she galloped for her life. She was busy dodging around the turtle shell shaped sentries as they fell from the ceiling from time to time and then stopped chasing her after a while. They were much faster than the two legged things and luckily needed to stop moving to fire their spiraling energy beams, by that point she was always out of their firing range. All she was trying to do right now was put distance between her and those metal mouths, she had no clue where she was or where she was going and was much more lost then she had ever been. She mentally lamented the fact that every doorway in these corridors looked too much alike, how did anything get around in this place previously?

Checking around for a place to rest Fluttershy opened and darted into a nearby room. She instantly wished that she hadn’t done so. There were thousands of what looked to be dead turtles everywhere or at least the remains of their shells and skeletons lying all over the floor with completely destroyed habitats that looked to have been well kept at one time. She was a bit sick to her stomach at the sight and she hoped that they were in a better place now, because she certainly wasn’t at the moment. She slowly trotted through the room to give her body time to recover, she needed to rest her tired legs, her aching ears and her throbbing face.

Fluttershy was nearly finished catching her breath when the floor started shaking. She wondered what it was now and already knew this vessel she was trapped on was bad news all around, not to mention a complete deathtrap from what she has come across so far. One could only wonder what she did to deserve crossing paths with this place.

Two drills popped up and started spewing the dirt outwards in a wide arc, then out of the ground two roughly round T shaped machines popped up and landed on the floor in front of her solidly. They crushed a few of the shells and scattered the remains of the dead turtles about, this upset Fluttershy a bit. The drills, once they stopped spinning, receded into the top of their heads and were covered by domes. Each one had one large wheel and looked like fully operational versions of the machine Fluttershy had seen earlier that was slashed in half. They made a noise that sounded like attempts at communication; whatever they were trying to communicate was stated in a horribly dull monotone.

Today was just not in the cards for the pony that was backing away towards the door she just came through. When she started her retreat, the lower half of the machines that drilled up from the floor lowered some kind of hatch located above the wheel on the lower half of their bodies. Out of these hatches unfolded a metallic arm that each ended in a pointed glowing tip that reminded Fluttershy of a unicorn’s horn.

Oh look, more energy weapons and they were pointed directly at her. At least Fluttershy was noticing a recurring trend with the design aesthetics of all the more immediately threatening machines she was seeing. They were all rather gray and seemed to always have some easily recognizable offensive capability. The odd one out of all of them was the more alive and intelligent looking black and purple one she just saw in the hangar, even then all this technology seemed less advanced in places in comparison to some of the other things she witnessed before mysteriously ending up here.

Ducking, two red beams shot over her head; Fluttershy turned around and ran for the door. She managed to hit the button to open the door only to feel something wrap around her back right leg and start electrocuting her as if she had ran into a cloud full of lightning, all this concentrated electricity caused her body to spasm and fall to the floor. With a glance back, she saw a relatively thick cable wrapped around her now scorched leg leading to one of the two robots. She struggled to her hooves and roughly pulled her hind hoof out of cable and got into an uneven three legged run avoiding a second lashing cable from wrapping around her other leg launched by the other robot.

The second Fluttershy tried to put pressure on her right hind leg as soon as she got out the door to the dead turtle farm, she felt pain. She forced herself into a full gallop as she now saw seven metal mouths coming at her and the two robots rolled out of the room after her slowly reeling in their cables. She wasn’t going to be able to take much more of this; she opened the nearest door and entered and quickly closed it behind herself.

Tearing up Fluttershy lifted her pegasus wing and reached into her saddlebags, it was time for desperate measures as she couldn’t keep going like this. She pulled out her snack from the bag; a large apple chunk covered in syrup and wrapped in relatively edible leaves and sunk her fangs into it. Her lone pegasus wing quickly started morphing before her eyes into a second bat wing. When she was done sucking the juices out of it she ate the remains of her snack chewing and swallowing it as quickly as she could get away with.

Spreading her two bat wings, Fluttershy started flapping them slowly to lift into the air carefully. She had to stay in control and she’d have to get somewhere fast, her ability to fly would only last for so long with so little an apple boost. She kicked the button to open the door with her good back hoof and then flew forwards before swerving around to go zooming straight towards the opening door. Two red beams lanced into the room below her and the seven metallic maws which were just starting to gnaw at the door fell to the floor on their backs.

The pony wasn’t going to bother with finding out why there were more of the metal maws or how their numbers seem to be multiplying like parasprites. She’d rather not know and had more pressing things to concentrate on at the moment, like controlling her flying speed and momentum.

Fluttershy flew out through the open upper portion of the door past the two machines that folded up their lasers and lashed out at her with their round ended electrocuting cables; she twisted her body between the two of them and sharply turned to head down the corridor. She picked up speed as she flew trying to figure out to get out of this situation; she knew the metallic mouths would never be able to keep up with her now. The laser toting and cable launching robots were a different story; she still managed to outpace them if only for a little while.

Eventually Fluttershy flew into a vast room at the end of the corridor with a large fluctuating wall of energy below her; before she could fly much further she saw the purple and black figure from before pointing at her. It was with a slightly different looking purple and black figure, its head was more bulbous and round and its face was exposed showing what was underneath the mask. Its mouth was a triangular metallic grill, with two glowing diamond shaped yellow eyes above it and two strange tubes sticking out of its enlarged forehead. At the top of its head above the ripped open face portion of the purple mask there was a familiar yellow curved oval symbol with several dots above it.

This new bulbous headed purple and black wearing humanoid machine was leveling what looked to be a laser rifle at Fluttershy, without a second thought it fired a single well aimed shot at her.

The shot struck Fluttershy in the right wing searing a painfully large hole through the membrane. She shrieked in agony as she spiraled out of control towards the floor where she summarily crashed and bounced twice before coming to an unmoving halt. A pair of feet walked towards the fallen angel and the smears of blood she left on the floor.

Author's Note

Yeah, I've given enough hints, it's the (***********) and a classic place at that. More then nine hundred rooms worth of space and it's size tends to vary at times, most likely due to its dimensional transportation instability and in general being a really inefficiently designed super fortress.

Several of the notable machines are seen in the series overall, well maybe not the sentry drones which are from a good and popular 'beat them up' with catchy music.

Mind you the place is in the state it's in now because it's been abandoned for a while. Also one wouldn't expect the purple and black guys to normally hit the broad side of a barn, unless they were a lot smarter such as the bulbous headed one.

35

It had been a long while since Roller Wheel the Wheelie had heard from Fluttershy and he was getting testy just rolling around in small aimless circles exploring this little fast moving place. It had moved faster than anything he had ever seen, even a wheelie’s magic exhaust jets couldn’t get them out of the atmosphere as fast or as far as this thing had. Now he had seen just about everything there was to see aboard this place and wanted to go after the one that patched his tire, if only he could figure out how to get out of the Head Hunter first. Sure he figured out a way to be on-board the ship before it left the planet, but he wasn’t exactly the smartest being in the universe and hadn’t figured out how to do it the other way around.

Being a Wheelie, getting trapped in an enclosed small space would upset it if it was there too long without something to distract it. So it was a little understandable that Mr. Wheel was a little claustrophobic considering his race had a penchant for loving wide open spaces. So he started trying to figure out a way off the Head Hunter. It would be a few hours and some minutes later that he would eventually manage to do so with some help.

Fluttershy was once again quite traumatized; she was physically hurting badly and was as emotionally distraught in the same way. She was actually starting to get used to pain and suffering, the very thought of actually liking it kind of scared her. She had woken up in an enclosed cold metal room that reminded her of a jail cell; she was lying down and was trying hard not to move too much.

The pony was missing a lot of feathers from her right wing; at least the damage wasn’t as bad as it had been when it was a bat wing. Her bleeding face had scabbed over at least, she need to wash her mane again though as it had bits of dried blood staining it. Her right back leg was not only scorched as if it had been struck by lightning, it also felt broken or at the very least sprained horribly meaning she wasn’t going to be standing on it soon. She had a headache forcing her to repeatedly acknowledge the fact that her body was heavily bruised once more.

In any case Fluttershy was thankful that at least she wasn’t dead, but this place was definitely making a good effort on her life. She had to wonder why none of the two legged metal mouths ripped her to bloody chunks yet, much less why she still had her saddlebags strapped to her or why the machines didn’t bother to remove them. In fact, checking her saddlebags Fluttershy noted she still had her glass knife, her water and… why was the Aldebaran memory stone in her saddlebags? She didn’t pack it when she left the Head Hunter; then again it was a magic stone that was said to be impossible to lose which was a useful feature in this moment and time.

In her mental state Fluttershy could really use someone to talk to, sliding the glass knife across her throat to end her suffering was becoming slightly tempting. It was a bit curious that the machines would overlook her glass knife. The knife was a lot sturdier then normal glass; it could feasibly cut through metal and was quite a useful tool. How was she supposed to get back to the Head Hunter when she couldn’t run anymore, much less get the Head Hunter out of this place? She definitely had a lot of problems, closing her eyes she sighed before opening them and looking beyond the bars.

Beyond the bars of the cell the pony was in there were several black and purple figures guarding her. They were all humanoid machines and looked almost identical to each other, all armed with energy weapons. They had a symbol similar to the big headed version of them, except the bent ovals were all red with five dots instead of yellow above them and that was a common symbol the trapped equine had seen a lot of throughout this wrecked and lifeless place. Even if the pony were to somehow miraculously escape the cell, she’d likely be immediately shot. To further compound the trouble, she had no clue where on the vessel she was in relation to her mode of transportation. Even if she miraculously got by these slightly more intelligent looking machines, she’d still have the defenses to deal with.

“I hope Mr. Wheel is okay. Poor Roller he must be so scared, confused and is all alone right now being so far from home… I know the feeling.” Fluttershy shifted her mane so that it stopped covering the left side of her face and cringed as her hair lightly brushed across her most recent physical scar. The physical injuries would heal with time and a little patience, well… as long as she stayed in one piece that is.

The mental scars from everything Fluttershy has seen or will likely see in the future on her journey would never leave her. She still had a lot to live for and so much more to see, she concentrated on wanting someone to talk to and focused her thoughts towards the stone, mental magic shouldn’t be too hard to work right? She was still a magical being after all and the stone was also magic, she had gotten Katrina once and getting anybody at this juncture would brighten up her miserable position at the moment. While she was concentrating she got out her water container and took a nice long drink of the lukewarm water. She wasn’t about to complain about how the water tasted, she was happy to still have even that much and the stone was starting to glow. She wanted a pony to talk to as a preference and tried to focus on that.

“Huh… well that’s odd. Is this your fault Discord?” A familiar feminine voice was heard asking.

“Rarity…” Fluttershy quietly muttered was just happy to even hear her voice, she was equally happy to hear that Discord was there.

“Oh no it’s not me, well at least this time it isn’t. Considering what I just heard I need to look into something out there.” Discord was clearly amused by whatever it was he was seeing. “Fluttershy is in a bit of pickle it would seem. I can only imagine the intergalactic phone bill for this collect call to get you on your horn. Hello Fluttershy, can you hear me now?”

“Um… yes, I can hear you. If it’s not too much for me to ask, what is exactly happening with Rarity?” Fluttershy had a small smile on her face it sounded like Discord and Rarity were doing something together.

“Well we were having a smashing tea party, quite literally since you know I like the taste of freshly broken porcelain chips and I must say Rarity does have a good taste in tea sets. Hey don’t frown like that Fluttershy my dear, I always reimburse her for it in the very least. Though I probably should reimburse her for the toilet I ate as well, sorry to say that certainly caused a bit of trouble.” Discord smiled as he held Rarity’s glowing horn in his claws up to his ear and was talking into it like a phone while he held his other paw over his eyes and stared out at the sunny sky. He was keeping the slightly peeved Rarity away with one of his feet and she grew angrier at the fact that toilet thing was his fault; she had thought the Cutie Mark Crusaders caused that one and Discord was only correcting her just now. “Yes things were going just splendid until you got her all horny. Hold on, I’ll put the horn back on her.”

“You can see me?” Fluttershy asked, a little surprised and she looked around.

“Well I can’t darling, but Discord can. The poor dear has been quite worried and he checks on you regularly to see if you’re feeling okay. He’s already explained to us why leading you back home by sight isn’t exactly a great idea, something about the curvature of space and time getting all twisted so he’s not exactly looking directly at you. I wouldn’t even begin to understand what he’s talking about, but I assure you it’s every bit as complicated as his chaos theory explanation was. Half of which ruined my diet because he kept going on about doughnuts the entire time and why we just can’t talk you all the way back home through him.” Rarity glared faintly at Discord who gave her a goofy grin, she sighed and bit into a chocolate cream filled doughnut. With so many friends who loved sugary treats like this, watching her weight was quite difficult. “How are you feeling darling?”

“Why ask her my favorite marshmallow? I can show you how she’s doing, I’ve done it once before remember. Just a word of warning though, you’re not going to like what you will see. Oh and Fluttershy you might want to splint or bind that leg, it looks to be heavily fractured and I wouldn’t want my favorite butterfly flapping her wings around upsetting a broken leg. At least it’s not broken completely, but it’s very well close to doing it should you too much pressure on it.” No longer was Discord amused as his tone dropped, he wasn’t happy that Fluttershy was injured and it was obvious. “Do be a dear and tell me if you need anything, like an idea of how to get back to your little friend and the ship he’s still on. I can guide you only so far though, once you’re in space again all bets are off. Speaking of which, Rarity about that bet we had on Rainbow Dash, would you mind if I take a rain check on it?”

“I won that fair and square Discord and you know it, so stop holding a check that’s raining above my head! Also can you please fix my mane while you’re at it?” Rarity didn’t seem so angry if her tone was anything to go by, she was almost as amused that Discord could be so playful and friendly. It was nice for Fluttershy to hear her friends were getting along so well. With a snap Rarity was no longer wet and back to normal. “Thank you.”

“I’d rather you tell me what the vessel I’m on looks like and can you look for a way to make the vessel go away or tell me what’s going on around me?” Fluttershy definitely needed to bind or splint her hind leg until she could get back to the maximum tomato chunks back aboard the Head Hunter, but she was worried that she might be followed by one of those metal mouths on legs and if the ship was damage then she’d lose all hope of getting around on her own.

“Hold on dear, Discord is showing me now… my word, that looks so bizarre and the decor is simply horrid. It looks like something I’d expect Discord would create, if I didn’t know that he had very little power beyond our world and that he tends to not break his toys as badly as the vessel you are on looks to be.” What Rarity followed with was the description of a large horribly ripped up large spherical vessel. It had two large mangled tank treads, a giant flattened eyeball at the top and several shredded extensions poking out and about in places. The odd thing about it was that it was floating through space while glowing slightly.

“Hmm… what have we here… now there’s something incredibly chaotic and inviting. Apparently there’s a chaotic field of energy on the vessel that is entangling it somehow, you’ll have to find some way to knock that out ‘safely’ while you’re on-board your ship. I’d imagine it’d be bad if you weren’t and got exposed to the great vacuum cleaner.” Discord hummed to himself slightly and his eyes roamed all over the vessel. “It seems to be the only thing holding that giant sphere together aside from that would be the energy source linked to the warped field. Some infighting seems to be going on around you, apparently there’s a giant monstrous two legged thing taking up the lower portions of the ship and it’s recycling smaller versions of itself by eating its dead and my what sharp teeth those metal crunchers have. The upper portions of the ship are being guarded by more of those gangly looking fellows; they all look exactly like the ones that are guarding your cell. Apparently they are at war with the toothy little biters. At least that’s what I’m able to infer by the head honcho I’m seeing, his head is way too fat for his mask. Sorry for mentioning the F word around you my marshmallow, I know how touchy you are about your chocolate doughnut lust and you could use some graham crackers, but I will talk of it no smore. Aside from that everything else looks like it’s a neutral party.”

“You mean the same neutral party when it comes to assaulting me that is… those metal maw things were trying to kill me. I have no idea why these tall two legged machine have captured me, I’m really too scared to think about what they’ll do to me at the moment and it can only be a bad thing. They are the reason why my wing is so damaged.” Fluttershy sighed and took on a determined look; she pulled out her glass knife from her saddlebags. She wasn’t going to sit around waiting to be rescued; she gathered all of her mane into one hoof, while holding her knife in her other. “Can you see my ship, how’s Mr. Wheel doing Discord?”

“Darling what are you doing with that knife, why are you holding it to your mane like that? Oh please don’t tell me. Oh no, not your beautiful mane dear. Please, anything but that kind of travesty!” Rarity cried out as Fluttershy ripped the knife in a sweeping arc cleanly through her mane leaving it a lot shorter than it had been when she had previously lopped of a small chunk to wrap her knifes handle.

Fluttershy immediately got to work with binding her leg with her chopped off hair, which she started wrapping around her right hind leg in several separate tightly wound bands. If Rarity could weave a basket with her bare hooves then Fluttershy could bind her leg with her hair. She had to shift into a sitting position which hurt quite a bit, but she worked through the pain and tightly wrapped her leg. She used some of the excess hair and wrapped it around her right wing, it might not actually have helped any but it still felt nice.

“Sorry Rarity, I really am, but I can’t afford to look pretty at the moment and I really need my ability to walk.” Her mane now barely hung below her cheeks and she was crying, even if her voice was wavering she still spoke solidly. At least she didn’t need to wash out as much blood now. “I might end up having to do this to my tail later, I-I hope you can understand that there are things I may need to do to survive. Just please don’t stop being my friend Rarity.”

“You’re little round friend is okay for most part, he looks to be having cabin fever though, I should probably get my talking frog puppet out but I doubt that would help right now. The next time you find a planet you might want to let him out for a bit Fluttershy.” There was a pained look in Discords eyes, but he didn’t say anything about the sudden haircut his friend just gave herself. It would be bad form for him to crack a joke about the haircut still being two bits without needing to shave. His dear friend Fluttershy just did something he figured was very much traumatic to her and she did it like the little trooper she was. It was amazing how strong Fluttershy was being at the moment. She was always such a levelheaded little sweetheart and it was breaking his chaotic little heart to see her like this and what she had to do. “You’re one floor 'shy' of the top and your ship is five floors down. If you can get out of the cell, exit the cell block and go through the fourth door on the left, I think you’ll find something to your liking.”

“Why would I ever stop being your friend Fluttershy, you wound me with such an accusation that I could do such a thing. Do what you must darling, just please come back to us in one piece okay? It’s just hair after all, even if it was your crowning glory and so beautiful… it’ll grow back.” Rarity tilted her head at the images she was receiving from Discords sight. “It doesn’t look that bad from Discords view, just… just don’t ever get used to having short hair dear. I don’t think it suits you too much, even if you did need a good trimming.”

“Thank you Rarity… I can only hope to be back before it grows out again, then maybe you can help me with keeping it clean and nice as it grows back.” Fluttershy tucked the Memory stone into the crook of her bat wing and struggled to stand; she slumped to the floor. Gritting her teeth, she stood up fully and forced her damaged hind leg to take the weight and limped her way up the bars. Running was no longer an option; she could take the pain as she has been in this state several times before and she wasn’t about to give up now. Coming close to starving to death felt worse than this. Discord said something about the fourth room on the left once she got out of the cell block. “Tell me one thing Discord; can these machines feel any pain at all?”

“No, I doubt they’d feel much of anything really. They don’t have souls and are just hard lifeless things; they’re just no fun at all if you ask me, life is truly chaotic. If they did feel pain then they would have had souls in them by this point… huh, how did I not notice that before?” Whispering that last part out Discord was intrigued about a strange phenomenon taking place around Fluttershy. He was seeing the spirits of hundreds of dead turtles, from babies to the few adults there were all gathering around Fluttershy flowing throughout her body and the stone she held in her left wing. Their spirits seemed to have been trapped in that place for quite some time.

“Even now, your way with animals never ceases to amaze Fluttershy…” This was something that only Rarity would hear Discord mumble as she too was witness to the little turtle spirits. They watched as the little spirits were collectively pushing Fluttershy forward.

Rarity was quite speechless at the sight of all the little adorable ghosts infusing Fluttershy with what little strength they could give her and they all looked to be dying. Or were they just finally passing on after having been trapped for so long in a hellish looking place full of deadly machines? Rarity would like to think it was the second option and not the first, because the universe would be a sad place to live if these spirits weren’t ever truly given their final proper rest.

Fluttershy slowly but surely made it to the bars in a stumbling limp, once she was close enough she hit the bars with the glass knife to see if she could even use it to damage them. She was a little more than surprised to see the bars spark wildly with energy and melted slightly at the point of impact. None of the purple and black clad machines guarding her seemed to be paying attention to her at all. She lashed out with the knife again only a little higher, it went completely through several metal bars that after sparking for a bit before stopping completely. It befuddled the pony as to how she did that. A few small dead baby turtle spirits faded completely from existence coming from what were once the electrified bars to her cell. With another swing the bars fell outwards with a loud series of clangs, immediately Fluttershy was being fired upon and she clenched her eyes shut.

After a moment of hearing energy burn through the air, Fluttershy opened one eye and looked at all the lasers flying by her. She cautiously walked forward and every single laser aimed in her general direction was missing, either the black and purple figures didn’t have very good aim at all or something really weird was going on here. She slowly limped by all six of the bipedal humanoid machines. They all ended up shooting each other and exploded violently, Fluttershy was starting to believe everything here did that. Not one bit of shrapnel struck Fluttershy leaving her even more confused, if she could see what Rarity and Discord were seeing she would be more awed and reverent of what was going on around her.

The numbers of the protective spirit turtles flowing around her were diminishing rapidly, the miracles that they could perform for the one who cried were becoming weaker as she went along and soon wouldn’t be able to protect her at all as she exited the cell block no worse than when she entered. They weren’t the ones to protect Fluttershy from the lasers; the tall gangly humanoid machines were just that bad at aiming their energy weapons that even a slow moving target would outmaneuver them if they weren’t being directly controlled by a higher intelligence.

Elsewhere on the vessel, Roller Wheel was getting a little stir crazy from being trapped aboard the Head Hunter until he had heard a weird noise. Revving excitedly he looked around hopeful that it was a certain pony coming back, only it wasn’t a pony. He saw a little green thing with four flippers slowly floating a lazy circle in the air as if it were swimming, he growled at this figure and jumped at it a few times and after a few seconds of not scaring it away he was curious. Only when he calmed down did it fade from existence.

Suddenly Mr. Wheel found himself moving up to the top of the ship and he looked around warily, he saw a different green thing floating a lazy circle at the door way and gave chase as it flew away from him.

Author's Note

Welcome to the Technodrome news hour, yes Fluttershy is in fact currently on the still 'barely' operational destroyed Technodrome from the 80's cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Also Fluttershy gave a new meaning to the words 'Turtle Power', animals no matter their given form will always like the spirit of kindness.

Foot soldiers- the purple and black garbed robots, not exactly the best shots in the world and were programmed with the lessons from the Stormtrooper Academy alongside being programmed with Cobra and GI Joe battle simulations. They have problems hitting at least five feet tall bright green turtles in broad daylight, they are definitely going to have a problem hitting Fluttershy who is a smaller target.

Alpha-one- A special foot soldier with an upgraded AI matrix, his head became bulbous and he gained a distaste for organic beings as well as a huge increase in his intelligence. This one foot soldier led a rather successful revolt against the Shredder and Krang that could have ended their lives. He was never exactly destroyed, he was only sent away to never be heard from again. While he doesn't have the programming to kill directly, he definitely has the wherewithal to injure painfully.

Mouser- Two legged chicken to turkey sized robot that could eat through rock and metal, they were made to be pest control and completely relentless hunters. A factory was made in the Technodrome's bowels to pump out these little monstrosities in droves. They still did a lot of damage despite their general size and lightweight construction. Considering their bite strengths were stronger then a bear trap they were definitely dangerous in the lethal sense.

Big mouser- A mobile mouser factory and a giant working mouser itself, it is a good thing these things couldn't be mass produced because they could produce swarms of mousers real fast.

Roadkill Rodney- The one wheeled slightly cylindrical shaped robots that launched electrocuting cables, their quick launch cables are very damaging. They also come with a laser beam projector that unfolds and fires from their lower half. They aren't seen in the 80's cartoon series after the first two episodes.

Sentry Drones- These four legged machines tended to appear in several versions of mutant turtles beat em ups, they generally came in waves of three or four that dropped from the ceiling and are most memorable on the 'Star Base' level from Turtles In Time.

Technodrome- It was a large super fortress, one that was highly inefficient in its power usage. It was so badly energy inefficient that at any given time it was ever seen, it was never exactly working at an optimal level of full constant power and at one time it was pedal powered to get it to do anything.

Despite never running on a full charge for long periods of time it still had many features, some of which were entirely frivolous. Of its most interesting abilities, it was immune to being submerged in lava, it could travel underground at incredible speeds, the entire thing could lift and move itself in the air with an anti gravity device and its most often used feature was that it could teleport across dimensions, time and space. It had missiles, forces fields, limited range high powered energy projectile cannons, weapons manufacturing capability of an entire country stuffed into and it still had enough room for corridors that were comfortably wide.

Of the frivolous additions to the Technodrome, Below are three such mentions I've used already.

Beebop and Rocksteady's room. It had a game console and old style television (It was destroyed causing the foot soldier revolt led by Alpha-one, I can't remember if they ever got another one), a shower, a very sturdy toilet that could take the weight of a very heavy rhinoceros mutant and bunk beds built with two heavyset mutants in mind.

A swimming pool. What purpose does a swimming pool have in a war machine? It's frivolous in the extreme given there are so few around to enjoy it on the super fortress. It takes up space that could have been use for extra extra backup generators, something the fortress could have really used.

A turtle farm. A portion of the Technodrome's power supply was entirely geared to the raising of and then subsequent slaughter of turtles in the thousands. Quite a lot of them were really young turtles barely a few days old, all being made into soup. When the Technodrome was destroyed, did no one wonder what became of all those turtles?

Despite its failings the Technodrome was one really hard to stop fortress.

36

Fluttershy exited the sectioned off cell block, not a ceiling clinging machine to be seen except down the corridor at about twenty doors. The hallway was littered with scorch marks from energy weapons. She only needed to count off four doors on her left as she limped.

If those cable tossing robots ever got a cable around her neck… Fluttershy shuddered as her back right leg was damaged enough in the few seconds that she had been electrocuted. She was already mourning the loss of a large chunk of her mane; just because she could heal the damage done to her body later didn’t mean it didn’t hurt a lot right now. If only she had the foresight to pack a maximum tomato chunk, she already assumed she was going to feel like a living callus after all this.

She reared up and smacked the button on the doorway and entered, the upper floors of the place she was in were at least recently repaired or had less damage than the lower portions of the vessel. Some of the damage Fluttershy saw was likely being caused by the two legged metal maws; she had to wonder how this place ended up like this with all the killer robots. Who had previously lived here?

The room Discord directed Fluttershy to check out did not look to be in disrepair and was quite frankly more awe inspiring then the swimming pool or the two person bedroom a few floors down. It was like there was sunlight in the room, well at least the lamp lighting the entire room gave off muted ultraviolet rays like a sun.

Closing her eyes Fluttershy gave a wistful smile at the warmth of the lamplight, the sound of trickling water could be heard in this room slowly flowing throughout and there were bonsai tree’s slightly larger than one would normally see. It was a very nice room and the smell in the air almost made her forget she was trapped in a dangerous place for a moment.

Fluttershy inhaled through her nostrils again as she noticed an unmistakable familiar smell, it was almost the same as a smell back home if only slightly alien. Given where it was growing, Fluttershy would forgive it for its slightly odd small variation in scent alone. Moving closer to a collection of smaller plants around the long since unattended bonsai plants, taking a huge whiff Fluttershy came to a conclusion that Discord likely thought this would help her calm her nerves for the bumpy road ahead.

Tea leaves, oh if only Fluttershy had a way to boil water at the moment. She wouldn’t say no to gathering seeds and quite a few leaves for later soothing drinks, these plants looked to have been perfectly pest free and that was once again understandable given their current location.

“Discord…” Stopping because she didn’t know what to say, Fluttershy just pulled out her surprisingly undamaged knife to start gathering some of these rather unique resources to use for later, she also refilled her water container from the small streams that were constantly being pumped into the room from somewhere. The bonsai trees weren’t big enough to help with creating a good splint for her leg so she left them alone.

“I figured it would be a pleasure my dear little wounded butterfly.” Discord and Rarity were still on the horn watching through the chaos lord’s vision as the shy pony collected a few recognizable plants known for their herbal uses. “Because the situation you’re in is rather bleak to say the least, and very upsetting.”

“I really don’t like breaking things, but I have little choice in the matter. My choices are to do something to break that chaotic energy field or the power source to that field.” Fluttershy had a moment of reprieve in this room, but she couldn’t stay in the bonsai garden forever even if it was a really nice garden. She did not like being trapped on a generally spherical place surrounded by machines intent on ending her life; she wasn’t safe anywhere she went while she was here. “Neither one sounds like a good option. I don’t even entirely understand what I’m exactly trying to accomplish or what will happen when I finally do accomplish it.”

“Well Fluttershy, you’re not the only one there trapped in that place. Your friend is also there with you and you are kind of responsible for his life and he is an animal is he not?” Rarity questioned before she took a sip of tea. She was trying not to let her nerves get the best of her with worries about her friend’s safety, especially with all those dangerous machinations moving about that place. “What was your special talent again dear?”

“I know what you’re trying to say to me Rarity, but I’m not exactly in a good position here and I don’t even know where to start.” If only Fluttershy could just curl up into a ball and have a good long cry. She couldn’t afford to because she needed to be proactive. “How am I supposed to break them? What do I break them with and in what way? Discord can lead me to the chaos field or the power source easily enough, but when I get there then what? It’s still dangerous and I really don’t think the Head Hunter would survive this place exploding even if I could get to it.”

“Wherever there is or was life, there is chaos Fluttershy. There are a vast number of options before you; you just have to find them.” Putting a claw to his scraggly little beard Discord gave it some thought. “My advice would be, do some thinking outside the box. Do something random!”

“Discord, that’s the same advice you give every pony.” Rarity stated dryly from her spot on a picnic blankets on a planet far away and safe from the situation her friend was in. “Although I do admit at times when making a dress it does have some merit.”

“Um, well… that is… okay.” Painstakingly standing up from her resting spot in the warm sun lamp grown garden, Fluttershy had an idea as to what she would do and it would be a little awkward. She’d have to go looking for one of those humanoid figures. She gave one last look around this nice relaxing place and then limped off to do the one thing not many ponies would expect of her, she was going on the offensive!

A shy, little, meek, rather repeatedly injured and traumatized pony was going to raise a stink and start putting up a huge fight. It’s something Fluttershy would rather not do, but it was her best option to just destroy all the lifeless machines which would give her plenty of time to figure a way off this place. Now how was she going to find one of those humanoid figures by itself? She needed to take something from one of them without it exploding violently; just like every single other machine here has done when they are heavily damaged. It was a rather common feature that she was beginning to greatly dislike about them.

Fluttershy decided to unleash her more assertive side, just a tiny smidgen, enough so that she’d be capable of being somewhat violent to non living entities. This is why she was now cowering in a cloud hanging four feet above the floor outside the door to the bonsai garden room trying to shore up some confidence. All she had to do was sit there waiting for some humanoid machines to pass by beneath her cloud, otherwise she was comparing corridor and vent sizes to the previous vessels she’s been on to keep herself entertained while she waited.

“Look alive, two gaunt masked pinheads are coming towards your little cloud nine Fluttershy.” It was a not so amused Discord announcing this for her sake. “Whatever you’re planning, your cloud better have some silver lining it.”

“I’ll be okay Discord, or at least I think I will be eventually.” Waiting patiently, Fluttershy shifted her sitting position on the cloud and waited with her glass knife held in her left hoof. Trying to balance on two hooves while using a knife trying not to put too much pressure on her back right leg would have been difficult, thanks to Rainbow Dash she knew a thing or two about how to use clouds as a tactical advantage when she couldn’t fly otherwise. “Could you tell Rainbow Dash thanks again for teaching me how to make clouds when we were younger? It’s been a real big help and I forgot to the last time I saw her.”

“I’ll be sure to darling, even if Discord is going to be busy later this evening with rearranging all of Twilight’s books while she isn’t looking. Since you’re in trouble I doubt he will put too much effort into it and would rather stick to watching you.” Rarity didn’t care what Discord planned to do, things haven’t been nearly as exciting without Fluttershy around and they all missed her dearly. “You may stop a lord of chaos from hurting others, but you can’t stop him from being who he is. Who am I to tell him not to be himself? I’d be a hypocrite then dear.”

Fluttershy giggled wanly and then her nerves came back in full force at the two purple and black figures running down the corridor. They weren’t paying any attention to her little cloud; obviously they didn’t have the same abilities as those little metal maws seemed to with being able to find her anywhere she went. At least that was what she could infer by their ignorance of the visibly unnatural floating cloud as they got closer.

Fluttershy felt like yelling something about cows when she made her move and for some odd reason things smelled like turtles for a second. She ignored both these random ideas and quickly acted to the best of her ability when the first of the two machines passed right by her position.

The second passing machine stopped when a flash of yellow from what was assumed a normal atmospheric phenomenon appeared in front of it snatching the rifle out of its hands. It promptly exploded outwards seconds later when the knife that was jammed into its head was swiftly pulled free, its parts thankfully didn’t explode upward into the cloud.

The other humanoid machine turned around looking for the disturbance that just destroyed its fellow machine pointing the rifle it had in that general direction. It hadn’t seen the intruder or the reason why its fellow machine had just terminated all of the sudden. The tip of a rifle poked its way out of the cloud, not being able to compute the idea of a cloud being able to wield a rifle; it promptly froze up at the impossibility of weather phenomenon suddenly wielding a rifle. Without input from the leader it didn’t know how to act in this situation.

Five shots were fired from the cloud, the first two going wide striking the floor creating fresh scorch marks, the third struck it in the left shoulder making it stumble back a bit. The fourth shot went between its left arm and torso. The last shot blew its head off in what would be a rather lucky shot on the part of Fluttershy who was still getting used to holding the middle of the weapon in her left hoof to adjust her aim and pulling the trigger with the end of her bat wing.

The machine felt to the floor with a smoking stump for a neck and like everything else tended to do in this place, it exploded. Fluttershy was getting tired of her ears ringing from all the explosions. She was sure Rainbow Dash might have appreciated the adrenaline and action better; because she personally didn’t have a taste for what she just did. Furthermore Fluttershy now had a bit of a problem, she had to use her left wing to steer the cloud and it was now also needed to even fire the weapon she went through the trouble of confiscating.

Slinging the energy rifle over onto her back while tightening the strap, Fluttershy sighed as she made her way for the floor with her hooves trembling. She could aim and fire the rifle with her wing alone given it had no recoil and the strap would prevent her from accidentally dropping it, but if she wanted more accurate shots she’d have to use her front left hoof to steady her aim.

“You know I’m not exactly surprised to see you do that Fluttershy. I must admit that you certainly took care of those nasty brutes, shooting a lady then imprisoning her without medical help. Why the nerve of those heartless machines for what they made you do to your mane!” Sighing as she caused the shy pony to jump in fright, Rarity just shook her head in disbelief at Fluttershy given what she had managed to do a few seconds ago. “We’re still here for you darling, though now what are you going to do?”

“I guess I’ll find a power source and do something to it, I wouldn’t know the first thing about handling a chaotic energy field. Discord, where’s the nearest elevator shaft?” Fluttershy slowly trudged down the corridor and stopped to blast the sentry drones on the ceiling. One was destroyed while it was still on the ceiling; two more went after they fell to the floor and were sprouting their legs and head. The last one managed to get its spiraling shot off, but Fluttershy ducked that and a few shots from her rifle put it out of commission. The laser rifle was thankfully not as loud as a bullet spewing weapon would be and it wasn’t overly cumbersome, just a tad heavy given all its main components were metallic judging by the silver coloring of the rifle.

“Just a bit further down the corridor on your right, keep going and I’ll tell you before you pass ‘GO’ to collect your two hundred bits. By the way Rarity I’m calling the horseshoe.” It sounded like Discord was preparing to play a board game. “No one is going to be as lucky as me in a game of chance.”

“OH OH, can I join in, I call the bowler hat!” Pinkie Pork Pie said arriving on the scene. “Wow Fluttershy, what happened to your pretty mane? My back just went all achy, you might want to duck!”

Fluttershy listened to Pinkie immediately and the humanoid figure that managed to sneak up on her had narrowly missed slicing off her head with a sword. Fluttershy spun around to fire several shots into its chest without hesitation. It was knocked onto its back where it did what every other machine here did when heavily damaged. That had been a bit too close for comfort, how did that thing even sneak up on her?

“Wow that thing was so ninja! It was awesome… well, except for the part where it tried to kill you Fluttershy.” Rainbow was curious as to what Discord, Pinkie Pie and Rarity were all doing on a blanket and found them watching Fluttershy on a magical screen. At least her friends were watching, Discord was just staring off into space. “What is that thing? It looks like a ray gun; please tell me that’s a ray gun! All those comics about aliens were right! Hey, did you do something with your mane?”

“Are we going to have a Fluttershy survived dying party?!” Gleefully asked Pinkie as she waved her hoof at Rainbow to come join them on the blanket where a tea set once was. Now there was plenty of empty space and Discord was picking at his teeth with a toothpick for a few seconds before eating it too.

“It’s a little early to be celebrating Pinkie; she’s still in grave danger.” At least Rarity was sticking to the severity of the situation Fluttershy was now in.

Fluttershy sighed; her friends would always be her friends. Even if they were currently being distracting, especially when there was an injured and limping mare that almost died seconds ago because of them. She already forgave them for it before it even became a problem. If Pinkie hadn’t warned her about that thing, that would have been it. She shuddered while rubbing at the back of her neck in a sad manner, just reminding herself of the shortened mane.

“Can everyone please be quiet?” Thankfully for Fluttershy her, friends heard her plea and were immediately quiet. Even in the upper parts of this spherical vessel, it was hard to tell from inside that it was round at all. Fluttershy’s ears twitched back and forth as she waited for Discord to tell her where the elevator is as she slowly trudged forward.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news… hmm the elements of chaos, element of bad news.” Discord chuckled amusedly at the thought of having something similar to the elements of harmony, but only to keep things interesting. “Anyway, you got some of those tall purple boogers about to come sneezing their way down the corridor for you and there are a lot of them. I advise picking up the pace as you’re almost there; the elevator is three doors down.”

Fluttershy didn’t manage to get far when twelve humanoid figures came at her firing deadly beams of energy everywhere. Though these machines were relatively highly inaccurate, the pure quantity of the shots that were being fired was more than making up for it.

Opening a nearby room to her right Fluttershy ducked out the way of a wall of suppressing fire. She leaned out of the doorway and fired ten shots. She wasn’t doing as well as she was before with hitting anything more than a single glancing blow on the leg of one of the twelve shooters leaving some wires exposed. Apparently panicking and getting pinned down in a room didn’t help her aim any; she ducked out of the doorway and took a deep breath. Leaning back out four of the tall machines had charged forward firing their rifles only to get taken out within the next twenty shots Fluttershy fired before ducking back into the room.

Fluttershy pulled the memory stone from her wing and stuffed it away in her saddlebags; she followed this action by slowly walked out into the middle of the corridor while returning fire. While the remaining robots weren’t very good shots, they had at least grazed Fluttershy a few times as she carefully moved forward trying to avoid being hit. A few doors down from her the machines had taken cover and were almost constantly shooting at her.

A few shots that managed to graze Fluttershy just scorched a bit of her fur; the worst was when she lost a bit of fluff from the tip of her left ear by the time she reached the elevator door. Fluttershy stopped firing and stood up on her hind legs and hit the button to summon the lift while the walls around her were being randomly scorched with laser fire. She kept moving left to right while returning fire a bit more accurately then what she was receiving while she was desperately awaiting the elevator, being a smaller target helped a lot even if she was too slow to really dodge effectively.

The door to the elevator opened and Fluttershy had only taken down one more of those humanoid machines in that time. She tried to take a step backwards into the open doorway and noticed a glaring problem that stopped her from doing so. The platform for this elevator was completely missing.

Sure the parts that moved the platform up and down were still there, otherwise it was nothing but a vast black void leading downwards and Fluttershy was slightly disheartened to learn of this fact. She snapped her head back in time to see a red beam pass by her eyes; she snapped off a shot and nailed the hip of the machine that had shot at her. It had exploded and damaged another one which lost its rifle in the explosion. Having lost its rifle to shoot with, the freshly disarmed machine with a damaged leg looked at the rifle Fluttershy held and charged her even while its five armed compatriots were still firing.

The bipedal machine charging Fluttershy was being struck by multiple beams of energy; it managed to get surprisingly close to Fluttershy before it exploded at almost point blank range. This launched the poor mare into the shaft behind her where she bounced off the walls several times. All of her friends held their breaths as they watched Fluttershy plummet into the open void, after a few second the three watching ponies screamed out her name fearing for her life.

Fluttershy felt a sharp blow to her head and back after she got caught up in the blast and everything was spiraling out of control, she could hear the air whistling by her ears. It didn’t take her long to figure out she was falling down the shaft. What could she do? Her head was swimming at the moment and she could vaguely make out the sound of her friends screaming her name. She needed something, something that wouldn’t kill her like the sudden stop at the bottom would. A cloud, she needed to make a cloud!

Being completely dizzy, Fluttershy didn’t know which way was up and after ten seconds she managed to orient herself into a stable upright falling position which wasn’t easy in the darkness of the shaft. She shook her head and focused, she managed to get out the water container and pry the lid off. Tightly holding onto the container in her right hoof which was swiftly losing water, Fluttershy slung the water in it downwards as hard as she could and held her left hoof below her with her eyes clenched shut in a slight prayer to any deity that would listen.

The pony felt a cloud envelope her and thought it would slow her fall towards the light at the end of the tunnel. It was only five seconds later that her world erupted in agonizing pain when something punctured her chest.

Author's Note

~Super mutant magic mare. Cutest hero with two fangs, apple powered!~

37

It was an unfortunate circumstance for Fluttershy that she didn’t immediately black out from suddenly being impaled. It was also unfortunate that the shock alone didn’t kill her and thus she was still alive to continue feeling pain in its ‘so many wonders’. She was a tough little pony and currently there were no words to describe how much pain she was actually in at the moment. Her hind right leg creaked a bit when she tried to move it, it hurt no less or more then it previously had which was a good thing as it was still pushing against a thick layer of cloud as she tried to move it.

At least the cloud Fluttershy had created slowed her down enough to survive the fall, but she was still going fast enough to get impaled on something. She should probably feel more panicked then she already did about the blood loss and possible internal bleeding, as her world was a colorful cornucopia of pain and suffering at the moment.

Fluttershy opened her eyes in the dim lighting and saw that she was surrounded by a cloud that had become slightly red in color. She idly made a mental note that she could possibly create clouds out of her own blood if there was no water around to use, though it was a horrific thought that she’d even need to do something like that at all.

Slowly Fluttershy put her hooves to the metallic flooring beneath the cloud and pushed her body up, quickly prying her body off the jutting sharp metallic thing that had most likely just grievously injured her. She was being surprisingly tough about it, because she didn’t scream at all as the blade of metal slid out of her flesh with a sickening sound. The cloud that had slowed her fall lifted upwards slightly and she managed to lift the front half of her body enough to look down at her chest with a dull and dazed frown on her face. It was a rather large wound, somewhat deep and to say that it hurt would be understating how Fluttershy truly felt at the moment.

After said moment, the pony decided to get her bearings as she moved herself out of the way of the circle of pointy metal spikes she was hovering above by kicking her left rear hoof out. Hitting the back wall of the elevator her cloud floated towards the open doorway, turning her head to look behind her she could see what she had been impaled on. It was the missing platform, there was a large hole in it and said hole looked to have been ripped open from below. This would explain why it didn’t show up and the spiky bits of metal pointing upwards were likely caused by the metal maws, she stared forlornly at the metal spike halfway drenched in her blood.

Fluttershy pulled out a few tea leaves and put them over her wound then wrapped her injured somewhat feathered wing over it to hold them in place. Sure it may not help a lot, but it was better than nothing. She pressed her right wing tightly over her chest to staunch the bleeding and would continue to hold it there despite the extra pain it caused her to move it.

Taking a quick look into her inventory, the injured equine still had everything in good order. Her glass knife was still undamaged; the energy rifle was still strapped to her and looked to be okay. She was highly thankful for that after all the trouble she went to get the rifle in the first place. The rifle looked to be pretty durable, except it was not likely to survive an explosion because all the others sure hadn’t when their usual wielders blew up. Her water container on the other hoof barely had even an ounce of water left in it considering she just had expended a lot of that in the fall; she would need to squeeze the cloud out before she moved onwards. Speaking of water container she saw the lid lying on the floor nearby and would pick it up once she was ready to leave.

“How bad…” Her voice being a pained rasp to it, Fluttershy gagged slightly and started coughing into her left hoof.

“You’re a lucky one; in a way that is, it didn’t completely perforate your left lung. It was however scratched and well… you can clearly see for yourself right now.” Discord winced at the sight of Fluttershy coughing up blood into her hoof; all of their other friends were still slightly catatonic from watching Fluttershy get violently impaled on the ripped up platform at the bottom of the shaft. At the moment he was the only one with any cognitive thoughts at what used to be a tea party. “My dear I wouldn’t stick around there too long or make too much noise if I were you, those lower portions are positively crawling with those nasty mouthy customers. They really deserve a snooty waiter to spoil their appetite; in fact, deny them service on the principle that they’d eat you. Do try to be careful Fluttershy, you’ve come this far.”

The corridor Fluttershy was in only had the one dim light and the rest of it was dark, but the echo sight she was seeing showed her a lot more damage than what she had seen previously and she could even hear the slight groaning sound of stressed metal. There were exposed wires and sharp bits of metal everywhere and the walls looked to have been chewed on, exploded, attacked and just in general wrecked. She could even see the holes in them, holes about the size of those nasty little mechanical monsters and she recalled Discord saying that they had run of the lower portions of this vessel.

Clutching protectively at the rifle with her left hoof while Fluttershy spat up some more blood, then stepped off the cloud to the floor where she gathered what little water she could from it. What was left was a ball of cloud made out of her blood; she lazily tossed it away towards the broken platform where it splattered on the floor. She picked up and put the cap back on her water container before stowing it away in her right side saddlebag, she was ready to go.

It took a moment for Fluttershy to respond to Discord. She did so with a weak giggle before coughing up a bit more blood onto the floor, she whimpered for a bit after that. At least she was standing despite the metal to the face, nearly broken fractured hind right leg, shot right wing, scratched lung, internal bleeding, chest wound covered with said shot wing and some leaves being the only thing on hoof that could really cover it. On top of all still being a twisted magically mutated and mental wreck that was slightly addicted to the taste of apples, at least she lost the uncontrolled cravings thanks to the first taste of a magical tomato.

It was getting to the point that Fluttershy wondered where she was getting her strength to remain standing from. She smiled slightly, when pushed into a corner a mouse would find the strength to beat up a cat or die trying. If there was one thing Fluttershy knew, it was that she was definitely mousy and even she could put up something resembling a proportional struggle to that kind of situation. Her will to live was probably the one thing keeping her together at the moment, she tried to psyche herself up that she still had good fortune going for her. She still had three fully functional uninjured legs, she had long range weapon to avoid getting caught up in any more explosions, her glass knife was proving to still be incredibly useful thanks to the rare unknown material it was made of and she was still breathing and moving despite how much it hurt to do so.

“It’ll be okay Discord; please… give me… a direction… to move in.” Fluttershy whispered slightly while trying to get a good lung full of air, the air down here was stale. This was not a good thing for her damaged lung and it made it hard for her to breathe for a moment. There was nothing left to it, Fluttershy was scared for her life and she was now paling from all the blood loss.

“To your left is a nearby vast room with a bunch of strange objects, other than that both directions lead to the same things. There are several elevators, a few empty rooms along with some odds and ends some of which are more chewed up than others, plus inclines in either direction that spiral their way all the way up to the top of the vessel connecting to all the corridors. The entrance to the power source is up two floors, but in your condition it’s going to be quite the walk to even reach an elevator.” It made Discord a bit angry that his powers couldn’t just pluck Fluttershy out there to bring her all the way back to Equus so he could hug her and restore her to normal with the flick of his chaotic powers.

Discord felt truly powerless when it comes to helping someone who has wedged herself so thoroughly into his life, one that was near deaths doorstep. Why if she started hyperventilating, she could make that scratch to her lung grow into a real big problem. There’s also a chance of an infection that could be quite lethal to her given her weakening constitution, the many chaotic possibilities of her suddenly dropping dead ran through his mind. His ears wilted and Discord actually started crying. For once thoughts of chaos didn’t fill him with playful glee or joy; in fact even he was hoping that things didn’t get worse for Fluttershy.

“I’m sure she’ll make it back to the Head Hunter Discord, she still has a few of those magical tomatoes right? Fluttershy is quite the outdoors pony and she’s been snuggled by timber wolves, cuddled by massive star bears and a lot of other things that would scare any normal pony, she can even speak several dialects of chipmunk!” It seemed Rarity was the first to recover while Pinkie and Rainbow were still staring at the screen Discord was projecting in horror. “If I must say so she’s much tougher then we all think she is, we really should be giving her much more credit than this. Why, you’re all positively treating her like she’s already dead, well I say neigh to that! Get that gorgeous little butt of yours in gear darling!”

Fluttershy smiled at that statement as she limped her way towards the large room Discord mentioned, maybe she could find something useful in there. She was using the energy shooting metallic gray rifle as a crutch; everything was so dark and quiet down here. Fluttershy needed the sound of her hoof steps and the clack of the rifle hitting the floor to see things with her echolocation sight. There were no sounds or movements aside from her and the muttering of her friends that came from the saddlebag the memory stone was in.

Stopping for a moment to catch her breath, the pony started tapping her right hoof to the floor to create some noise and her ears twitched as she looked around with her echolocation sight. Nearby there was something that looked like the remnants of a heavy doorway, the same kind that was upstairs that lead into the hangar full of what she thought might have been fighter or transport ships. There was very little left of the door that was once there, in the next room there were several notable rectangular shapes in it and several piles of scrap metal and other various odd things that she silently puzzled over as to what they once were.

Fluttershy exhaled softly and slowly trudged her way into the room while staying completely alert, she was more frightened by the fact that she hadn’t run into anything yet. Where were all the sentry things, where was the cable whipping robots and more importantly what were all the tall masked figures currently up to after she fell down here?

“Discord… look into the tall ones for me please, I want to know what they are doing.” Fluttershy coughed a bit and a globule was seen in her echolocation sight as it splattered against the floor, she sighed as she was becoming a bit lightheaded from the blood loss. “I’m not hearing anything so I should be safe for the moment.”

Tapping her right hoof against the floor again, Fluttershy was actively looking around at all the things in the pitch black room this time. It was a wide open, somewhat empty except for all the foreign objects in the room outlined in her sight and there was no movement or noise whatsoever. Her echolocation sight was quite a useful ability; she wished she didn’t have to be magically mutated to use it.

Moving over to a nearby large rectangular object in a hobbled manner, the only noise around Fluttershy was the clack of her hooves and the butt of her rifle impacting the floor. Now was a bad time to remember that she was afraid of the dark, in this case it was a good thing that the monstrous machines in this place always had some sort of visible lighting on all of them. Not seeing any light at all was actually a good thing to Fluttershy at the moment even if her mind was in a slight state of terror from how quiet it was. At least her fear was keeping her mind off her current poor state of health as thoughts of being eaten by a grue entered her head. Just because she couldn’t hear or see any monsters in her echo sight, didn’t mean they weren’t there.

So Fluttershy was a little paranoid and she had right to be, letting her guard down now would be tantamount to suicide and Fluttershy was not an idiot. Well she might have been one for not packing more than a dream land giant apple chunk to snack on, a small chunk of tomato wouldn’t have been too hard to carry and at this point it would have been nice to have on hoof. Provided she survived this, then Fluttershy knew she would not be making this mistake again and will always try to have some medical supplies on hoof at all times.

With that thought in mind she carefully crawled into one of the large rectangular things. She tapped the floor of this thing and closed her eyes; she got a full layout of it easily enough. It was definitely a vehicle of some kind, considering the control panel at the front of it. It was well armored at the front and bottom with slightly less armoring at the sides and almost no armor in the back. It was a ground vehicle and it had what Fluttershy could assume were multiple forms of odd forward pointing weapons sticking out of it. It kind of reminded her of the party tank Cheese Sandwich had or the Land Master that Fox and his friends used.

Fluttershy reasoned that the thing was not a tank for a few reasons, the largest one being control panel and a large portion of this thing left anyone driving it exposed to being attacked from above or behind. It was more like a transport vehicle; a rather heavily armed one that she surmised could carry multiple humanoid machines that could use their rifles in conjunction with the driver who controlled all the weapons as they drove this thing. She did not want to meet whoever was involved in designing this thing; because whoever they were they obviously weren’t big on tactical retreats. The other reason is that there were actual tanks sitting about this room, ones that might have rusted hatches and were too heavily dilapidated to consider exploring as an option.

Compared to the other transportation devices in this room, this particular one wasn’t nearly as damaged as the others were and Fluttershy wondered if it was still operational. If it was operational then she’d be able to get around faster without putting any more undue stress on herself. She moved all about in the vehicle and looked up over the edges from the inside, after inspecting it she moved towards the control panel to see if she could get it to move at all. If it wasn’t operational then she would try some of the others, if none of them worked she would just try to get some rest and recuperate from her injuries as best she could before moving on.

Before Fluttershy could make it to the control panel, she came to a sudden stop and her ears started twitching wildly at a slowly growing sound coming from within this large room. Something large had just moved and it was coming from the behind the vehicle, she froze and stared at something slowly standing up in her echo sight.

It looked like one of the metal mouths, only this was at least five times bigger than the size of the ones Fluttershy had previously seen before. Once it reached full standing height two red orbs flared into life blinding the poor mare slightly causing her to stumble back backwards into the control panel hitting several things on it randomly while raising her hooves to cover her eyes, after her eyes adjusted to the sudden light she noted it seemed to slowly focus its head downwards and at her for a moment. This filled her with a sense of dread; she could already guess where this was going.

Fluttershy could vaguely hear her friends yelling at her to move, to run, to escape and to try and get out of there. At the moment Fluttershy was too scared out of her mind to hear them or listen at the moment, not that she could really run in the state she was in anyway. The large machine slowly opened its mouth to release a loud groaning noise that hurt her ears; this is where her hooves went to next hitting something else on the control panel as she clutched at her head in a vain attempt to keep the sound out.

The control panel on the vehicle Fluttershy was in lit up and slowly a hum could be heard coming from it, only the currently incapacitated pony was too busy with her throbbing head to notice. The giant metal maw opened its large mouth full of sharp pony ripping teeth, reared back on its two legs and launched its head forward in an attempt to end Fluttershy’s suffering once and for all.

Fluttershy slid down and cowered on the floor of the vehicle with her eyes shut, prepared for the great beyond. After a second or so of not dying and hearing a deafening clang noise, she innocently opened one adorable eye and then wished she hadn’t. That giant toothy maw of immediate death had missed the vehicle because it had started rolling forward; Fluttershy tried to shake her head clear of a sudden wave of dizziness passing over her and failed as she had really bad headache. She looked at the control panel and realized that she didn’t know how to drive this thing or even how to stop it. Heck Fluttershy didn’t even get the chance to learn before things got out of hoof, the front of the vehicle had two bright beams of light cutting through the darkness lighting up everything in front of it.

After a moment Fluttershy had realized an entirely different problem aside from not knowing how to drive this thing was cropping up on her. The vehicle was slowly rising into the air and it was the sudden realization that this thing could fly that things went from slightly okay to pretty darn bad, as it was slowly getting faster. As if things weren’t bad enough for the disoriented equine, the vehicle flew towards the open hole that Fluttershy had entered this large expansive room from.

The large maw jumped forward biting at the vehicle again, only missing the back end just by the tip of its huge teeth. The front right end of the vehicle hit the side of the doorway, spun wildly out of control in the air and came to a sudden complete stop in the middle of the corridor floating a few hooves off the ground.

Fluttershy was wishing she could scream at this point, she instead chose to sob slightly and cough up another small amount of blood inside the vehicle as her injuries had been exacerbated. Why had it just stopped like that, why did this giant machine with tyrannosaurus sized mouth actually have eyes unlike the other ones like it? What was she going to do now? The giant maw gave pursuit out of the room and was about to get a mouthful of the vehicles side when it shot down the corridor in a sudden uncontrolled burst of speed, causing Fluttershy to yelp in pain as she fell over onto her injured leg after having just stood up.

On the bright side of all this, at least Fluttershy wouldn’t have to walk anywhere. Well, that was provided that she could get the vehicle in question under control and escape that the giant encroaching mouth full of deadly teeth all the while hoping it didn’t get a solid hold on this mode of transportation.

The vehicle had seemingly topped out at a maximum speed within seconds, which wasn’t nearly as fast as Fluttershy had thought it would be. It certainly would have helped if it was fast enough to stop the thing Fluttershy mentally labeled, ‘The Mouth’, from catching up in the slightest. As it was, the vehicle was uncontrollably bouncing off the walls which may have been a factor in it slowing down enough to be caught up to by the mother of all maws on two large metal legs giving chase. While The Mouth was keeping up, it was having all kinds of problems wrapping its jaws around the agile vehicle that was moving up, down and side to side.

It was at this time that Fluttershy was actually really beginning to dislike something. Technology and Fluttershy might never be good friends unless it was something that came with a soul and the ability to feel anything.

Author's Note

Technodrome location- Motor Pool Armory.

Big Mouser- This mouser was actually made with eyes, eyes that shoot laser beams and it's fairly large. Did I already mention that it can create more mousers?

TechnoRover Version 1.0- This version of Techno Rover is ground bound tank with multiple heavy missile and rocket armaments for heavy targets and a blaster cannon for more lightly armored targets, it was designed like a regular tank using Technodrome technology. In other words built from Krang Brain Industries.

TechnoRover Version 2.0- This version is the more commonly used open air version, less tank like and more troop transport with almost the same amount of fire power. It's frontal gun is a little less powerful but that matters very little because this thing could fly making it far more maneuverable then its predecessor and since Foot Soldiers don't need to breath in space it is pretty useful in being able to cut production costs by a lot. Sure you could shoot the pilot easily, all that will do is let another highly expendable easily built foot soldier to take its place and those guys were easier to replace than whole tanks as it is. The Mutant Turtles even used this mode of Foot Soldier transport to get around inside the Technodrome once.

I have a running theory that it is literally in a pegasus's blood to control the density of water and blood is mostly water too.

Below is the general idea of what Fluttershy is about to be put through... nope not ominous at all or the general theme for this chapter. It also does not represent despair in the slightest...

38

He was Alpha-one. The last true foot soldier of the foot clan or that’s what he would like to think, it was true that he was the last of the original existing foot soldiers of his production line under his previous creator. Any other tall gaunt masked individuals were more recently built from the blueprints he found when he finally found the desecrated place responsible for his birth after having been lost for a long time. His first plan to deal with the humans and the mutant turtles that defeated him was quite frankly idiotic in the extreme. He just spent a lot of fruitless time sending people to dimension X inside the very place that could just as easily bring them right back to where they belong.

Alpha was a greatly flawed individual with a spottily upgraded artificial intelligence that made him go rogue. Thus far the big headed machine hadn’t been capable of ending a life, but it clearly wasn’t for his lack of trying that led to so many problems. He was actually quite effectively programmed to kill in self defense after all and anything he vaguely considered offensive to his existence would have been killing in self defense. So just for being alive the biological being with four hooves was already on his list to eventually kill.

The Technodrome had a chaotic energy field which was a dimensional warping device that allowed the Technodrome to go anywhere, anytime and anyplace at the cost of a massive amount of energy. So it shouldn’t have been a surprise to Alpha-one that the people managed to come back from being displaced to the same dimension that he was sending others to because at the time the Technodrome had the energy for it. The controls to the dimensional warping device were not that hard to figure out for a single human and that was before this place was wrecked to the point that the ingenious but energy inefficient device became almost irreparable.

Once Alpha-one got a task-force of foot soldiers built he had them repair the outer shell of the destroyed Technodrome so it could hold oxygen once more. The production of some things would have been harder without air otherwise, such as welding parts together to build laser rifles or make folded high grade titanium swords. He had them rebuild the generators to run on a different strange power source and also used what amounted to wild guessing to get the dimensional warping device back up and running. These were the only two things the Technodrome needed to be operational aside from the gravity device for propulsion which was surprisingly undamaged despite ninety percent of the Technodrome becoming entirely inoperable and being overrun with wild plant growth. It was little wonder the Technodrome was currently randomly warping to different places in space, possible even time and dimension too.

Alpha had plans to get revenge on those mutated humanoid turtles that had likely forgotten he existed once they sent him packing back into dimension X with slightly different coordinates. Oh Alpha would like to blame the biological quadruped for all the problems happening with the Technodrome at the moment, but Alpha couldn’t logically do that.

Of the things Alpha did in the repairing of his birthplace, he tried to rebuild and take control of the idle defenses and that was his biggest overall failure.

The first failure was the machines known as the Roadkill Rodney’s, they just randomly patrolled the Technodrome and they even drilled holes through it at random and popped up in innocuous places. Their cable whips were just as deadly close up as their lasers were at long range. After Alpha activated them, they went about their job to protect everything on-board and ignored any commands given to them as their programming was something Alpha couldn’t exploit like that of his brethren. At least they were doing their jobs actively.

The sentry drones were the second failure, they only had a limited proximity of activation and they’d chase the target as long as they could see them. Otherwise they’d return to their designated protection zone and were easy to build on such limited resources. Like the Rodney’s they were impossible for Alpha to control except when it came setting up points for them to defend, which was a limited success since they don’t report back to him about intruders. They and the Rodney’s didn’t do anything to stop Alpha’s biggest failure from getting out of hand.

The ultimate failure was when he decided to bolster these already useful if sparse defenses with one of the Big Mousers, the reason why this was a big failure and a huge mistake is because of who the original creator of the Mousers was. Baxter Stockman a person that was once human was the original inventor of the Mouser robots; he was once a bright mind until he became stuck as a horribly mutated fly monster in his dealings with the original owners of the Technodrome. Some time before he completely lost his mind from his affliction and disappeared into limbo through a dimensional portal, he left a bit of viral programming behind that would make the Mousers run rampant if they were ever activated again.

Thus the lower portions of this space bound fortress was crawling with these metal mouthed monstrosities called Mousers, they ate through a lot of Alpha’s rebuilt army before he could collect his wits and force them to stay down in the bowels of the ship. It was because of this incident that he had been in a constant struggle to keep the generators activated while continually building new Foot Soldiers to deal with the infestation.

Alpha couldn’t have known this would happen because he wasn’t aware of anything that led up to the Technodrome being in the poor state he found it in. At least he had the foresight to sequester a supply of vehicles in the upper portions of the Technodrome including the fighters, hover bikes and a few rovers. All the other vehicles he had the foot soldiers working on were left behind in the places they were made when Alpha’s forces were forced out by the Mouser incursion.

Now Alpha had an unknown biological quadruped entity running around the Technodrome about to do who knows what, who knows where! The being could still feasibly even be alive from the long fall given it had the ability to manipulate atmospheric conditions and it could fly. The being was obviously a mutated creature of some type and with incredible powers to morph its genetic structure as if on a whim to heal from damage. At least that’s what Alpha thought when he saw the shift of its right wing going from a chiropteran design to avian.

Despite himself, Alpha’s curiosity got the better of him as to where this creature could have come from and he was going to interrogate it harshly in the operating theater. Nothing should have gotten on board while the dimensional field around the Technodrome protected it from all outside attacks no matter what dimension, place or time it appeared at. He would have done a lot of things that were definitely survivable for a horse, even if it would have been excruciatingly painful as that was the closest reference he had for what the creature that had escaped the cell-blocks was. It was obviously smarter then he would have ever given it credit for to have escaped with just the glass knife. They had just finished making that cell just for the morphing equine that gave off a strangely pleasant energy signature too, Alpha wanted to know its secrets and how it broke into his fortress.

Alpha mechanically lifted his head upwards and saw something from one of his soldier’s transmitted points of view that brought dread to his cold hard logical mind; the equine has managed to restart the plague of Mousers again. He had just gotten started on finishing off the previous Big Mousers forces after having fought a long hard battle to stop it from spreading more of those little nuisances dead set on destroying his glorious army. How in all of existence had that one biological managed to start another Big Mouser? Oh right, mousers were originally made as biological pest detection machines and that equine was definitely a pest to his grand schemes. He had to stop this before it got worse, he mentally commanded his vast army to get every available vehicle that could travel throughout the Technodrome to move on that equine and end her existence. He could figure out where the biological came from after it was dead and stripped of its flesh for study!

Alpha’s orders were immediately being carried out by his forces within the split second that he had learned of what was going on, he himself promptly turned and exited from the room with the large square screen that was the dimensional warping field. He would return to earth eventually and destroy all life on it, failing that Alpha would make sure that at least the winged equine met a fate most unpleasant for ruining his plans of owning an empire built in the glorious image of the foot clan.

The leader hopped on a hover bike and immediately set off to deal with this personally as well as have every available foot soldier start another Mouser purge. This would be the first step that would lead to him taking over everything in the universe! With the Mousers and the intruder out of the way Alpha’s rise to power would be nigh unstoppable and all biological beings will perish before his might. Alpha-one is an artificial entity that wanted to be remembered by all organic life before they all are wiped from existence!

Roller Wheel the recently named wheelie spun like a top and shredded his way through two sentry drones. He didn’t like any of the mechanical things in this place, they were always aggressive and his carapace was beginning to dent from all the biting monsters. His four pipes could spew magical energy exhaust to increase the speed of his horizontal spin and the exhaust could also do some damage as well. He could also technically fly by repeatedly expelling this energy downwards from his tire, but that could get tiring very quickly.

Once it was quickly proven that the surroundings outside the fast flying thing were incredibly dangerous, Mr. Wheel quickly forgot about the tiny thing with the four flippers and was now searching frantically for his friend Fluttershy. In his haste he was causing quite a ruckus destroying all kinds of Technodrome machinations, thus far none of its incredible rampage got back to Alpha-one because he was too busy with his tunnel vision on a biological nuisance he now sorely wanted dead.

Roller was a strong wheelie and had even managed to rip a Roadkill Rodney in half by jumping while moving at full ramming speed, something that wasn’t hard for a wheelie to achieve if given two feet to pick up any amount of speed. Though his tire still had the patch on it, he was moving unhindered and at full strength while ramming, spinning and in general using his carapace and four biological magical exhaust tubes to full effect.

The wheel puttered his way through the hallways almost blind in the darkened portions looking for any sign of Fluttershy while wishing he had a green carapace wheelie around for those nifty lights on their horns. There was a noise and the wheelie went into reverse up against a safe looking portion of the wall and quieted his body down looking left and right down the long corridors. This place was interesting; it had long straight roomy places to roll, plus a lot of empty rooms to sleep in off to the side. Though all the pointy bits of sharp metal were something Roller could have lived without being anywhere near his soft underside.

A noise came from down the hallway and a large elongated thing with another purple faced laser wielding monster zipped right past the wheelie. Taking the fast thing as a challenge to his existence, Roller sped after it ready to prove that he wasn’t slow.

A wheelie was a creature whose thought processes was in some aspects a bit slow, in comparison to how fast they could go.

Having his one track mind for high speed piqued, Roller chased after the hover bike that was about to get into a large messy affair between a large walking waffle iron and a large metallic slab of what would soon be the equivalent of French toast.

It had only been thirty seconds and Fluttershy still was having problems getting onto her hooves from her position on the floor of the vehicle. A metallic spiraling sphere shot out and landed on the back edge of the transportation device clamping its toes as it uncurled into a metal mouth, one that was hit by the second of Fluttershy’s three shots. Missing at the range of a few feet would have been a little hard to do and Fluttershy was getting better at shooting, it scared her to think that she was getting good at violence.

Reaching up with her right hoof she grabbed top of the left wall of the vehicle and pulled herself upwards to see that ‘The Mouth’ opened up and spat two more spiraling silver balls that were smaller metal mouths at the transport. One fell short and the other Fluttershy quickly brought her rifle around to shoot down in mid flight.

Turning the laser rifle being held by her left hoof and with her left wing on the trigger, she leaned into the inner wall of the vehicle. She fired several blasts at ‘The Mouth’ and did little in the way of actually damaging it. Of course it was more heavily armored then the smaller ones making her weapon all but useless against it.

Fluttershy was trying to discern a way to stop the thing from giving chase or launching anymore when two clinking noises sounded off on the vehicle. Two sentry drones had dropped onto the vehicle, one had landed on the same edge Fluttershy leaned against for support and the other landed in the vehicle itself. She shot the one that landed in the vehicle then swung the rifle at the other to bat it off before it could fire its charging energy weapon.

The sentry rebounded of the wall and entered the chasing monster while exploding causing ‘The Mouth’ to stumble before it managed to catch it footing to continue the chase. Its eyes lit up brightly looking to be charging for something.

Recognizing it as something the sentry drones tended to do, Fluttershy ducked as two beams scorched over the vehicle and the right back portion of it exploded causing it to catch on fire. It was like she didn’t have enough problems to deal with already. Did it have to have powerful lasers on top of creating those smaller things? Oh and the vehicle not only is not only out of control, but the back right portion of it is on fire as well and her ears were ringing almost constantly now from all the exploding machines out to kill her.

“Fluttershy you’ve got company incoming and oh… never mind I can see you’re already little busy with entertaining guests. Anyway something’s up with the purple masks and they are all converging on you, they look to be bringing out some pretty big guns too.” Discord’s voice could be heard clearly through the saddlebag the memory stone was in. Discord noticed Fluttershy grimace as she continued to fight off more waves of metal mouths being launched by ‘The Mouth’, trying to shoot them before they got onto the vehicle and started eating away at it. The mare was only partially successful in keeping them off as some of them managed to do some damage to the back end of the vehicle before they were destroyed. “There is some good news at least, it seems you’re little wheel friend is on his way to help you.”

“What, doesn’t he know how dangerous all of this is! He could hurt himself trying to come help me!” It was actually surprising to hear Fluttershy become angry, it did wonders for her adrenaline levels as she blocked a metal mouth from biting down on her with the midsection of her rifle. She swung the little maw off to the right side of the vehicle before it could clamp down to tightly and destroy her weapon by biting through it.

The flying vehicle suddenly nosed downwards and slammed into the floor dislodging Fluttershy from her standing position causing to tumble towards the back end as it scraped against the floor. Several metal mouths appeared climbing up the front of the vehicle and Fluttershy rolled onto her back from her left side and took aim between her legs with the rifle.

There were five of them on the front of the vehicle, she started shooting and didn’t stop until the rifles barrel started glowing red and it stopped firing shots. She had nailed all five of them, but her rifle wouldn’t fire as two more metal mouths climbed up the front of the quick moving transport that was now ascending a slope. Fluttershy shuddered as she could see hundreds of metal mouths swarming the floor that the vehicle was passing over now at a good clip. All of those mouths were trying to jump onto the transport as it rose too high for them to reach, for the moment at least.

“If I wasn’t so sure that Fluttershy was about to die, I’d think this was the most awesome action movie I have ever seen starring my best friend.” There was a slight sad crack in Rainbow’s voice as she hiccupped, from what Fluttershy could hear it sounded like she was sobbing.

Fluttershy couldn’t worry about Rainbow at the moment as she smacked the first incoming metal mouth off the left side of the vehicle with a back hoofed golf swing and got the rifle underneath the legs of the second and heaved upwards launching it out of the back of the transport and into ‘The Mouth’ and it’s open maw.

There were quite a lot of explosions as the ‘The Mouth’ stumbled and slammed to the floor crushing quite a few of the smaller metal maws. It had fallen behind and out of sight but that didn’t mean Fluttershy had lost it. She wasn’t about to celebrate an early victory as she stood up trying to find her balance in the vehicle as the left side of it slammed into the wall. She moved her rifle onto her back and steadied herself on three hooves before moving slowly towards the front and lunged for the controls as the vehicle started to list to the right while slowly rolling over in that direction.

She grabbed the controls pushed anything that looked like it could move to the left and the vehicle righted itself before it dumped Fluttershy into the horde of mouths clambering over each other to rip her to shreds. The vehicle rotated so to the left and the top of it slammed into the left wall before Fluttershy could get a good grip and she lost her hoofing. She fell into middle of the left side of the vehicle gasping in pain as she fell on her fractured leg, the vehicle slowly right itself so that it was flying upright while continuing to go up the gently curved slope.

“Fluttershy if you can hear me, you need to hold on a little longer! You’re up one floor and you need to go another one to reach the floor where the energy source thingy is! Come on Fluttershy, my Pinkie Sense says you can make it and we don’t want my Pinkie Sense to become a liar now do we?” Pinkie was trying to sound encouraging; her straight hair from what Rainbow, Rarity and Discord could see was a different story.

“I think my leg is actually broken now… at least the bindings are helping. Wish I had found a splint to go with it.” Muttering that last part as she stood up with tears in her eyes, Fluttershy limped up to the controls again, after a moment of looking it over she hit something on what she assumed to be the steering mechanism now and a bright bolt of red ripped through the mechanical mouths in front of and slightly below the vehicle at it continued its upward journey. Well she now knew what fired the forward gun at least; it was far more potent than the laser rifle she had laying across her back. If she could just get it there, she’d use it to do something to the energy source.

Fluttershy didn’t know why her rifle had stopped firing or how long it need before it could fire again, but that became less of an issue as she slowly got a hang of the controls and they were bit complicated to work with hooves. She wasn’t really all that ready to give up on herself as easily as her friends were.

It took a few minutes for Fluttershy to get a rough idea of how to maneuver the vehicle, controlling its speed was another matter entirely compared to controlling the direction it went. Without fingers the fine control aspect was lost on Fluttershy. It was to be noted by the pony that the purple and black humanoid machines had fingers and were the only ones that were capable of using tools and manipulating things like this flying deathtrap. Said deathtrap was leaving a trail of smoke behind it that was easy to follow.

The vehicle was slammed into the right wall on purpose by Fluttershy when she saw another metal mouth doing something rather intelligent. The mouth in question had jumped off another one already in the process of jumping; it managed to get enough height to start eating a hole in right armored wall of the vehicle before it was smashed.

If Fluttershy didn’t know any better, she’d swear the metal mouths were quickly getting smarter. Even if the vehicle was much faster than them, she knew the machines of this vessel weren’t going to leave her alone until either they were all destroyed or she and roller were both dead.

Author's Note

The story is about to move on and I feel that the next bit is going to be intriguing, how does two or three crossovers running all at the same time sound if Fluttershy just happens to survive this?

Technically it would be six crossovers, but only two or three actively participating with mentions to ones that have already been used.

39

“Fluttershy turn left at the next intersection and go straight from there, you’ll reach the power source in no time. After that you do whatever it is you got in mind and if you’re still breathing by then, I’ll try to guide you back to Head Case or whatever it’s called. Remind me to set up an appointment with a psychologist for you when you get back or you could find one out there if it will help.” Discord had a frown as he stared off into space and the magical screen next to him showed Fluttershy jerking the floating vehicle around the corner where its back right end became more damaged then it already was by being on fire. It fishtailed after bouncing off the wall a bit before Fluttershy managed to get it under control, the corridor seemed well lit and undamaged compared to what Discord had seen already. “Oh and those two eyed flying black and purple pony beaters are about to catch up with you. They sure look well armed to me, but they aren’t going to beat you because you’ll play rough!”

For some reason Fluttershy felt like slapping Discord when she got back to Equus, his last comment sounded way too familiar. It was like a reference to a song she once heard about a monster with one long horn and one big eye… it was possibly purple or did it eat things that were purple? She just vaguely remembered Twilight having problems with one given that such a thing actually existed on Equus.

Shaking her head Fluttershy knew things were about to get hectic, she tried to get her game face on which was basically her just grimacing. So far things had been quiet since she managed to get out of the horde of metal mouths, but that didn’t mean anything as she was expecting things to get really bad. At least the fire from the back right corner of the vehicle eventually went out.

The vehicle was flying straight forward down the center of the corridor passing by several intersecting hallways and out of one of the hallways behind Fluttershy the three purple masked ones appeared riding hover boards. These hover boards were moving at a good enough speed to keep up with the armored troop transport and the humanoid machines had to have had excellent balance to stay on them like they were without falling off.

The foot soldiers started throwing metal stars and these thrown weapons were a far sight more accurate than their shots with a laser rifle. They impacted the general area around where Fluttershy was, she had to actively duck out of the way of the pointy sharp metal stars. She wouldn’t have had to move at all if they were wielding laser rifles.

Fluttershy steadied herself back into a standing as she twisted around on her left hind leg to put her back against the control panel, one of those star things they were throwing almost went into her neck. A few of the other metal stars had bounced off the controls and one sunk halfway into the armored metal next to her shoulder. They were definitely throwing those things with a very scary amount of accuracy.

Aiming steadily with the laser rifle, the pony snapped off quite a few shots which were deftly dodged by the metal throwing ninja robots as they swerved left and right weaving through the shots with the deftest of precision. They continued their barrage of throwing weapons with their aim slightly thrown off, but still far more dangerous than when they had the laser rifles.

After a moment of reflection, Fluttershy aimed a little lower and immediately destroyed all three hover boards without a fuss in the next three shots. Apparently they were good at dodging fire coming directly at them on those highly maneuverable floating boards; only they weren’t as good when it came to getting said hard to miss boards shot out from underneath them.

“Look out Fluttershy!” The warning from the voice immediately made Fluttershy duck down, it may have aggravated her broken leg but she had been missed by another masked hover board rider as it passed by the right side of the vehicle. If not for the warning Fluttershy would have been a head shorter on the principles of momentum alone not to mention that there was also extra force applied to the sword that just whiffed by.

The foot soldier sped up and jumped off the hover board and onto the back of the vehicle, lunging forward it brought its sword down in an overhead swing at Fluttershy who parried it with her rifle. The laser rifle being made of the same metals as the sword deflected the blow taking some cosmetic damage and Fluttershy was knocked down. The foot soldier had staggered backwards from its unsuccessful second attack to be shot through the chest seconds later causing it to flip backwards out of the vehicle.

Getting back up Fluttershy narrowly missed getting a metal star to the eye; it still grazed her right cheek leaving a thin line of blood flowing from her face. She obviously had more of those hover board riding robots on her. She brought her rifle up and staggered her shots in a few bursts at a time, she didn’t want the rifle to stop working after prolonged periods of shooting and especially not while she was in a situation like this one.

Ahead of the action the wall bulged slightly as Fluttershy was fighting off another foot soldier boarding the vehicle, at least this one wasn’t armed with a weapon and was just trying to bludgeon her with its fists. It managed to land a hit on her wing covered chest causing her to cough up some blood by aggravating her wounds. As soon as the rover closed in to the bulge in the wall, three mousers burst out in a shower of small chunks of silver metal.

Fluttershy was shocked when the masked one she was fighting off fell off the left side of the transport when it took a metal mouth to the face. The other two had managed to clamp onto one of the hover boards and the rider switched from attacking her to attacking them instead. Looking behind her she could see more bulges in the wall and she frowned, not to mention more hover boards riders and along with a few hover bikes. Her ears wilted in dismay as the bikes fell behind her damaged transport and started peppering it with their more powerful mounted energy weapons.

The bike riders aim with the energy weapons was surprisingly much better then when they used the rifles, but they were still nowhere near hitting Fluttershy directly with them. That alongside the random metal mouths continuing to pop out of the walls was making things much more chaotic by the second, since they were attacking both Fluttershy and her pursuers with vicious efficiency.

At this point the pony had a hard time keeping up with everything going on at once. She smacked a Mouser off the vehicle with her gun into the face of a foot soldier; she turned slightly to the right shooting another masked machine riding a hover board causing it to spin into another one. The two masked machines were both swarmed by Mousers bursting out of the walls after both their hover boards crashed. The pony rolled towards the back to avoid being stabbed by the thrice damned sneakier foot soldiers that came at her with a sword. She managed to dodge it in a way to take out another foot soldier bisecting it before it could completely board the vehicle. The pony then tripped up the sword wielder by hooking the end of her gun behinds its left leg and it fell off the side of the vehicle.

Fluttershy wasn’t a pony born for war, but any pony who knew their history knows that the pegasi were the most militaristic long before the joining of the three tribes. Fluttershy was currently making her long dead ancestors proud for how quickly she became a combat pragmatist, with everything constantly exploding around her it was an inevitable result. Even if her nerves were shot, her body was slowly failing her and her mind was not enjoying the violence one bit, she was still shooting metal mouths by the bucket loads whenever they got on the vehicle and began gnawing away at it.

This was quite the battle with Fluttershy being overwhelmed from all sides, it got especially bad when the cable whipping robots finally showed up and started lashing out trying to snag the pony. They were gouging out quite a few bits of armor from the vehicle and were much more focused on her than the ever increasing number of metal mouths and humanoid machines. At least the two factions were a little busy with each other; she kind of wished the same could be said about the ones that could kill her if they got one of their cables around her pretty little neck just once.

A jerk made the slowly standing Fluttershy gasp as she struggled with not falling over, all the tumbling around to shoot leaping maws of death was really getting to her and she noticed that two cable robots had latched onto the back end of the vehicle with their cables and were actually managing to slow it down. It was dangerous for the vehicle to get any slower while being swarmed like this, looking towards the front of the vehicle she could bulges building up in the walls ahead of it down the corridor.

Picking up her left hoof off the floor, Fluttershy tried to get a bead on the two cable throwers that had latched onto the vehicle. She had fired several shots at the cable but the damage was minimal as they were a bit thick. Switching to shooting the robots themselves she was actually doing some damage, but not nearly enough to get them to let go as they actively avoided her shots by moving left and right while staying tethered to the vehicle. Their lasers popped out to return fire forcing Fluttershy to take cover behind the damaged back wall of the vehicle.

The roaring sound of an engine was heard and it was followed by two explosions and with another jerk of the transport picking up speed again Fluttershy poked her head up over the wall as the two cables went limp, her eyes widened at the destroyed ripped in half robots and was watching Roller as he tore through a few of the hover board riders before catching up to the vehicle and leaping into it. He came to dead stop right next to her. There were also more hover bikes giving chase now and they were easily catching up.

Roller puttered softly while rubbing up next to the injured Fluttershy, the pony moved to say something while petting his carapace only for a huge crash to be heard coming from the floor behind them.

Looking up from her sitting position Fluttershy stared on in shock as ‘The Mouth’ had ripped a huge hole in the floor and if her vehicle had been moving any slower that would have been her that was in its mouth. The front and back ends fell down as a bike was crunched up in those mighty jaws as it ran after Fluttershy and her current mode of transport. It hadn’t erupted from the floor then stopped to get its bearings; it had erupted from the floor already running as if it knew exactly where she would be if Roller hadn’t interfered.

Fluttershy sat there frozen as the machine opened its mouth and started firing sphere after sphere of metal that unrolled into more metal mouths. One metal mouth had just had about had its mouth around her neck ready to chomp down on it only to be shredded in a blast of magical stardust exhausting from Roller’s four tubes. This brought Fluttershy back into action as she tried to stand and found it very hard to do before Roller got underneath her and helped her move towards the now slightly damaged control panel; she shifted her rifle onto her back once she reached them.

Behind the pony the foot soldiers were attacking the Big Mouser with all they had and were doing minimal damage at best. The ninja stars were ineffective so they went back to chucking them at Fluttershy, the lasers on the hover bikes might have been doing something and the most effective of them all was the sword users but they were always swiftly crushed or bashed to pieces before they could get in too many good hits that left small rents in the armor. The foot soldiers had had problems with a Big Mouser before and they had only taken out the previous one with the help of several Techno Rovers that were the first ground based versions all working together to put down a single Big Mouser. Needless to say most of those rovers no longer existed from that incident and what few they did have left might not have been nearly enough heavy firepower.

Fluttershy steered the vehicle while taking quick glances over her shoulder to avoid the incoming metal mouths, The Mouth was making them much faster after consuming that bike and a few of the hover board riding humanoid machines heckling it in mid run to the point that the speed it was creating the little ones was unreal.

Looking ahead trying not to think about the monstrous thing behind her, Fluttershy avoided more metal mouths bursting from the walls and almost got a few sentries dropped onto the vehicle for it. One did come close, but it was rammed away by Roller before it could really become a problem.

Roller was determined to stay right next to Fluttershy as he was worried about her state of health, he realized that his friend didn’t have an armored carapace like he did and his was slightly dented from running into these things repeatedly. His friend was not only really nice being, but also a really tough one too despite having most of her body exposed to injury.

Off from a different corridor a familiar sight rolled out ahead of Fluttershy, it was one of the tank versions of the transport Fluttershy was riding in and out of the top of the vehicle’s turret popped Alpha-one. Fluttershy didn’t know who Alpha-one was; all she knew was that he was intelligent and that whatever he just said was directed at her. Considering his deep voice and dark tone of inflection behind it, he most likely said something about wanting her dead and was going to do horrible things to her body after the fact. It wouldn’t surprise Fluttershy at this point if she was spot on because she has seen so many things like this already, which was even before she got lost in outer space. Who could have guessed that all hydras were sadists from that time she went watching them in their natural habitat?

Between a rock and a hard place Fluttershy aimed the frontal laser cannon upwards and fired. She might not have hit her target who had ducked out of sight, but it was definitely worth a shot. The tank turned it’s turret around and Fluttershy veered the vehicle out of the way of its shot which was much more powerful than the one her vehicle could produce. The back left end of her vehicle was struck and so was The Mouth behind her, that part of her vehicle exploded and it was once again caught on fire and started wobbling in the air.

The Big Mouser too some damage to one of its eyes, it roared and fire two powerful beams into the tank as Fluttershy veered out the way. It then started spitting as many Mousers as it could get onto the tank, the hover board riders were the ones that started dealing with them since the ones inside the tank obviously couldn’t.

It was only seconds after the exchange that Fluttershy’s eyes widened as she flew high up into a large cavernous circular room, the hum of the energy source was quite apparent. They were at the core of the vessel, now Fluttershy had to make a decision about what to do before… the entire transport shuddered as it was rocked with a blast.

The frontal cannon had exploded by a hit from the tank and it was slowly falling out of the air, whatever had been keeping it in the air before was no longer working anymore and the only reason why it wasn’t falling like a dead weight was because Fluttershy likely still had some modicum of control over it. The tank was still on the floor and was using the pathway around the energy source while The Mouth gave chase to it; the turret turned and started firing on it.

“Roller can you carry me? We’re going to really need to move incredibly fast soon.” The wheelie had been at Fluttershy’s side he was getting some rest from all the fighting and that explosion didn’t make his angry disposition any brighter. He was worried that every once in a while Fluttershy would cough slightly and flecks of blood came out of her mouth, her right hind leg refused the floor and was bound with pink bands that looked to have come from the top of her head. He simply nodded, he didn’t want to fail his friend and he was not one to be slow anyway. He rolled forward to pick up Fluttershy, only she held out a hoof stalling him.

Fluttershy tilted the controls and the transport turned straight into the machines that were giving off a hum below her. Judging by how everything tend explodes around here… this was going to be pretty big. She let go of the controls and quickly draped herself over Roller before the transport started an out of control dive.

Roller didn’t need guidance; he shot into the air burst magical stardust from his tire in a mighty jump. He did it several more times bouncing through the air temporarily defying the laws of gravity each pulse, before hitting the floor he gave small pulse and landed as softly as a flying wheel could. Once on the floor he was much faster and he entered into the corridor on the far side of the vast room at a blazing speed leaving a trail of energy bursting out the back of his tire from the pressure he was putting on his body to move that fast.

“What… NO!” From inside his tank Alpha-one watched as the burning transport spiraling straight for all his hard work to get a feasible power source going. He immediately ordered all his foot soldiers to stop busying themselves with Big Mouser and gave the order to end that biological life no matter the cost. He even ordered his tank to ram the biological and that strange machine it was on if they could manage even that much. He thought the weak pathetic creature couldn’t have done much more after critically damaging her transport, but now he knew that a biological was thing that was hard to overcome. Life just found a way to ruin his aspirations after all.

Roller was booking it as a huge shock-wave erupted behind him and Fluttershy in the corridor, once it died down in the distance out of the fires following that shock-wave a heavily scorched tank and the heavily damaged eyeless Big Mouser followed. The Big Mouser still had sensors and it leaps onto the tank to rip off its turret, crawling from the damaged remains of that bite was Alpha-One who pulled out an emergency hover board followed by two other foot soldiers that had their own as well.

That was the last Fluttershy could see of The Mouth and the head honcho of the humanoid machines as Roller was humming loudly as he sped down the corridor much faster than the transport had been moving. They had escaped, but Fluttershy couldn’t help but feel she didn’t truly accomplish what she set out to do.

“You didn’t completely destroy the power source my dear, but you charged a battery in oh so many words. It’s caused the chaos field to fluctuate quite wildly and if I’m not mistaken it’s slowly growing, so we need to get back to your ship so you can heal up.” At this point Discord was stroking his chin with a claw. “Also you might want to be on the ship before that field grows to encompass everything. “Hmm… that’s no good. You might want to go faster because that chaos fields growth rate is actually picking up exponentially, if you’re not on you ship when the hits you, well… I have no idea what will happen but I don’t suppose it will be as pretty as you are. Hear me now Mr. Wheel, you better make sure she gets back safely before curfew. Speaking of its getting late, why don’t you girls go home while I hold down the fort? Unlike you I don’t need sleep.”

Fluttershy blushed, at least Discord made her feel normal and she could hear her friends deny needing sleep as they were too worried about her and her disheveled state. Well as normal as a broken and battered pony riding a biologically grown wheel creature in a giant deathtrap could be. It was kind of weird that Discord was actually worrying about the health of her friends, a little warm spot built up in her heart even if it was pumping some of that warmth out through the puncture wound in her chest. She was oh so tired but she couldn’t fall asleep yet even if her adrenaline was running out of her body quickly, is this what dying felt like? Roller was pretty fast at full speed, more so than the many dangers all around Fluttershy could keep up with and he wasn’t nearly as tired and as injured as she was.

Though the dents in the carapace she was laying on were uncomfortable, Fluttershy was actually glad Roller came along with her even if he was going to be putting himself in constant mortal danger for her sake. She had no illusions about where she might end up next being a completely peaceful friendly planet filled with lush greens for her to eat, little to no danger and it being a completely beautiful utopia on top of all that was just as unlikely.

Author's Note

The next chapter is the last one in this arc, in fact it'll bleed into the start of the next arc which will fully begin on chapter forty two which is the number frequently seen on a spaceship in that particular series. Fluttershy gets one last tiny little mental scar from all this.

A lot of small things are going to start tying together and a small bit of the Wander Over Yonder comes into play when two particular characters show up at the next planet for the multiple crossovers jamboree.

41

Janet was a planet and she was rather informative one when it came to talking about the one Star Nomad she had met personally. It was hard to believe that she used to be a desolate rock with an atmosphere. Now she was vibrant and covered entirely in beautiful vegetation; she was quite capable of being classified as a jungle planet.

Wander was a Star Nomad, one that Janet had a violent crush on because he had appreciated her even when she was just a single flower on a desolate ball of nothing but rock. It was an unfortunate situation for Sylvia his long time traveling companion who was beaten and battered by the strength of a whole planet that was trying to become between the bipedal lizard and her best friend Wander.

Sylvia was a tough creature known as a Zbornak and was a lot more so than a normal one, considering Janet swallowed her whole and she didn’t die by being crushed between two halves of an entire planet. She was violently protective of Wander and Wander wouldn’t stop mentioning her which was one of the things that drove Janet crazy. Then again Wander had good reason to keep mentioning Sylvia considering she survived to punch Janet’s flower avatar in the chin to deliver a one liner about there being no mountain or valley that could stop her.

“Well she’s the companion of a Star Nomad. I heard from a Star Warrior that when you become a close companion to one that you become immortal and will get stuck wandering the universe forever with them seeing infinite amounts of wonder. It’s a bit romanticized huh?” At least Fluttershy thought it was, hearing about Wander and Sylvia they sounded like a nice pair. Even if one of them is incredibly violent, she wasn’t about to disparage violence considering what she recently survived through.

“It is a tad romanticized and not completely proven or otherwise. Zbornaks are really tough creatures and who’s to say they naturally can’t survive having their bodies completely crushed by the full circumference of a planet not to mention being put directly into the center of my very being. Say, are you hungry? I can whip up a mean salad and I’m also really good at making flat cakes. Except for your mutations you did say you were herbivorous right? I’m basically an herbivores paradise!” Despite her avatar being a little red flower, Janet wasn’t particularly scared of Fluttershy’s main source of food. If she were just a flower and not the planet, then maybe she’d actually have something to fear. ”Oh and I need to make a camp for you, you need a vacation after having to deal with all those nasty robots.”

“Um… well… if it’s not too much trouble for you Ms. Janet, it is not too much trouble for you is it? I mean I wouldn’t want to be a bother.” This planet was nice and relaxing and it didn’t want to murder her, Fluttershy would have just as easily rested and just snacked on her maximum tomato since they filled her and Roller up.

“Oh no, it’s no trouble at all! By the way it’s Mrs. as I’m kind of married to my moon, he’s a really good husband. He keeps me all warm and toasty by bouncing light off the sun onto me and he’s my dear Maurice. You’ll see him if you stick around long enough.” After a moment of smiling the flower then quirked her mouth into a questioning look before bringing up a leaf to tap her chin, Janet hadn’t realized it but Fluttershy might not like some of the things she had to offer. “I have to ask before I begin making that salad, but is there anything you can’t eat or digest very well?”

“Well as a winged pony I can eat fish or aquatic creatures… it’s not very nutritional for us except for the high protein though. Any other form of meat would cause any pony to throw up or get dreadfully sick. My friend Applejack once accidentally got the whole town of Ponyville sick that way.” That was a lead up to a batch of better memories for Fluttershy, she sighed in contentment at remembering all the things she had gone through with her friends and the good times they’ve had. “I’m willing to try anything once; I’ve been eating almost nothing but alien foods since I left my planet. So far I’ve found a few things similar to what my home planet has. Why the last planet I set hoof on… Janet do you think you can reproduce any vegetable or fruit if I gave you the seeds for it?”

“Yeah, that shouldn’t be too hard. I might be able to reproduce all kinds of plants, but some might not have the exact same taste or properties after growing in my body’s soil. Why do you ask, have anything in particularly you want me to grow for you?” Janet would aim to please, this pony gave off the same kind of general warmth and kindness like Wander did all those years ago. The only difference for Janet was that Fluttershy was a bit shy and more respectful, whereas Wander was happy and hyperactive. They both had unique friends and nothing got more unique then the living wheel that was grinding at some mushrooms with its tire nearby. “I would be happy to try and provide for you. I’ll see what I can do with whatever you give me.”

“Well if you don’t truly mind then, could wait for me while I go get them out.” Fluttershy had limited medical supplies, some of which doubled as a good nutritional food source. If she was going too far from the ship she’d take a bit of maximum tomato with her, if not then she just bring her glass knife, water and saddlebags. She feared the need of having to use the laser rifle again, especially against targets that weren’t just hunks of mobile metal. She wasn’t going to get it out of storage unless the situation was extremely dire.

As Fluttershy left to go get a Popstar native tomato and apple, Roller curiously rolled up to the flower and revved at it. He had seen Fluttershy talking to it and was curious; he was worried that it might have been something as dangerous as some of the trees from his world. He was wrong as Janet was nothing but pleasant to him and made a thick sturdy ramp out of vines for him to launch off of and this ramp would also double as a tent for Fluttershy later that night. The nighttime was only a few hours away.

Fluttershy arrived to see Roller sitting next to the river and Janet’s little red flower avatar was just idly looking in her direction with an expectant smile on her face. Fluttershy pulled out one of the two tomatoes she had left along with a giant apple she had picked up from the previous planet she was on for little more than two days. She pushed the apple forward first; she had little idea what the incredibly powerful tomato would do to a living planet and would rather see if it were possible to go with a tree that grew giant apples first.

“What’s this called?” The flower hefted the apple into the air with more strength than one would think it had, slowly her bulb grew to expand around it before crunching the apple and swallowing it. The chunks of apple could be seen visibly moving down its stem into the ground. “Tastes sweet and it’s delicious.”

“It’s an apple; it’s like one of the ones native to my own world, only these were much bigger.” After a moment Fluttershy watched as a tree formed out of the ground next to the flower and several apples appeared on it. She looked on in wonderment at how Janet grew a tree so fast.

“That wasn’t so hard, it’s a nice plant and my babies will be able to eat and digest these fruits. Well at least that gives me some idea of what you can handle.” A branch from the tree came down and immediately grew an apple, one which was swiftly plucked by the leaves of Janet’s avatar and held out to Fluttershy who took it. After a moment Fluttershy sunk a fang into it and started to drain the nutrients out of it, it was recreated pretty well with a mild sour flavor adding in a nice twist to the cloying sweetness that was the taste of a fresh apple. “How’s it taste, good huh? What’s the other one... oh is it one of those healing plants you told me about?”

“Yes, it does taste good if a bit sour and yes that is a maximum tomato. It’s one of the few medical supplies that I have left that also doubles as food. I wish it could do more than just fix my physical injuries, like make the feathers on my right wing grow back quicker along with my mane or even get rid of my mutations entirely instead of just curing one of the symptoms.” Fluttershy was only slightly reluctant to give up one of the magical plants that healed any kind of injury and filled whoever ate one with energy. Even if it couldn’t give off the same effects, it still would have been nice to have a few more tomatoes even if it wasn’t a super powered version that cured her cravings. Despite not having cravings for apples since Popstar, she was still thoroughly addicted to them. “Here you go… um do you taste it when you consume it.”

“I sure do, that apple from a foreign planet was thankfully not of a virulent species of vegetation. I will not tolerate foreign plants trying to take over my body, but if I can incorporate a plant into myself I can grow more as long as I can continue propagating the seeds to do so.” The flower picked up the tomato and then swallowed it whole much like the apple after a moment the flower turned its head to Fluttershy with a flat look on its eyeless face. After a moment Janet spoke in very serious tone. “I promise you will never want for food whenever you visit me for the rest of your life, even if you were to become immortal. I’ll also even let this favor stand for any ‘true’ friend of yours that may visit me, trust me I’ll know if they were a true friend of yours as I’m kind of psychic. I can tell you this right now, you have no idea what you’ve just done for me and I can’t even begin to repay you back enough for it. I may not be able to help you find your home personally, but you’re always going to be welcome here. I will even get my children to give you some supplies, whatever you need that will help you I will make sure they get it just for you.”

“Why, what happened when you ate the maximum tomato? Can you make more of them?” Fluttershy wondered what happened to Janet to make her act like that. It was like a switched was flipped and everything around Fluttershy just became more alive and vibrant. She was interested in Janet’s children, but she didn’t know whether or not if she should really ask about them. Mothers often went on long tangents about how wonderful their foals were and Fluttershy didn’t want to be stuck here for the rest of eternity.

“No, I can’t exactly recreate the entirety of that bit of vegetation sadly. It’s far more complex than anything even I should be feasibly capable of. That thing packs quite a wallop though, even for my body being as big as it is. I can however recreate the flavor with the ability double the natural regeneration rate of any biological organism that consumes one of my versions of it; we’ll need to test that on something. Even then that’s not even a single hundredth of what the one you gave me did. I would know, it just did it to me and even I’m still confused about how it managed so much for so little!”After a moment the flower seemed to inhale slightly and calmed down. “I could replicate a few other little useful effects into some of the technology that my babies make... I’ll get right on that when you finally go to meet them. Oh my goodness, I haven’t even told you the name of their species or anything really about what they are like. I’m definitely getting you free spa passes, you deserve it! I’m afraid I can’t thank you nearly enough for putting all the pep back into me, but thank you so much Fluttershy! If I could, I’d exit my own orbital spin around the sun to go looking for your home planet myself. I won’t because I have prior responsibilities and obligations to those I gave life to that live on me.”

“Um… okay… you’re welcome… you don’t really have to do so much for me.” Fluttershy was unsure of what exactly she had done for Janet, but it was obviously something really big and beyond her scope of imagining.

“Stop being modest, like that little cutie Wander you’re my hero! Definitely top five on my list of people I’ll never ever forget!” The flower was clutching its leaves together and the head was smiling with a great sense of joy. “Now, how about that salad, I’m pretty sure all this talk of food is making you two hungry.”

Roller revved in agreement, he liked this plant thing. After Fluttershy nods, a stone bowl formed from the ground and a bunch of vegetation grew out of the ground around it and fell in it. Janet’s flower avatar formed a knife a fork and started tossing salad while some vines were gathering more ingredients.

“What do you like for a salad dressing, something oily or something creamy?” It was a nice meal for the two visitors to Janet’s body, Fluttershy had creamy and Roller took an excessively oily salad dressing. The planet knew a thing or two about cooking for a vegetarian; she gave birth to an entire race of them after all.

Later that night as Fluttershy went to sleep and refused to call out for Luna, she wanted to let her friends get some rest and to stop worrying so much about her. However she was having those nightmares again of being chased by two legs attached to a giant torso that led to a large mouth that would chew up her body and turn it into cold heartless machines. Machines with her spirit trapped inside one of them unable to stop them from consuming everything she loved and cared for.

The rather pervasive nightmare of ‘The Mouth’ was soon broken. Not by Luna as Fluttershy would immediately presume, but by a third party making the princess of the night and protector of sleeping ponies quirk an eye when she came in upon the sight of Fluttershy’s nightmare being ripped to shreds by plants which were protectively wrapping around the shy little pony protecting her from the scary monster that was very much a real thing. In fact she was getting a belly rub from the plant and it was making her dream self made her giggle vibrantly and act something like a little foal.

“Who are you to wander into the sanctity of my subject slumber and why are we not in Fluttershy’s dream meadow?” After a pause Luna considered the situation, she then smiled. “I sensed she was having another nightmare of her times aboard that dreaded place and I come to find that the problem already dealt with. I would like to thank the current savior of this well beleaguered mind.”

“I’m Janet and you’re standing on me. I’m a planet and Fluttershy has done me an act of kindness I’ll never be able to repay. She breathed energy back into me, of which I’m currently trying to share with my husband hanging above the both of us at the moment.” After Janet spoke, Luna looked down at the ground and saw the red flower sitting there. Then Luna looked to the sky and saw a moon that wasn’t anything like her own moon, it had what looked to be an adorable mustache painted on its blushing surface. “That’s Maurice, he’s my moon.”

“He is a charming looking… stallion… is he single by any chance?” Far be it for Luna to ask if a handsome sentient moon was single.

“He’s taken by me I’m afraid, we’ve been gravitating around each other for years. I and my dear Maurice would never dare part since our love is just that strong, aside from the fact that such a thing happening would destroy a few solar systems and we’re both rather reasonable and responsible adults.” After a moment Janet started giggling vibrantly into her two leaves, Maurice the moon blushed even more.

“Yes, for she is my lady and I am her gentle planet. We are forever bound by our orbits; I would never leave such a lovely vision of beauty of which none can ever compare in my sight. She is my world and everything that she is, I will revolve around until my very end.” Maurice stated before he just continued to silently stare at Janet, he thought her beauty was only getting better with age. They were both getting pretty weak after providing all they could for the race Janet gave birth to and they were quite proud parents, especially after the race had discovered space travel in such a unique manner. If Janet had continued to fade out of sapience like most sentient planets tended to do, he too would swiftly follow her into the abyss without question as close to if not at the same time that Janet went.

“A pity then, quite the classy moon you have there.” Luna was not saddened that she didn’t get the chance to date a male planetoid, there were likely other planets like him out there for her and likely just as romantic. Her moon personally didn’t have nearly this much personality when she became imprisoned on it, after a moment she shook her head violently at the silly notion of dating something so huge and started laughing. Then she idly thought about buying enough paint to get a mustache on her own moon.

“Oh I know, he’s a real charmer. You poor lost subject really needs a vacation from all the bad things that have been happening to her and I aim to please on that end. Hope you don’t mind if she doesn’t want to leave for a while if we start pampering her too much.” All Janet could receive from Luna after that was a bright smile. It seemed as if Pinkie wasn’t the only one that can make friends with a planet!

Fluttershy was just cuddling a pillow made from a soft apple scented plant in her sleep that Janet had made for the little pony, her good night’s rest assured away from all the nightmares she’s been having about metal monsters and becoming one. She smiled in her sleep as the tent of vines Janet held strongly over her and Roller’s forms kept any minor pests from messing with such an adorable sight.

Yawning, the pony stretched out her hooves and flicked her tail about as she was in the throes of waking up on an alien planet. She hadn’t had slept so well since Popstar, admittedly Roller’s home planet was the best place to sleep even if having nothing but good dreams would eventually have largely detrimental side effects over time. Mr. Wheel, feeling Fluttershy shift against him, slowly opened his two eyes and started slowly puttering about as he warmed up his body.

A flower popped up from out of the ground in front of Fluttershy holding a platter of flat cakes, they looked an awful lot like pancakes and she was pouring some sap from one of her two cupped leaves onto them along with some jam from the other for added flavor. After thanking Janet for breakfast Fluttershy decided to go for a dip in the nearby slow flowing stream and Roller rolled off looking for excitement.

“Uh… Fluttershy, I hate to disturb you’re relaxing day and all. I know you really needed this time to wind down from all your troubles… goodness knows I would handle it myself, but something rather dire has come up.” The flower stopped and bit her lower petals pensively, with Fluttershy looking at her in curiosity.

“What is it Janet? What’s wrong?” Fluttershy swam to the edge of the stream, pulled herself out and shook her coat and wings free of water. She was concerned if a whole planet like Janet couldn’t do something.

“You’re about to find out because she’ll be floating down the river in the next few minutes. She’s… about half drowned at this point, barely alive and definitely injured. She’s from the local law enforcement in this part of the universe and she’s been on me a few times before with her three friends. One time was mostly as tourists and a few other times on official business while saving my babies from a complete nutcase before they figured out how to defend themselves, I had some trouble helping out with that one.” After a moment Janet’s flower frowned while visibly wilting. “Only I’m not seeing any of her friends anywhere on me or in the space around my body, so that means that something has gone quite horribly wrong given the condition her spacesuit is in. I don’t know what could have caused her to end up in such a state or how she got here. I want you to get her out of the water for me and I’ll do what I can from there to aid her. I know you’ve had your bad days traveling the universe, but she looks to be having an even worse one currently.”

Fluttershy gained a slightly determined look and turned back to the river and went back to swimming while being on the lookout for the body that Janet told her about. She was likely about to get involved in something she probably shouldn’t have in the first place, but her heart wouldn’t let her look away when someone was in need.

Author's Note

Next episode: Fluttershy rescues a stranger and makes more friends, but its not necessarily overall good news as that new friend needs a lift to infinity and beyond. If that didn't give away the other crossover about to happen, I don't really know what will.

Having a nightmare about being eaten by a robot to be turned into one that then starts eating her friends is rather horrific, thus it only gets a passing mention.

42

Janet might not have been a magical planet and Fluttershy definitely didn’t feel any magic here, like she could on Aldebaran or Popstar. Still Janet was quite knowledgeable about what was happening on her body and it was like she could see everywhere at once within the range of how far her moon was and that was a lot of space.

Fluttershy had found the body Janet told her of with its head still barely above the water just floating down the river. It was humanoid and though she might not have had the best of times with most humanoid beings or things like them, Fluttershy was still going to fish this female out of the river. She was doing this because Janet asked her nicely and this was someone having a bad day like she’s been having for the past few months. This person, whoever she was, was owed some form of debt by Janet enough for her to ask another who she was already indebted to for help.

After sadly making Janet owe her more, something she would try to deny vehemently, Fluttershy kicked her hind hooves and with a little help from Roller she managed to drag the suited being onto the shore of the riverside campsite. This person’s mostly white with green highlights suit had two portions, upper torso and lower torso connected by a rubbery substance. Said substance almost had the same consistency and tensile strength matching the rest of the armor. The white and green portions were definitely armor and quite solid if heavily damaged that there was barely anything left protecting the wearer from being hurt.

The upper torso armor looking to have been blasted open by some amount of force exposing a large amount of what lay underneath and some parts of the armor around arms was heavily damaged; most of which was focused around the wrists. The lower torso armor was mostly damaged at the thighs and cracked around the legs. It looked to be damaged by the same kind of blast that took out the armoring around the chest. At least now Fluttershy understood what it was like for someone to see her in a condition like this, except for the fact that she has never worn a spacesuit before, much less one that was armored like this. Around the neck of this being there were several little inflated puffs like what one would expect from a flotation device partially coming up from the damaged suits collar, a safety feature perhaps?

A bunch of vines sprouted up from the ground and lifted the unmoving body to begin slowly shucking her out of the mostly destroyed armored suit carefully; Janet didn’t want to unnecessarily hurt an old friend of her children. Underneath the armored suit of the biped that Fluttershy just dragged out of the river was a full bodied green and purple suit that looked to be slightly ripped up from whatever happened to her armor, there were a few burnt holes in the clothing exposing some nasty looking burns.

“Janet let me check her, what exactly do you know about her anyway?” The body on a couch made of vines was lowered to the pony and Fluttershy inspected the humanoid being personally with her hooves.

This being had blue skin, pointy ears and a long straight orange mane with highlights that was slightly waterlogged; Janet was already taking care of the water in her hair with another vine squeezing it out. Her forearms were burned as badly as the central spot on her chest, she looked to have taken shockwave damage through her armor even if she wasn’t struck by the shrapnel of her armor being ripped apart and her body was bruised if the red discoloration of the skin on her head was anything to go by. What else could those swelling lumps be? She appeared to have at least one broken rib, though Fluttershy wasn’t entirely sure if her anatomy knowledge on primates worked with aliens.

“She’s a Tangean from the planet Tangea. I didn’t even think one could get this badly injured. She likely didn’t have the time to phase out of the way of the danger or she must have taken quite a blow for someone.” Janet, seeing the questioning look on Fluttershy’s face, decided to flesh out what a Tangean can do. “To explain it, most native creatures of Tangea have special abilities. The blue skinned Tangean humanoids in general have the most notable ability to generate a small distortion fields around themselves that allows them to move through solid objects. They can even use this ability with others while physically touching them. Word of warning though, the one thing you should never let a Tangean do is phase through a source of raw energy. It usually ends poorly for them if it doesn’t outright kill them. Other than that they do have a few other cool powers, but I don’t know much about them.”

“Why does it end poorly for the Tangean and what happens when they phase through raw energy?” In all the years she has been alive, Fluttershy was not going to be skeptical about a race that has the ability to go through solid matter. She remembered Pinkie’s story about what the Cake twins had accomplished while she was babysitting them for the first time.

“The ability to do this requires quite a bit of focus on the part of the user from what I hear and their powers can be cancelled out by beings with psychic abilities like me or another kind of Tangean from their planet. While going through solid matter or letting directed energy quickly pass through them is mostly fine, touching a raw source of energy makes their powers go out of control and it becomes highly addictive to them since they absorb some of that power into their bodies. If they don’t stop going through raw energy sources they either die from the buildup itself or they eventually explode in a very unpleasant iffy manner I would rather not describe.” The flower grew to a slightly bigger size and started to run her leaves across the unconscious body. “As to whom she is personally? Her name is Mira Nova and she’s a Space Ranger of the Galactic Alliance. The fact that she just appeared on me out of nowhere is sending up all kinds of little red flags in my head. I can only hope it’s not because of that same maniac that endangered my babies the last time something exciting happened on my body; at least they are better defended than ever even if I had never gotten that maximum tomato. They’ve been working on learning how to defend themselves recently because of the last few incursions with some help from the rangers, they would have been in good hands regardless had my consciousness faded entirely or not.”

“Um… can you start making some of those healing tomatoes you talked about right now? We could use them to help her get better.” A straight vine popped up next to the couch of vine and started growing little red tomatoes right in front of Fluttershy, but it didn’t look like they’d be fully grown within seconds like the apples would be. “Um, aside from that, what’s the Galactic Alliance? Is it anything like a Galactic Federation with their large bulky block shaped ships flying everywhere?”

“No problem Fluttershy, though the tomatoes will take a while to fully grow into something usable. I don’t think that Galactic Federation and my Galactic Alliance is the same thing or is even in the same general region of the universe, the ships around here are a bit odder then what you described seeing. In any case you can be sure that the rangers would have put a stop to aliens being mutilated by those shadowy organization guys you’ve only heard about.” Janet was certainly not going to tell any Space Ranger the ship her pony friend had was stolen or that it might have looked like a rather necessary theft at the time. She was going to plead to be Fluttershy’s lawyer if something like that happened and having an entire planet vouch for how nice you are is a good thing. Especially when that planet would make you regret hounding such a poor little pony so far from her home. “Besides you haven’t done any crimes in Galactic Alliance space, so you should be fine even if the ship you have is stolen. They don’t exactly have jurisdiction to go find the owners or even report your crime as it happened out of their borders, plus there’s first contact diplomatic immunity laws.”

“First contact diplomatic immunity laws?” Tilting her head curiously Fluttershy looked at the flower that could change size and shape on Janet’s whim and even vocalize through it, it shrunk down to her level.

“Yeah, the Space Rangers are big on their laws; mention that clause and you’ll have a patrol of them following you around in Galactic Alliance space protecting you with their very beings. The guys are really big on diplomacy where they can get it.” After a chuckle, Janet brought a leaf up to her bulbs chin. “First of your kind in their spot of the galaxy and you can be assured you will be treated like a diplomat of a high esteem if you prove to be sentient and not hostile, by the way Luna says hello. You were too busy enjoying me babying you in your dreams to notice your princess popped on in to me stamping out that nightmare, kind of surprises me that you still have a link like that back to your home world.”

“Oh… well yes, I do still have the ability to talk to my friends. The memory stone happens to have magical properties that can connect me back to home and to Aldebaran… I really need to talk to Katrina since I haven’t said anything to her in a while. Apparently I can also connect to any unicorn back on Equus; I mostly keep getting Luna since she can tether herself to me in my dream state no matter the distance between us. Only recently have I connected to my friend Rarity’s horn by accident and my friend Discord was there.” Fluttershy sighed, it sounded like Discord was really watching out for all of their friends.

“I’m still watching you even now Fluttershy and I don’t truly think that was an accident.” The shy pony jerked and lifted the flap on the left saddlebag to pull out the memory stone that Discord was talking through. The pony had left it on the dash of the Head Hunter and now it was just there all of the sudden. “I figured out how to form my own connection after seeing the one from Rarity’s horn; I’ve never stopped watching you after you appeared here on Equus for a few seconds. I have one eye on you at all time my dear, interesting planet you’re talking to there I must say. I can see you are spreading the message of friendship and magic throughout the universe, along with a bit of chaos here and there to stir the pot a bit. I give that injured blue girl with the strange chaos field around her a few days before she’s up and moving again… a few hours if you’re friend finishes cooking up one of those delightful looking tomatoes, not exactly the same strength as one of those maximums but it’ll do its job. These long distance calls are giving me quite the headache and use up quite a lot of my energy. Wish you still had turtle power for that, but oh well. Life is chaotic enough as it is and it is fun to watch. Twilight and the others are doing just fine, but they still worry about you.”

“Discord I take it? Nice to hear from a friend of Fluttershy, hope the planet your on eventually learns to make their own form of space travel. It’s a rite of passage for all intelligent races in the universe to reach for the stars in their own way. My babies have done it in the most unique way that makes me so proud of them.” Yep Janet was back to gushing about her children and Fluttershy still didn’t know whether or not to ask about them. “My name is Janet, the planet that Fluttershy is on.”

“I’m looking at the ships right now, have you told Fluttershy about them yet? Oh I’m seeing a lot of interesting things here; get her one of those suits if you can. If not, then keep it a surprise for her, she’ll enjoy seeing it all for herself. The ponies of Equus would also find the idea unique and interesting and they are more than certainly capable of reproducing it, but as you say they really need to form their own way into space aside from magic bubbles. As Fluttershy found out a long time ago, it’s not exactly the most pleasant or safe way to travel. Have some tea on me when you can find some hot water Fluttershy.” Discord chuckled merrily as he saw Fluttershy looking healthy and making friends with an entire planet and its moon that had a huge mustache on it. “I’d tip my hat to you, I’d do just that, but I haven’t got a hat. You’re an interesting one Mrs. Janet and your babies are unique in their technological advancements, please make sure Fluttershy stays on you long enough for a trip to that spa. She needs it, like my friend Rarity needs to stop being so uptight and let her mane down a bit.”

“Oh don’t worry; Fluttershy isn’t leaving my body until she’s well cared for and after enjoying a nice full relaxing day there I’ll let her go. Don’t worry; I’ll keep it a secret just so she can see everything for herself and I’ll make sure she gets one of those suits. How she got this far without one, I’ll never know. I’m not going to tell her about these things when I can just show her, I want to see that awed look on her face when she witnesses just what my babies came up with.” Even if Janet didn’t get a response she smiled at Fluttershy who was smiling at her. “Your friends are still watching out for you even now, you must talk to them a lot with how lonely it is out there in space. I would know, I was once the loneliest number that anyone could ever know and then I met my moon Maurice.”

Roller had gotten bored and was rolling around at incredible speeds in the background. He hadn’t lost his speed at all and was blazing around the campsite cornering at a high velocity while keeping Fluttershy well within his sight. There was not much danger here to fight, but there was a lot of open space here so he wasn’t bored and could roll around to his heart’s content while Fluttershy looked over the blue skinned thing that had its outer shell peeled off. The world Mr. Wheel saw was very different then what everyone else could see, then again his eyes were on the sides of his body leaving him with an almost perfectly three hundred sixty degree’s of visual range.

A few hours later…

Fluttershy was enjoying her time by the river. She frolicked through all the alien flowers while tasting a few, they weren’t bad tasting either. She went rolling around in the soft plush grass; she could almost forget all her problems and her recently shortened mane.

When it came to lunch, Fluttershy started draining a few apples through her fangs before eating what was left of them afterwards. She had plenty to eat thanks to Janet’s ability to grow plants of all kinds from her body; she wasn’t going to be hungry or wanting for food. It took a while, but her second fang eventually disappeared and her right wing reverted back to feathers.

After lunch was around the time that Mira Nova was starting to wake up and Janet called Fluttershy over to the bench the space ranger had been laid up on. Her eyelids were twitching and her left foot wiggled slightly.

“She’s waking up Fluttershy, what should I do? I’m not exactly the first thing anyone wants to see when they wake up.” Janet’s red flower avatar was a tad intimidating when it grew to a large size and according to Janet she could make it much bigger, colossal even.

The pony idly wondered how one was not supposed to be intimidated by a talking planet, then again if it was friendly and fed you apples it wouldn’t be nearly as scary. So the pony might have been a bit biased towards apples because of her condition of being a fruit vampire.

“First make sure to put some shade over her eyes until she can handle the light, don’t let her sit up too fast or else it might upset her identified broken rib and most of all make sure she doesn’t panic too much as she could hurt herself.” Being the deferred to by an entire planet made Fluttershy feel awkward, she guessed Janet has never had to give medical aid to anyone. She shuddered at the thought of Janet becoming a doctor and Fluttershy was the closest thing the planet had to an expert on the subject at hoof within a hundred miles at least. Why did she tell Janet that she took care of animals both big and small again?

Janet listening to Fluttershy’s instructions decided to put a little cover overhead increasing the size of a leaf from the nearby apple tree to shade Mira’s head. She also tied some looses vines around the injured patient that allowed her to move, but wouldn’t allow her to get up from the couch. After a few more minutes of randomly shifting about, Mira finally opened her eyes blinking them dazedly while trying to sit up.

“Where am I, ugh it feels like I took a rocket to the chest.” Grunted the out of sorts Mira, she currently couldn’t focus well enough to know why she couldn’t move. “Why does my body feel so heavy?”

Having gotten used to talking without problems, Fluttershy had forgotten something important and that was that she didn’t understand Mira when she started speaking. Thankfully Janet relayed the information too her as to what Mira was saying.

“What? What was that?” The poor humanoid slowly tried to come to a much more lucid state having heard strange oddly cute noises. Her head stirred and she looked around, more carefully at her surroundings inhaling a breath of air when she realized she was being held by vines she grunted in pain as she felt something was wrong with her chest. The vines didn’t tightly grip her until she tried to sit up and then she heard what she assumed was a voice speaking an oddly soothing dialect.

“There there, it’ll be okay.” That soothing dialect was none other than Fluttershy who was softly petting Mira with a hoof making sure to try and calm her down. This suddenly got the attention of Mira Nova the spitfire princess of the Space Rangers organization, she stared at the odd four legged creature as it gently caressed her not understanding the gentle words it was saying. She was still getting the overall gist of Fluttershy’s tone as she was pushed back down gently. “Now you just lay back and rest, you’ll be better in no time.”

“Despite not speaking the same language she does, you’re doing pretty well with making her stay calm.” Now Janet on the other hoof was a voice Mira understood. Janet spoke in a language that Mira could understand even if she was having problems understanding the four legged adorable creature.

“Who are you? What’s going on? Why does everything hurt?” Tilting her head Mira saw that she was lying on a couch made of vines that were pinning her down. Behind the yellow furred creature with the pink hair that was calmly putting her hoof into Mira’s hand so she could hold onto something, behind the feminine creature was a large flower with what looked like a smiling bulb and a wheel with red armor and a slightly grayish tire that had eyes.

“Don’t know how you got here Ms. Nova, but you’re really quite banged up. You’ve got one or more broken ribs from what Ms. Shy here tells me, aside from that you have burn wounds to your arms, chest and thighs. Also your armor is totaled, you’ll definitely need a new one and until then you’ll be spending some time with my friend Ms. Shy here. You look like you could use a good spa treatment too.” After that the pretty talking flower then moved a vine that had a single fully grown tomato on it closer along with a pitcher shaped plant. “You much be hungry and thirsty. Here is a pitcher plant of water freshly squeezed by Ms. Shy here, so it’s guaranteed fresh. Also the tomato is to help speed up your recovery.”

Looking around dazedly with her blue eyes, Mira felt the upper half of her body being pushed into a sitting position and her arms were given some freedom to move. She slowly brought the pitcher plant to her lips and drank lightly from it before taking the offered tomato off the vine. She was still a bit confused as to where she was, but she must have still been in Galactic Alliance space if they knew she was a Space Ranger and helping her out like this. Taking in her general surroundings, this planet did indeed look familiar to Mira.

“Rhizome, I’m on… I’m on Rhizome? How did I get to… why am I here? I can’t remember.” She reached for her head and grimaced at the thought of how she ended up on Rhizome when… what had happened exactly? She really couldn’t remember.

“Well you do have a head injury, but don’t worry, that will clear up in no time. Just eat and rest a little.” It was now that Janet turned to Fluttershy having finally remembered the name her children had given her. “Oh right, that’s my other name! Sorry for not telling you sooner Fluttershy, it kind of skipped my mind that my children all call me Rhizome. I guess my full name would be Janet Rhizome then, home of my little Rhizomians!”

Something distinctly tickled at the back of Fluttershy’s brain, she’s heard of Rhizome before and she could almost remember where from. It had something to do with space traveling hippies? Fluttershy gained a wide eyed look.

Author's Note

Planet Rhizome home of the Rhizomian people, their technological prowess makes a whole lot of sense if they grew up on Janet the planet.

Plot welded together into a fused crossover. So far Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and Wander Over Yonder. There's obviously a lot more to it then just those two crossovers.

43

Fluttershy had heard mention of space hippies before, it was just unfortunate for her that she didn’t know how to get into contact with Fox and his crew. She at least knew she was somewhere near the Lylat System. After a moment she heard voice she didn’t understand trying to get her attention, oh right it was Mira that was trying to talk to her.

“She wants to know when she can be safely moved to the city Dr. Shy.” With Janet as a translator it wasn’t hard to keep her as a go between; psychic powered planets were a rare oddity.

Fluttershy was assuming cities like the main one on Aldebaran were the norm for more intelligent races, big and encompassing a large area with highly visible architecture. She was quickly done with checking over Mira and decided to move on to tending to Roller.

“You likely wouldn’t Fluttershy, given what my children use as building material. Don’t worry I’ll give you directions on how to get there from here when you’re ready to go.” Turning her bulb back to the Tangean eating a tomato, Janet’s avatar relayed what Fluttershy told her. “Tomorrow at the soonest, you’re still recovering from your injuries and need more rest.”

“Yeah no, that’s not okay. I need to get back out in the field; my team could be in danger!” Mira clutched at her chest while cringing slightly after having leaned forward abruptly, she went back to laying down not wanting to aggravate her injures. Looking around she saw the husk of her suit, definitely too damaged to call for any form of pickup or even able to fly. So she was going to need the ride she was being provided with in the form of that strange yellow furred alien tending to the strange wheel thing.

“Your team wouldn’t want you to die before you could even get back in the fight. Whatever said fight happened to be anyway, how would you even get back into it if you don’t have a ride? They’d want you to recover some before getting back into the thick of it, besides that your suit is definitely out of order and I doubt you’ll be getting far without your armor so you’ll likely need to pick up a spare suit from Star Command.” Janet knew all about Mira’s team. Mira’s three friends were Booster the friendly if strong Jo-adian, XR the experimental ranger robot and one of the most highly decorated Space Rangers and leader of the team Buzz Lightyear. “Also you have much more to worry about with someone who qualifies for the First Contact Diplomatic Immunity law.”

“Who would that be, you?” Mira hasn’t heard that one used in a while since they discovered Lylat, Star Command was discreetly keeping everyone away from that section of space to avoid getting dragged into whatever was happening there. Things needed to settle down completely first before they could truly open their borders for possible trade and commerce.

“Nope, I’m already part of the Galactic Alliance… well given that I am Rhizome in a nutshell. My body is this planet. Sorry I’ve been quiet before, but giving birth tends to take a lot out of you and the people that live on me are my children that you’ve already helped several times before. What was that thing called that mister angry pants Buzz got a bunch of vines to destroy? Oh right, it was that hyper death ray thing! You all thought your hero was cracked when he was completely correct.” Pointing a leaf at the pony, Janet was making it clearly known who the first contact diplomat was. “Anyway, I’m talking about my little friend over there; her species isn’t exactly the best at space travel quite yet. They are certainly learning a lot about it though and she’s the first of her kind to get this far out. Very much to the point that she’s kind of lost, well she doesn’t exactly know how to get back to her home world. She’s at least in communication with them and darn it all if she isn’t trying to find her home planet the poor little dear.”

“How is she still be in communication with her home and not be able to find it?” The blue skinned female thought it was simple if this sapient being could just follow the signal back home. She wasn’t about to question Rhizome being alive, she’s seen some pretty weird things being a Space Ranger. This wasn’t even worthy of putting on her top fifty of the weirdest things she’s ever seen list.

“It’s not exactly simple, she can’t exactly trace it back to home and her method of communication puts her in touch with another race she met on the way to ending up on my body. She ran into a vessel full of killer robots before she got here, the end result of that little adventure ended up with her warping around the universe like a pinball and less hair.”It was nice to finally talk to a Space Ranger for the first time; Janet thought it was a novelty she wouldn’t let go to waste. “Even before that she was on an exploding planet and a vessel full of shoot first questions later types, they even shot at her just because of her appearance. She’s kind of a magnet for trouble and I think you’re trouble, so please don’t drag her into doing something she doesn’t want to do.”

“What’s her race called?” It was a question that would allow Mira to think about the first contact scenario. That and to mull over the fact that her Dr. Shy was definitely a survivor of several dangerous sounding situations. She’s seen what going through several survival situations in a row can do to others. The little cuddly looking creature didn’t look too dangerous; then again Mira thought that the nearby spaceship did look slightly intimidating despite its general size.

“She’s a pony and there are several types of her kind where she’s from. Her planet has a lot of intelligent races aside from ponies, but hers was the first race to get into space and it was by accident that she even ended up getting this far out.” The flower could just see the slightly intrigued look on Mira’s face.

“Pony huh? Sounds cute and she looks it too. So I’m taking it the reason I can’t understand her is because the translator in both my ranger suit and my underclothing are completely shot.” Putting a hand to her head Mira tried to remember what blew her armor open, Space Ranger armor was tough stuff made for the comfort as well as the functionality of actually keeping the wearer alive over everything else. “Well what can you tell me about her? She’s obviously not native to any of the Galactic Alliance worlds. She’s now considered a diplomat and the closest Space Ranger she has to take care of her is me and I’m feeling pretty useless right now.”

“Her species is primarily herbivorous, a lot of them are as small as her and like many people from your planet they have their special talents. The markings on their rear end is unique to each individual denoting specifically what their special talents are, it only looks like it does right now because she was slightly mutated in an accident after she got lost.” Looking back towards the pony Janet sighed staring at the twisted markings, one pink bat, one pink butterfly and the last one something twisted between in a warped circle. “She’s really been put through a lot since she got off her home planet, the fang and that one featherless wing isn’t exactly normal for her.”

Yep Mira was right; this pony must have some really good survival instincts. A vessel full of killer robots wouldn’t scare Mira as it was the kind of a weekly basis thing for her. Doing it alone without any kind of advantage of her Space Ranger suit or Tangean powers? She hadn’t realized it, but she was getting tense just thinking about all the mental scars that Fluttershy might have had. Mira finally noted the pony didn’t seem to have any armor and was practically a civilian by all appearances.

“Excuse me. I’m sorry to interrupt your talk with Officer Mira, but can you boil some water please? I don’t exactly have the equipment to do so and I want to make a beverage of boiled leaves that helps calm the nerves. Mira could use some, she seems a little tense.” Fluttershy was the very image of adorable despite her slightly twisted appearance, her ears splayed backwards and her eyes not meeting Janet’s avatar.

“Of course I can help you with that Fluttershy; my children have boiled leaves for beverages too. Got any leaves in particular though?” After she was hoofed some of the tea leaves from the pony, Janet’s avatar ate them to get a grasp of their properties. The leaves were safe for most biological life, the calming properties weren’t bad and the slightly addictive quality was easily dealt with. Janet added a bit to the makeup of the mental blueprints she had of the plant. When she produced some with her own personal spin they would be much sweeter in flavor when boiled, Rhizome had a new sweet tea plant.

A thicker pitcher plant came up from the ground along with what Rhizomian’s knew to be a power plant, a plant that produces energy from sunlight. Janet was a truly ‘green’ planet. The power plant stretched some tendrils towards the pitcher plant while slowly heating up, after a moment some water and crushed tea leaves were added to the pitcher. A few minutes later a soothing aroma filled the campsite.

“What is that? It smells really good.” It was hard for Mira to relax. She was strapped to a couch made out of vines against her will, even if it was for her own good. She also just met a sapient possibly traumatized first contact diplomat and her armor was wrecked. That armor wasn’t particularly cheap, as a lot of Space Ranger armor was custom made.

“Fluttershy figures you looked a bit antsy about being pinned down by me, so she suggested a soothing warm drink to calm your nerves. I have to say you are actually looking a little stir crazy, but you’re staying remarkably calm despite all this.” Janet received a simple smile for her comment.

“Well, I’ve seen a lot of things in my line of work. If you want to know one interesting thing about me, I’m a Tangean that survived energy build up syndrome past the normal lethal level.” What followed Mira’s comment was a nice tea party getting to know her new charge that she was sworn to protect. Fluttershy not only dragged her out of the river, but was also from an undiscovered sapient alien race that has committed a first contact with a Space Ranger. Her hands were tied with protecting this pony; at the moment Fluttershy and Janet were more likely to be defending her in her current state. She would also need to register Rhizome as a living being and the paperwork for that was going to be horribly mind numbing.

Their gathering went well into the evening with Mira telling many a tale of her adventures in space. Roller told them of the places he rolled through in a simplistic manner befitting his equally simplistic species. Fluttershy had a few happy tales of her own to tell about animals. Janet was mainly acting as the go between for all of them. The most surprising thing to Mira was the fact that Roller was a biological creature; many would assume him to be mechanical at first glance. Having finished their tea and the snacks provided by the living planet, they all settled in for the evening.

Fluttershy was snuggled up to Mira who was idly scratching her behind the ear on the vine couch as they both slowly started dozing off. The pony was such a cuddly creature; Mira wished that she could have seen what Fluttershy looked like before all this happened, the pony was now sadly a diplomat by association of first contact.

There were plenty of jerks out there that wanted to paint Star Command in a bad light and there would be many people after Fluttershy the moment they knew she was a first contact diplomat. There was a very good reason that a law was made about this and had Space Rangers following a first contact diplomat around for their own safety. It would be impossible to hide the fact that she was a diplomat; Fluttershy was rather unique in her appearance. An almost sleeping Mira Nova gripped the pony tighter and the pony nuzzled into her neck softly, Fluttershy was going to be constantly hounded the moment anyone aside from those on Rhizome found out about her existence.

Janet watched the scene with a smile; Fluttershy had made a friend with a Space Ranger and was looking to be recovering slightly from all her ordeals. Now if only the pony would rest easy in her sleep. Janet didn’t need to be asleep to interact with the mares dreams, being a psychic planet helped a lot in that end with some aid from that maximum tomato Fluttershy brought along. She kept a vigil similar to that of the living biological wheel, the thing had a language that was hard to understand and Fluttershy made it look easy since her special talent was dealing with all forms of biological life in general. Though the less intelligent said life was, the better it likely went for Fluttershy.

Further up north another avatar of Janet appeared as a Rhizomian was preparing for bed, he was a large being and he looked questioningly at the smiling flower of a variety he had never seen before. That’s when Janet first spoke to one of her children; this child was a fully grown Rhizomian who was peaceful in nature and could be assertive if he wanted to be. He was a good leader that had much in common with Fluttershy, though he lacked her shyness. This Rhizomian was given an intriguing task to do; he would be reminded about it tomorrow in case he forgot.

The next day, Janet released Mira from her vines once Fluttershy gave her the okay to do so. Fluttershy thought she was okay enough to walk around, even if her ribs were still a bit off and mending.

Mira took the time to stretch her legs and move around; she wasn’t wanting for anything at the moment and was waiting for Fluttershy to finish breakfast. She was good enough to take a few tumbles and to move around. Intense fighting was definitely not something she would be capable of, even so she’d still throw herself in the way of danger if it meant keeping the peace and brokering peaceful connections with Fluttershy and her race.

Fluttershy was beginning to feel less jaded by all the things that have happened to her as she spent time on this planet, there was no danger and it was peaceful. The food was fantastic, she’s made some new friends and the best of all things was that there was absolutely nothing trying to kill her. It was with a heavy heart that Fluttershy knew it wouldn’t last and she had to leave eventually, she couldn’t abuse the hospitality of the planet or its native children forever. Janet wouldn’t cause detrimental side effect to Aldebaran and Equus. She had plenty of time to get better mentally and then she would be ready for further trauma inducing stuff, even if she didn’t want to be.

“Mira I know I haven’t done this before, but I was too scared to do it after what happened to me the last time. Thank you for holding me last night; I didn’t have any nightmares thanks to you.” That Fluttershy had the courage to use her stare again at all to communicate with the Space Ranger was quite telling of just how much she trusted the blue skinned biped. Even Janet was a little shocked to see mild mental emissions coming from Fluttershy connecting herself temporarily to Mira Nova to actually talk in a manner that she would understand.

“You can talk to me? Um… thanks, I would have done that for anyone who needed it. Helping others and keeping the peace is why I’m a Space Ranger in the first place. Why didn’t you talk to me before?” Despite the off putting feel of being stared at so hard, Mira managed to respond to those highly focused eyes.

“Oh I can’t talk to you normally; it requires that I keep eye contact with you and this ability is the reason why I currently look like I do. I’ve been kind of afraid to use it and Janet makes me feel secure enough to try and bridge the gap on my own. You’re a good person and I’m glad you’re my friend.” After that Fluttershy broke eye contact feeling a bit shy at the moment as she bowed her head low and headed for the ship. She hadn’t used the stare in while; it was hard being reminded of the horrible things that have happened because of this particular ability.

Mira was slightly shocked at actually seeing what could be described as a stare that could literally see into the soul, Fluttershy was an incredible being and there was a lot of hurt built up in there. She shivered a bit and crossed her arms, she had actually seen into Fluttershy as she had likely seen into her. The pony really deserved being on a peaceful planet like Janet Rhizome.

Boarding the Head Hunter after having gotten directions from Janet, Fluttershy pointed the ship in the right direction and then pulled out her memory stone while concentrating. It was getting easier to use the stone and she was finally making that call into Katrina.

“Katrina can you hear me?” The stone in Fluttershy’s hoof glowed.

“Um, I’m fine… mostly. Has Katt been by Aldebaran or is she there right now?” It was hard question to ask as Fluttershy really didn’t want to know the answer. Did Katt eventually come back for her?

“We did get some communications from her asking about you. We told her you were definitely still alive, but no longer on our planet. She has joined in on the Toad Wars as they are calling it here in the Aniverse systems; I think she may be searching for you. We have heard things have become quiet in the Lylat system and they’re likely in the midst of rebuilding. There are a few grim things happening in our systems personally. With more heroes like Bucky O’ Hare out there, things are actually looking up.” After a moment the wise old cat lady chuckled. “Enough about how I’m doing, is there something that you need of me aside from having a nice talk my dear friend?”

“Yes, I need you to get a message to Ms. Munroe. I need her to ask Star Fox about the time they visited a planet called Rhizome and if they could go there. I think I’m on that planet and I need a little help from them.” Hearing a gasp, Fluttershy didn’t want them or Katrina to worry so she hastily added information of her situation. ”Oh, I’m not in any immediate grave danger or anything Katrina; I just need somebody who can repair stuff and if they aren’t too busy I’ll be on this planet for a while. I have friends here who are looking out for me.”

“I’ll do what I can to get this information to Katt, though I doubt she’ll want to leave our systems while we are in the middle of a rather random war against the Toads. She has been aiding both the downtrodden and the injured, I heard she’s even flying with the Corsair Canards.” One could almost hear the smile in Katrina’s voice. “Ah, those ducks knew how to use all four of their arms and they were simply divine companions when I was younger. Ahem, anyway, I would like to hear from you again sometime soon Fluttershy. Felicia had recently gotten into quite a little pickle and I would like to regale you with that tale sometime later. I’ve just become rather busy. ”

Fluttershy put the fading stone back into her battered and beaten Saddlebags, she looked out the view screen and resumed piloting the ship as they approached a large mass of huge plants, after a moment she realized that there were people moving among them. It was rather breathtaking once you realized what you were looking at; the city was colorful, vibrant and entirely made out of really big combination of alien plants.

The pony spotted something that exploded like fireworks in the air and it directed her attention to the glowing circle of vines on the ground outside the city. It was one of Rhizome’s landing ports for visitors and she could already see the familiar avatar of Janet waiting for her with three other beings, the flower was waving her down.

Mira stayed silent throughout the ride, she figured the stone was Fluttershy’s communication device and decided not to disturb her. She looked out over Rhizome; Janet certainly made for a beautiful world. All of Rhizomian technology was ecologically friendly to the planet and Janet was likely appreciative of her children treating her body with respect.

Author's Note

Mira Nova for one episode got her powers boosted by absorbing raw energy sources, the downside is that it was addictive as hell to her and was actually killing her. It was a G-rated drug episode.

Fluttershy is Mira's acting medicine horse, cuddles make many things better, if only she knew what being a First Contact Diplomat entails. It kind of paints a target on her back doesn't it? At least she'll have a protection of some kind.

44

It had been six long and glorious days for Fluttershy, she was still having some problems with nightmares and having either Roller or Mira sleep next to her helped her out a lot. Her nightmares weren’t just of become a metal monstrosity, there was also the nightmare of being the cause of a planet exploding and learning to enjoy bloodshed while becoming utterly cruel. At least she had plenty of support for her mental scars.

Thinking back on it, Fluttershy had done a lot of good in the universe despite being consistently mauled and she still believed in helping others… at least within reason. It was time about she reflected on things in the positive light, instead of all the painful scaring negatives getting her down.

She had seen many a wondrous things and technologies, like the Star Fox fighter ships that were a lot like watching the Wonder Bolts fly even if she didn’t particularly like all the violence that came with their amazing ability to keep up with how fast things were moving around them.

Thinking of wondrous technology, everything on planet Rhizome revolved around plant life. Food, transportation, tools, clothing, spaceships and more was all made from local vegetation which was incredible. The unfortunate downside of said technology was that it could catch on fire, was incredibly susceptible to pollution or certain chemicals, plants weren’t good for heavy armor and the last thing was negativity. Being negative in personality or being constantly angry can actually kill some Rhizomian plants, which would naturally make any bad situation worse if you couldn’t keep a positive outlook despite things not going your way. If Fluttershy hadn’t heard it from the source herself, she would have never believed that such a thing as being killed by negative thoughts. It luckily only happens to plants that you have to absolutely be touching or working with to have that effect. It was still a rather inconvenient little problem, which is why the technology hadn’t caught on with the rest of the Galactic Alliance.

Aside from all the wonders of the biggest plants she has ever seen in her life, it still embarrassed Fluttershy greatly that the toilets on Rhizome were directly connected to Janet. How was a pony supposed to get any privacy when the entire planet knew where you were at all times as long as you were on her?

She had helped save all those enslaved people in the Aniverse systems; even if she couldn’t stop the war she still at least aided people in need and may have made friends on both sides. She wished them all well, hoping that most of them lived to lead fulfilling lives.

She even saved the real owner of the Head Hunter who became violently ill and wrecked a fighter ship while almost getting crushed by an asteroid in the process. It might have been a bit fun if she hadn’t had that large panic attack; it helped somewhat with learning how to fly the ship made in part by the mysterious mystical Chozo at least.

She made friends with some wondrous animals like the Dachoras, Etecoons and the Popstar natives. One of those animals was still at her side even now and now that she thought of it, she even saved his life. It was an errant thought on how Wheelie adaptation worked; Roller would have died had he not been patched up. His herd or pack would have left him behind to fend for himself in a seemingly cruel manner, but at least Fluttershy understood why they would have left him behind. It was simply survival of the fittest while still protecting the young viciously, Roller would have likely been eaten by a larger predator since he was incapable of rolling. The lucky Wheelies to survive an apex predator successfully adapted to become big and tough with that thick spiked black armor, it explained why there were so few of those big scary Wheelies.

Most of all she had survived many a circumstance beyond her or anyone’s control. In all things could be worse, much worse. Her friends could fall into a depressive state that spiraled out of control; instead they were cheering her on while being horribly worried for her safety as she would do for them if they were constantly in danger. Angel was okay and he was watching all the animals back home; he was such a good little bunny. Luna checks up on her frequently, Discord literally has an eye on her at all times now and could even call her at a personal cost. It was touching that Discord and Luna thought she was worth all the effort to contact.

“I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Her name was Pwerta; she was quite a beautiful Rhizomian who had skills relative to that of Aloe and Lotus back on Equus and she was a master at massage treatments.

“No, I’m fine Pwerta. Just do that again only a little further back.” Fluttershy was still wary about the using the stare like this, she received a simple smile from the Rhizomian.

All Rhizomian kind were in general, tall, had three thick fingers on each hand, their heads had large fan shaped ears reminiscent of a bats ears, beak styled mouths with their nostrils protruding and hair at least hanging to the middle of their backs. They wore tunics of varying colors and make; given the warm climate throughout most of the planet they had no concept of winter or warm clothing. Females tended to have bigger ears, while the males tended to be stockier.

Pwerta was the best masseuse of the spa; she had long red hair, wore a white tunic and had a light grey toned skin. When she finally did what Fluttershy asked of her the pony yelped in ecstasy then melted into the massage table where other Rhizomian females were giving her a pedicure for her hooves. They were exceedingly good at their jobs because Fluttershy was blushing like mad by the time they started combing and brushing out what remained of her mane and then moved to working on her still rather luxuriant tail. The last six days of constant Rhizomian spa treatment and pampering like this would put any pony back on their hooves.

The overly friendly Pwerta was rather affectionate with Fluttershy in such a way that she constantly tried to get her new friend to squeak or squirm because it was cute. The native found the pony rather adorable in her shyness and when she started purring at her ministrations. In fact, Pwerta couldn’t be happier to help out someone who needed this much stress relief and her gentle teasing was certainly aiding in the healing process.

“Yeah, this is the stuff. Don’t know how I ended up on Rhizome, but the hospitality is always worth sticking around for. At least until I can get some assistance from Star Command.” Mira had the head of the spa as her masseuse and the hospitality here was great, except for the lack of meat anywhere on the planet. At least there were plants that tasted like meat with Rhizomes vast assortment of more than fifty thousand types of edible plants that were useful in cooking, there was about a hundred thousand more that didn’t need any cooking at all. If you were a vegetarian it would be impossible to starve here and Mira did like her salads. “So how have things been here on Rhizome Tubunch?”

“We’ve been doing fairly well, Professor Triffid is still running the non lethal weapons program and our city defenses are much better than they were last time. Things will be more interesting for us now; especially with our great mother Janet returned to strength from what was nearly her eternal slumber. We will be well defended for however long she is awake for now.” The male Rhizomian with the grey hair and the pale white skin sighed. “Even then I know that our planet and our very way of living can still be destroyed, everything isn’t meant to last forever no matter how much we wish it were so. As long as we are still at peace then we will flourish, we still try to spread what gifts we can to all we meet. The only ones we will likely never please is a carnivore and we hold no hatred for their very natures, as they are naturally a part of our vast universe too.”

“It’s a good thing you’re multilingual or else I wouldn’t understand a word you were saying.” At least Mira was glad that someone here spoke Tangean, it was getting annoying needing an entire planet to translate everything you say. Just about every being in the Galactic Alliance wore some form of translator or spoke a common language, but the translators could only be made to work with languages that were known. In essence it would take months for a person to learn Fluttershy’s language then add that language to a translator to alter her speech into something understandable which at most would take a year. This was if Fluttershy didn’t do the eye contact thing which allowed her to talk directly to anything biological.

What Mira couldn’t have known was that Slip Toad the frog of Star Fox made something that did it in a few days and that Fluttershy still had the busted remains of one of the greatest breakthroughs in translator technology.

Shaking her head Mira probably should have asked Professor Triffid for a Rhizome suit since they had built in plants that could work as translators and communications, same problem that it only works with Galactic Alliance languages. Triffid was currently busy with a custom order for Fluttershy who has never worn a spacesuit before and asked her not to tell Fluttershy about it. Apparently the large Rhizomian vegetation engineer who was once her leader on a mission against a mechanical energy vampire was going to give one to Fluttershy and it was a newly upgraded version with some help from Janet. They were hoping to literally weed out the negativity problem inherent in some Rhizomian technology, within reason since it made a decent failsafe in the case that it fell into the wrong hands.

Fluttershy was enjoying everything, the sights and sounds made her wish her friends were here to witness it all. She thought about Professor Triffid, he was a good being and leader. He was friendly and quite stout despite his diet being entirely vegetarian like the rest of his species. He had white hair pulled back into a ponytail, a short white beard sticking from his chin. His ears were quite small even for a Rhizomian male, his skin was two different shade s of brown and he held quite a calm demeanor at all times. He wore a small pair of glasses and green and yellow suit, all of which were made from plants found on Rhizome. While he was technically a pacifist like every other Rhizomian on the planet, he knew there was a time when fighting back is the only option. Triffid did make weapons though she hadn’t seen them yet; he was called a vegetable geneticist and was the top professor in his field of chosen work.

Looking about the multicolored vibrant plant covered landscape, the pony saw that Roller was sitting off to the side taking a nap under a tree. The Wheelie was getting a lot of exercise in and he had recently discovered a new unique property of his recent adaptation, he can stick to and roll along any surface at full speed. It was something of interest other than his tire growing tougher, aside from that discovery there was nothing new about the friendly wheel creature except that he liked it here. He really liked all the oilier foods he consumed that came personally from the Rhizome cookbook, said oil was coming from the massive variety of natives nuts.

After a short warm mud bad and a quick rinse under a sprinkler plant later, Fluttershy was wondering what she should do next. She had explored the city and seen many odds and ends of this world, things that Discord was likely shared with her friends back home. The planet while it was relaxing and incredibly therapeutic, it wasn’t going to make her forget her mission of finding Equus. She would wait for Mira to finish with Mr. Tubunch before she asked what they would be doing next.

The food was probably the best part of being on this planet, it came in so many flavors Fluttershy almost wanted to be like Pinkie Pie and try it all. This was referred to as the fruits and salad planet by the Galactic Alliance and they were as big as Jo-ad the farm planet was when it came to food production, one of Mira’s best friends and comrade was a Jo-adian. While she has yet to meet a Jo-adian she heard that they were big and generally friendly beings, they were also far tougher than most beings in the Galactic Alliance just from their size alone.

Of one of the downsides that Fluttershy had learned about Rhizome was that the people here had a little trouble with long range communications technology, it was hard to get plants to connect to something that was mechanical. Still though, aside from her message for Katt the Rhizomians had managed to get a message out to Star Command three days ago that Mira Nova needed backup and it was taking them a while to respond.

Being a properly paranoid pony that she was, Fluttershy knew something bad was going to happen on Rhizome soon and hopefully Janet would be able to stop it. She didn’t know whether that bad thing would be about her, Mira or just a random assault on Rhizome itself, but things certainly seemed peaceful enough to warrant the worry.

Fluttershy jumped in shock when she was lightly shook out of her thoughts by a blue skinned hand and she looked up at Mira sheepishly. It was time for them to go, Mira was escorting her around because she was now the ambassador of the pony race and was under the protection of Star Command. Well at least she was being protected by Mira Nova, the tomboy princess of Tangea.

Finding out that Mira was a princess, but didn’t necessarily want to take the job as leader of her people, was kind of odd for Fluttershy. As a Space Ranger she’d protect more than just her own people, she protected anyone who needed it and was a pretty heroic person from the stories she could tell where odd and magical things happened in her line of work. A princess was something to look up to for ponies, but it definitely had an entirely different connotation for Mira who despised the idea of being one. It didn’t mean that Mira was a bad person, she was just different and that was okay.

Twilight Sparkle was a little put off when she heard from Fluttershy that Ranger Mira Nova was in fact a princess of her people that didn’t want to be one and that she was instead chose to be a protector of a wider range of people of the united factions of the Galactic Alliance. The things she and Fluttershy had discussed last night left a lot of food for thought on Twilight’s plate, she wished Fluttershy safety in her travels and that she’d always be one of Twilight’s best friends even if she never made it back. She promised that they’ll talk again in another dream.

Fluttershy was led to a wide building with a dome made of plants that looked to be several floors tall and eventually she was brought to a room where she saw Professor Triffid discussing something with Janet and they both turned to Fluttershy with a smile. Fluttershy was used to being smiled at by Janet’s avatar now; Triffid on the other hoof was looking a little haggard as if he had been through one of Twilight’s overeager studying periods.

“Fluttershy have we got a present for you! It’s a little souvenir from me and my children and something to remember us by when you finally go looking for your home. Go to sleep Professor you really need your rest, I can handle the explanation of our gift.” Janet said in a perky tone as her plant sunk into the ground to show several tables with modified plants on them that were behind her. They were at Professor Triffid’s Floral Foundations lab, where floriculture, horticulture and agriculture came together in an amazing way that only Rhizomian’s could have accomplished with their vegetable technology.

“I’ll do that Janet, this project has been simply quite amazing with your input… great mother Rhizome.” Triffid wasn’t surprised to find out that their goddess was the planet itself that fed them and led them through their infancy as a people into what they were now; he was surprised that their moon was alive too and that he was in constant contact with the great mother. He just shook his head as he exited the room, he needed a good nap. While his work was quite thrilling, it was also highly tiring.

“Oh how my children embarrass me by calling me great mother, what’s a planet to do?” The flower popped up next to two green objects on the table and then coughed into one of her leaves. “Anyway, the reason you’re here is that we’ve been doing a bit of pruning and advancing some other things here at the Floral Foundations Lab. Mira I hope you know what this is?”

Mira looked excited as she took one of the green backpacks from Janet as she sprouted a vine holding it. After a moment Mira had her arms through the loops and her body was soon swamped with green and red colored vines for a moment. The end result was an ensemble consisted of red boots, green pants leading up to the red chest plate with puffy rose colored shoulders and with more red leading to rose colored gauntlets. The helmet was nearly a complete bubble coming from the suit leading to a red portion sticking out the top of the bubble with three white thorns, at the side of the bubble where two strange looking corns sitting near where Mira’s ears were.

“It’s been a while since I’ve worn this thing.” Mira pulled out and twirled what looked like pistol, brown on top, light green around the tip of the barrel where as the rest of it was dark green with a light green swirl running through it. She aimed at the wall and squeezed the handle causing the thing to launch something the size of a soft ball at the wall where it made a dent with its impact. “Yep the old pea shooter is still responsive as ever. If another Nos-4-A-2 happens, I know what I’m wearing to that fight.”

“It has a few upgrades, faster flight speed and now completely space capable since it originally couldn’t keep up with ranger made suits before outside of atmospheric conditions. The pod grenades regenerate faster now. The suit might need a bit more sunlight, water and love afterwards, which shouldn’t be too hard to come by as negativity has less of a disastrous effect on these suits now. Our weapons have better more damaging firing modes now that makes the gun shoot thorns, both metal eating acid for robots and a non lethal paralytic poison for taking down biological targets without harming them and it also has a lot more punch to it. Wait a moment and you can take it out for a test flight.” Janet turned to Fluttershy and held the next one out for her, she looked at it and then at Janet. “Go on, take it. It’s a gift and it’s not going to hurt you, though it may take a moment for it to adjust to your physiology. Professor Triffid worked really hard on getting this to work just for you. Take your saddlebags off before putting it on though.”

After taking off her saddlebags as ordered, Fluttershy tentatively reached out and took the backpack from the vine with a hoof. She put it on and wondered how she was supposed to activate it. With but a thought she felt all kind of vines erupt around her body from the pack temporarily blinding her and after everything around her calmed down, she realized she was now wearing her own specially made Rhizomian Spacesuit. It was chafing a… no wait, the chafing had stopped immediately. The suit had just readjusted itself to make her feel more comfortable, which was nice of it even as it made Fluttershy feel rather self conscious.

“Oh that is so adorable; each suit is different because the wearer affects how it looks. Hold on I’ll get you a reflective surface here in a minute.” Even the mirrors on Rhizome were made with plants or made out of them, either way Janet was now showing Fluttershy her reflection. “There you go, one Rhizome Vega-suit made to order. Even with your wings the way they are, this spacesuit will let you fly.”

Fluttershy stared at her suit; it was a bit odd and vastly different from Mira’s. Aside from the green highlights it came in the two colors of pink and yellow, matching her body’s natural colors. It was green around her neck, at the joints, the tips of her hooves, the large pouches that would replace her saddlebags and the leaves wrappings around her tail. The chest, body, wing and legs were all a soft yellow, including the petals acting as a skirt around her waist and rear. Her head was in a half bubble and at the back of her head were two large pink petals stick straight up and a wreath of smaller pink petals wrapping softly around her head, there was one long pink petal leading down the back of her neck connecting to the rest of the suit.

“Oh I see you’ve activated the exhaust plant, it’s a new feature. Without that plant, those suits wouldn’t be nearly as maneuverable in space. This new line of Rhizome made spacesuit prides itself entirely on the utility functions, combat is secondary to comfort and safety.” Janet couldn’t help but look at the pony’s look of awe as she flexed and moved these wings as if they were a part of her own body when it was just the suit reacting to her thoughts.

This was the first time Fluttershy wore a spacesuit.

Author's Note

Vega-suits are shown to be worn by Buzz, Mira, Booster and Triffid. Along with the weapons that Rhizome people would use. Specifically its from the episode of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command 'Dirty Work'. Professor Triffid even had a solar powered spaceship called a Rhizomian Solar Clipper.

For all intents and purposes, Fluttershy is now wearing a tree, a highly technologically advanced one at that.

45

“Ouch, that really hurts.” Fluttershy whimpered slightly as she slammed bodily into another building, it wasn’t nearly enough to damage one of the regenerating buildings that made up the whole city. She had just got finished dropping off her saddlebags with the Head Hunter and made sure Mr. Wheel got some rest as she was going flying. It took a lot of talking with the wheel to get him to let her do this with Mira; he was okay with it as long as Mira was around to look out for her. The last time she was out of his sight she got seriously injured and it was understandable that Roller was a little upset at not being near enough to protect her.

Fluttershy heard Mira asking her what sounded like a question; she looked at Mira in the eyes and responded.

“Yes, I’m okay if that was what you were asking about. This thing takes a little getting used to.” That was an understatement about the suit; Fluttershy could now fly up into the upper atmosphere without getting cold or freezing before she reached space where there was no oxygen. The lack of oxygen wasn’t something to worry about anymore either. Janet said the suits were built for utility first and combat second, Fluttershy knew what she meant after it was explained. “You seem to be doing okay.”

“Yeah well, I’m used to jets and not these ‘exhaust plant’ things. It’s similar enough that I quickly got used to it, just goes to show how right Buzz was when he said this technology should have interested the LGMs more.” Noticing Fluttershy tilting her head Mira slapped her face, when her helmet was down the large portion that sat on top of the bubble folded down onto her back. “There is this race called Little Green Men which is why we abbreviate it into LGM, I’ll introduce you to them if we stop by Star Command or their planet. They help with all the technological advancements at Star Command and can build just about anything you need or fix whatever might need fixing; they especially make armor and spaceships.”

“Well, they sound nice.” Fluttershy pushed off the building and went into a hover next to Mira; she looked at her back and kept the fake wings spread out. She watched as the exhaust plant that popped up from the suit went to work with keeping her in the air, to think there was a plant that can spew so many harmless spores so fast that it can lift anything weighing underneath three hundred pounds up into space. She turned back to look at Mira.

“Oh they are, trust me. There are just as many friendly races out there as there are races bent on conquering, killing and or enslaving everything to their wills. It’s a bit annoying that one of those races put me in a cage and used me as a zoo animal. They treated me no better than a wild animal too, in fact they were really quite condescending about it until we broke out.” Mira now had a slightly sadistic smirk on her face; it had been a long time since that happened. Looking back on it now, it was actually kind of funny to her. “At least Ozma wouldn’t have been that bad if she had us in cages.”

Fluttershy didn’t bother asking who that was; it was probably another one of Mira’s long stories that usually had a lot of violence involved. It wouldn’t surprise her if Mira didn’t know the meaning of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, something Fluttershy hoped she didn’t have right now or in the near future. She just flew on trying to get used to the speed at which she was flying with this suit, it could easily move at mach speeds which was disorienting. Her suit was more civilian than Mira’s, Mira’s actually came with weapons and she has definitely worn one of these suits before. A cold shiver ran down all the way to the tip of her tale at the thought of there being so many violent and dangerous beings in the universe.

The civilian suit was geared entirely towards comfort and utility more than it was for battle. It could produce oxygen to a nearly limitless capacity, the suit was made of plants so that one was a given. It had a power plant that would keep the suit powered if it was hit with enough sunlight and required very little watering to remain operational, Fluttershy being a pegasus would have no problems drawing water out of most forms of liquids provided she ended up on a planet with a breathable atmosphere. The wings on the suit didn’t need to flap, but in an emergency they could while in atmospheric conditions to provide flight. Then there was the recent modification to all Rhizome suits which involved something called an exhaust plant.

On Rhizome the exhaust plant is a peculiar piece of vegetation, it was a plant that has its seeds at the base protected by its leaves until it was ready to fire them like artillery shells when it was ready to propagate. While it is waiting for the seeds to mature so that it could spread them, exhaust plants had the unique defense mechanism of making sure that nothing could touch its seeds to eat them. Janet, not having entirely been in control of her whole body for quite a while until recently, did not have control over the defense mechanism of this particular plant and as such it wasn’t until now that such advancement in Rhizome based technology could be made.

The exhaust plant defense ability was to spew millions of tiny relatively harmless exploding spores, what was not so harmless was with which the strength that these quickly evaporating spores were sprayed from the exhaust plant. It could send a Rhizomian of average weight flying up to over five hundred feet away with one blast. Another reason for its name, other than the spore firing feature, was that it only had a limited amount of blasts and spores it could create. It could only hold so much energy all of which went into seed and spore blowing production. Professor Triffid had wanted a better look at one of these plants for years, but the danger involved had made it a highly unfeasible prospect.

The exhaust plant was tweaked to remove its seed reproducing ability in exchange for ramping up its spore blowing capability to be more of a constant stream; this led to the Rhizomian jetpack upgrade in all Rhizome Vega-suits. Even then the exhaust plant alone wouldn’t last more than a few minutes of flight before needing a recharge, which is why the power plant was added to power the exhaust plant and aid in the other functions of the suit.

Power plants weren’t previously added to the Rhizome suit, when Mira and her team wore these suits previously. They were what amounted to old astronaut suits with no self propulsion ability installed outside atmospheric conditions since the suits had wings before the exhaust plants became available. That was one of the reasons why they were overlooked entirely by Star Command since they weren’t highly capable in space and simply having a negative attitude almost killed Buzz Lightyear of all people.

The combat model version of a Rhizome spacesuit had slightly better armoring. It came with a rifle or a pistol that fire large spheres of vegetation at targets, recent upgrades saw fit to make it fire two kinds of thorns too. Aside from ranged offensive ability it also came with a thorn sword, which was available in the previous model that could double as a crowbar to pry things open with. The thorn sword featured the two new upgrades that the ballistic weaponry did when it came to dealing with both biological and mechanical forms of trouble.

The shared feature between both types of suits was the base features of a highly modified entangling vine plant in the suits. The entangling vines wrapped around the being to produce the suit to fit the wearer’s needs. Said modified entangling vine plant was further mutated to create the pod grenade plant. The maximum number of pod grenades each suit could carry was one to civilian models, three to four on combat models, the grenades tended to take a minute or more to regenerate given various environmental circumstances. The pod grenade had two functions, it sprouted vines to immobilize targets within a short range and if said target happened to be mechanical it would either sap or overload that targets power source rendering it inoperable.

Fluttershy felt a lot safer wearing her suit, even if it had a lot of downsides it would still protect her from harmful radiation, asphyxiation and was partly resilient to certain types of energy weapons and all kinds of ballistic weapons. The positives outweighed the negatives, with the exception to possibly being set on fire while wearing it. She zipped around some buildings and over the streets watching as the people of Rhizome went about their daily lives; it had been a while since she could fly without having to ingest an apple. Even if it was a little bit too fast for her taste, she tried to pretend that she was Rainbow Dash and would just enjoy the thrill of flying.

“I wonder what my friends are doing. I feel like a beautiful tree or a pretty flower in this thing.” Wearing a suit made out of plants would make Fluttershy feel like this. She in fact liked the idea of standing still in the grass next to some tree’s in the sun while wearing this suit.

“So Fluttershy is being pampered and has somehow become an ambassador of our planet with this Galactic Alliance? At least she is safe for now, though I do worry about that law that requires protection at all times. They wouldn’t have a law like that unless first contact ambassadors were frequently attacked.” Celestia was visiting the hill and sitting with Discord who was eating from a pile of porcelain chips, she was actually beginning to understand him and it started to worry her that they had become friends. The princess of the sun had become friends with one of the most chaotic unpredictable creature in all of Equestria, it was a little boggling that he had taken the time to distract everyone that would take up her busy schedule so they could just talk and have a little fun.

Sitting at a table for lunch, Fluttershy couldn’t help but notice that Mira had a concerned look on her face as her helmet was down and she was picking at her fruits and salad special. You could eat a meal on this planet for twenty years straight and never have the same meal twice, her salads were rather divine and she was always getting something different. She picked up a fruit and bit into it, it taste faintly reminiscent of a cross between a vegetable she had on Aldebaran and a peach back home.

“Ahem, Mira… are you okay?” Addressing the elf with the blue skin and reddish orange hair got her attention and they stared at each other for a bit, Fluttershy wanted to broach a subject about what was bugging Mira.

“Not really, we haven’t heard back from Star Command in days. It really doesn’t take that much to get a ship out this way and I’m wondering what’s taking them so long.” Mira took a bit of food into her mouth and chewed it thoroughly before swallowing. “The message got through perfectly fine, they just haven’t showed up yet which means someone is stopping them from coming. Buzz was properly paranoid about things like this and while I can’t match his instinct I’m definitely picking up some bad vibes here.”

“Yes, I too confer that something is amiss here, but Maurice tells me there are no Star Command cruisers coming from what he can see. We’re only getting the usual visitors or tourists here.” Janet didn’t need to eat, but she did need a metric ton of energy to recover after sparking the birth of Rhizome’s race, a single maximum tomato did that with spades. If it can fill a void like Kirby the Star Warrior with energy, then a planet isn’t that much of a stretch. Janet didn’t need to sleep forever and she was now sustained by the various plants on her surface where before it wouldn’t have been enough for her to do much aside from lend minimal assistance without much intelligence behind it. She did after all destroy a hyper death ray the last time there was trouble on her body and she was hardly aware that she did it. “I can understand why that might be upsetting for you, since you don’t know what has happened to the rest of your team. Until we get someone from Star Command to come in person we’re not going to know. The visual message we sent out gave them confirmation that you were here at the very least, so they know you’re safe and mostly sound.”

“Hey, what do you mean by mostly?” Mira said as she crossed her arms, she was a bit irritable of being reminded that she was still cut off from her friends and Star Command. She was also upset that she couldn’t leave Fluttershy’s side for nothing; she had to protect the ambassador at all costs and she usually disliked politicians.

“Calm down Ms. Nova, you are getting a bit twitchy and I can tell you’re ready to get back into action of saving the Galactic Alliance and protecting the peace. Just think of this as a small relaxing vacation with pay!” Janet just shook her bulb sadly at the indignant look she received, Mira was reacting as if it was the worst thing in the world to relax and enjoy things once in a while. Space Rangers, some just never wanted to relax and take free time off from protecting the people of the Galactic Alliance.

“I know, but I can’t help but worry about my friends.” Mira understood that some rangers needed time off from work or else they’ll get as grumpy as Buzz Lightyear was. She found the other side of it as understandable that Buzz would be grumpy if he were ever told to relax, she could now see things the way he did at this moment.

“Huh, what’s she talking about Janet?” Its times like these that Fluttershy wished she could speak Mira’s language. She knew she was being rather quiet and tried to get back into the conversation, but she was completely ignored making her feel a bit down. At least Mira’s voice was pleasant to listen to.

“I mean planet Venus the home of the LGMs is in sector one, then there’s planet Morph which is Buzz’s home planet in Sector 4 and we’re currently in sector 6… why hasn’t Star Command come to my aid yet? In fact what’s stopping them from getting anyone to me? There has been at least enough time for one ship to get here. On top of that I’m likely stuck with ambassador duty as long as Fluttershy is in the Galactic Alliance boundaries!” Mira had a sudden thought while thinking back to what sector of the Galactic Alliance she was in, she even grumbled that last part even though she didn’t mean to be so angry about it. Fluttershy was a really nice and fuzzy being to cuddle, but darn it all she was angry! “Ugh I can’t believe I’m going to be possibly stuck with a tourist gig, especially when I could be busting drug runners or stopping galactic scale crimes!”

“I honestly don’t know what to tell you Mira, but Maurice is on the lookout for anything dangerous that might be on approach, he tends to be rather protective of me and he’d notice if something was coming.” Janet turned back to Fluttershy who had finished her salad by this point and her ears wilted, she sat there quietly not adding anything to the conversation. “Hey Fluttershy, can you tell me about flamingoes now?”

“She’s upset with me isn’t she?” Fluttershy didn’t like that Mira seemed really angry; she could feel some of it was directed at her. She didn’t even know why Mira was grumpy and really she didn’t like the tone voice.

“No, of course not Fluttershy, she just wants to be with her friends again and get back to her job. It means a lot to her and now even if she does get back to her job she will have to protect you personally, even if it means someone else is in mortal peril you’re a lot higher priority to her and she doesn’t like the idea that you could put lives in danger. I’m guessing she’s had problems with ambassadors and delegates before ever meeting you, she doesn’t hate you since you’ve both been having a good time at the spa and spending a lot of time with each other.” Janet hoped that it eased her worries and was trying to placate the docile and easily frightened friendly little pony.

It didn’t ease Fluttershy’s worries one bit, but even she could see that Mira’s job was really important to her.

Around a day and a few hours later it was evening, the sun was going down on the horizon and the streets of Rhizome were lighting up with candy cane shaped lamp plants. The moon with a mustache floated a vast distance away staring at the planet. The stars were shining forth, one of them possibly belonging to Fluttershy’s home and happened to be the star controlled by Celestia.

Fluttershy, Mira and Roller were sitting on top of a tall sky scraping plant that was a nice apartment complex when Janet showed up. Watching the faint light of the sun on the horizon none of them noticed when the moon suddenly spun around way too fast to be normal; the moon glowed brighter for a few seconds.

“Guys we have a contact and it doesn’t look friendly.” Janet turned her flower to the sky. “Five ships, purple, red and grey, big zeta symbols on the side. Relatively large and from what Maurice tells me, they are communicating on a long distance array. He’s picking up some of their transmissions… he’s telling me they’re carriers?”

“Oh great, Zurg sent five carriers likely fully loaded with hornets after me, how nice of him.” Stated a sarcastic Mira who was starting to remember what had happened to her as soon as she identified who was encroaching upon Janet Rhizome, she rubbed at her head for a moment. It involved a wormhole and being violently electrocuted by the unstable space inside while she tried hard not to phase with all that energy around her. She hadn’t ghosted once since she’s been on Rhizome, not once would she mention the mental block that she was trying to get rid of. It was the reason she survived the wormhole, had she performed any ghosting in there she would have died from all the energy overloading her. “I remember how I ended up here now, it was an unstable wormhole! This kind of thing happens to me and the team at least once or twice every three months. I took a missile to my arms and then my chest, the second blast knocked me. My helmet and life support systems barely held together long enough for it to spit me out a mile or two above one of your rivers, it shattered on impact with the water and that’s when the emergency flotation devices in my suit activated. I hit the water face first too and that’s probably why there was that large bump on my forehead, it was likely from where a piece of my shattered helmet struck me.”

“What is it Janet?” Fluttershy didn’t hear what Mira said, but it sounded rather bad given the lilt of sarcasm to it, then she started talking a bit excitedly and the tone took a downturn.

“Mira remembered what happened to her and a madman we both know who likely knows Mira is here is sending a huge force of killer robots to kill her, from what I’m getting there are thousands of them. Uh, exactly how many hornets are we looking at here Mira?” While she was conversing with the two, Janet was silently arming every defense her body had to offer. Evil Emperor Zurg was about to learn third time’s the charm was in her court, he was not landing a full invasion force on her again and not after last time. She noticed Fluttershy was whimpering and curling up into a ball with her hooves above her uncovered head at the mention of the killer robots.

“At a guess? Around fifty thousand of them, Zurg usually never throws this many at one location though. He must really want me put out of his misery if he’s throwing this many in my direction.” There was a hint of excitement and slight boredom in Mira’s voice. She was excited for action, bored because the action was going to involve hundreds of highly expendable grunts gunning for her and it was just like another Galactic Alliance version of Tuesday. Looking to a cowering Fluttershy on the roof she frowned. Mira really wanted to get into the action, but Fluttershy most likely wouldn’t like it and she’s been through a recent horrible experience with robots. It was time for her to make a decision. “Janet where’s the safest place we can put Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy didn’t mean to be such a coward, but she wasn’t exactly brave and feeling like having a round two with any killer robots. Sure it might have been a little more than a week and in this situation she could run from the robots even though she would feel really bad about leaving the Rhizomians to be attacked by them after they were all so nice to her. She felt something nudge against her and hummed loudly, Roller was obviously worried about her and likely had no clue what was going on. It was hard for Fluttershy to remember that he was a wild animal sometimes with how smart he could be, he could read her emotional state and wanted her to be okay.

“I… I want to help the people of Rhizome.” Fluttershy really didn’t want to take part in whatever fighting would happen directly, but there had to be something she could do to aid them. Hundreds of innocent people were about to come under assault by cold heartless machines.

She was just one pony who wondered just what exactly could she possibly accomplish against an army. After giving it some thought, Fluttershy knew she could truly do quite a lot if she were willing and able.

Author's Note

Mira wants to protect Fluttershy instead of asking her to join in the fight.

Fluttershy wants to help the people of Rhizome.

Not necessarily a conflict of interest here and Janet is cooking up something in the defenses.

Plus plenty of back story about the design of the Rhizome spacesuit also known as a Vega-suit, more action in the next chapter.

Buzz's team are 'old hat' at destroying hornets by this point, they are mostly expendable cheaply built robots you can imagine of a higher or similar grade to that of technodrome robots. They come with built in triple barreled blasters in each arm, these three barrels can transform into the fingers of the robots so they can manipulate and grab things. They have jet thrusters in their backs and possibly their feet as well for redundancy if they survive either being destroyed, they are tall spindly humanoid machines that are mostly yellow with black highlight here and there. The most noted feature is that they always come in large numbers, even if they were easily disposed of they will always just keep coming like an endless tide.

Team Lightyear would go through hundreds of them in their normal Space Ranger issued armor alone, but thousands of them with the only ranger nearby being Mira? Buzz's team has surrendered once or twice to the numbers these robots brought to the table alone.

46

“No way, I’m not supposed to let you put yourself in danger! You’re obviously frightened to the point of being unable to do anything and we’ve yet to see even one hornet!” It was obvious Mira would rather Fluttershy be safe then in the middle of a firefight and the pony wasn’t exactly presenting herself as one of the greatest warriors ever. “Speaking of, how long until they get here.”

“It will be a few hours after we launch the first strike.” Janet turned her flower towards the sky. “I’m coordinating with my dear Maurice right now for it, should slow them down long enough for us to come up with a plan to deal with their numbers.”

“First strike, what are you talking about Janet? And I do have an idea of what to do.” Looking out over the city Fluttershy saw a large flower bloom at the center on top of a tall building. It was glowing with ethereal light and it was beautiful as the entire building had veins of vines in various colors lit up leading to that flower. There were six other smaller giant flowers on other buildings around the biggest one that were also glowing and she was getting a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Oh it’s just a little payback, nothing to worry about Fluttershy and it’s a good thing that someone around here has a plan.” The avatar of Janet had an evil grin and it did not look pretty on the red flower. “Besides there’s no one in the way at this moment, well at least nothing that happens to be alive anyway and I’ve got a clear shot. Maurice is up there spotting for me so I figured, why not take this as the perfect opportunity to make it clearly known that I don’t like being invaded.”

There were a lot of things that Fluttershy had learned about the existence of life in the universe and there were still rules she was learning about. Nothing was perfectly safe or harmless. Fluttershy herself wasn’t perfectly harmless because she now had a plan to deal with the robots, one that would be given time to be put into place after seeing what Janet had done.

A bright beam fired from the giant glowing flower with six other smaller beams conjoining into the big one in the center and fired from the city in a vibrant yellow beam of imminent death, to Mira it oddly looked like a hyper death ray. It even caused a twitch in Mira’s lips to the point that she was smiling slightly. The beam made a sweeping motion from right to left and after a moment the beam died down.

“Those bloom guns used a ton of energy. It’ll be a few hours of sunlight or a lot of moonlight before I can fire this cities bloom guns again. Worth it though, wish I could have seen the looks on their faces after that… Maurice said I atomized two carriers and crippled one severely. They still have two carriers left though.” Janet had a smug smirk on her flower, it didn’t have eyes but you can just feel the sense of satisfaction as the flower pointed its bulb towards space. “They don’t have much range, but I’d like to see someone say my children aren’t well defended now. I can only hit anything up to three planets away, they’re not that great. So, what was your idea Fluttershy? I believe we have a lot more preparation time now, though I highly doubt they are going to just let us fire our bloomers again.”

In outer space two carriers with loaded robots being sent to kill Ranger Mira Nova suddenly ceased to exist, the ranger had been off on the numbers by ten thousand hornets. There were approximately sixty three thousand hornet robots; however Janet had just about effectively cut their operational strength in half as a first strike. Following the first strike a good number of active hornets maintaining the ships blue screened becoming completely inoperable.

The sudden malfunctions dropped their fighting effectiveness even further, leaving around eighteen thousand hornets still active. The yellow triangular headed robots flew around trying to make repairs to the third carrier as they slowed down in their approach; it slowed them down by about two hours and fifteen minutes. Plenty of time for Fluttershy to literally get her plan off the ground.

Many wouldn’t consider Fluttershy dangerous; personally Fluttershy knew she had something that her friends always kept forgetting about her that made more dangerous than most ponies.

Rainbow Dash could create powerful shockwaves that could be used as an attack. Applejack could throw boulders and buck her rear hooves through solid steel. Twilight is one of the most powerful magic users on the planet and that was before she gained the power of the two other main pony races. Rarity was a master of fine control and could likely do horrific things with needles and thread if given the chance; she even took part of the fight with the changelings, so even she would dirty her hooves in a time of need. Pinkie Pie could teleport, pull anything that she may need from her mane and she was entirely unpredictable.

To think that all their powers of harmony combined created a large rainbow beam that could deal with the most dangerous of foes in a peaceable manner, but Fluttershy was a little different in how she was dangerous. All her friends frequently forgot that she wasn’t stupid. In fact it was quite the opposite; Fluttershy was a really quite the clever pony and had a little bit more in the common sense department.

Rarity and Twilight were quite easy to panic; Rainbow Dash could get performance anxiety and might buckle under enough pressure, Pinkie was easy to depress and all you needed to do to take the fighting spirit out of Applejack was destroy her orchards or injure her family. Hurting Fluttershy’s friends just plain pissed her off; an angry Fluttershy was quite the sight to behold.

Fluttershy may be a tad quiet and reclusive, but she definitely wasn’t a pushover where it counted. This was a mare that could wrestle a bear to the ground while getting a nice workout in helping the bear with his back problems, got a dragon and a cockatrice to back off by staring them down, defeated Discord at his own game twice and she didn’t even have to pay Iron Will for his assertiveness lessons.

This was a mare that understood chaos better than her friends and she even showed her truly angry side when she got frustrated at the gala a long time ago. She understood life and death as she knew her animals couldn’t live forever, she just eased their paths in life by a lot until they perished and then she would take care of a new generation of adorable little bunnies that would pop up. That’s what she wanted to get back to, a peaceful life.

The pony had decided to let her cruel side out a bit. There were small sides of her and her friends that they all tried to ignore as existing; the grey sides that Discord had shown them that was there. Her plan as the second line of defense would be carried out to great effect. Mira was in charge of the third line where Janet would begin actively destroying every robot that made it through the second line of defense being personally crafted by Fluttershy.

The ones ordering the hornet robots around were a bit shocked that Rhizome had beam weaponry that could take their ships at such an impressive range. In fact, the robots controllers were wary of sending the rest of the hornets in after Mira Nova with that kind of response to their incoming assault. The evil emperor behind this faltering assault wasn’t paying much attention to the operation that was quickly going south; he was quite assured that his hornets could handle a bunch of pansy pacifists with wimpy plant based technology to get at an injured Mira Nova. The evil emperor was too busy distracting Star Command in other places.

Of the initial sixty three thousand plus hornets, only around eighteen thousand were left operational and were all riding the remaining three hornet carriers. The vast swarm of robots had been more than cut in half by their own programming errors and the beam attack, then they lost six thousand more units when they started sending every hornet at the place where the large beam had originated from.

It didn’t take long for the hornet operators, who were on a different planet entirely, to notice that the hornets weren’t making it through the sickly looking purple cloud layer hanging above the area where the massive beam fired from. In fact, it took holding the remaining twelve thousand or so hornets back to realize that the cloud layer was doing something. One of the hornets was sent in to test the cloud and they caught sight of the problem. The robots were being dissolved by what appeared to be a massive cloud made of acid and then they caught sight of a being in the clouds; the hornets were ordered to fire immediately. They missed the being as it disappeared into the purple haze.

The robots split their forces, they sent six streams of one thousand hornets each to go around the cloud and start their assault. The remaining six thousand plus hornets were sent back to the carriers to fix the malfunctioning hornets as fast as they could. The operators didn’t think this initial attack was going to go so well after what they’ve seen, but they were ordered to carry it out by their evil emperor and they didn’t want to fail him to end up facing his wrath.

Fluttershy slipped below the clouds and flew towards the outskirts of the city. She had Janet create a large pool of the same metal eating acid that was new to the thorn shooting applications of Rhizome weaponry, it was only slightly harmful for a biological being to breathe in and it was entirely disastrous to anything completely made out of metal. It didn’t affect a Rhizome spacesuit though; Fluttershy was able to watch her plan cut down the massive force even further before they spotted her.

All adult Rhizomian civilians were all wearing protective suits that were manufactured quickly thanks to Janet; they were at the center of the city and underground as the last line of defense. The people that would fight for Rhizome were awaiting Mira’s orders and were armed appropriately. The hornets would have to go around the cloud and when they did, it would have them coming either from all sides or one direction. Either way the people of Rhizome had a huge tactical advantage.

“They’re coming Janet, they figured it out and are going to go around!” Fluttershy had likely saved many lives with the acid cloud she helped make, as she flew towards the city from twenty miles out. It wouldn’t take the hornets long to get around the huge cloud to give chase to her and she was right. “They are spreading out, not coming from a single direction! Have Mira prepare her part of the plan, if it’s needed that is. I’m about to come under fire and I’m heading for safety like I promised!”

After only flying for a mile, a few green blasts of energy blurred past Fluttershy who rolled out of the way and flew closer to the ground along the road leading into the city. The first group of hornets had caught up to her. The lazy looking streetlamps made out of plants suddenly turned their heads skyward and blew out blasts of purple energy shredding quite a few of the hornets behind Fluttershy forcing them to deal with the defenses.

Janet was holding back until Fluttershy got into the city as her plan was still in play. There were some things not many knew about pegasus ponies. It involved how their magic affects clouds and Fluttershy had a good idea as to what suddenly removing her magic from the cloud of acid hanging above the city would do.

Flutter flew slowly on purpose trying to acquire as many hornets on her rear end as she could, any hornets that managed to avoid the trap would be taken out by Mira’s offensive. Ten miles out and several more of those hornet robots had caught up with her.

Fluttershy took evasive maneuvers and avoided being shot down. They were slightly better than the previous killer robots that she met when it came to their aim and they were definitely bigger in size then the purple and black sword wielding machines. The hornets were barely all that much smarter though, as there was no intelligence behind their programmed actions. She felt her suit shudder as one of her fake wings was clipped causing her to dip towards the ground; she righted herself and looked towards the sky while the wing of her suit regenerated.

The purple cloud of acid was quickly losing cohesion and it was just about ready to start raining its payload all over the hornets behind her. The only reason why the acid cloud held together before was because Fluttershy was in contact with it. There was a little known fact about Cloudsdale; if it weren’t for the ponies living there at all times then the sky bound city would have fallen a long time ago.

Smiling to herself, Fluttershy knew she didn’t have enough pegasus magic to keep a permanent cloud of acid hanging over the city at all times. She only had enough to hold it together for a limited amount of time until it fell out of the sky and it would all fall back down on top of the robots.

Five miles out was when it started raining and hundreds of black and yellow humanoid robots started practically melting in the downpour of acid rain. Hundreds were falling out of the sky, but there would still be hundreds left after the acid spent itself wiping out most of the invading force. The nature of weather magic was a harsh mistress.

“Fluttershy, Maurice caught another transmission that not all of them are a part of the attack, they’re holding some in reserve and sending them back to fix some malfunctioning robots.” Janet paused for a moment. “We’re going to be in trouble if they come back with more and the bloom guns can’t fire again for a while and they may be ready for them the next time they can. At least we wiped out a lot of them without any casualties to my children yet.”

“I’m coming into the city, we’ll think of something. Maybe the city defenses can take them all down. We’ll have Mira and your people open fire on the next wave if they give you enough time to regenerate the cities defenses.” Fluttershy rolled into the path of some rain that still fell from the large purple cloud. The cloud was quickly breaking up leaving her exposed in shafts of moonlight to the robots giving chase.

She was quickly within the city itself and then the defenses started picking off any chaser on her rear end. Vines erupted from the ground behind her cutting off some low flying hornets from getting any more shots at her and any of the higher flying ones were promptly taken down by the street lights that fired short ranged bursts of energy. The buildings were spraying thorns in huge blasts in areas where there were a lot of hornets.

There were just so many of them, far more than the ones that were trying to kill Fluttershy on that vessel. These were the things that were after her new friend Mira? How did Mira not have a mental breakdown with the thought that everyone around her was going to be hurt by these things because she was here? She must have nerves of steel in wanting to face these things head on; they all fired really fast volleys of energy and speed was the only factor that kept Fluttershy from being hit.

After a moment and flying around a street corner in the safety the purple rain allotted her, Fluttershy came in for a landing on the street and tapped her helmet twice. She could see black and yellow dots lighting up the darkness in the distance getting closer as the rain was petering out at a rapid pace.

“I’m here Janet. The sky is clearing up over me and I really don’t want to be out here anymore.” A portion of the ground formed into a staircase leading down into a tunnel that led beneath the city for the scared pony that did something brave.

Fluttershy quickly trotted down the stairs where Roller was immediately at her side, the staircase closed up behind her returning the street to how it normally looked. She was safely below the city, for the time being at least. She could already hear the explosions as Mira led a force to fight back against the robots in the streets of the city; she crawled into a corner and was promptly surrounded by civilians and children as she curled up there whimpering.

It was a few hours later and after a successfully led counter attack led by Mira that found Fluttershy being hailed as a hero. Her plan wiped out a huge swath of the robots on its own aside from Janet’s opening shot. Unfortunately, they knew that the robots hadn’t been completely wiped out and the city was still repairing its damaged defenses from the hornets that didn’t go down as easily as the rest of them did.

“I really didn’t do all that much, all I did was make a cloud and then held it in position as long as I could. You should really be thanking Ms. Nova instead of me.” The truth was that Fluttershy was understating her accomplishment; she actually believed Rainbow Dash could have done better than what she had.

The defending forces had taken a lot of injuries; medical supplies were also in abundance on Rhizome. Fluttershy was still being thanked by many a Rhizome native as she made her way to where the injured were being tended to.

“Is everything okay here Pwerta?” Fluttershy asked as she looked the Rhizomian in the eye, Pwerta and her friends from the spa were apparently highly trained medics in times of duress.

“Nothing permanent, thank the great mother. Speaking of, I can feel her anger directed at the ones who attacked us from here. I would like some assistance, could you pick up that rolled up plant and wrap it around that patients arm?” At her request Pwerta was astounded by how tenderly and quickly Fluttershy could work with her hooves to help heal the wounded. For a creature without fingers, Fluttershy did some amazing work when it came to making others feel better and it was much more Fluttershy’s speed then taking an active part in combat operations. While the pony needed help learning what a few things did, Pwerta had found a really good assistant in the emergency medical corps.

Fluttershy spent the next thirty minutes wrapping up injured Rhizomians, they weren’t much for battle and their suits took heavy beatings. The suits held up much better than the bodies filling them did.

“Ugh, there was just so many of them. I swear if this suit wasn’t as good as it is now...” Mira stumbled into the room and was quickly peeled out of her Vega-suit by a happy Fluttershy, whom immediately began apply rubs to her sore body. “Good to see you’re in a good mood Fluttershy.”

“Well, I was something of a healer back home and a lot of the people that helped you got hurt badly tonight.” Of the Rhizomians that went into battle, Fluttershy noted that over three fourths of them were wounded badly to varying degrees, none of which were mortal, lethal or even permanent. The next attack wouldn’t be held back so easily with so few people left to fight the hornets off with and they definitely weren’t veterans in combat like Mira was. “They aren’t very good in a fight are they?”

“Why do you think I have the job that I do Fluttershy? Rhizomians aren’t fighters; they are mostly healers and scholars. The next wave is going to be much worse; I’m surprised they haven’t hit us again yet already.” She didn’t sugar coat it at all, Mira personally accounted for five hundred and forty seven hornets destroyed. Any injured Rhizomian could only account for about twenty hornets each. “Let’s face it, someone is going to die in the next wave and it’s lucky that no one was captured or killed in the first one. Unless we can come up with something else we really need help. I think it’s about time I got off this planet before these people get hurt any further. They’re after me and I’m not going to surrender given that it’s Zurg who’s behind all this.”

“What if this Zurg has those robots attack the Rhizomians again even if you do leave?” It was rather important to Fluttershy to hear an answer to this one, she didn’t like seeing so many innocent people hurt or being forced to fight. At least the suits held up to all stress as they took what would be lethal damage for their wearers and her suit personally was doing perfectly fine after having lost a bit of a fake wing when she came under fire. She stared deeply into Mira’s eyes waiting for a response

“Yeah, he’d do that.” It was something Mira knew he’d do to get revenge for all the losses anyway; he just lost a large chunk of his cheaply manufactured army thanks to Janet and Fluttershy. She felt like she hadn’t pitched in nearly enough. “Fine, I’m going to give the hornets exactly what they want. Janet said one of those ships was crippled right? I have an idea, but it requires me getting onboard that hornet carrier. I’m going to need a ride after I’m done resting, will you help me with it Fluttershy?”

“Of course I will, but I don’t think I will like what you have in mind at all.” Quietly stated Fluttershy, who had a really good guess at what was coming next. There were sayings about kicking a nest loaded with hornets.

47

“I would just like to point out that I’m not being forced into this Luna, I actually want to do it.” Fluttershy sat before Luna and explained what she thought was going to happen; she’d been asleep for a few hours. Janet wasn’t interfering with her dream this time and she was having a nice chat with Luna about her night flight. “Why do you think they haven’t attacked yet?”

The last bit of news Fluttershy heard was that the hornet carriers were staying behind Maurice’s body to avoid being shot down by Janet, but they were holding position and only sending a few scouting patrols out that were quickly dealt with. The hornet horde weren’t retreating from this particular area of space, their controllers were trying to find a chink in the armor that was the new threat the Rhizomians seemed to have presented.

“I’m guessing that they haven’t attacked because they know not how injured your forces are or what you can bring to meet them. You have likely shocked your enemies into a stalemate position with your tactics, you have saved many lives doing this Fluttershy and that is why they call you a hero.” From what Luna could tell of Fluttershy’s recent foray into helping an innocent race protect their home, she had helped in routing a massive invading force with a simple if devastating tactic. “If you were never there then what do you suppose would happen? What do you suppose would happen had you never used your idea?”

“Well Mira would have never been pulled out of the water, she might have survived anyway and then the situation with the hornet robots would have happened all the same if at a much later time. A lot of Rhizomians would have been hurt or much worse since they would have swarmed the city without the acid cloud making them split their forces and weakening their numbers.” Fluttershy began to brighten at the fact that she had actually done a lot for doing so little; she had caused chaos amongst those that would harm her friends and that protected them from being worse off. “If I never arrived on Janet then none of the civilians would have flight capable suits or the newly upgraded weapons, because Janet would have been asleep forever. Or everything might have turned out for the best if I hadn’t come along at all.”

“It is amazing how far you’ve recovered from witnessing the destruction of an entire planet, the fact that you still have a grand love of life is amazing after having seen so much pain and suffering. Your emotions may be slightly raw, but they are not entirely wrong. No one can tell what the future holds in perfect detail.” Luna moved over to Fluttershy and wrapped a wing around her. “Now let me tell you about how my day went. It all started when Pinkie Pie baked a pear pie and Applejack accidentally got a taste of it…”

Waking up, Fluttershy was in a good mood. Her friends back home couldn’t forget her no matter how hard they tried and from what Luna says they frequently visited her cottage to make sure it stayed clean and in good repair. Now that she was awake, she stretched out her two mismatched wings and put on her Rhizome spacesuit, she giggled as the petals tickled the back of her head as the suit encompassed her. She sighed sadly given her agreement to help Mira with an insane plan that was likely to work; at least Luna made her see that she was still trying to do good things in a universe full of bad situations.

It wasn’t hard for Fluttershy to say that she loved everything about her home planet, but the number of automatons out in space needed to be a teensy bit less then there were. She started prepping the Head Hunter, storing plenty of food away with Janet’s help. While she was doing this she learned a bit about Evil Emperor Zurg. He was one of the many evil overlords in the universe, on par with the likes of planet destroyer Emperor Awesome and violent whiner Lord Hater in being a dastardly thing against all that was good.

Apparently galactic scale evil beings were common and they always had minions and armies of all sorts, Zurg had Grubs and Brain Pods as minions. He also had his army of hornets nearby ready to rip the Rhizomians a new one being controlled by said minions. The only reason why the hornets weren’t back is likely what Luna came up with, they were surprised to meet such a devastating resistance that they were taking the time to analyze and regroup for another attack which could be in hours or days.

The people of Rhizome they barely held off the first assault, they only had volunteer infantry and Rhizome built spaceships didn’t sound effective in ship to ship combat in outer space. The previous few times Rhizome had been invaded pretty much without a fight says a lot as to why the controllers of the hornets had been spooked so badly.

The planets defenses before Janet was awakened would have put a nice dent in the hornets, but it wouldn’t have taken out nearly as many as Janet had. If she weren’t awake and angry at the fact that her body was being invaded once more plus the fact that her much beloved children were being hurt, then things would have been much worse.

“Are you sure about following Mira’s plan, if it fails… well you won’t be able to get help from us and those darn carriers that are sticking to the far side of my husband.” Janet had a few hang ups about Mira’s plan to infiltrate a hornet carrier while there were so many hornets in her airspace. ”None of my bloom guns in the other cities can get an angle or bend a shot around my wonderful Maurice to get at them. It makes me feel helpless and Maurice wishes he could do more for us other then intercept their communications.”

“Um, how is he doing that exactly?” Questions, always with the questions, there nearly weren’t enough answers about everything for Fluttershy.

“You know how I’m limited in my psychic abilities and have full control of my body; you know things like creating mountains or growing entire forests? Maurice has similar talents that allow him to pick up any broadcasted signal, even ones that are supposedly stealthy. He can hear communications going on all around our system; even now he’s hearing some cargo ships passing through the edge of our system heading for the planet Bathyos. Why they are carrying an order of fifteen thousand tubs of frozen Muu cream, well one can only guess what a water planet would do with that.” Janet looked at the compact dirt ceiling, being underground wasn’t exactly the best of things for her avatar. “He can only pick up signals and since he’s connected to me he can tell me what’s going on out there, helped a lot with the boredom before we decided to start a race together. At least our Rhizomians are very smart even if they are not very good at the violence thing, kind of a downside when your body keeps getting invaded huh? I wish I could protect my children better.”

“Well I think you’re doing a good job Janet, you’re a good mother. Your children are a wonderful and friendly Janet; they have space travel, they have great food and the medical advancements they’ve made alone are something that my world can’t even begin to come close to replicating.” Fluttershy smiled as she focused on the many things Janet’s people were good at, instead of what they weren’t good at and fighting was definitely the problem. “At least a lot of them are out there in the universe doing good things, making friends with so many people and spreading all kinds of good ideals around.”

“Yeah, is it any wonder that I’m so proud of them? By the way I’m moving your ship above ground right now; Mira, Pwerta, Kleptchi, Triffid and Truffle are all on their way.” The fact that her children were still willing to put themselves in harm’s made her sad, but Janet was happy that her children were willing to help others no matter the danger involved. “Your people and the many races on your planet sound just as amazing Fluttershy.”

“Um… I was just expecting Mira to come with me and Roller, are Pwerta and the others going to see us off?” Fluttershy really hoped that they weren’t insisting on coming along, Pwerta was like Aloe or Lotus the spa ponies that Rarity frequently spent time with. It was hard for Fluttershy to imagine Pwerta as wanting to be a part of a commando team; Triffid has done it to great effect before according to Mira’s story of having previously worn a Rhizomian spacesuit.

“Actually, Triffid has a good idea of how to get Mira on that damaged hornet carrier. You’ll need to ask him about it.” After that Janet’s flower sunk into the floor and Fluttershy went off to find the others. “In the mean time I have to keep up the impression that we have the firepower to deal with them, because we actually do have it. If they aren’t going to give me a shot at them, then I might as well keep them pinned in place behind Maurice. If you leave my atmosphere I won’t be in direct contact with you so I apologize in advance if you end up being vaporized by me.”

“It’s okay Janet; I’d forgive you for it if you do.” Fluttershy quickly left with Roller following along lazily, she had almost forgotten the wheel had been at her side near constantly since she got to the underground shelter. She moved along the tunnel until she reached a spot where Janet would form some stairs for her back to the surface.

The pony exited the tunnel and saw a few portions of the plant city in ruins and it was daytime, it also seemed like the plant city was regenerating swiftly from the damage that was dealt to it from all the fighting. Oddly she didn’t see any sign of debris; Janet probably took care of it already. Wings sprouted from the back of her suit and she launched herself into the air leaving behind a trail of miniature exploding spores, behind her Roller sped up to keep her in sight.

With a bit of careful control, Fluttershy slowed down and came in for a soft landing at the outskirts where Head Hunter was above ground completely unharmed. There was a ship sitting next to her personal method of travel and Mira was talking with four Rhizomians.

It looked like a small yellow yacht; it had a tall yellow stemmed green leaf poking out of the back end of the vehicle like a mast. The front of the vehicle had the same kind of see through plant matter that made up the helmets of a Rhizome suits for the windows of the boats cabin. On the sides of the vehicle there were small blue petals as if from a flower and sticking out of the bottom of this vessel were two large green leaves that looked like rudders or wings.

After a moment Fluttershy felt something tapping her side getting her attention, she looked into the kind eyes of Professor Triffid the stocky Rhizomian who was now wearing a green and brown suit that looked to be well armored.

“I see you’ve taken an interest in my ship, I grew it from a little tuber. It’s called a Rhizomian Solar Clipper. This thing won’t be detected approaching the hornet carriers, our flower power does have its advantages as I’m sure you’re very well aware of by now. We live in interesting times, not a day I thought that we would be taking an active part in protecting ourselves or taking up weapons. I guess we all have to do what we must to continue surviving.” The wise and kind Rhizomian wasn’t one to sit around living in fear; he was taking the fight to Zurg. He didn’t like the idea of the evil emperor messing with his home again. “You know me already and I’m sure you’ve gotten well acquainted with Pwerta. And these two are…”

Triffid stopped to point at the first one, Fluttershy heard him call out that he was Truffle. He was an average built silver skinned Rhizomian with brown hair and he was armed with a thorn spitting rifle, his combat suit was rather dainty looking as it was covered in small flowers and it was mostly blue and green throughout.

Truffle pointed to the tall, green haired, bronze skinned Rhizomian female next to him putting on her own Rhizomian suit. She turned to Fluttershy before activating her suit and she introduced herself as Kleptchi once she was looking Fluttershy in the eyes. Kleptchi was also armed with a plant rifle and her suit was purple and pink with small thorns poking out of it in places, it would have been kind of scary looking if it weren’t for the friendly face in the suit.

“We are endeavoring to make a point that we won’t be having any more of these robots plaguing our people since peaceful methods are not going to work here. Pwerta is going with us as our medical specialist, I’m here to make sure nothing goes wrong with the suits and I can certainly fix anything that does. You will be with us as we’re going to be in supporting positions.” As Triffid went on, Pwerta put her suit on and was now wearing a red and white suit with a Rhizome medical symbol on it and it had a large green bulging sack on the back that would be holding medical supplies. “Mira, Kleptchi and Truffle are going to take point once we are in the process of entering the damaged carrier. As for your ship, we’ll leave it in an out of the way place. If things go wrong you can fall back to it and use it to escape the area. I have no misgivings about what will happen to my Rhizomian Solar Clipper when we get close enough to board the vessel; I’m willing to sacrifice it for a good cause.”

“What if you didn’t have to make the sacrifice?” Janet popped up out of the ground and looked the ship over with her flower. “In fact I might even be able to add an autopilot to your ship, but yeah it’s still best that you have Fluttershy’s ship in reserve if you need to escape. It has weapons right?”

“Yes, but why do you ask? Doesn’t the Rhizomian Solar Clipper doesn’t have weapons?” After a moment Fluttershy smacked her helmet with a suit covered hoof when she remembered what exactly she was asking. She whimpered out her next words while lowering her head. “Oh right, I’m sorry for bringing that up.”

“How are you going to add an autopilot to the ship great mother?” Triffid was both intrigued and excited, the great mother could engineer plants to do many things better than he could. She wouldn’t do everything for him or the rest of her children and Triffid agreed with that attitude. They were their own sentient beings and needed to be able to do things for themselves and wouldn’t let Janet solve every single little problem for them.

“It might be a bit of a stretch… but what are the chances that I can still control my avatar after it’s disconnected from my body?” After that question, Janet knew that Triffid was going to find out personally and so would she for that matter. It looked like warning Fluttershy was a waste of time.

The Head Hunter flew through space and slowly drifted downwards and came to a stop by landing on Maurice, it landed underneath a portion of the moons peculiar humongous mustache imprint.

“Okay Fluttershy, breathe… you are just going for a little walk in the airless vacuum.” Even as Fluttershy muttered it, she really could help but think that she was glad that she learned airlock procedures from the Head Hunters computer before attempting this. She had already shunted all the oxygen out of airlock into the rest of the ship. Roller bumped into her telling her that she should get on with it already. She checked her suits saddlebags, water, two of Janet’s recovery tomatoes and the glass knife. She was just going as support and her suit did have a single grenade pod generator. “Right, here we go.”

The hatch opened above her and Fluttershy kicked off sending her shooting into air in a high arc, before she came down softly on the Maurice’s surface. She had landed on her back and was not used to the low gravity, after a moment of scuffling about she finally managed to roll onto her hooves and look around.

There was no atmosphere here in this barren rocky landscape, but her suit was providing all the air she needed for her slight panic attack. The last time she was fully exposed to space like this, she was stuck in a bubble and nearly starved to death. After a moment of breathing in some sharp breathes of completely fresh air to calm her rapidly beating heart, she tried to get into the right mindset for being in the void again. She felt something bump against her side and saw Roller floating there, after a moment his carapace pointed forwards and his four pipes shifted downwards while erupting with little sparkles of star dust. He flew off doing a good impression of a rocket while going towards the Solar Clipper as it silently flew overhead.

“Have to keep it together, come on breathe. It’s okay, I’m with friends and I’m going into a really dangerous place with them.” Closing her eyes Fluttershy ignited her thrusters and flew up and around to the top of the ship where she found Mira and the other Rhizomians waiting for her. Mira got in front of her and stared at her with caring eyes.

“Remember, I’m not allowed to let you out of my sight no matter what, now calm down, stick with me and you’ll be okay. I promise you that much and not just as a Space Ranger, but as a friend. You know, I thought it would be just the two of us going into it using your ship. You still have time to back out of this if you don’t want to do it.” Mira felt something hit her leg and she looked down at the wheel that was glaring up at her. “Sorry I meant to say it would have been just the three of us… wait a minute, how can he hear me if we’re in a vacuum? He doesn’t even have built in communications like we do in our suits. Heck how is he even alive if he’s completely biological?”

Fluttershy gave a noncommittal shrug. She wasn’t backing out of this so she wasn’t going to say anything. The likeliest answer was that Roller could feel the vibration of her voice as it moved through the suit into the ship and into his tire. She couldn’t hear much of anything aside from her own breathing and the calming voices of the Rhizomians chatting with each other as they set out. She could vaguely feel Roller trying to rev something that was lost in the vacuum of space.

Mr. Wheel was really a special creature because he didn’t need a suit to live in outer space, but he did need a ship if he was to get anywhere within his lifetime and he still needed food at the very least. It was either his species didn’t require constant intake of gaseous matter or he was doing it completely out of sheer ignorance that he shouldn’t be able to survive without breathing. His body was exposed to the vacuum and he certainly wasn’t dying. He flew a small protective orbit around Fluttershy in his rocket form; Fluttershy forced him to settle down on the deck of the Solar Clipper as it exited the moons gravitational field.

“Okay folks look alive; we have about five minutes before we get there and I would like to say this really feels weird. A part of my mind is just away from my body, I’m sure it’ll snap back if my avatar is destroyed.” Janet could not separate her avatar from her body unless it was connected to another plant, the ship worked for her even if she couldn’t leave it. She couldn’t connect her avatar and consciousness into a Rhizomian spacesuit while it was active. “If not, oh well. No psychic soil off my back if it was for a good cause.”

“Why did I agree to do this again?” Muttered Fluttershy with her eyes closed, she still thought she could do something and she wanted to help Mira. She could have withdrawn her lot in all of this once Professor Triffid said he would set out with his ship. It was like what always happened when she was with her pony friends; she got dragged into it anyway. “Right, my friends need me, even if it’s only just as moral support.”

The pony was beginning to wonder if she should have grabbed her energy rifle before she left her ship. She decided not to worry about it because in the distance she could see three block shaped ships through the windows on the Solar Cutter. They didn’t seem really too big, but they were still rather daunting. Two of the carriers had swarms of those hornet robots patrolling the general vicinity. The third carrier was missing huge portions of its hull and it had seen better days, quite a bit of its insides were exposed to vacuum and there weren’t as many hornets patrolling the area around it. There were only small groups of five or six active hornets patrolling around the heavily damaged carrier.

None of the hornets noticed the incoming ship; the scanners on all the hornet carriers weren’t made to detect anything like Rhizome technology. They were able to get close enough for Mira to start planning the destruction of one of the patrols and then they’d be inside.

Fluttershy could only wonder how many hornets were left out here; she also wondered why they were doing this when it didn’t seem likely to succeed. Was she just being a pessimist? If they succeeded they’d be saving a lot of lives and that’s why they had to.

Author's Note

Plans are always changing, operation capture a hornet carrier is go.

Character stats:

Princess Mira 'Dangerous' Nova- Healthy. Armament: Modified Pea Shooter, Pod grenades, Thorn sword.

Flutter 'Felicity' Shy- Physically healthy, not so mentally. Armament: Pod grenades, alien material glass knife.

Professor Triffid Trogledyn- Stocky with a bit of flab. Armament: Thorn rifle, pod grenades, thorn sword and emergency Rhizomian suit patch supplies.

Pwerta Delarosin- Vibrantly Healthy. Armament: Pod grenades, medical supplies, surplus suit repair supplies.

Truffle Shrimtake`- Possible red shirt. Note: Has minor bruising from previous engagement and is likely the first to die if things go down the tubes. Armament: Thorn rifle, pod grenades, thorn sword.

Kleptchi Mossport- Aroused. Note: Was discreetly staring at Fluttershy's skirt covered butt and is unlikely to act on her attraction. Armament: Experimental thorn burst suit, thorn rifle, thorn sword.

48

Fluttershy watched as Mira loaded a pod grenade into her pea shooter and took aim from the deck of the Solar Cutter, she wasn’t sure but that didn’t seem like it was using the pea shooter correctly. She also didn’t quite understand what gave the ship propulsion and the thought was relatively unimportant in comparison to what her new friend was about to do.

Mira took aim and fired her pistol sized weapon; the grenade struck a patrol of seven hornets and exploded into a bunch of tiny red vines that encompassed all of them. Within seconds the small red vines were glowing with a faint red color, before all seven robots exploded. That’s when she motioned for them to follow her as they launched themselves for the airlock.

“Good luck you guys, sorry they dragged you into this mess Fluttershy I know it must be horrible having to face your fears again.” Not getting a response other than a hesitant nod, Janet watched as the equine launched her way after the other five as they made for the damaged hornet carrier. She turned the Solar Clipper around and decided now was a time to become a distraction.

The hornet carrier had a lot of outer hull damage and had plenty of its inner workings exposed to space, but it still surprisingly held a breathable atmosphere throughout and the exposed sections looked to have been sealed off. Why these robots needed a breathable atmosphere was questionable, it was likely because Zurg liked wasting atmosphere or he had planned to capture a lot of Rhizomians alive. There was certainly enough space for at least half a cities worth of Rhizomians on just one carrier, the evil emperor would likely make an example of them.

Fluttershy didn’t close her eyes as she flew forward; it was another situation where she couldn’t afford to let fear get in the way of survival. Everything was so quiet, she could feel her suit wrapping protectively around her in a gentle hug. It was almost like it was alive and technically the suit was only intelligence so far as it was symbiotic with its wearer. The suit being made out of an amalgam of naturally plants and plants in general reacting to outward stimuli, it made a lot of sense to Fluttershy if it could feel what she felt.

Fluttershy carefully landed against the hull and slowly trotted her way across the metal surface, her suit started clinging to it automatically. She walked up the team and saw Mira sitting at some doors that obviously was an airlock; she had learned a lot about airlocks back on the Valhalla and why she shouldn’t be near them. Her ears were twitching wildly and yet she couldn’t hear much of anything except her slight hyperventilation, the suit hugged her again and she calmed down slightly.

As Fluttershy reached the edge of the doorway where the others were standing she heard Kleptchi speaking to Mira about something and pointing to the closed panel that she was trying to pry open with her fingers. Mira moved aside and Kletpchi gripped the panel with her three fingers and managed to get the panel open and there was a mess of wires underneath. After a moment of trying to break the wires apart with all six of her fingers pulling at them she shook her head in aggravation.

“Um… maybe I could help.” That got the others attention, they might not have understood her as the suits couldn’t decipher her language like Janet could do so easily. While they might not have understood her, they definitely heard her quite mumble as she stepped forward. Reach into her suits right saddlebag with her suit covered feathered wing, she pulled out the knife and kept a tight grip on it as she held it out to Kleptchi.

Kleptchi smiled and took the proffered knife from Fluttershy and looked it over, she shrug and turned to the wires and moved the blade to cut one of them and looked at the knife with surprise as it went through the wiring with ease. After that Fluttershy watched as the Rhizomian started crossing several wires and jabbing it at several circuits, the others were looking out for another patrol.

Even though Mira destroyed a patrol so fast that they hadn’t got a signal off, it would be bad not to be wary with so many ways to die in the vacuum.

After a moment the airlock was open and Mira looked into the airlock, she smiled and motioned for the others to follow her. Rhizome based technology was making this somewhat stealthy infiltration go off without a hitch so far, ‘so far’ being the key words to this adventure.

Packing into the airlock they floated there and Roller seemed to be enjoying his freedom of being able to fly around however he liked above their heads. After Kleptchi finished working another panel and the doors closed behind them, a white fog was pumped into the tight space hissing as it came in. After a moment they fell to the floor in a massive heap. Whereas Roller just reoriented his four pipes and carapace and landed upright on the floor staring at the tangle of limbs next to him curiously.

Fluttershy had thankfully been at the top of the pile of bodies suddenly affected by gravity. Poor Triffid was at the bottom of them all, at least his bulk made sure he was relatively uninjured. After they managed to get off of each other, Mira seemed to ask something of Kleptchi as she went to work on the door that would lead them inside, they all kept their protective bubble screens in their suits on. Even if there was breathable oxygen on the ship, they had no clue when they might run into a door with a fail-safe problem and it was better to be safe than sorry.

Their objective, as Fluttershy knew it, was to get to wherever the control room for the ship was and hold that room.

Mira knew Zurg and the piloting controls for these ships weren’t always on the bridge since the guy randomized the placement throughout every spaceship in his regime, plus redundancies that were activate one at a time for as long as they were still capable of being operational. Not only was the single active control room hard to find, it was the reason why the ships were simplistic in design so the control room could be put anywhere and powered. The fact that the hornets bothered repairing it meant that the carrier still had an active control room available; they just had to find the one active room among several other completely inert control rooms.

In essence it was trying to find a needle in a haystack full of false needles, while also being hunted by feral rabid hungry wolves who are staking out the haystack with you inside it. Fluttershy was feeling her suit cling to her again and it was weird that she found it overly comforting, it was a good thing she wasn’t claustrophobic on top of all the other very feasible anxiety ridden fears she had.

Once they’ve gained control they’d then fly it at the other two carriers and set it to explode, the two undamaged carriers were close enough together to be destroyed if the third one blew up next to them and providing they haven’t moved by then. While Zurg was good on design for many things in an evil a manner as possible, his minions controlling the robots weren’t trained for good tactics and likely wouldn’t make the other carriers run. They were separated from the third carrier for repairs and if anything went wrong it wouldn’t affect the other two carriers.

Fluttershy blinked and found her knife being held handle first be a smiling Kleptchi, she took it back and stowed it away in her spacesuits large green saddlebags. The door into the next room was open and the door beyond that one was scouted out as it led to the corridor, Mira motioned Fluttershy forward.

Being the smallest in the group Fluttershy was good for peeking around corners as she didn’t present a large profile. The pony could also hear the movements of robots through her helmet given there was an atmosphere to hear it in, but the echolocation sight was muffled by her helmet making the image she was seeing fuzzy through the walls and floor. She turned to Mira and looked her in the eyes.

“It’s clear, but I think we are going to need a way to communicate without me having to look at each other every few minutes. I can hear them moving and I can even see them too, none are near us at the moment and they are marching around.” There were a lot of places to hide on this vessel, but it would be hard to miss the hornets as they mostly moved about in groups on the floor below, Fluttershy didn’t have a very long range because of her helmet. “Oh and my helmet is limiting my hearing range, it’s one of those side effect of being mutated halfway into a chiropteran that I mentioned.”

“Still, stick close to or behind us. If something comes up we all know what your voice sounds like at least and if it’s something we should know about immediately yell. Oh and thanks for getting us in, now make sure Mr. Wheel doesn’t make too much noise.” Mira turned back to the corridor and motioned for them to move forward. Things were relatively quiet and being a part of a group would hopefully make Fluttershy feel safe.

Fluttershy turned to Roller and patted him on his carapace and she started moving forward with Pwerta and him at her side as the group started to systematically check the rooms. They already found one of the inert control rooms and were searching it over; there was no way to get any power to this room unless another specific room went offline.

After a moment of looking around the room Pwerta spoke up attracting the attention of both Truffle and Fluttershy. Pwerta was pointing out the wires that ran along the walls and floor. Truffle held a conversation with her that the pony was no part of; Fluttershy really wanted her universal translator back in working condition.

Mira came over and joined their conversation after a moment of talk and scanning the doorways into and out of the rooms she nodded and motioned for everyone to follow while pointing at the cables in the walls. There was a chance that the cables led to the other control rooms or the power source connected to all of them.

As they followed along with Mira in the lead, they had to duck out of the way of several patrols, five to six hornets would pass by and then they’d leave cover. There were alcoves in the hallways to hide in or they’d hover against the ceiling, it was nice that the hornets didn’t have any peripheral vision or else they would have been caught because of a few mistakes.

As they followed the large wires into a large cavernous room Mira suddenly halted their progress and Fluttershy’s ears wilted as she looked up at the hundreds of racks each containing an inactive hornet robot.

Now that she saw them, Fluttershy had an insight as to what might possibly happen once they do find the control room. It was similar to what happened to her on the previous vessel she was stuck on, minus the chaos field and possibly with chances of a more lethal explosion.

They were trying to do all this as silently as possible, but Fluttershy heard one of the robots becoming active and she squeaked before ducking out of sight as her echolocation sight still worked even if at a limited range through her helmet. Pwerta followed her lead which led to the others doing the same as a random hornet among the hundreds dropped to the floor and slowly became active.

They hid behind some large cargo containers that held parts and bits of machinery that appeared to be for hornet repair purposes, they watched as it moved around to activate five more in the room before marching off down a different corridor with them.

Fluttershy poked her head out around the container and then turned to all the Rhizomians and Mira staring at her, she blushed at the attention she was receiving and then nodded. It was hard for her to forget she wasn’t alone in this, the fact that she was helping so much made her feel useful to the cause.

Mira got them all following the cables again, after a while they found another inoperable control room. They all sighed as this was going to take a while. Twenty minutes later they were all hiding outside the working control room while being edgy about all the hornet patrols they dodged, they were waiting for Mira to come up with a plan of action to deal with the twenty hornets in the room.

From what Fluttershy understood, they couldn’t afford to destroy anything in the room or else the control room may stop working and then they’d have to find the next control room. Every once in a while hornets would enter the room or exit it, so it was under constant patrol and no one was going to sneak in there… no one except for her that is and she really didn’t want to.

While the Rhizomians were busy talking with Mira quietly, Fluttershy turned to Roller and motioned him forward. He gave off a soft rev and followed along; apparently his friend had an idea of what to do with the swarming robots. It was a good thing they didn’t have the doors under constant guard or else Fluttershy would have been seen slipping in with Mr. Wheel when the next hornet entered the room.

Fluttershy was too small for the hornets to see close up, Roller didn’t exactly count as stealthy but he wasn’t trying to make any unnecessary noise as they entered the room and ducked into an out of the way alcove. They were watching as several hornets stood at the consoles and were working their three mechanical fingers over multiple buttons at insane speeds. The screens in front of the hornets showed screens of the other two hornet carriers and a pack of hornets chasing the Solar Clipper still being controlled by Janet’s avatar.

Janet was wrecking the hornets without having weapons and she was putting on an interesting show with how hard she was pushing the clipper to perform as it slammed its way through packs of hornets. It was soon joined by a dozen other similar looking Solar Clippers all being driven by little red flowers that were loaded with tons of semi activated pod grenades that slammed directly into the thrusters of the other two hornet carriers. The hornet’s controllers must have been pretty confused that Rhizome ships could seemingly pilot themselves when it was just Janet planting an avatar flower in each one to assume direct control. She must have found out what would happen if her avatar was destroyed.

“A plan, I need a plan…” Fluttershy reached into her left saddlebag and pulled out the memory stone held in her left wing, she dropped it into her left hoof. She wasn’t surprise that it was there after she had left it behind on Maurice. She smiled as she hefted the memory stone twice getting a feel for its weight in her hoof; it didn’t weigh very much at all and it was completely indestructible. It had enough mass to make enough noise to attract attention; these machines weren’t nearly as intelligent as the ones on the previous vessel, but they were still just as dangerous. So Fluttershy had a good plan of action. “Roller, can you please take care of the ones I miss and watch out for me?”

The red carapace moved up and down in a nodding motion as the wheel stayed in place, he watched as Fluttershy brought her left hoof back and then hurled it at the corner of the room where nothing important looked to be. The loud clacking noise the stone made as it hit the metal wall and hit the floor attracted the attention of every hornet that swiftly flew over to it and stood in a circle staring down at the memory stone. After a moment the stone disappeared in a small flash, puzzling the hornets until a small green orb rolled into their midst.

They all turned to Fluttershy who had come out from cover to roll the orb into their pack; they never got a shot off when the pod grenade she rolled forward went off entangling them in bright red vines. After a second the vines started glowing brightly before the robots fell to pieces when the ensnaring vines erupted. Before Fluttershy could comment on that going so well three hornets burst into the room from the door in the back, she had come from the right hand side of the room from their position.

Roller revved loudly and rammed the three hornets to the floor taking out two of them immediately by the force of his impact. The third being the furthest away only took damage to one of its legs; it sat up and tried to get a shot off at either Roller or Fluttershy only to get hit with four thorns that caused it to start melting into a pile of useless slag. None of the equipment in the room was damaged and it was all still operational.

Mira started making quick orders, Truffle, Triffid and Kleptchi spread out to cover the three doors leading into the room as she looked to Fluttershy looking impressed with the pony. She patted Fluttershy on the back instead of yelling at her in an angry and said something that sounded rather comforting. After that Mira went to the consoles while asking something of Pwerta making the Rhizomian join her.

Fluttershy quietly poked her hoof at Mira’s legs as she looked at the screens to see several Rhizome vessels were harassing the hornet carriers without a single Rhizomian coming into the line of fire.

“Huh, oh Fluttershy what is it? We’re about to ram this carrier into the other two, then we’re going to set the self destruct.” Things were going pretty well and Mira had not given thought to the one problem as Truffle started firing thorns down his corridor as blasts of energy whizzed by him.

“How are we going to get out of here after we set the carrier to explode? Won’t the hornets swarm the ship and try to keep us onboard now that they have an idea that we’re here?” After a moment of staring at the indescribable look of slight unease on the aliens face, Fluttershy wasn’t sure she liked the answer as to how they were getting off this ship alive.

Pwerta grabbed both of their attentions when she yelled something, they turned to the screens of the control room and saw hornets were activating and dropping from their racks in the cargo area they passed earlier, Mira turned back to Fluttershy.

“Yeah, that’s the tricky part about all this Fluttershy. The limited time we’ll have to get off with hordes of killer robots breathing down our necks, I’ve done something like this often enough that I forgot I wasn’t with my friends for a moment. For now though, I’ve got to steer the ship. So please don’t cause any more trouble, you just about gave me three separate heart attacks back there.” Mira turned back to the controls rooms console and started to operate the ship, she was Buzz Lightyear’s co-pilot and knew how to fly several kinds of vessels. She was especially handy when it came to flying Zurg’s ships once she could get to the controls of them without them exploding in her face. The ghosting powers that had saved her in all those incidents would have been really useful right about now.

Triffid and Kleptchi were now firing and sparingly throwing pod grenades down the corridors as they were starting to attract more swarms of hornets. Truffle sitting in his position by his door threw a pod grenade before a nasty shot ripped into his left shoulder causing him to scream out and fall onto his back spilling turquoise some blood on the floor, he continued to fire his thorn rifle in his right hand despite the pain. His suit had taken enough damage that the planet matter covering his shoulder had become thin enough to be punctured.

Pwerta was immediately on it moving towards the injured Rhizomian tossing her own pod grenade down that hall as she ran up to Truffle; she slammed her suit fist over controls to the door, damaging the panel enough to force it to shut and lockdown. They definitely weren’t getting out that way, after a moment she rummaged through her backpack then pulled out two plants.

“Roller I want you to please stay here in this room and keep the tall yellow things out if they get in, okay?” Hearing an affirmative revving noise from her favorite wheel based animal, Fluttershy quickly joined Pwerta by taking the roll of flattened plant into her hooves. She watched as Pwerta held the other plant in her six fingers and squeezed it tightly. It started squirting a foul smelling sickly yellow substance over the wound, after that Fluttershy started quickly wrapping up Truffle who wouldn’t be able to move that arm due to the numbing and cleaning agents that was just freshly squeezed into his shoulder. After Fluttershy was done, Truffle’s suit grew over the bandages and was once again sealed up.

While they were helping Truffle, Triffid took a shot knocking him back slightly, but he stood his ground and kept firing even while his suit looked lightly scorched all over. Kleptchi ducked out the way of a barrage of energy blasts from the corridor they just came through. The two were getting swarmed and hammered badly, their suits wouldn’t hold up much longer. At least the control room was taking very little damage compared to the walls in the corridors around it that were getting struck with acidic robot melting thorns.

They had definitely just kicked a hornet’s nest; stealth was no longer an option for them.

Author's Note

Pwerta- Vibrantly Healthy, if worried about Truffle's injury.

Mira- Healthy.

Kletpchi- Healthy.

Fluttershy- Minor amount of bravery, relatively stressed out.

Triffid- Smells like scorched plant matter, but still healthy.

Truffle- Bruised with a badly damaged shoulder, left arm numbed and medicated. Still capable of wielding a rifle and pod grenades with his right arm.

Roller Wheel- ???

Roller addendum: Likely Has no idea what is really going on anymore. Paying heed to Fluttershy's commands because he likes her.

Will fix errors with this chapter later if there is any.

49

Normally Fluttershy wouldn’t join in a fight, but that was against anything that actually had a soul, that could feel emotions and or be considered alive. Mira’s friend XR definitely had a soul from the tale Fluttershy heard of the space iceberg.

The hunks of metal could easily be rebuilt; a life couldn’t be brought back after it was gone and was far more complex then bits of metal and wiring. Unless said life was made of metal and wiring and had acquired a spirit all its own, Fluttershy had no compunctions or hang-ups about destroying mindless machines. She likened it to taking away a spoiled child’s playthings; said spoiled child was the leader of his own evil empire.

So Fluttershy, while not entirely of sound mind, snuck into a room to take out its robotic occupants with her only backup at the time being Roller. It had worked, only now she and her friends were surrounded on all sides by tons of robots, Truffle was injured and they now only had two exits as Pwerta smashed the door controls to one of them locking it down. This was assuming that the robots didn’t have the ability to break through the door in some manner.

Truffle was now helping out with Professor Triffid and being more careful, Pwerta was using Mira’s pea shooter to help out Kleptchi and Mira finally managed to get the ship moving. The pony stayed out of the way watching it all with the living wheel, this was the kind of things heroes did and all these people including Mira were putting themselves in danger for the sakes of others.

“Now if only we can get out of here safely.” Muttered Fluttershy, as they were already halfway to making sure this Zurg would never bother the friendly people of Janet Rhizome ever again. She might have ignored this kind of stuff back in the Lylat system because it wasn’t her place and she was being a bit selfish at the time, this however was her place and she was putting her life in the line of fire for millions of people who weren’t able to stand up for themselves very well.

Fluttershy knew the feeling of being bullied all too well, if only those bullies could see where she was now and what she was accomplishing. They’d be a little more than shocked at what meek little Fluttershy has been able to survive. If asked why she wouldn’t defend herself against any bullies? She’d now tell them that it was too dangerous for them if she were to fight back. Fluttershy still doesn’t want to hurt anyone that doesn’t deserve it and she knows what it’s like to be the bully herself and she doesn’t relish the memories. A bolt of energy whizzed past her face causing her flop backwards on her butt while squeaking, she looked to Mira who had instinctively ducked the shot as she pilot the ship.

“This is Ranger Mira Nova, is there anyone out there? We’re under attack in a partially commandeered and heavily damaged hornet carrier, Star Command if you can hear me get someone out here like yesterday!” Mira was working communications as she piloted the ship, which was something she did anyway on Cruiser Forty Two. What she wouldn’t give to see that ship right now flying up to the damaged carrier in a blaze of glory. “I repeat this is Ranger Mira Nova, is there anyone out there in the sector of the gamma quadrant? I could take all the help I can get; I’d even trust Warp Darkmatter with my life at this rate if he was willing to take a month’s worth of my salary!”

Fluttershy watched as Mira was yelling at the console in slight despair, none of the other Rhizomians covering the doors said anything and kept firing when an opportunity presented itself they were holding the doors valiantly and their suits were getting shot up badly. She went up to Mira and put a hoof on her shoulder as she started the carrier on a slow turn so that she could aim it to wedge the carrier between the other two, Janet appeared to have done enough damage to immobilize them by ramming pod grenade loaded ships up their aft sections.

Mira looked to Fluttershy and smiled slightly, it was a nice thought that the pony was trying to comfort her and hey it was actually working. If all ponies were adorable like she was, then she wouldn’t mind spending her retirement years living on a planet with them provided this one in particular can find it in the vast universe.

“Is there anyone out there worth talking to? This is Ranger Mira Nova, I’m requesting help.” There was no one out there it seemed as she steered the ship around.

“Hello, this Fox of the mercenary team Star-Fox what do you need help with exactly and what in the world is going on over there?” The voice sounded very familiar to the only pony onboard a ship loaded with deadly robots and she broke out into a slight smile.

“I’m Ranger Mira Nova and I’ve recently helped Rhizome route an invasion force, lots of nasty robots called hornets from an empire were held off and the rest stuck around. There were five carriers loaded with hornets at the start of all this. I’m jacking currently one of the remaining three ships to finish the job, the carriers are where they are because they fear the firepower Rhizome can point their way, that orbital defense system has a nasty kick to it. I’m in the heavily damaged one and we have a bunch of automatically piloted Rhizome ships doing some damage and distracting them, but it’s not enough to be worthwhile since Rhizomians don’t have anything resembling effective ship to ship combat. They’ve got their ground forces well covered and equipped at least.” Mira paused in the midst of pulling an image up on screen, she stood up and threw a grenade down the corridor Triffid and Truffle were covering giving them some relief and then did the same for Kleptchi and Pwerta. She turned back to the monitor to see a fuzzy face on it; she didn’t care if they were from the Lylat system, she could take what she could get at the moment. “We’re kind of pinned down and being swarmed relentlessly here, I have five people and a relatively intelligent animal with me one of ours is injured and our Rhizomian suits are barely holding up to all the strain of taking hits as it is. We’re trying to ram this ship between the other two and we’re going to set it off, but we need more distractions and a lot of firepower. Can you help a girl out?”

“Depends, we’re looking for a friend of ours and… guys get to your fighters now! Rob start doing some damage with the main cannons to those robots and take out as many as you can squeeze into each shot, clear a path for us to launch as we’re going in hot! We’ve got to start clearing the space out here.” Fox saw Fluttershy on the monitor, well her head at least inside of a Rhizomian suit behind Mira. She was looking up at him with a faint sad smile as she hugged some kind of strange wheel with eyes she gave him a tiny wave with a hoof; he knew well enough that she was in danger and needed help. He was already running down the hallway for his fighter with his three friends as Rob carried out his orders and started vaporizing hornets with fire from the Great Fox’s two massive energy cannons.

“Where’s the fire Fox, what’s going on here in hippie space?” Falco was rather grumpy as he ran full tilt alongside Fox, Slip and Peppy.

“If I said the Rhizomians successfully repelled a large invasion force attacking Rhizome would you believe me? Fluttershy’s currently onboard the damaged enemy carrier and in a room that has a lot of deadly robots swarming towards it. Oh and did I mention that they are going to try and blow up two other carriers with it? They are going to have a hard time getting out there with so many robots coming down on them; I can only imagine what Katt would have in store for us if we don’t help them.” The minute he finished telling his bipedal bird companion Fox was amazed as Falco blurred down the hall within seconds of hearing Fluttershy was in danger, he smiled cheekily. Fox was never going to let Falco live that kind of reaction down, not without throwing tons of jabs at him.

“Looks like we got some help guys get ready to start running. Can you manage it Truffle?” Putting the ship on course with the other two carriers, Mira turned to the injured Rhizomian who nodded in her direction. She stared the pony in the eyes. “Be prepared to move Fluttershy, you should have another pod grenade by now in case you forget that they regenerate. I’ll get us all out of this alive, okay?”

“Okay.” Was Fluttershy’s reply, she didn’t think she’d see Fox and his friends in a situation quite like this one. She heard a stifled male scream and saw Professor Triffid stumble back as his leg was got grazed and Truffle almost took a blast to the chest. After a few moments it looked like Triffid’s suit wasn’t regenerating from some of the damage it was taking, Fluttershy nodded to herself that he was too busy to make repairs. She immediately ran up to Pwerta who turned to her after firing another thorn into hornet. “Burn wound medication, spare suit patch.”

Kleptchi stepped out and kept firing as much as a she could to give Pwerta some time to hand Fluttershy the necessary equipment. Fluttershy was immediately on her way back to Professor Triffid when she heard an anguished shout and what was likely Kleptchi’s body hitting the floor; she didn’t stop until she was at Professor Triffid’s side. The pony immediately pulled out the required plant and squeezed out some blue fluid that would heal the burn wound and slapped the patch on top of the hole that was refusing to regenerate; the entire suit became revitalized within seconds. Professor Triffid glancing down at the suit patch integrating with the suit pulled out another suit patch and slapped it over Truffle’s suit making it revitalize as well.

Turning around Fluttershy saw what happened to Kleptchi, the thorns on her suit were missing and the entire hallway beyond the door was covered in hundreds of little acidic thorns spread out everywhere. Pwerta punched the door controls like she had previously done and the door locked down like the one on the opposite side of the room. One of which had a small glowing dot on it slowly moving across the top of it.

Fluttershy didn’t have time to pay attention to the glowing dot moving along the door as Kleptchi had a small hole in her abdominal region that she was clutching at with her right hand as she held her rifle in her left as she started bleeding out on the floor.

“She’s going into shock Pwerta; we can’t let her fall asleep.” Fluttershy received a nod at her diagnosis and Pwerta pulled out what looked to be a cactus and stuck Kleptchi in the chest with it for a few seconds before quickly ripping it out. Kleptchi jumped slightly, but was held down by two comforting hooves and she started breathing evenly.

“This is a pretty bad injury Fluttershy, but nothing I can’t handle. Now hold her still, this is going to cause her a lot of pain that I can’t even begin describing to you, at least it will keep her from bleeding out. I’m sorry about using a Fire Veins on you Kleptchi, but you’ll thank me for this later.” Pulling out a plant that the Rhizomian on the floor grimaced at, Pwerta squeezed some red fluid into her wound and the sickly fluids coagulated at the surface of the wound after a few seconds. Kleptchi was rolled over to get at her back with the other half of the fluids. After waiting a moment for the red fluids to settle Pwerta applied a suit patch to revitalize the suit Kleptchi wore, holding the coagulated fluids in place.

It was odd to Fluttershy that she didn’t hear anything that sounded like pain as she held the Rhizomian down, a moment later Kleptchi started grunting and gritted her teeth in anguish while trying not to thrash against Fluttershy’s gentle hold. Soon it appeared like she was having a seizure by how much her body struggled as Pwerta joined Fluttershy in holding her down; she was pretty tough to not be screaming her head off at the moment.

Mira looked up from piloting the ship and saw Kleptchi being held down by both Pwerta and Fluttershy; looking behind her she saw that Triffid and Truffle were still holding the last door. Hearing something, Mira turned to a hissing noise and saw that the hornets were slowly cutting into the first door that Pwerta locked down. Oh great, more problems, that’s exactly what she needed. They were so close to a collision with the other two carriers, which were currently stymied in their efforts to move out of the way of the damaged carrier by the numerous Rhizome vessels clogging up their tailpipes.

“Triffid, lock down that last door and gather everything together now! I want the two of you to move over to Fluttershy, Pwerta and Kleptchi. I need everyone touching each other, tell Fluttershy to get Mr. Wheel to come over to her. You’ll see why in a minute, if we’re lucky nothing will go horribly wrong. Come on, group hug everybody!” Silently the space ranger muttered a few expletives as she moved away from the controls as she joined the group. “Come on Mira you can do this, just a little focus. I really need to start ghosting right now; it’ll save us a lot of headaches if I can.”

The door blew inward as Mira gathered into her arms as far as she could. The quickly hornets piled into the room and Mira tool three shots, two to her back and one went through her right leg before the ship crashed. Mira was holding on tight as everyone close to her followed her when she through the floor at an angle and passed through several layers of ship. They stopped falling when Mira lost her concentration in midair in the middle of a faintly lit room full of large metal boxes.

“Did I ghost everyone out?” Even through the haze of slight pain she was more worried about the others then herself at the moment, she had taken two damaging shots along her spine and her leg didn’t look to good. She got everyone, even the wheel was there and all their equipment was present. “Pwerta check the others first, that’s an order not a suggestion!”

“Mira, that was amazing! Oh wait, you’re hurt, are you feeling okay? How many hooves am I holding up? Are you seeing a tunnel with a bright light? Stay here please, if you don’t mind me asking you to do so that is.” Fluttershy wondered how Mira was awake; she had to be in so much pain right now. She could even see how messed up Mira’s knee was as the shot had hit the back of it and went straight through and her back looked to be a complete and utter mess.

“I’ll be okay Fluttershy; this isn’t the worst thing that’s happened to me. Becoming temporarily partially fused with a robot and a Jo-adian was much worse than this; I needed psychiatric help for weeks after that one. Thank goodness for ranger medical benefits that leads to them solving just about everything medically except Commander Nebula’s leg oddly enough, that and death.” Speaking in a bored tone Mira was treating this as if she were talking about the weather. Sure Rhizome couldn’t field a military that could fight effectively, but they could restore a nearly useless completely shredded limb to full working order given enough time. Darn it, she was going to need more physical therapy and just after she got finished getting over her blast wounds!

“Everyone else is mostly fine, Truffle still has a numbed arm, Kleptchi has a sealed abdominal wound in her and Triffid’s leg is good to go thanks to Fluttershy. Other than a being a little jolted from hitting the floor they’re doing fine, now you… yeah, you need another week on Rhizome after all this.” Pwerta just shook her head as aside from her, Fluttershy and Roller were the only ones untouched by all the fighting. “Help me lift her up into a sitting position. I’ll get the damage to her back first. ”

After a bit of checking Mira over, Pwerta slathered a purple liquid and then a blue liquid on her back and then looked over her leg while she pondered why the back only looked worse than it actually was.

“Well Mira It’s rather odd, but you don’t seem to be feeling incredible amounts of pain despite having your back flayed open by two shots that punctured your suit. The wounds in your back surprisingly aren’t as bad as they look, compared to the horribly damaged leg of yours.” Pwerta was looking to Fluttershy’s eyes for her convenience of knowing what she was saying.

“Yeah well, our ghosting powers have the natural side effect of making us Tangean Royal’s slightly resistant to energy based attack… makes sense if you consider the existence of Tangean Grounders. Our nervous systems are really hard to damage permanently as a result and despite the pain I should be in I can kind of well… shut it off.” Mira shrugged slightly when she said she could shut off her ability to feel pain. “That nifty ability helped a lot with Space Ranger training. It only works with pain though and doesn’t affect my ability to feel fatigued. I’m feeling pretty tired at the moment, but I’m made of tougher stuff then that and I’m not a princess that is easily distressed mind you.”

“For a second there I was about to call such a practice as being able to turn off your ability to feel pain unhealthy, in this situation it’s actually quite useful.” Reaching into her bags Pwerta pulled out a particular plant she had called Fire Veins that she had previously used on Kleptchi. She doused the leg wound completely with red fluids that started hardening around her knee and just stared expectantly at Mira. “How do you feel?”

“My leg just kind of feels ticklish.” It was Mira’s reaction to the complete agony she should be in, this left Fluttershy completely confused considering Kleptchi’s reaction to the stuff.

“Remind me to make a note about this if you will Professor Triffid, we’re down to four suit patches after I use this one.” Pulling out a Rhizomian suit patch, Pwerta slapped it over Mira’s suit and revitalized growing over her medicated wounds.

“Yes that is a useful trait, Fire Veins usually burn through anything even resembling anesthetics. Maybe she could help us look into it later to solve the anesthesia problem; of course we have to survive blowing up this negative mass obscuring our cosmic field of peace and tranquility first.” At least Professor Triffid was standing with relative ease, he was shouldering Truffle who refused to let go of his thorn rifle or stop paying attention the doorway into the room.

“Yeah, not sure how we’re going to set off a self destruct in the conditions we’re in and escape safely.” Moving her leg about, it looked to Mira that her leg stiffened sticking straight out and she couldn’t even flex it a single millimeter.

“How about we just escape? Fox and his friends are really good at destroying all kinds of large ships and they could safely blow it up once we’re off it. I traveled with them for a time Mira; they can blow it up for us.” One of the things neither Fluttershy nor anyone else had told Mira was that Head Hunter was a stolen ship. The Rhizomians were definitely keeping a lid on that information for the pony’s sake.

“Fine, we’re escaping. We’ve already made them think twice about sticking around Rhizome and if you know those mercenaries enough to vouch for them, then they’ll take care of the carriers.” Mira raised a hand and it flickered for a second, after a moment of staring at her hand with concentration she just forced herself to stand and looked at the Rhizomians and Fluttershy. They all looked worse for wear and were not naturally fighters, but they held together well enough under stress and Mira had to admit that she wasn’t that great a leader. “Sorry guys, it seems I can’t ghost us out of this. I’m too tired after getting us out of the control room.”

Fluttershy just pulled out the memory stone and concentrated on calling out to Discord specifically, she could use his guidance and he could see things from a really long distance away. With a flash the stone started glowing as it made a connection with one of Discord’s mismatched horns.

“You have reached the discordant help me hotline. If you would like to cause chaos, press one now. If you would like to do something unnecessarily stupid, then you will press two now. If you would like to make prank calls to Celestia to distract her while you steal all her cake, press three now and be wary of the sun for a while. ” Discord’s voice was coming through loud and clear for Fluttershy, it sounded like complete gibberish to everyone else. The pony slowly rolled her eyes as Discord continued. “If you would to have the chaos lord himself give you an overview your current situation as it stands, press four now. If you desperately need to be hit by the elements of harmony and turned to stone for some reason, please do go ahead and press five now especially if you’re bored with chaos.”

Fluttershy started tapping her left hoof impatiently, but there was a small smile on her face.

“If you would like to giggle like a little schoolgirl wearing a shrimp costume, press both six and nine now. If you would like Discord to assist you with getting out of another horribly dangerous situation with your friends in tow while hopefully surviving it intact, press ‘Fluttershy’ now.” The voice sounded rather smug at that last one.

“Fluttershy, I’m done playing around for the moment if that’s alright with you Discord. If you don’t mind me asking this of you, could you maybe help me and my new friends without all the sidetracking commentary?” Fluttershy could hear Discord smiling on the other end of the stone.

Author's Note

Pwerta- Healthy, if tired of everyone around her getting injured.

Fluttershy- Healthy, also tired of seeing others being injured.

Triffid- Medically treated burned leg, overall in good condition.

Mira- Treated back and leg wounds.

Kleptchi- Treated abdominal wound, suits special function completely spent.

Truffle- Medically numbed and wrapped left arm.

Roller 'Mr.' Wheel- ????

Roller addendum- Still just going along with everything.

Might not post another chapter for a while, I'm busy playing Golden Sun and waiting for season 5.

50

Fluttershy slowly dropped her helmets bubble, reached up with her hoof and slowly wedge the memory stone in her left ear. After her bubble popped up she turned to Mira and the others, the suit reacting to her mood, the two long pink petals sticking up at the back of her head fell down to veil the right side of her face as she shyly pawed at the floor with a hoof. She wasn’t good in a direct fight; even if she could protect and handle herself well enough.

Ever since she joined Rhizome’s fight against the hornets, Fluttershy hasn’t directly been involved in the fighting, sure she might have cleared a room by herself but that was quick and simple thinking alongside using her small stature to her advantage compared to the taller beings she was with. At best she’s only come up with useful plans and tactically speaking she dealt a lot of damage to a massive number of hornets with them; she thankfully wasn’t Rainbow Dash who would have likely flown straight into a wall of energy weapons being fired directly at her with a bravado that would coincide with suicidal tendencies.

In this situation fighting was necessary, something Fluttershy was hardly good at unless she was under extreme duress and fighting for her life on her back. She did pretty well last time considering she was impaled through the chest, had numerous bruises and a broken leg at the time. This time she was actually wearing something that would protect her from a few glancing shots, maybe even a few direct hits like all the other suits. It was safe to say Fluttershy would rather curl up in this room and not leave it until things were safe, but that wasn’t an option and she didn’t like where they were all headed after they were finished resting.

The Rhizomian suit patches were useful, slap one over a suit that lost its regenerative capabilities and the entire suit restores to full functionality and form. Depending on how often the suits takes damage, the Rhizomian suits could theoretically take an infinite amount of damage even if it had less durability than something made of sterner materials.

Mira’s Space Ranger armor could take a lot more of a pounding, but didn’t have the ability to restore itself back to full condition after a fight and would need to be sent in for repairs. There was a big upside to having biological armor that can heal itself and protect the wearer.

As long as the damage threshold was not exceeded the Rhizome suits would work perfectly and continue to do so while prioritizing life support functions. A mechanical suit could only carry so much air and only recycle it for so long, plus there were better chances of this type of suit having system failures compared to a biological suit that breathes with its wearer.

The pony moved over to sit down in a circle with the Rhizomian’s and Mira after she was done flicking her left ear irritably. Fluttershy cowered as the ship was rocked by what sounded to be a huge explosion.

“We can only rest for about five more minutes; we’ve wedged the carrier into position now all we need is for Janet or those mercenaries to finish them off. We’re about to hightail out of here, so does anyone have any good ideas or any comments to make?” Mira was still looked to as the leader of this operation and she was going to make sure that they had no complaints. She promised Fluttershy they’d survive and they were going to even if it was over her half dead body, good thing her thrusters were still working or else flying around looking randomly for an exit would never work.

“Um… I can find an exit…” Fluttershy daintily toyed with the pink petals that reminded her of how her mane used to hang in her face. She got Mira’s attention easily enough; she was being a lot shyer now than she has been for the past few weeks. It was a comforting feeling for Fluttershy that she could still be herself, of course now wasn’t a time for being shy. “I’m in contact with my friend Discord, he can see us right now and he’ll guide us to an exit as best he can. We’re going to need to do some fighting and… well he can get us out. After that we’ll be in open space, which will be much more dangerous than being in here and being in here will get us killed anyway.”

“Good point, but we haven’t really pushed the thrusters to full on these things yet. Hope those exhaust plants are as powerful as you say they are Professor Triffid.” Hearing the professor describe the strength of the suits thrusters had Mira wondering why he stated it was a bad idea to use them at full strength while in atmospheric conditions, she’d find out once they hit open space though. She wasn’t going to question Fluttershy about the glowing stone too much, she trusted the pony explicitly after getting to know her over a week of spa trips. “Since you have a method for getting us out of here faster, one that doesn’t require a large amount of explosive we currently don’t have, we’ll follow you’re lead Fluttershy. Truffle, Kleptchi and Pwerta you’ll be behind her, I’ll take up the rear with Triffid. Roller can just do his own thing; he seems capable of taking care of himself anyway. Now let’s get the door and everyone get their weapons ready, Fluttershy you’re going to need this.”

Roller just rolled his eyes and revved something that sounded like him saying, well of course he could take care of himself as he didn’t currently have a flat and could still go fast. His ability to describe his health wasn’t exactly the greatest thing in the world; he was still confused about how he and everyone fell through the floor after he was brought into a hug with Fluttershy and the others.

Fluttershy looked at the hilt of the thorn sword she was just given by Mira, a blade with thorns would grow out of the hilt and then it would be a weapon otherwise it could perform different functions including a onetime Jaws of Life feature that turned it into a small tree.

“I’m moving out Discord; please give me the directions as needed.” Shaking her head the pony moved up to the door to this room and poked the control panel, the door opened up. Sticking her head out of the doorway slightly, she looked around the corridor and didn’t see anything so far. She took a few steps out and then kicked off the ground into a hover. So far so good, Fluttershy heard Discord give her a direction to start moving in, she steeled her nerves and continued to think of the mantra that she was just destroying big dangerous toys that children shouldn’t play with. “Let’s go!”

Fluttershy shot off down the corridor at full atmospheric speed clutching tightly at the thorn sword hilt held in both her hooves, leading the others while following Discord’s directions. When she first came upon few hornets the blade immediately sprouted from the hilt and she swung as hard as she could, while flying by them at a blazing speed.

The pony continued onwards spiraling a bit before she righted herself not looking back; she took the lack of energy weapons fire to mean that she succeeded in neutralizing the machines. She took a right turn and saw a glimpse of several forms still following her, including Roller. Her left ear flicked as she continued flying forward trying to keep focused on it for any more instructions from Discord.

If there was one thing Fluttershy wasn’t good at doing, it was flying fast. She was having some problems keeping her flight path straight. She flashed by several more hornets that had opened up fire on her before she destroyed them with another swing of the sword she was holding onto for dear life; she was flying so erratically that evasive maneuvers weren’t needed.

Fluttershy slowed down and curved around to the left at the next four way intersection, and was immediately under fire. She dropped down in shock and was caught by Roller who put her in a position where she destroyed three of the five hornets. The wheel spun around really fast horizontally like a top as they rammed through them while Fluttershy held her blade out. The other two hornets were taken out by multiple thorns fire from behind her, after that she kicked off Roller and was back in the air within seconds leading the way.

A left turn, then a right, they weren’t being interrupted by any patrols. Discord was leading them around the patrols; he was pretty good at that as Fluttershy really didn’t really want to go on the offensive.

“Ten incoming on the way you have to go next, just a heads up. Left turn and get ready to swing that thing around some more.” Hearing Discord’s advice Fluttershy looked up at her left ear and flicked it a bit before lowering her eyesight to in front of her and she made a left turn while swinging. The acidic edge of the sword ripped through three of the robots, the other seven started firing at her airborne form.

Fluttershy immediately dropped to the floor and went into a high speed roll with her thrusters pushing her forward along the ground, she popped out of it into a spiraling straight into the air with a flourish which destroyed four of the hornets in their way. Two more hornets went down to thorns fired at them and the last one was slashed in half with a vertical swing from Pwerta wielding a thorn sword of her own as she flew between the two halves of the yellow and black machine as it fell apart.

Dizzily the pony shook her head and twitched her left ear; she turned right down the next corridor. Now she had to fly straight until the airlock came up on her left, she and the others were going to get company and they had to hold it together. When they reached open space things were bound to get worse before they could get better.

Staring down the hallway Fluttershy had a firm frown upon her face; she shot forward and swung the sword loosely taking out the first of a large pack of flying hornets while getting between them so they’d shoot each other. The ones before had been on the ground slowly trudging about, these hornets were all much more prepared for the escaping counter offensive team that had rammed the three hornet carriers together.

Evasive maneuvers were a must in close quarters and especially while flying at break neck if you hit anything resembling a brick wall speed. The Rhizomian’s were doing this while they pumped round after round into the hornets as the flew through them and came out the other side with Mira flying backwards planting a few shots into the stragglers that survived the initial rush lead by Fluttershy and Pwerta.

Fluttershy’s heart was thundering in her chest as she swung the sword haphazardly as she flew through the entire flock of machines tearing them to shreds with the acidic edge of her blade. She would never do this to a living being and these were just toys of a bad colt, yes it had to be a very bad colt that couldn’t just play nice with others so his toys had to be taken away. She dodged deftly out of the way of some ionized green air that shot past her and the offending hornet was shot down by Mira.

Within seconds of clearing the pack having swung her sword one last time taking down one last hornet, she could vaguely hear Discord yelling in her ear to keep a look out to her left. She saw the airlock and slowed down by pointed her thrusters in the opposite direction to come into a hover before dropping to the floor, she tested the airlocks panel to find it wouldn’t open. Kleptchi flew forward and Fluttershy flicked her glass knife towards her with her bat wing as the others moved to cover the airlock from the two directions that hornets would have to come in from.

“Fluttershy when we get out into open space pay attention to your surroundings at all times, because they will be firing at us from all sides. Now excuse me I’ve got some hornets to deal with.” Mira raised up the hornet’s arm she had liberated from one of the robots and started to fire it down the corridor alongside her pea shooter. The hornet’s arms had their own power sources in case their main batteries were ever compromised, they’d still get off a few shots and be powered by both their arms. As fragile as they generally were, hornets were good at staying operational in certain situations. “Come on guys, keep them off of Kleptchi!”

Kleptchi was sweating as bolts of energy flew by behind her head and she hurriedly twisted several wires in the three fingers of each hand, after a moment she slammed four wires together and the airlock popped open.

Everyone piled into the airlock and Mira flew in last to shooting the panel on the inside of the airlock closing the door shut behind them. Fluttershy was breathing heavily and shuddering, the other Rhizomian’s looked to be tired and Mira looked to be glowing with excitement.

Kleptchi was already kneeling by the next panel and she stopped at the last wire with her thumb and forefinger on both bits of metal prepared to squeeze them together, she handed the knife back to Fluttershy and looked to Mira.

“Right, everyone be prepared for what’s about to happen. Keep an eye out everywhere around you, oh and Fluttershy?” Making sure she had eye contact with the pony Mira smiled. “Can you ask your friend which direction we should be flying to head towards the mercenary’s ship?”

“Straight down from the airlock in the next minute, can’t miss it really. Your blue friend sent all three ships rolling when she rammed them together.” Fluttershy could definitely hear the amusement in Discord’s voice. “And I must say how positively chaotic of her, I really like that in your new friend my dear. Please don’t get hit out there... I worry a lot for your health and I’m only getting winks of sleep with fear for your safety.”

“I’ll be okay Discord.” They had about ten seconds from what Fluttershy understood, until the time allotted by Discord was up. She turned away from the door to look at Mira. “We need to go straight down from our current orientation, open it in the next six seconds.”

“Remember to use full thrust everyone, three, two, one… go!” Mira pointed to Kleptchi who smashed her two fingers together and the airlock burst open sending them all flying out into space, everything suddenly became soundless except for everyone breathing in the depths of space.

Everybody's jets activated at the same time and they swerved for the Great Fox in the distance, they mentally activated the full strength of the exhaust plants strapped to their backs. Fluttershy grabbed Roller as she too went to full thrust and they all shot off at a blistering pace with green beams of death lancing silently through space all around them. They were moving too fast for any of the shots to be too accurate, but evasive maneuvers were still required to avoid taking too many hits, a suit breach out here was certain death.

The pony’s heart was positively racing, she hadn’t personally been blown out an airlock by accident and doing it on the purpose caused her heart rate to spike as she sped for the Great Fox in the distance that was destroying large numbers of robots and the four fighters harassing the robots were keeping them from reaching the vessel.

Fluttershy ended up flying by a fighter at a blistering pace with Roller adding his star burst to her momentum, for a second both Fluttershy and a grumpy bird looked each other in the eyes. Recognition of what they were each seeing could barely be had before Fluttershy was out of his sight being followed by a group of suited individuals also flying at incredible speeds.

“Holy flap, did you guys see that! This is Falco, the hippies are out; they are heading for you Rob. If you want to help blow the vessels to smithereens, now would be a good time for an assist.” Falco watched as the Great Fox started firing away at the hornet carriers with its two massive cannons opening up large holes in the three vessels.

“I’ll help cover their escape Fox; use the smart bombs and to take them down.” Peppy Hare broke off from the rest of the fighters to start shoot away the robots giving chase to the escaping the suited beings flying at incredible speeds.

“Fox, help me!” The voice of Slip said over the communications, he had at least two hundred hornets swarming at him.

“Darn it all Slippy, I keep telling you that you need more simulator practice!” Fox flew in behind Slip and started to rapidly blow apart the robots attempting to puncture the Slip’s shields under a mass of energy weapons fire and cleared them off his friend. He sighed, why couldn’t his friend keep flying like he did at Area Six? “Right this is Fox everyone, I’m authorizing the full use of smart bombs now. Form up on me and let them have it guys!”

Three fighter ships formed a flying V and they all fired three small red jewel shaped bombs towards the recent holes opened up in the three fused ships. Within seconds the ships started glowing internally when multiple blast waves went off destroying the hornet carriers and the surrounding hornets.

The fourth fighter was making sure that not even one hornet could get close to the Great Fox or the ones gunning towards it for safety, it was also picking off the stragglers.

All that was left now was for them to clean up the mess that was left behind.

Fluttershy turned off her exhaust plant and flipped over to start it up again to slow down before angling for the hangar of the Great Fox, the others followed her in her turn and burn to slow down to a crawl. Roller wiggled in her grasp, but she wasn’t about to let go of him. Flying in space was so different from flying in an atmosphere, momentum was bit problematic for Fluttershy and she didn’t even know how she was taking the vastness of space so well. It took a moment, but she realized that she wasn’t taking it well at all. She felt a grand need to put something excessively solid beneath her hooves again, the memories of drifting out in space caused her to start hyperventilating as memories of starvation returned to her.

The pony calmed down when she felt a gentle hand squeezed her shoulder as it gently led her into the ship. Once they all settled down in the ships hangar they heard a coughing noise and a Rhizomian fell over, immediately attracting the attention of everyone. They all gathered around her as she was coughing up blood all over the insides of her helmet.

“Fluttershy get over here, I need your help to keep her calm by letting her hold your hoof. Professor Triffid I need you reload this spiny plant with anesthesia, the Fire Veins has likely run its course enough for it to be effective. I also think the adrenal fluids I jammed into her earlier are starting to wear off and her body is started to feel every bruise and injury dealt to it. None of us are in good condition, but Great Mother preserve us we’re all going to live!” Pwerta was immediately over Kleptchi with Fluttershy galloping over with a fearful look on her face. “Do you hear me Kleptchi Mossport?! You better hold it together; the Great Mother doesn’t need you returned to her soil just yet as you still have life in you! Professor where’s that anesthesia!”

Kleptchi the bronze skinned Rhizomian with the long green hair smiled slightly up at Fluttershy with tears in her eyes. Fluttershy felt the strength in the grip on her hoof and she gripped the three fingered hand back, the grip didn’t weaken however and in fact it seemed to be staying steady and strong. Taking as many shots as she had, she was still very strong.

For every shot that didn’t make it through the suit, it left a nasty bruise on Kleptchi and it wasn’t any different from the bruises left on the other Rhizomian’s and Mira. It was just that she had taken the worst injury out of all of them and she did her part to protect her home planet of Janet Rhizome, she helped them get in and out of the ship with her well studied knowledge of machinery to help hot-wire the doors. Slamming into the doorway on the way out of the airlock didn’t help her body any in the slightest, she had bravely clenched her teeth and endured a nearly blacking out. Knowledge was power and she being the oddball Rhizomian that she was, Kleptchi had studied the technological developments of other races and was a top scholar in the field.

Truffle was just an athlete, Professor Triffid was just a scientist and the one feverishly working to save Kleptchi’s life was both a great doctor and one of the best multiple species masseuse Rhizome would likely ever see. They weren’t fighters, they weren’t a warrior based species, but darn it if they didn’t give it their all to get this far to let even one more casualty be a permanent one.

“Kleptchi you’re going to be okay, I promise you. You’re in good hooves.” The Rhizomian jerked in Fluttershy’s hooves when she was jammed in the chest with that cactus plant again, then she became slightly limp.

Only time would tell if Pwerta would be able to prevent the worst casualty of a short war against the invaders of her home. Fluttershy would refuse to remove her hoof from Kleptchi’s hand until things got better.

Author's Note

Final Results-

Kleptchi- Status undetermined.

Roller- Sad, but completely unharmed.

Fluttershy- Also sad, tired with mild bruising from glancing shots.

Medical note by Pwerta Delarosin: The pony needs fifty CC's of hugs and a psychiatrist, which are certainly available on Rhizome. Personally I could use those myself.

Mira- Heavy bruising, severe leg injury and slight exhaustion.

Truffle- Extreme bruising, severe injury to shoulder of left arm.

Triffid- Heavy bruising, light burn wound on leg and relatively exhausted.

Pwerta- Lightly bruised, currently under threat of heightened mental despair.

This ends the Rhizome arc, then the other crossover with Buzz Light-year of Star Command pops up.

51

Two weeks later…

Mira just stood behind Fluttershy as she sat there in the seat staring blankly at the monitors, they were both onboard the Head Hunter which was currently docked on the Great Fox. They were on a current heading for the Galactic Alliance hub of Capital Planet and the Space Rangers work center of Star Command the enormous space station that hangs above the planet.

“Look you saved Truffle’s life when he started having a negative reaction to that numbing agent, no one could have predicted he’d have a negative reaction to Rhizomian medicine. You know, since he’s well… a Rhizomian! He actually died for a full minute, but you saved him.” It had shocked Mira when Truffle almost completely died from heart failure due to the numbing medicine that saved his arm and almost killed him from a delayed negative reaction. “Why didn’t you want to talk to him before we left, he wanted to thank you. The guy was so healthy he didn’t have a medical history until that happened, he was one of the top Rhizomian athlete’s and he survived thanks to your quick thinking. Sure you may have hurt him a lot but he forgives you and I’m sure that Kleptchi…”

Fluttershy sat there in silence not saying anything, her only reaction was when her mismatched wings flared out. She was wearing a recently fixed translator and she hadn’t even bothered to pull the memory stone from her ear or take off the Rhizomian suit for the last two weeks. Thankfully the suit took care of all bodily issues and absorbs the stink that Fluttershy should have had, they had good utility functions in their suits after all.

Looking upon the monitor one would see the universe with multiple systems mapped out personally by Fluttershy herself, not one of them had her home planet anywhere in or near them. She had talked to the psychiatrist, but it really didn’t seem to have helped the moody disposition she was in. The suit was slightly dark, but it was just matching Fluttershy’s depression and in fact trying to cheer her up with good scents or rubbing up and down her back by tightening in the right places to do so.

Mira had learned that ponies didn’t do well when it came to committing acts of violence or at least Fluttershy didn’t, the pony was so quiet and withdrawn to the point it was scaring her. The Rhizomian’s also had some emotional baggage from having to fight, but it wasn’t hitting them nearly as hard as it did Fluttershy. She knew that being a Space Ranger was a tough job, especially when it came to being the best of the best and the few among the many who could handle the high stress job of having to make tough decisions. Fluttershy wasn’t trained to handle that level of stress.

“I’m sorry; I really shouldn’t have brought her up. I know it’s probably a sore issue with you.” Mira turned around and was about to leave the Head Hunter, she turned back to Fluttershy. She was wearing a new freshly made universal translator personally crafted by Slip Toad from the Lylat System. “Look she wouldn’t like you moping like this; they’ll find a way.”

“You know as well as I do that that’s no way for her to live Mira.” Fluttershy said quietly, it was rather hollow sounding for such a sweet and caring individual.

“It’s okay.”Mira had just said something that Fluttershy would say a lot, she almost regretted it when she looked at the large aquamarine eyes that snapped in her direction. “They’ll be able to fix it, you’ll see.”

“I’d rather move on not knowing what happens to her from here on out.” It was a bit cold of Fluttershy but she had a reason for acting like she did.

Mira didn’t say anything as she exited the Head Hunter to go get some food from the Great Fox for the pony without touching her ships new stores of perfectly kept medical tomatoes. The tomatoes that couldn’t save Kleptchi because of what became of her, but just like the wire wolf incident there was always hope for a cure out there. Maybe some magic mumbo jumbo of the races Fluttershy had met could help with a rather convoluted problem.

Roller came up to Fluttershy and revved questioningly at her, Fluttershy easily hefted the heavy armored creature and held on to him like he was a large round teddy bear. He purred softly as Fluttershy calmly caressed him, he didn’t want her to be sad.

“This is the Great Fox calling Star Command of the Galactic Alliance. Come in, do you read me?” Fox was very peeved that and innocent being like Fluttershy had been thoroughly messed up by the many things the universe threw at her. He was surprised that anything could actually stick to her.

“Yeah this is Star Command, Zeb Nebula speaking. What do a bunch of guns for hire want with us? No wait, let me guess. You wouldn’t happen to be another raid on us would you, after the last twenty eight we’re not too keen on allowing anymore guns for hire to stick around in our airspace. Even if they aren’t doing anything more than so much as sneezing near us, so keep your noses clean while you’re in the area and we won’t have battle on our hands.” He was Zeb Nebula or as he is more famously known as by all Star Command Space Rangers, Commander Nebula. He was a grizzled old gruff guy who had a built in plasma cannon for a leg, he didn’t want his peg leg to be used for just walking on. He was the toughest son of a gun Star Command had back in the day before he was forced into a desk job which was slowly killing him with paperwork, he hated bureaucracy and would never say that to any government officials faces.

“That is a negative on us being a raiding party. I’m Fox Mccloud, we’re friends with Mira ‘Dangerous’ Nova? Really, that’s something she actually goes by? Also we happen to have a special cargo in the form of a dignitary we can’t mention over communications for her safety. For your sake don’t yell at her or we really will become the worst raid team you’ve ever had the displeasure to meet and there are only four of us. So please show some decorum for our friend or else.” It was hard for Fox to look at what became of Flutterhsy without wanting to hug the poor girl, even Falco was giving her hugs and he hated showing affection to anyone. He stared Commander Nebula straight in the eyes without flinching and that said a lot about his character to the Star Command leader who just signs a lot forms nowadays. “She’s had a rough time of helping Rhizome defend itself from five loaded hornet carriers. From what Mira tells us, that’s about fifty thousand hornets in total that attacked Rhizome. Sorry to say we arrived at the tail end to take care of the last three carriers with Mira running what amounts to a suicide operation with the dignitary in tow through one of them.”

“Did this dignitary complain and whine all the time?” Nebula wouldn’t be surprised if that were the case.

“No she actually helped commandeer the control room of a damaged hornet carrier while it was swarming, destroyed up to at least seven thousand hornets acting as a tactical specialist and she’s not taking how dangerous she thinks she is very well. She also assisted in patching up the wounded Rhizomian’s that were in on the groundside action with your ranger leading them.” Peppy decided to speak up as Fox turned away with a frown while crossing his arms; Peppy knew all the hugs in the universe wouldn’t make Fluttershy feel okay at the moment and he was wise enough to take the reins when Fox was angry. “She even saved the life of a Rhizomian who was dead for a solid minute. She’s not a soldier and most of her species don’t handle violence too well unless they sign up for it, but she’s definitely a little trooper to have survived as well as she has. I feel sorry for the girl though, she’s been hurt a in many ways that old grizzled soldiers like you would be permanently traumatized by. Names Peppy Hare by the way, hope you grant us permission to come onboard."

“If Mira is there, can I speak to her now?” Nebula switched topics as he was surprised a dignitary would do any of the things that he heard described to him, Mira was a dignitary but for a princess she really was one of their tops rangers in the field aside from Buzz, Booster and XR themselves. Team forty two was the best team he had really never fail and answered every call to action.

“Of course, Mira report to bridge. Commander Nebula is on the horn asking for you…” A second screen popped up showing Mira gathering food with Rob.

“Right, Rob you take this to Fluttershy and make sure she eats something. Nebula you better have a good reason for why you didn’t get any cruisers out there to support me or so help me I’m sending in a complaint so long that will have you reading forms for the next three weeks! Even Buzz would be hard pressed to solve all the paperwork I’d create; you’d need half of Star Command working on it for three days straight to get it done in a timely manner.” Mira might have been a princess, but she was no dainty damsel in distress and she knew how to threaten Commander Nebula with so much red tape it was something she could really accomplish. To make it worse she could even sweeten the deal and dragging her father King Nebula into this to add a cherry to the top of her cold creamy tasting milk related snack. She wouldn’t as she hated her father on numerous levels, but she’d pull the father card if she was pushed hard enough.

“Yep, that’s one of mine alright. Nobody else can threaten me nearly that hard with death by bureaucracy quite like that.” Nebula looked to be sweating slightly. “I still want to see her face-to-face on screen, but you’re given clearance for docking with Star Command if she can transmit the codes personally.”

Ten minutes of tedious docking procedures and regulations later, Fluttershy sighed as Roller carried her along following Mira leaving the Head Hunter behind with the landing four fighter escort. She couldn’t forget what had happened to Kleptchi and Janet tried to be reassuring, but it didn’t go over too well as the planet had little in the ways of tact.

The bright side of things was that Fluttershy helped save thousands of lives and the only one to die out of all of those lives was successfully revived by her, Truffle was going need a lot of rehabilitation though. There were still a lot of injuries and therapy both physical and mental going on when she was finally cleared to leave Rhizome. It was a sad farewell, she hardly said goodbye to anyone other than to Pwerta who just gave her a wan smile before she boarded the Head Hunter and flew off.

As Fluttershy was escorted from one of Star Command’s vast hangars, a bunch of little bipedal green creatures wearing blue uniforms that went up to their necks came to stare at Head Hunter. They had three eyes in a row, pointy ears and antennas sticking up from the tops of their heads, they had small dexterous three fingered hands and all of them stared at the ship that Fluttershy had arrived in.

“The true claw…” One of the little green men stated in awe. Sure it might have a mixture of other technologies but every hive minded Little Green Men there knew what signs of the real claw represented.

The ship looked like it needed to be repaired and refueled, plus it could use a few upgrades and fixes to the haphazardly mixed technologies. Every Little Green Men of the unified hive mind agreed that it needed some work done; even the independent thinkers of their race joined the hive mind temporarily to agree to it.

“The pilot, it was that new dignitary… is she a protected of the first contact law?” One of the LGMs asked, every other LGM nodded towards him. “Then she is special, she has seen a claw! Whether in dream or by association, she pilots one of their ships without repercussion. She might even be of the stars themselves, she might know of Buzz!”

“The real claw and Buzz…” The mass of little green men moaned happily and then they started talking excitedly among themselves.

They all liked Buzz Lightyear, the nearest thing to a Star Warrior one could be while toeing the threshold. Sure they might have been slightly naïve, but they weren’t dumb. The LGMs hadn’t told Buzz he was popular because he was almost a fully fledged Star Warrior, but they thought it was better to only mention it when it became obvious his aging process became stunted and he fully came into being a warrior of the stars themselves. Heck Buzz might have even started the path of three others becoming close to being Star Warriors themselves, one of which was a robot which was the first artificial life form they heard of that could even feasibly do so in the Galactic Alliance and they were the ones who built him. They were all proud of the accomplishment of building what could feasibly become a Star Warrior despite his character flaws and it meant that the future looked bright to these adorable little green men.

Fluttershy gave a slight huff as she was hefted up by Mira from Mr. Wheels back. Even getting petted and snuggled wasn’t picking her mood up… well maybe it was just a bit. It wasn’t like someone... well someone did die, but they got better. Mira continued to rub her behind the ear and she refused to respond with cooing noises, even if she really liked the spot her ear was being rubbed in.

They were currently in Star Commands control center with Commander Nebula himself, currently the man was trying to fight off his ridiculously intelligent desk that kept assaulting him to do paperwork. He really wanted to take a sharp metal instrument to it, but it would cost him personally to have it replaced. It was a loyal, if annoying, artificially intelligent desk and it wasn’t to be blamed for doing what it was made to do. Now if only it didn’t seem to enjoy doing it, then Commander Nebula wouldn’t be as high strung as he was being backlogged by so many attacks on Star Command.

“Commander, where was my team while I was being hit with a case of the hornets? Zurg really had it out for me and the planet I was on this time.” Mira held Fluttershy against her chest; she was currently wearing fresh clothing and out of her Rhizome suit. She couldn’t wait to get back into her armor once it was finished being repaired, she saved her heavily damaged suit and brought it back to Star Command for that very reason.

“About that, they last reported in from Karn saying that Zurg was trying to have a highly endangered species exterminated. When they get back they are going to be pulled to help you escort this little lady here around.” Commander Nebula shook his head and pointed out the first contact ambassador currently acting like an adorable plush toy, Buzz was worried about Mira and it needn’t be said that he was glad to hear she survived the wormhole. “The great news is that Zurg can’t make any more grand scale moves against us. Until Buzz comes in, you can relax and spend some time writing up you’re AAR ranger.”

“I understand Commander Nebula; I can’t wait to get back into the suit.” The pony gave Mira a slightly disturbed look and otherwise said nothing as she cuddled silently against Mira.

“Not much of a talker is she? Look I understand that it’s a rough universe out there. While you can’t save everyone, you can sure as hell try and never stop trying.” Nebula smiled slightly as he watched the pony lifted her head to look him in the eyes with a dead look. “Now you listen here, I’ve seen a lot of things in my life, but you never give up the ghost as long as you have a breath left in you to do good things. Now stop moping already!”

“Yeah, that’s a very inspirational speech there Commander.” Came Falco’s snarky reply and he was elbowed in the gut by Slip for it, as with the others he was only a guest here and he wasn’t the only one twitching a hand towards his blaster.

The four mercenaries were all armed with charge pistols and personal reflector shields, of the four of them Falco and Fox were the best of their team when it came to on foot operations. Fox was generally good to have around in any situation; he could likely bring down an entire planet on his own.

“Thank you.” It was all Fluttershy would say for a while as she looked away from Commander Nebula, the response made Falco balk at her. The bird mercenary couldn’t help but wonder why she was thanking that jerk who just yelled at her, even if he personally was as bad a jerk as that guy and might have eventually ended up doing the same thing. The other three were a little more understanding of what she was thanking him for, especially Peppy.

“Well you can’t say the little darling isn’t polite.” Peppy said with a chuckle as he rubbed Fluttershy’s cheek, she seemed to brighten up a bit.

“Come on Fluttershy; let’s go get you out of that suit. You could use a really good bath about now as you‘ve been stuck in that thing for the last two weeks. I’ll give it some nice fertilizer while I’m at it; I know where Booster keeps his stash. That’ll be guaranteed to keep it going for a while at least.” Mira wanted Fluttershy to smile again, rangers be damned if she didn’t see it on the poor things face before she decided to continue looking for her home planet. The ponies as a species were technically space travel capable even if they weren’t particularly good at it yet; if a deal was brokered they’d be under the protection of the Galactic Alliance provided their planet was in an easy to reach or find location. “You also need some sleep, let’s see if I can get you in a nice bed while we’re at it. Hey, you guys sticking around?”

“I don’t see why not, we’re not currently busy at the moment and Ms. Munroe is paying us a lot to watch out for Fluttershy… something I think we’d be doing anyway even if we weren’t being paid.” Slip was still the friendly face of Starfox and he knew they all wanted to make sure Fluttershy was okay. “We don’t run around looking to start trouble and we try to stay on the right side of things.”

“So, is there any particular reason why I shouldn’t have any of your heads for your failure?” Zurg said with maliciousness tinting his voice as he stared down his minions the grubs and the brain pods from his throne causing them to cower at his visage. His fingers idly rapped on the armrest as he waited for them to answer his red glowing eyes as they glared down on them. They had failed him in taking out one of the bigger thorns in his side; he found it impossible to believe she had somehow survived a freaking wormhole and was lucky enough to end up safely on the supposedly pacifistic planet of Rhizome still kicking.

It was to Zurg’s own personal shock and displeasure that Rhizome could now fight against his forces effectively after the first few incursions went off without any trouble. They just recently destroyed five fully loaded carriers and the hornets on them without a single death. Were all his mortal enemies actually immortal or something?

“Uh… well you’re evilness we found out one of the major reasons why we lost so many hornets on trying to kill Nova… it was her fault!” On the screen the grub pointed out there was Fluttershy sticking out of the acidic cloud. “She was said to be a tactical mastermind that helped stop our assault your deviousness.”

“Hm… what is she, a mutated pygmy Cyclocentaur? That is the most disgustingly cute face I’ve ever seen.” Zurg was curious, no one in the universe wanted Zurg curious about them as it never ended well.

“No your evilness, lord of torturing small puppies and throwing cats into tree’s for fun and profit, she is not of a listed Galactic Alliance race. Her species doesn’t even appear in the database at all. We have surmised that she’s a first contact ambassador your heinousness. ” The brain pod that spoke cowered away as Zurg moved to sit up and steeple his fingers in thought.

“Hmm… I won’t kill any of you today then, maybe tomorrow if I’m still feeling like it. Call up Torque, Gravitina, Warp Darkmatter and the Gargantian Militants for me. While you are at it I want Crumford Lorak to spread the word and an image of this creature that offends my very sight. I want everybody to know her body will fetch quite a high price with me, Crumford will do this for free or else he will earn my ire. I don’t care if he tells Star Command; just make sure everyone knows I want her dead!” Zurg slammed his fist on the armrest of his throne making his minions jump. After he calmed down, he thought of something else. “After that call Bonnie Jookiba and tell her I might release her brother Clyde early, which is if she can bring this nuisance to me still alive.”

It was easy to say that Zurg was an evil bastard.

Author's Note

Does the name Jookiba sound familiar to anyone? It should.

Yep Truffle died off screen and not because of battle wounds, but from paralytic medicine getting into his version of a mammals heart. He got better. Kleptchi will be brought up again eventually after a trip to earth.

52

Heartache, it was becoming a common thing for Fluttershy but she would eventually recover because time healed all wounds. Kindness was a hard path to follow, especially when it might have been more kind to have let someone die peacefully instead of living in agony. Fluttershy would never know, it was hard to tell if her decision was the right one or not.

Truffle had been on the cold hard floor and Fluttershy noticed his breath was getting shallow he had no idea what was happening to him, he wasn’t feeling pain and he was trying to use his right arm to clutch at his chest as his heart failed from the numbing medication. Life or death was the choice in Fluttershy’s hooves; inevitably she chose life and all the chaos that will have encompassed it. She hurt him to save him; she hurt him badly and at a cost. Was it worth it?

“You did what you thought was right Fluttershy.” The shy pony looked up at the voice only for some pink silken locks of hair to fall into place over her face; they slowly became petals that shifted out of her face. Looking down she was wearing the suit again and still seeing the alien blood on her hooves. She noticed Truffle’s body laying there lifeless as she remember him being. When she blinked her eyes she noticed Twilight standing before her instead of the lifeless form of Truffle. “None of us can fault you for choosing to save him or what you did; Pwerta was too busy to do it herself. You’re not a monster Fluttershy; so please stop having this nightmare I beg of you. What hurts you out there hurts us here as well; you can’t keep blaming yourself for making a judgment call, even a painful one like that.”

“Then why do I feel like one, you must have heard from Discord what happened. How can you not think I’m a monster Twilight? I have blood on my hooves and it’s not my own.” As a pony, many would suspect she should live in a magical fantasy land and be happy with life. She was mostly just content with her life taking care of her animals until they passed on to the great beyond as long as they died naturally. What she had done messed with her mentality and was something she wasn’t ever going to forget.

“I would have done the same thing if it was you Fluttershy! He was dying and he was a friend of yours, why wouldn’t you try to save him? When those hornet things finally came, we watched you struggle to help the natives and you shared their pain by standing proudly beside them!” Twilight screamed at Fluttershy causing her to jerk back and her hooves looked less bloody then they did before, she also cowed a bit. “Stop beating yourself up Fluttershy, Pinkie’s mane might never inflate again if you can’t remember how to smile no matter how much it hurts. It’s even hard for me to keep the feeling of the magical bond we still have together as strong as it is, but we’re still doing it and it isn’t easy without you. We’re suffering with you…”

“Hey, he lived Fluttershy, even if you hurt him badly. Oh and you kind cried yourself to sleep again while in my arms after I helped you bathe.” Mira walked up to Twilight and the two just stared at each other, after a moment Mira knelt down and pulled Fluttershy into a tight embrace. “Dream a little dream for me, will you? Make it something happy, something you’d think all your friends would enjoy you dreaming about. I’m Mira, you must be Twilight.”

“I can’t Mira; it was because I was so selfish that it happened in the first place. I wanted him to live and I hurt him; I nearly killed him trying to save him and there was all that blood.” Fluttershy curled up in Mira’s arm spilling a rivers worth of tears, it wouldn’t have been possible if this weren’t a dream as Fluttershy looked something like a miniature weeping willow now.

“Fluttershy has told me a lot about you. You’re a princess, yet you don’t care about your royal title. You instead protect the ideals of the Galactic Alliance. From the way Fluttershy tells it, you’re really brave Mira.” Twilight looked down at the little yellow willow tree that planted itself in Mira’s embrace.

“I may be brave, but I’m also scared all the time. Most of my fear is not for my life personally though. I’m scared for the lives of everyone else in my line of work; my friends, the civilians that get caught up in the crossfire and even those who would claim to be my enemies.” Mira started petting the wilting leaves and Fluttershy slowly turned back into her natural form with a full length mane. The pony was snuggling up against her in comfort. “I hurt others for a living, I have anger issues, I have possibly destroyed as many lives as I have saved and my life is like watching one train wreck after another. I work at Star Command because I choose not to be a snobbish asshole like the others in my species. I wanted to make a difference and so I did that by becoming what I wanted to be and not letting others tell me who I am or what to do. Do you think I’m evil for following my heart Fluttershy? I mean I could rise up to be the biggest figurehead of my people; instead here I am out in the universe putting myself in the line of danger for the possibility of only meeting ungrateful strangers for the rest of my life. Even then I still think what I do is all worth it in the end and that’s what truly matters to me.”

“No, you’re very nice and a wonderful person Mira. Even if you get a bit scary at times, I can hardly even begin to understand how you handle all that responsibility and danger. You remind me a lot of Rainbow Dash; she’s one of my best friends and now you are too.” Fluttershy felt Mira run a hand through her long pink hair, the caressing touch felt so real.

“Being around violence all the time never gets any easier you know, just got to laugh it off and keep pushing forward for a better future. You look really good with long hair by the way, it really suits you.” Neither of them said anything as Mira silently continued playing with Fluttershy’s dream mane and she eventually moved on to slowly stroking her back.

“You know Fluttershy is right, you do kind of strangely reflect Rainbow Dash in the loyalty department. You even seem to have a knack for it.” Twilight had sat idly by and watched the two interact; Fluttershy had always liked being cuddled even if she won’t admit it.

“What can I say, especially when I learned from watching the best in action? I trained hard to get as good as I am.” Both ponies perked up their ears and stared at Mira, she had just said something that Rainbow would have about the Wonder Bolts. As they continued to sit in silence, they hadn’t notice Twilight moving off to the side while becoming thoughtful.

“Now that I think about it, it’s not just Loyalty. Does she have a bit of honesty as well?” Twilight muttered as she stared at what was clearly a representation of two elements of harmony before her; even if she wasn’t a pony she clearly upheld the ideal of loyalty in high esteem. It was eerie that Mira had blue skin like Rainbow Dash had cyan fur and even had a similar personality too. “Katrina and her generosity that allowed us to connect to Fluttershy better. There was Fox and his team taking in Fluttershy and feeding her, the etecoons and dachoras nursing her back to health and the people of Dream Land helping her heal after she was battered and beaten. She’s been meeting a lot of beings who represent kindness, maybe that’s why she ended up on Rhizome after being introduced to a field of raw chaotic energy. She ended up in a place filled with beings that are just as kind and peaceful as she is.”

After a moment Twilight had a realization, the elements of harmony weren’t just a thing unique to Equus. Now that she was seeing it for herself, the elements of harmony were clearly a universal thing and Fluttershy was easily running into anyone who had some of those very traits. In fact, she might even be spreading those traits slowly across the universe and not just her own personal trait of kindness either.

“Friendship… I guess I’ve been a bit blind to the more subtle nature of what I really share with the girls.” It was only now that Twilight realized that all her friends each represent two elements while she only had the one, but it was important that she only held the one. What was it that bound the other five elements together? “We all represent the element of magic equally; we all represent friendship at the same time and that was why Star Swirl’s spell left my cutie mark alone. It couldn’t change it to any other pony because we all had the element of magic in each of us. That would mean Fluttershy is the element of not only kindness, but also of magic! Meta Knight must have known when he told Luna that… the darkness will never consume her and could only end her trying to do so.”

After a moment of standing around Twilight closed her eyes and she smiled, then she started to move even further away from Mira and Fluttershy. Fluttershy was currently in good hooves at the moment, Twilight trusted that Fluttershy would meet and become friends with many more beings. Everyone back on Equus would hear about it because Fluttershy loved learning about new cultures and sharing it with all of her pony friends. Fluttershy has seen so many wondrous things already, who knows what amazing thing she’d see next?

“A true, true friend helps a friend in need... and it takes a true, true friend just to see… that a light always shines from a true, true friend.” Now Twilight saw the full scope of their friendship and it was quite the sight. Even if Fluttershy were to perish out there, she would always be in the hearts of her friends as a light that couldn’t be fully extinguished. They had to continue being strong for Fluttershy and she had to reciprocate, ironically enough, in kind.

Neither Fluttershy nor Mira noticed when Twilight disappeared from the dream with a pop; Fluttershy was busy slowly accepting the loving embrace of a friend helping to ease her guilt. Twilight had something important to write down quickly lest she forget one of the biggest things she had ever learned about her connection with her friends.

“Um… Mira… can I dream that little dream now?” Fluttershy’s quiet voice cut through the silence.

“Make it an especially good one Fluttershy.” With a request as simple as that from Mira, how could Fluttershy refuse?

They were the dangerous criminals; they were the notorious villains that lived in Galactic Alliance space and they were all deadly and gifted with talents in wanton destruction.

Torque was a deep voiced yellowish alien with five eyeballs, four arms and had the ability to make unstable clones thanks to an implant installed by Zurg’s minions that thankfully only worked with his particular biology. He was dangerous for being one man army unto himself; his copies didn’t survive a single solid blow though. He was good at wielding four guns at once and was a well known terrorist.

Gravitina was a dangerous teal skinned woman, whose bald head was the size of a small planet and it easily angered her to have people constantly stare at it. Who wouldn’t stare at something like that? She had her own planetary ring and three moon s the size of baseballs constantly revolving around her head. Said planet sized cranium gave her the ability to control gravity to such a degree that she could seriously do a lot of damage, moving some celestial objects wasn’t hard for her and she was once hired by Zurg to destroy Star Command. Obviously she failed her task, but was still in the business of evil.

Warp Darkmatter was a the red and purple armored man that is known as the worst traitor to the Space Rangers to ever exist and was once a partner of Buzz Lightyear. He was working as a double agent for Evil Emperor Zurg back then until he was exposed as a traitor; he was in the market of trading Star Command secrets for cold hard cash. One of his arms had to be replaced with a robotic limb after trying to fake his death went horribly wrong; it comes with various nasty surprises installed in it.

The last of the villains were the Gargantian Militants, a Gargantian was a tiny four fingered purple skinned man with horns that could fit into Fluttershy’s hoof. These Gargantians in particular had a preference for autonomy and isolation. They were a small military loving sect of their race; despite them only being a few inches tall they were all extremely dangerous. They specialized in sabotaging spaceships and were a perfect depiction of gremlins in space. They could take down targets fifty times their size with ease, most likely because no one would notice them coming before they could inject you with a deadly poison. It was never a good idea to underestimate a single highly determine Gargantian, much less an entire group of them working together in unison.

These were the beings that were being sent after a soft target that had no hope of defending herself against all these guys at once on her lonesome. The one Zurg singled out to capture Fluttershy alive, Bonnie Jookiba, was in fact the wildcard in Zurg’s little game.

Bonnie sat there at a console looking over the data of the target, a first contact ambassador, with a sour look on her face. She was on a planet known as Trade World, a nearly lawless place where you could trade for just about anything, Space Rangers had a problem keeping a lid on the things that happened here and grand theft or destruction of personal property was a dime a dozen here.

Bonnie wasn’t truly evil, but she had to work for the emperor for her brother’s sake if she wanted to get him out alive. She was an illegal genetic experiment made by her father who was a rather infamous mischievous scientist named Jumba Jookiba. She vaguely resembled an etecoon in appearance, had primarily green fur, yellow belly and small blue stripes on her limbs. Her production number was one forty nine, she was genetically designed to steal anything and evade being arrested with the help of her younger brother. While they were good at what they were designed for, they weren’t entirely perfect at it. In particular she was thankfully designed with better brains than her brother.

Bonnie had an idea of what Zurg had in mind for her. While the others were tripping all over themselves, she’d swoop to steal that creature and turn her in to Zurg so that he could torture her endlessly for his own sick amusement.

Chances are, even if Bonnie did turn the girly looking thing in; Zurg would not bother with releasing her little brother because she heard his exact wording loud and clear. She knew that the emperor would backstab her if given the chance. That or he would just get some enjoyment out of making her fight some of the worst villains in the Galactic Alliance just for a chance to rescue Clyde.

Zurg enjoyed tormenting not only heroes, but the other villains as well. Bonnie was mostly just a petty thief who was good at what she was made to do. Stealing living things wasn’t against her genetic programming, but darn it if it wasn’t hard to do. She’d steal this first contact ambassador alright, but only so she could get on Zurg’s planet where her brother was. She didn’t care about what would happen to the ambassador when she delivered her.

At least Bonnie had a good idea of how to take care of Warp Darkmatter already, his mechanical arm was made based off the technology copied from her brother’s mechanical arm and that was already enough reason for her to be pissed at the emperor. Zurg might have had her under the carrot for a while, but he was making a huge mistake by messing with her Ohana. Besides Bonnie didn’t truly jump at carrots on a string, she was far craftier then that and the emperor severely underestimated her intelligence. He thought he could play her by her emotions; well he was going to see what an angry Bonnie Jookiba looked like if he didn’t pay up for this obviously rigged job.

Bonnie’s youngest brother would have helped if she had only asked for it, she didn’t think she needed production number six two six or any of the rest of her massive family to help her with this. She didn’t want to interrupt Stitch’s quiet life; he didn’t need to hear from an older sister who couldn’t reform in spite of their father’s genetic programming quirks for evil or that she was still as bad as the day that she first met her youngest brother. She didn’t need anybodies help as things were just better that way, except maybe for Clyde. Why did her family have to be so damn understanding and why does it still bother her to this very day that they were!

“Ugh, Meega Nala Queesta!” Bonnie muttered to herself as she started polishing her freshly stolen blaster while looking out the window of the rundown apartment complex. She knew Clyde felt the same way about the Ohana, yet they couldn’t ever be near them without hurting them.

Fluttershy let out a deep yawn and stretched out her four hooves, her bat wing and her pegasus wing. She unfortunately couldn’t get up because she had two arms wrapped around her barrel. Mira looked to be sleeping so peacefully she didn’t want to disturb her by moving too much.

“Mira I’m so happy to hear you’re… oh my goodness, that’s adorable!” A big red figure popped up in Fluttershy’s vision and he resembled a large oval red dragon without wings. The pony squeaked and shrunk back from that big mouthed toothy smile the pink eyed creature was sporting.

Fluttershy hadn’t understood what this obviously intelligent being was saying, but he certainly seemed excited about something and Mira continued to sleep on peacefully, completely dead to the world while using her as a plush toy and drooling a bit. At least the drool was only getting on the pillow and not her wings; this guy was obviously not very dangerous as he looks.

“Hey, there’s no need to be afraid little guy… or are you girl? It’s hard to tell, because I’ve never seen anything like quite you before. You look like a Cyclocentaurian only different.” The large creature was down on his four fingered hands and knees meeting her at eye level, it brought some form of comfort to the pony given this was a tactic she personally used with little animals.

It was at this point that Fluttershy realized that she had met a kindred spirit, given his great enthusiasm and demeanor he seemed to be a rather gentle giant like that one berserker baboon she met. She lifted her head up and pointed a hoof at the nearby translators and motioned putting them on her head with a hoof, all while making cute neighing noises that melted the heart of the Space Ranger invading Mira’s quarters.

“Huh, you want that, oh okay.” The giant picked up and plopped the translator into her hoof, where she then places it on her head and points out the other one, then to Mira, then to him. “Um, you want me to borrow Mira’s thingy?”

Fluttershy nodded and watched him as he had a slight problem with getting the translator designed for Mira on his head, after he was done.

“Well now what?” He asked wondering what the devices did, Star Command wouldn’t have let something dangerous past security much less in Mira’s quarters.

“Um… I’m… my name… flutter… uh…” Fluttershy was having a hard time introducing herself she shyly pawed at the bed with a hoof drawing little circles in the sheets.

“Huh, oh is that’s what these things do? They help translate our languages for each other.” Receiving a nod from the shy creature Booster clapped his hands together. “Hi I’m Booster Sinclair Munchapper, sorry I couldn’t hear your name, you’re really quiet. Oh I have got to get a picture of you and Mira, this is just so precious. Hold on a second, I’ll be right back!”

So that was Mira’s friend Booster, she wasn’t exaggerating when she heard he was larger than life and just as friendly.

“Now hold still and smile.” Booster came back in and Fluttershy gave him a weak smile and after a clicking noise he pulled out a picture of her and Mira cuddled together. “Oh sorry, I just get so excited, are you a new cadet?”

“No… I’m Fluttershy… I’m a pony. Mira brought me here because I’m something called a first contact ambassador.” His eyes light up and he bit his lower lip, Fluttershy heard him trying to hold back a squeal at how adorable she was as she tried to pry herself free from Mira’s iron grip around her waist. After a moment Booster sharpened his eyes and threw up a silly salute with a bright smile.

“Booster reporting for duty ma’am, I’m at your service! So do you need anything? Mira is kind of a heavy sleeper, so you’re going to be stuck like that for a while Ms. Fluttershy.” This would lead to a beautiful friendship between a jo-adian and the pony still being incarcerated by a slumbering tangean.

Author's Note

Bonnie Jookiba (Experiment 149) from Lilo and Stitch the series- Her special abilities include wall crawling, quick thinking, high speed split second evasion and can hot wire most vehicles meant for civilian use on her own if given the time to do so. Without her brother Clyde her abilities as a thief are limited.

Current crossover-> Lilo and Stitch the series, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command and Starfox.

53

Fluttershy has heard of a continental breakfast, she’s heard of an intercontinental breakfast, but never in her history has she ever heard of a galactic breakfast. Star Command apparently fed their rangers well considering all the different dietary needs of the many species that were a part of it.

Booster was lying on his back with the tray sitting on his belly with his hands behind his head looking at Fluttershy. She had asked for food and he was happy to deliver until Mira was ready to let go, the sad thing of the situation is that Mira was going to be asleep for another half hour at least.

It was almost impossible to find something onboard that wasn’t edible to someone. The pony was currently enjoying what were basically pancakes and maple syrup at the moment; because they were in fact pancakes and syrup with a bit of alien butter on it. There was food here that wasn’t alien in appearance or taste and it made breakfast in bed enjoyable.

Fluttershy started into her scrambled eggs, she made sure that they were unfertilized and were of the protein giving variety of eggs. It tasted the same as the pancakes, completely like what it was supposed to. It was the novelty in and of itself that surprised Fluttershy when she asked for something to eat.

Her enjoyment of the food ended when she got to the last item on the tray, it was a grilled cheese sandwich but the cheese was an odd solid blue color and she just looked at it. She hoped that Booster took her seriously when she told him that she was primarily vegan with few exceptions. She sniffed the sandwich carefully and then took a nibble of it. It had a salty flavor to it; salt was just as addictive to a pony as sugar was and Fluttershy started eating it without worry. Alien food hasn’t killed her yet and she trusted Mira’s friend.

“So… who are you going to meet with to start a treaty with the hopes of brokering peace between the Galactic Alliance and your race?” Booster was asking it in a sweet tone as he took up the tray and utensils to set them down off to the side, he stood up and continued to pay attention to Fluttershy.

“Um… I can choose who to meet with? I really don’t know what being an ambassador entails; all I know is that I’m supposed to be a representative of my planet.” Fluttershy felt Mira clutch her slightly and stir, the blue humanoid alien was slowly waking up and then she’d be free of the comforting cuddly position she was in.

“What, no one told you? Oh, it will be my duty to explain then! We’re currently hanging over the planet called Capital Planet where all galactic laws and the center of all our combined governments come to discuss things; hence it’s the capital of the alliance.” Booster paused and went to a nearby computer screen and turned it on, after a moment he had a view of both Capital Planet and Star Command on screen. “As you know we’re here on Star Command, Space Ranger central where my dreams came true and I’m protecting the peace for every being that would be willing fight for it. Anyway, there are many people you can meet to write up a treaty for when we run into more of your race and we’ve had a ton of first contacts with many species and people in the universe. You can either meet up with the Galactic Alliance President or the Grand Councilwoman both of them have consular duties when it comes to first contacts and you can choose to meet either one or both of them. Even if Madam President yells a lot and the Grand Councilwoman is a bit cold at times, they both are actually rather friendly and I bet they’d both be happy to meet you.”

On the screen provided there was a stocky short testy alien with two big mouths that looked to have a naturally occurring white hair that looked like a powered wig, her two eyes seem to hold a fierce demeanor in them. The other one was a much taller and serene looking alien wearing regal clothing with long slender fingers and large legs clawed ending it what looked like cloven hooves and a cold stare that could freeze a star. They were both bizarre in appearance and Fluttershy didn’t know which one was less intimidating.

“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, is there anything else I should know about being an ambassador or those two I am to meet?” At least Fluttershy was trying to take in the image of the two beings and commit them to memory. They were both incredibly alien looking to her, if she wanted to make a good impression she had better see both of them up close and talk with them. Being who she was, Fluttershy was understandably extremely nervous about those meetings. “By the way, I think I want to meet the both of them.”

“Well, I know the Galactic President better than I do the Grand Councilwoman, but I’ll try my best to tell you what I know. The Galactic President is the one who calls most of the shots in the Galactic Alliance and is a great no nonsense political leader, she once even won an election by screaming her opponent it quitting. Even if she’s a bit harsh and critical she really has everyone’s best interests at heart and I have been on several missions to protect her. She helps Star Command stay funded and backs the good work we Space Rangers do.” Boosters flipped from the picture of the two mouthed teal skinned lady, to the tall grey woman of a regal figure. “The Grand Councilwoman is in charge of the Galactic Armada and making sure a full blown war doesn’t break out, she’ll always consider her first meeting with anyone neutrally. The armada is there to prevent anyone from declaring war on anyone else. Unfortunately they can’t put a stop to the likes of someone like Zurg in part because of politics getting in the way. The armada is only meant for defensive purposes and cannot be used to launch an assault on any other nation no matter how bad they are to their own people without a signed agreement from the Galactic President and the Grand Councilwoman, plus a majority of the Galactic Council. They all have to be tested for coercion in any form, plus they all have to be of sound mental health when signing an assault order. In the case of defense, it’s a non issue as defending oneself is everyone’s right in the Galactic Alliance. Though there are limitations on the types of weapons you can legally carry or use, you have the right to be armed for self defense and the defense of others as long as you are not a minor and if you are then you need a license for use of said weapon. This means that some people do carry lethal weapons; they are usually an adult and are carrying legal firearms or personal defensive measures.”

“Thank you Mr. Munchapper, that was… really informative.” Fluttershy was shivering in fright, so many people and if she offended even one of them then they’d shoot at her? She had a weapon on board Head Hunter and she wondered if it was legal or not. “Um… is Rhizome weaponry legal? Also, I have a weapon I need you to check out back on… my ship. I just want to make sure if it’s illegal or not that I have it, I don’t want to be breaking any rules or laws.”

“No problem Ms. Shy, I’ve read the Space Ranger handbook front to back and I’ve memorized all laws of the Galactic Alliance. Rhizome weaponry is considered mostly non lethal so as long as your adult it’s completely legal for you to use and own said weaponry. Just as long as you’re willing to follow Galactic Alliance laws as long as you’re here. We can go to check out the other weapon you have to see whether or not if it’s legal. If it’s legal, then it’ll be returned to you immediately without any trouble. If not, then we will have to detain it and possibly destroy it depending on its threat level.” Booster frowned as he held a hand up to his large chin. “I find it hard to believe anything you’d have would be considered a weapon of mass destruction, you’re too nice for that. Just call me Booster.”

“Thank you for getting food for me… um Booster… how exactly do I pay for it?” It hadn’t occurred to Fluttershy until now, but for the longest time she hadn’t any need of currency until this moment. All the other places she’s been to or visited freely gave her food and a room without need of asking anything of her, but this place made her feel like she was freeloading.

“Don’t worry about it Fluttershy, your getting a stipend of galactic currency for food and any place that houses you without ill intent will count as a temporary embassy.” Finally releasing the poor pony, Mira sat up and stretched out her arms. After her stretch she found herself being squashed into a dangerous hug from Booster that made it hard to breathe. “It’s good to see you too Booster, now please stop killing me...”

“Sorry Mira, you know you gave us quite a scare when you fell into that wormhole. Buzz might have had a heart attack if he wasn’t so sure you had survived, he definitely had one when he learned you were kicking hornets around while injured!” After saying that Booster released Mira and watched on as Fluttershy mewled in protest at having her belly rubbed until she was completely relaxed.

“Adorable isn’t she?” Mira smiled as Fluttershy lazily kicked her hooves at the air on her back and tried to wiggle out from under Mira’s petting.

“Cutest race I’ve ever seen, though the mismatched wings make me feel sad for some reason.” Having an affinity for cute and adorable things, Booster had learned his lesson long ago to not underestimate anything like Fluttershy. That she was friendly and cuddly enough for Mira to sleep with made Booster happy in two ways, his longtime friend was okay and his new friend was as innocent as she looked.

Meanwhile outside Mira’s room, a team of ten diminutive purple horned people in military uniforms were standing on each other’s shoulders while the one at the top was hacking the door to the room. Once the door was open they’d strike swiftly and ferociously at the protectors within and then they’d make sure that the ambassador took a dirt nap and never woke up.

So far the assassins known as the Militant Gargantian’s have managed to subvert the security of Star Command from the hangar to their current location. They had so far capture and tied up some top level Star Command elites and trainee’s, the total number of people these small soldiers took out was twenty seven in the last hour they’ve been onboard. They eventually managed to find out the location of the ambassador and they had gotten this far without a single injury to themselves, they definitely used their size to their advantage being about as tall as an average action figure.

They were almost to the mission target, they were of a military mindset so they were only focused on the objective and anything would have been secondary to that objective. Had they bothered to sabotage Star Command so that it blew up and or fell out of orbit, it would have been easier then charging into this room.

The door to Mira’s room open and the ten Gargantian’s yelled out a war cry as they charged in; booster was the only one who was currently armed and he was quite literally the biggest threat in the room . Mira was next in the line of threatening as she was about to spring up to defend Fluttershy from the tiny attackers that could take down titanic foes with great efficiency.

They were the few, they were the proud… they were quickly ran over by Roller as he shot into the room and leapt onto the bed and ducked behind Fluttershy for safety. By accident he had mangled nine of the ten perfectly healthy little aliens, he was certainly afraid of something and something had him spooked. It definitely wasn’t the Gargantian’s though as he paid them no attention as he ran over them.

“My brothers… you will pay for that! For Gar…” A red beam struck him and he went down after being blasted into the wall. Booster just held up his right arm with his left hand poised over his wrist and enclosed fist, he kept it pointed at the only tiny being in the room to not be mangled by the strange creature who just ended up cowering next to Fluttershy. Booster would never say he felt a sense of satisfaction from shooting the Gargantian given the look Fluttershy gave him afterwards.

Fluttershy cowered while holding onto Roller while looking at Booster horrified. Seeing as Mira was not reacting with any hostile intent towards the wheel being cuddled by Fluttershy, it was obvious that he was not a hostile. Booster sighed and lowered his arm; he didn’t want Fluttershy to be afraid of him.

“Don’t worry I just stunned him Fluttershy… he’s most likely to be the least injured Gargantian here anyway.” It would be hours later that Booster was proven right; the Gargantian’s that hadn’t seen Mr. Wheel coming were said to be crippled in the medical files that Fluttershy would never be witness to. They would continue on to live relatively peaceful lives and one of them would even save the universe, but that was a different story entirely.

Roller had simply spotted Fluttershy and turned into the room at high speeds to end up hitting the aggressive little aliens caught flatfooted by his speedy entrance. He did it without noticing that he did anything wrong in his haste to find Fluttershy.

“… Okay… um… can you please get someone to help them, I’m not sure how to treat a… what did you say they were, gargantuan?” Fluttershy mumbled as she stared at the poor little broken bodies of the purple men who were wielding what looked like little knives and blades coated with what looked to be poison. They were also armed with miniature grappling hooks that were all destroyed and parts of them were sticking out of a few of the bodies Roller had incidentally wounded. “Mr. Wheel what’s wrong?”

Roller revved as to the reason of his distress, as he cuddled into her hooves. Apparently he had done something that the beings here didn’t like and they all shot beams at him that really stung quite a bit.

“Alright you stupid robot, freeze and don’t make any sudden moves!” A bunch of Space Rangers burst into the room point their arms at them. It wasn’t long before most of the Gargantian’s were handed over to the primary medical station onboard Star Command, the situation Roller had caused was settled as he had gotten hungry and invaded the cafeteria and started eating other peoples food.

Fluttershy sighed as this was another thing she had to deal with; Roller was her responsibility after all. She would have to explain to them that Roller was not a robot, but an adaptable biological creature that grew to look like it did and was a living and breathing being. She wasn’t entirely sure about his need to breathe though, given he didn’t need an atmosphere to survive and his race could be quite capable of traversing space to reach other planets naturally.

Things settled down for the most part, in other ways things hadn’t settled down at all as the Star Command went into high alert. The Gargantian’s hadn’t sabotaged anything other than the scanners to the hangar and a few doors, had they used the vents they might have actually succeeded in getting Fluttershy. The reason it went on high alert was because there was an attempt on Fluttershy, why else would the Gargantian’s specifically target the room she was in? This meant that someone knew that she was a first contact ambassador and wanted her dead; the likeliest culprit behind the attack was Evil Emperor Zurg.

It wasn’t hard to figure out when Emperor Zurg was behind a good sixty percent of all the crimes being committed in the Galactic Alliance. It especially wasn’t hard with Crumford Lorak singing like a stool pigeon that Zurg set up a reward for Fluttershy to be brought in dead. While he might not be able to move on Fluttershy personally with his heavily reduced hornet army, Zurg was still able to contact quite a few assassins and didn’t care who knew he did. He would have likely hired them for the job anyway given he hated friendly and nice creatures like Fluttershy with a passion rivaling Rainbow Dash’s love of apple cider, he hated her much more because she was a likely advocate for peace between her race and the Galactic Alliance.

“Well that happened. I swear those little guys are always annoying to deal with, so Mira… did you bring me anything from Rhizome? After what happened last time, I hope you didn’t. We don’t need another incident where I get blown up, that happens enough already as it is! Not mention that kid stole my arm and it took us forever to get it back.” XR the Experimental Ranger or more commonly known as the Expendable Ranger, asked of his chum Mira Nova. This was his first introduction to Fluttershy and he was not making a good example of the friend he truly was, he was a somewhat quirky robot who was built to be Buzz Lightyear’s good friend by the little green men. After his first destruction they successfully somehow implanted him with a soul while stowing junk into his spatially enlarge chest compartment. “Hey now, who’s this little cutie! She looks like sweet little thing, I hope this is not another pet situation Booster. I thought we’ve learned our lesson about trying to keep pets after what happened with that yukari.”

“Please XR, not now. I just woke up to Gargantian’s, Roller and a gaggle of Space Rangers invading my room and I currently don’t feel like dealing with any of your antics at the moment.” Groaning out in agony of the paperwork she now had to do; Mira diligently went to work on the papers sitting before her. Nobody liked paperwork, nobody except for the zanier bureaucrats possibly. “Fox your team has been authorized to be near Fluttershy at all times, after that attack we’re not taking any chances and because Fluttershy is actually vouching for you. XR, Booster, you are to stick with Fluttershy at all times except for the bathroom.”

Fluttershy stood off to the side staring at XR’s floating head inside the glass dome. Beneath dome was his short cylindrical body that had arms ending in three fingered hands and two legs ending in treads instead of feet. He had Star Command’s symbol on his chest and he didn’t seem likely to attack her. She could even see his mischievous spirit when she looked him in his calculating expressive eyes, Discord would probably like him if they were spend any time in the same room as he looked rather lively for a being made out of metal. She wasn’t about to go anywhere near him though and the Rhizome suit she had put on clutched protectively at her body when she started getting overly nervous, it still had a working pod grenade generator.

“Take a picture it’ll last longer sugar butt, say Booster do you think we can get a trip to Mahambas six again after this? I don’t care what happened last time, that place was nice.” Well XR certainly didn’t mind that he might have gotten a hit order on Booster; it felt kind of similar to the one that they had all just learned was on ambassador Fluttershy here. The robot was cocky and quite sure that they’d be able to handle another hit men order. “Aside from that I’m feeling up for a meeting with dear old dad, haven’t seen him since I arrived and he’s currently in a discussion with Buzz. We had a heck of a time on Karn, but we managed okay without Mira pulling our fat out of the fire.”

“Robots can have parents?” Fluttershy remarked in a clueless manner.

“Yep, Commander Nebula is my pops. He signed the work order for me and the Little Green Men made sure I was born… though it kind of required the Galactic Alliance nearly ending before I came into my personality. The guy I was before was a stiff stick in the mud yes man!” The robot crossed his arms defensively as angrily muttered out how the LGM’s thought he was good idea before his character flaws became a feature. “The last time we had a first contact problem was with the Valkyrans and that went about as well as expected considering they were hostile and it has been a while since they stole cargo in Galactic Alliance space.”

“Well that sounds nice, not the part about the stealing or people getting hurt, the part about your father giving you a chance at life.” This robot had a soul, which was all Fluttershy had focus on. It wasn’t going to kill her the moment she turned her back on it.

“There’s just something I like about you sister!” XR said as he put his arm around Fluttershy’s withers and gave her a loose hug. “You don’t mind if I call you sister right?”

Fluttershy didn’t like the invasion of her personal space, but she thought could live with it and the guilt she still had with what happened back on Rhizome.

“XR you’re spooking Fluttershy, let her go. She’s had some really bad times with robots… the less than pleasant kind of robots that don’t have a twisted personality like you.” Mira stood their tapping her foot against the ground; she couldn’t wait to get her armor back from being repaired. She glared at XR and he swiftly let go of Fluttershy who had been looking at her pleadingly.

“Come on Fluttershy let’s go have a look at your weapon, you said it was on your ship right?” Booster waved his arm and the group of three started off for the hangar.

Fox and his team stood by silently watching for a moment and then followed along without a word. They were silent because Fluttershy had nearly been attacked with lethal intent while on their watch; at least they hadn’t been able to poison her or anyone else and they were caught before it was too late.

Author's Note

The threat level of the Gargantian's dropped dramatically, because they were tired and because they went for the direct approach and were blindsided. Despite being small and fast, if hit by something faster they go down easily.

Now for more from the LGM's and maybe introduce Fluttershy to Buzz and the Grand Councilwoman from Lilo and Stitch. What could possibly go equal?

54

Knowledge that a violent group of Gargantian’s had managed to get aboard the space station had every Space Ranger within range of helping Star Command on edge. It was a fact that even if Star Command was a safe place to keep Fluttershy, it wouldn’t be the safest place forever if everyone and their grandma was gunning for her.

The Galactic President wasn’t anywhere near capital planet at the moment and the Grand Councilwoman would be taking one of the Alliance Armada’s vessels to come to Fluttershy. The tall old lady was coming armed to the teeth with the most trusted soldiers under her command and a well tested crew that could work well under pressure. The Councilwoman figured she’d need them what with the highly visible assassination order on a first contact being that was of a peace brokering species.

Speaking of pressure, a large headed woman sat in a ship and was currently gathering a portion of an asteroid field to make a move on Star Command with it.

Fluttershy and Roller were escorted to the hangar and a lot of Space Rangers were on the lookout for any more tiny intruders or big trouble. Mira had split off from the group to check up on the repairs for her armor and XR had to go print out a few files to hand to his dad. It kind of bothered the pony that so many beings would throw their lives away to protect her to the best of their abilities.

After they were into the hangar good and proper, Fluttershy had stopped to ask what species one particular Space Ranger was. The ranger in question had four legs, an upper humanoid torso and strangely she didn’t have a nose, but did have short dark blue hair in a style reminiscent of Twilight’s. She also had one large central eye, moderate sized mouth and her arms end in three fingers. All of her body below the long thin neck was inside a suit made specifically for her anatomy and in particular her skin was a lighter shade of blue then her mane and her eye was an icy color. She didn’t remind Fluttershy of Tirek one bit; as such she didn’t fear the interesting looking stranger.

“Oh her, that’s Betina Bucks-a-ton. She’s a Cyclocentaurian, must be one of the closest things to you genetically on all of Star Command at the moment. Her race tends to always have hyphenated last names which are always prophetic to how their entire family acts. In particular everyone in her family is either entirely rowdy or erm… yeah, I’d rather not think about that.” Booster saw a blush appear on Fluttershy’s cheeks, he felt his own cheeks turning vibrantly purple at the other thing Betina’s family was known for.

“Yo Booster, how’s the life of a ranger treating you? I see your still in good spirits and that you’re still one of the top rangers around. It’s good to hear your teammate made it back in one piece, wouldn’t want a big lug like you reduced back to a heroic janitor in a fit of depression.” Apparently Betsy had seen them staring and trotted over. “Just came over to say that Plasma and Petra say hello and that Sally is wondering when your team is going to drop by Cosmo’s again. It’s been a while and she’s a bit worried after hearing Mira was MIA.”

“That’s nice, thanks Bets. Tell them I said hello too if you meet them before I do.” The centaur nodded at Booster and threw off a half salute before cantering off.

“She seems nice.” It was just an observation, still though Fluttershy couldn’t help but noticed the temporarily raised tail around Booster. After a moment a fierce red color broke out throughout Fluttershy’s entire face, if that meant anything like it did on a pony then Booster was apparently attractive to the alien centaur.

“Oh she is… nice to hear that Plasma and Petra are still together on the same team. Fraternizing in the work place is not forbidden as long as you can prove that you can keep a clear head, really hard to do though if you’re too busy worrying about someone you love.” Shaking his head Booster continued onward, he saw something going on around Fluttershy’s ship. There sure were a lot of LGM’s he wondered what they were doing to it. “Hey guys, what’s going on here?”

“Ooh, the pilot is present. We are repairing this ship of the True Claw!” One of the little green men answered with a cheery voice.

“The Claw…” All the other green men intoned in unison as they picked at various parts of the ship and were working on it, they made sure it would have the same general shape and controls while adding a few of their own innovations.

“The True Claw’s technology is infused with another’s in this ship, it is very intriguing and we are willing to upgrade it for you for free. You will get it back; we assure you it will be working better than ever. Tell us, how did you meet The Claw?” The little green man had apparently stopped working so he could be a spokesperson for Fluttershy. The others in the mass of green three eyed childlike critters all were crawling around the Head Hunter with looks of fascination clear in their eyes.

“Do you mean the Chozo?” Fluttershy tilted her head slightly and all the LGM’s perked up at hearing the magic word, the name of a supposedly extinct race that the Galactic Federation kept finding ruins of. It was perplexing as Fluttershy didn’t know the Chozo personally, but these little green aliens had obviously held them in high esteem given the bright looks on all their faces.

“Yes, The Claw, you have seen them? They are one of the grandest of races to ever traverse the universe. They are almost as great as the Star Nomad’s themselves, one of whom once visited our world and we haven’t seen one in years since.” Despite what the LGM said, Fluttershy didn’t get her hopes up, the fact that they saw a Star Nomad meant that finding one wasn’t a pipe dream at all. The only problem was catching up to one to ask them for help as they sounded like they moved around constantly.

“Well I only saw one in a dream, because some of my friends dreamed of them.” It was at this time that Fluttershy’s mind went back to the little hatchling Dachora that shot out of its egg like a cannon, it had been so adorable after it hatched. She wondered what it was doing right now and if it was happy.

“Did ‘The Claw’ see you in this dream?” The LGM asked of Fluttershy he was smiling at her.

“Yes, it looked directly at me and a friend of mine, but what does that have to do with…” Pausing Fluttershy noted she was the center of attention in a mob full of little green men.

“She has been seen by The Claw!” The LGMs all gave off a coo of excitement. “The Claw, they are not only of the physical, but are of the spiritual as well! They can see many things that others cannot and their nature is far more than one would first think. You are special; we shall help you, all you need to do is ask it of us. We all are of a shared agreement to assist you already, now we are even more determined to lend you our aid.”

“I was wondering what you were doing to the Head Hunter, that’s the ships name. I kind of needed something from it… oh dear; I hope you haven’t broken anything.” Because Fluttershy had no idea how she would even begin fixing the ridiculously advanced technology, heck she had little in the ways of understanding how it exactly functioned in the first place and it certainly didn’t run on magic like Twilight wanted to think it did. It was only because she could read griffon script that she had learned how to pilot it with her hooves without the need of having manipulating fingers like most other races she was seeing moving throughout the hangar.

Science was certainly powerful and that’s why ponies hadn’t discovered space travel yet, ponies tended to focus on the more towards solving problems with magic than with science. Even the Aldebaran people had a great grasp of magic and yet they needed science to develop those defense robots and their ships. It was just a good thing that their memory stones made sure that they were never truly alone even as they traveled that vast loneliness that was space and it was something they had long before space travel was a thing. Aldebaran jewelry was not only beautiful, but also exceptionally functional as it helped them focused their full magical might.

“We have left most of your things alone, we have also avoided touching your supplies of food and water. We are repairing and making your cargo loading bay better, it should be in running order when we have finished. We are also installing a security system so the ship can be locked and unlocked by you; as we have noticed it lacks security.” The LGM was exceptionally cheerful as he continued to talk to Fluttershy. “What is it that you need from the ship? One of us will retrieve it for you.”

“It’s long and silver, it’s a weapon and I needed to have Booster look it over in case it’s illegal… um is the ship itself illegal in any way?” Fluttershy hadn’t thought about it, but the ship itself had two powerful plasma beam cannons and a high impact missile delivery system. Fortunately it hadn’t been loaded when Fluttershy got the ship or she might have accidentally fired one by now, she at least knew how to fire a missile if she had one. She noted that a few of the LGM’s were looking over the Fox’s Arwings from a distance, but didn’t comment on it as they weren’t currently taking pieces of their ships apart like they were for Head Hunter.

“Ah yes, the ship is equipped with high caliber plasma beam cannons and has an unloaded rack for an unknown high powered weapons delivery system. You’re ship is completely legal, if barely as the technology other than what ‘The Claw’ has put in place was somewhat suspect. We have already removed said suspect components. Is that the object you speak of? It is an ionizing particle projection rifle; we know a Space Ranger needs to see it to verify its legality, we can only guarantee the legality of your ship great one. We vouch for the honor of the one seen by ‘The Claw’.” One of the LGMs besides the spokesperson came out of the top of the ship holding the rifle above his head as he walked towards them. He handed the rifle over to Fluttershy who took it in her bat wing. “We will be done with your ship in a few days; it will take us a while to make the necessary upgrades so that it can be of better use to one such as you. Is there any other thing you need of us great one?”

“Well can you download some maps of the Galactic Alliance into my universal map? It would be really helpful in helping me find my home planet if I remember where I’ve been, so I know where I’m going next.” Fluttershy said as she looked over the energy weapon that was still scratched from where swords had been slammed into it in her desperation to protect herself by using it to block the deadly bladed weapons from flaying her alive. She shuddered at the memories of sharp edged metal stars being flung at her.

“Ah, you mean that! So you search for home as you are lost, we understand and respect such a goal as we too feel need to return to Venus when we wish to be closer to the unified mind. Even the independent thinkers of our race feel the need to reconnect every once in a while. We are saddened to hear that you are lost, but we are happy that you are not lost in hope.” The LGM pointed to three other LGMs that were wearing Star Command armor instead of the blue clothes the others had, they were part of the special LGM taskforce that actually went into the field. They were currently looking over the universal map Fluttershy had with awe. “If you need to find your home, then we will try to do our best in helping you. They will download full maps of the Galactic Alliance and as much explored space as possible. Sadly we have yet to meet another one of your race on any planet in the alliance systems.”

“Can you point me to the nearest Star Nomad?” The sad look the little green man gave Fluttershy told her all that she needed to know. “You don’t know where one currently is do you?”

“No none of us do, but it would have been fortuitous had we the information on where one is. A Star Nomad can find any planet in the universe, even the ones they have yet to visit in their eternal travels.” The LGM received a hug from Fluttershy and she patted him on his little antenna making him blush slightly, he smiled up at her.

“Thank you, for trying to be helpful. Um… is your entire race um… are all of you male?” She understood that they were called Little Green Men as a race, but she still wanted to know. It’d be like what became of the Aldebaran people, she wanted to know if there were Little Green Women or were they were always like this. Either way they were still adorable intelligent little beings considering they didn’t need a translation device to understand her.

“Yes, we are all men and we normally reproduce asexually if that is something that you wished to know about us. We accept your thanks and are eternally grateful to have met you. May you continue to be a shining beacon; ‘The Claw’ would not look your way without there being a grand light shining forth from you.” The LGM hadn’t heard Fluttershy say anything about needing to stop taking it apart or adding things to it, he took that as permission to continue what they were doing. He waddled off to continue overseeing making more little changes to the Head Hunter.

“They sure are nice little guys aren’t they? Fixing your ship up for free, golly a lot of people would charge a lot just to have the LGMs fix or upgrade some of their stuff. They are really innovative little guys for being connected like they are, they built XR after all. Come on, we have to go test that weapon.” As Booster led Fluttershy and Roller away, the pony was rather silent and thoughtful.

Fluttershy had met beings who had likely seen a Star Nomad within her lifetime, all she had to do was find him or her and then ask them for help. It would be easier once she got her ship back from whatever the LGMs were doing to it, she hoped they didn’t cause too much of a mess tinkering around with Head Hunter.

“You know, I’ve got to ask. I’ve heard the LGMs mention this ‘Claw’ thing a few times. What was it like to actually see one? The way the LGMs go on about it, it’s practically a religion for them.” In fact, Booster had never heard the LGMs go into length about anything having to do with ‘The Claw’ before. Apparently Fluttershy had seen one and thus they were willing to talk openly with her about it, they seem to think she’s special because she saw one in her dreams. Well Booster knew she was special before the LGMs said that she was, she did help out Mira and the people of Janet Rhizome after all. Who knew the planet was a living being? It had certainly surprised Booster to hear that the planet and moon were both sentient.

“It was really strange; it was this ancient bipedal feathered being. When it looked at me in the dream it was like it could actually see me and my friends, like it knew I was there despite the dream in question being a memory of an animal called a Dachora.” After all the coincidences having to do with the elements of harmony, Fluttershy didn’t believe that it was a coincidence anymore that the Chozo had looked directly at her and Luna. Especially not after hearing what the LGMs had to say about it, that Chozo hadn’t looked at something behind her… it had actually seen her and Luna.

Fluttershy softly hummed the tune that the Dachora had sung before that memory with the Chozo had played out, a nearby working LGM turned to stare at her with something approaching a high level of reverence. It left her wondering why that tune was so important if it got that kind of recognition. Was that circle that had an S in it a symbol of the Chozo? She looked at the winged symbol on Boosters armor, more specifically the wings of the symbol itself with suspicion.

Fluttershy wasn’t the best shot in the firing range, which also doubled as a training room for Space Rangers. Her weapon had been approved as a item of self defense owned by ambassador Fluttershy, it was still hard for her to think that she was so important to her entire race and not just her few close friends that she sorely missed.

It was kind of sad that the only reason why they had use of this training room at the moment was because the Gargantian’s had taken down a lot of trainees. Fluttershy tried not to think about it as she got some more target practice and to test the limits of her rifle, it had infinite ammo from what the nearby LGM running the training room told her. The LGMs explanation for the rifle was that it recycled energy from what it fired to not lose any energy at all, the only problem was that it overheated really fast if fired too rapidly and if it melted down it wouldn’t be able to ever fire again. Most of which Fluttershy already knew, it was both efficient and sturdy in design.

“Hey, you’re not a bad shot. Where’d you learn something like that?” It sounded like an innocent question to Booster, one that led to a not so innocent answer.

“I learned to shoot while I was on my back fighting for my life with near fatal injuries.” It was said in a dour tone that made the Space Ranger flinch, Fluttershy really didn’t feel like reliving that anytime soon and repressed the memory with extreme prejudice.

“Oh… I’m sorry.” Booster rubbed the back of his head feeling self conscious that his question obviously brought out some bad memories.

“It’s okay; I’m mostly over it and hope I never have to go back to that place.” After a moment Fluttershy finally relaxed her slightly angry look, she had survived so there was no point in thinking on it further.

As they were about to leave the training room, alarms began blaring all around Star Command causing Fluttershy to huddle to the floor with her hooves above her head. The four mercenaries that had been talking amongst each other as they watched Fluttershy interact with others were suddenly alert and had their beam weapons out of their holsters.

“This Commander Nebula, we just nearly got hit by an asteroid. Wherever you are Fox get your team to your ships, you’re robot just shot up a large the incoming piece of rock and I have a feeling I know who sent it our way. I’m even getting reports of a small asteroid field coming right at us, all Rangers we’re going to code brown weather.” The reaction of Commander Nebula had received from everyone was immediate; every Space Ranger was running around Star Command immediately preparing for something. “Mira, XR, Buzz, one of you find Booster and help him protect ambassador Fluttershy. And bring her here to central command while you’re at it. If this is Gravitina we’re dealing with, we need to come up with a plan to knock her out like yesterday!”

Roller revved wondering what all the loud noises and flashing red lights meant, it sounded bad. Fluttershy eased his worries by rubbing the top of his carapace with a hoof, the rangers didn’t need him running around wild again.

“I think it’ll be okay Roller, just stay near me and be my big strong protector that I know you are.” It was getting to the point that Fluttershy was making it sound like a comment about the weather that a lot of beings were out to kill her for just existing. She hadn’t done anything personally to them, but it didn’t seem to matter if she hadn’t and she was learning to accept that a lot of unscrupulous people would kill her in a cold manner.

“Booster, is this the first contact ambassador!” He was tall and he looked well muscled, he even had a dimpled chin which was pretty wide and pronounced. He came up to them running and stopped to look at Booster who had been said to be escorting Fluttershy around Star Command.

“Yes sir Buzz, Fluttershy here is perfectly safe… well at the moment at least. You know Gravitina is going to try to get both you and her at the same time right?” Why the super villainess Gravitina had her heart set on Buzz was one of the few things Booster had trouble understanding, on the other hand he could completely understand Buzz’s sudden need to shudder involuntarily.

“Right, okay little lady we need you to follow us. My names Buzz Lightyear, I wouldn’t hold it against you if you or your people don’t want to be a part of the alliance after having to deal with all the assassination attempts on your life that have yet to happen.” With that the two started leading Fluttershy back to where Commander Nebula was. As they walked Buzz added an extra comment. “Even then I hope that we can at least be friends, even if your people don’t join the alliance. Thanks for getting Mira back to m… us… in one piece.”

“I just hope that we can be friends too.” Even though it was likely he couldn’t understand what Fluttershy had just said as he didn’t have a translator, he certainly got the gist of it judging by his smile and she felt herself smiling in turn.

Author's Note

Ah, Gravitina... what to say about her? She has a hard on for Buzz and she wants his love in a most maniacal fashion. One wonders why she just doesn't implode Mira or Booster, because she certainly seems to have the power for it. The answer is simple, she can only move gravity in one direction in a given area and doesn't entirely have the greatest of fine control despite looking like she does.

In short Gravitina can't just implode Star Command with a thought and that was why she tried to crush it with asteroids the first time she was hired by Zurg to attack the Space Rangers home base.

In this particular scenario... it's taken to it's logical conclusion of how easy it is to disable Gravitina based on the technology that is already present at Star Command.

55

Fluttershy didn’t want to say anything; because the next few words that wanted to come out of her mouth were likely about how in the world did Gravitina’s neck manage support her massive heads weight. Being a pony that was currently representing her species even if she didn’t currently know how to find her planet, she politely chose to keep quiet about Gravitina’s forehead as it appeared on the screen in Star Commands central command room. Now if only Fluttershy could stop staring at it to be even more polite.

“Ugh, the Grand Councilwoman can’t get here soon enough, hope we can clean up the mess from this one before her ladyship’s ship arrives. We don’t need another budget cut!” Commander Nebula wasn’t happy to be dealing with the gravity menace herself again.

Roller being least polite being in the room revved that the bulbous mass at the top of Gravitina’s body looked weird and sickly. Since the only one present who could understand him was Fluttershy, she decided to let Roller have his comment all to himself and did not want to say anything in case she was heard being insulting to anyone.

Gravitina was smiling down at Buzz and Fluttershy on the screen. Her ship on a different screen was surrounded by dangerous asteroids that she would use to attack the planet and Star Command; she was after Fluttershy and had the firepower to get at her. Unlike the other ones seeking to kill Fluttershy, Gravitina was least evil of the most powerful villains in the Galactic Alliance. This was only an excuse for her to get at Buzz Lightyear.

The big headed wonder would likely only want to enslave Fluttershy because she looked adorable and she didn’t think adorable things needed to needlessly die, she also wanted Buzz to love her which wasn’t going to happen because she was insane most of the time. It was hypothesized that her insanity stemmed from her gravity powers.

“Well hello there Buzzy. Why don’t you and the ambassador just hand yourselves over to me and I won’t have to hurt anyone. I’m actually surprised my warning shot got noticed with as fast as I threw at you.” Kicking back in her floating seat the planet headed alien women was looking salaciously at Buzz making him shudder.

“All active cruisers put up a defensive perimeter; we’re not letting one rock past us. That goes for you too mercenaries.” Commander Nebula wasn’t negotiating with Gravitina, he was going to just deliver an ultimatum and then they’d start fighting. “I’m not about to hand over one of my rangers to you or the first contact ambassador, so you can either leave or we will have be having an altercation lady. Do your worst!”

“Humph, if that’s how it’s going to be then be prepared for my wrath. If I can’t have Buzz and that cute little fluffy ambassador, I might as well kill everyone so I don’t have to think about it any longer.” With a gesture Gravitina lifted her hand and pointed forward before she disappeared off of central room of Star Commands screens. “I’ll miss you terribly Buzz, but the money should make up for all the grief of having to kill you.”

“Don’t you worry ambassador Fluttershy; we haven’t failed anyone where it counted yet!” Booster was holding Fluttershy in his big strong arms and petting her to try and keep her calm. It was working, mostly.

“We got incoming asteroids people, make sure they don’t get through or I’ll have your hides back in training like yesterday!” Commander Nebula bellowed and all the cruisers that were currently hovering around Star Command went into action of blasting the first three large asteroids coming in.

Gravitina was obviously testing their ability to defend themselves, after she did that then she’d launch a storm of asteroids and really hit Star Command and their precious Capital Planet. Two of the asteroids were dealt with by four Star Cruisers launched by Star Command. The Star Cruisers were elongated tube like rocket ships with four fins; most of them were like this anyway. Team Lightyear had been through several variations of Star Cruisers because of how many they’ve trashed in the line of duty, their current version had four fins and two backwards slanting wings giving it an aerodynamic shape for atmospheric flying.

Fluttershy had seen Star Cruiser Forty Two while she was being given a tour of the docking bay by Booster, but she hadn’t been onboard. She hoped that things would calm down soon; she didn’t understand why so many people wanted to kill her for money. What did she ever do to them except for what was right? She was still reeling from what had happened to Kleptchi and Truffle; she decided to continue reflecting on it quietly.

“This is Falco, how is this broad headed woman controlling those things? This sounds like what happened to some of our friends in the military when they were going through the enemy fleets in Meteo, one of the asteroid fields from our system.” Falco popped upon the screen along with the four arwings were approaching Gravitina’s mobile asteroid field. They were already in the process of tearing apart the last testing asteroid with the combine fire power of eight high powered beams of rapidly fired energy.

“Gravitina has the ability to control gravity on a large scale, thankfully she’s not as good at controlling things on a much smaller scale or she’d just explode us all by creating expanding gravity fields from the center of all our masses and just blow everyone up instead of trying to crush us with a large amount of blunt force.” XR was giving them what the mercenaries needed to know as he stood guard with Buzz, Mira and Booster. “That’s Gravitina for you, all force and with barely any finesse at all. And let me tell you something about blowing up, it’s not a pleasant feeling and definitely not one of my favorite ways to get a leave of duty. Ugh, all that metal fatigue from blowing up messes with my head.”

“If I remember right they got through Meteo around the same time we were arriving at Aquas, that was about the time Fichina and Katina were getting hit hard. Wish we could have helped out at Fichina and Katina, but we would have never met the little darling otherwise.” That wasn’t all Peppy had to say about it, he could clearly hear the silence of his three friends as they were all thinking the same thing. He just put his voice to it. “She might have been just another victim and Andross would have gotten away with causing another Zoness to happen if we hadn’t gone the way we did. If this Gravitina has that much power then we’re not going to be able to get close to her without her smashing our ships into each other or crushing us with those asteroids.”

“Oh please be careful.” Fluttershy muttered as she watched the four fighter ships were the furthest out, even though she had seen what they were capable of she still had to worry about them. Fox and his close friends lived such dangerous if exciting lives.

“Everything will be fine subject Fluttershy. This is Rob Sixty Four; massive gravitational spikes detected trying to affect Star Command.” The robot kind of surprised the four pilots as they were hanging outside the small field of giant asteroids with Gravitina’s ship in the center of it and were staying well away from actually going into it. “Action of gravitational forces is currently ineffective.”

“Hmmm…? Her gravity powers are ineffective there, but why? From what I’ve seen of Star Command they don’t have anything to prevent something of that force from affecting the space station.” Slip hummed silently to himself and quietly considered what he heard Rob said about trying to affect Star Command. “Maybe… Fox I think I might have an idea how to quickly solve this situation.”

“What is it Slippy? If you hadn’t noticed she’s launching more asteroids our way.” Fox was already chipping away at one of the the next ten asteroids that were hurled towards Star Command and the planet behind it, he was swiftly joined by Falco in breaking down the asteroids.

“Can I have permission to give Rob a command that might sound a bit strange and possibly destroy our ships ability to operate?” Slip fingered and trigged his own ships lasers to tear an asteroid into harmless chunks.

More and more asteroids were beginning to move into position and launch forward, quite a few of them were slowly being torn apart by the Great Fox’s guns with support from the Star Cruisers staying around it.

Gravitina growled, why weren’t her powers working? It was like she was trying to grab hold of the most slippery thing in the universe, she was trying to pushing Star Command into crashing down on the planet. Her powers especially refused to affect the ship floating above Star Command.

After that she attempted to shove the four small fighters into hitting each other or tried to forcefully ram them into the asteroids she launched forward. Somehow her gravity powers had no effect whatsoever on the four fighters and it boggled her mind. At least she still had control over all the asteroids surrounding her ship.

She started launching them in waves of five at a time as hard as she could push each one in a salvo that promised to do some damage if any of them hit something.

“Permission granted Slip, if it will stop things from getting worse. This is almost overwhelming, almost…” Fox rolled his eyes as he charged up his ships lasers, once he released the trigger a ball of energy struck out and into an asteroid ripping it to small pieces.

“Rob this may blow out the engines a bit and the repairs are going to be a bit expensive, but I want you to moved start moving forward towards the asteroid field. Star Command Cruisers, please cover our ship. We have a quick solution to this situation.” Hearing Slip’s orders, Rob carried them out and once the Great Fox was close enough he’d give the order that would quickly wrap up this attack. “Guys we need to keep busting up these asteroids, at least until the Great Fox gets close enough. Then we’ll hit her.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing Slip.” Falco grumbled as he blasted his way through another large rock.

“You heard him, Cruisers ten, fifteen, twenty seven and thirty six. They need an escort, so fly escort! Keep those asteroids off of their ship!” Commander Nebula was willing to trust them if they had a plan, it was on ambassador Fluttershy if they weren’t trustworthy and Mira had also vouched for them be a good group of people for hire. It was hard for him to believe that they were the rarely seen noble and friendly type of mercenaries, but he trusted his gut enough times to know this was the right decision.

“Now stop and put all the power into the G-diffusion field!” Slip smiled as he watched the field go to work and the next five meteors that were going to be launched stopped moving into position. The asteroids started to drift lazily on the last bit of momentum they had before the gravity diffusing field struck them. “Yeah, yeah, the G Diffuser Systems aboard the Great Fox is nullifying her guys. We’ve got to hurry though; the Great Fox can’t hold that much of an output forever and we wouldn’t want to let her get away!”

“Good job Slip. You heard him guys, let’s bring this Gravitina down!” Fox and his friends formed up and shot towards Gravitina’s ship.

“If you can bring her in you’re going to get a reward for her capture, maybe a better one if you can put a big kibosh on her powers so we can actually hold her better in prison.” Commander Nebula didn’t need to tell the Star Fox team twice as they flew around the asteroids angling for Gravitina’s ship as it slowly turned around to start working on an escape vector while the remaining Star Cruisers dealt with her launched asteroids that were still heading towards Star Command and the planet.

Gravitina started panicking when her floating chair flopped uselessly to the floor, she tried to use her powers, but they weren’t working so she had to manually pilot the ship instead of just using her powers. She had been completely nullified by the gravity diffusion field being generated by the Great Fox.

It was unfortunate that being surrounded by as many asteroids as her ship was. Without being in control of them, her big blocky ship was getting battered. The only way to escape was to turn the ship around and fly out of the opening at the back of the small asteroid field.

She had to wonder, how did things go so wrong for her?

While Gravitina was being dealt with, Fluttershy had eased in her fears as it seemed like the situation was well in hoof. She watched the screens as the four ships burst their way through asteroids to start raking Gravitina’s ship with fire.

An explosion happened and the room filled with smoke. A rocket was fired and two figures were immediately taken down in the ensuing explosion.

“Heh, bet you didn’t see me coming eh Buzz? Managed to get a one you’re friends too, hope I get a bonus for… that?” Warp said, only to pause when he didn’t see anyone else in the room as the smoke cleared and there was no one shooting at him. One would expect to have the need to start dodging incoming fire and leaving injured opponents behind after making sure he dealt with the ambassador and earned his paycheck. What he saw was only a pile of stuffing from what seemed to be a giant Booster shaped doll that had been holding a life sized pony shaped plush toy. “What the…!”

Before Warp Darkmatter could do anything else his body erupted in a violently powerful electric shock that disabled his arm and two darts coming from out of nowhere went straight into his back knocking him completely out.

“That was not smart of him.” A voice said holding a small gun with an electrically glowing end. “He is cunning, but he didn’t expect us to be more so.”

“He is not ethical, so we shouldn’t have been either.” Another voice said blandly holding one of the equally small guns that was a dart shooter. “Still took the high ground even if force was a bit excessive.”

“Like him, we are not caring on this issue of excessive force.” A third voice said. “Still feel a sense of earned retribution for the earlier kidnapping of us and assisting in the taking of the Unimind.”

“We are in agreement that this course of action was warranted then, he would have hurt the ambassador who was sighted by The Claw.” Three LGMs wearing Space Ranger armor stepped out of the shadows from behind the fallen Warp Darkmatter after having lured him into a trap, they had quickly hacked the computer built into his mechanical arm the second it was detected entering Star Command. It was why they had Commander Nebula bring Fluttershy to the central command center of Star Command, if they had failed laying the trap then it would have been up to Buzz. “We are all pleased at this turn of events; friends of the True Claw are friends of ours. Helpful we are to our friends and learned much in turn we have.”

While the Gargantian’s had disabled the biological scanners at their entrance point into Star Command, what they hadn’t disabled was the secondary scanners for known illegal tech entering the station. Star Command had a lot of redundant scanners for everything now, including dimensional warping beings of complete evil. Not that the LGMs would ever tell Commander Nebula how they managed to create that last particular feature. Warp’s mechanical arm was his own downfall and he lost to the special LGM rangers unit, they may have missed the Gargantian’s but they had certainly caught Warp flatfooted.

“This is Team LGM reporting in, Commander Nebula we have successfully captured Warp Darkmatter.” The head of the special Space Ranger LGM unit said with a hint of smugness in his voice.

“Well doesn’t that beat all? You’re proving to be one of our most effective teams out there guys and I’m proud to call you Space Rangers. You’ve certainly come a long way since training and running straight into the line of fire all the time!” Buzz stated over the communications to the three LGMs started blushing at the praise they received from their hero who had likely watched them take down an old regret that became a huge thorn in his side.

“Just color me surprised that you didn’t screw this up like the R and D LGMs usually do with all their experiments!” This was Commander Nebula’s way of saying they did good.

Fluttershy relaxed a bit things hadn’t gone as horribly as it could have; nobody was dead, no permanent injuries or scars. Nothing violent happened in front of her aside from those poor little Gargantian’s that accidentally got crushed by Roller. She’s even met a lot of new people and made a lot of new friends, even if she was having trouble speaking up with so many odd or strange beings around.

“This is Fox, we have secured Gravitina! She’s not going to be bothering anyone for a while.” Fox appeared on one of the screens. “Hope you’re doing okay Fluttershy. It must not be easy to have people out looking to kill you huh?”

“I’ll be okay… I’m among friends. As long as I have a true friend near me telling me that everything will be alright, I’ll be just fine Mr. Mccloud.” Sure she may not have been perfectly happy and she wished she could forget about that planet that exploded with all that life still on it, not to mention her still mutated form.

“This is Rob Sixty Four; please continue to be happy or at least content Miss Fluttershy.” After a moment of hearing the dull monotone of a robot telling her to be happy, she couldn’t help but start giggling. “Disabling G Diffusion field operations to return to normal status, many repairs are necessary to the G Diffuser Systems aboard the Great Fox.”

“Gee, I wonder how our robot gained a soul.” On the view screen from Star Command control room, Falco rolled his eyes while speaking his sarcastic remark. He gave off an insufferable smirk. “Oh right, our favorite lost space hippie caused it to happen! Trouble is going have to go through everyone here to get at you and we’re planning on sticking around a while longer to make sure that kill order never happens. At least we know things are going to stay interesting for us, did you know Rob was your biggest fan. Never saw a robot like him sulk like that after you left the Great Fox the first time you came aboard with us.”

“Thank you for caring about me Mr. Lombardi, even if you are a really grumpy bird.” Fluttershy smiled at the blushing pilot who gave off a gruff sigh while looking away from her with a blush on his cheeks.

“Yeah, whatever, as long as things don’t get too boring around here.” Falco angled his fighter for the Great Fox; he needed time to cool his feathers as Fluttershy was just too damn adorable at times.

“I hate red tape and I don’t envy your current importance to your race Fluttershy, I’m getting on in years and I’m sure to be stuck doing something similar soon enough. I think you’re still young enough to get out of it while you can.” Peppy stated with a chuckle before he started coughing a bit. “I really am getting too old for all this. See you real soon.”

“Hey, while I’m here I’ll update the universal translator so that it can translate your speech into the Galactic Alliance languages. That was kind of a slight oversight on my part with making the translator, sorry that it hasn’t been working at full capacity recently. The update should fix the bug and I’ll reinforce the frame while I’m at it.” Slip sounded so cheerful to have been able to put a stop to Gravitina with swift efficiency. He might have been the worst pilot on his team, but he definitely made up for it in other ways. “That ought to help you out with communicating better around here and it will help with your upcoming meeting Fluttershy. You must be so nervous.”

Honestly Fluttershy was quite nervous, she didn’t know what to expect of the Grand Councilwoman of the Alliance Armada. She was becoming jitterier every second, until she felt a handle rub up one of her large ears easing her tension she looked to Mira who was smiling at her softly.

“Yeah, I hate politics too.” She chuckled dryly. “Don’t worry about it, be true to whom you are and I doubt you’ll fail to impress the Grand Councilwoman.”

“She sounds so… um… well… scary? Maybe even a little intimidating?” Fluttershy wilted under the gazes of everyone in the room with her, from the LGM workers to Team Lightyear surrounding her in a protective group.

“Well as long as we’re around, we’re not going to let anything bad happen to you personally ambassador.” Buzz put a hand on Fluttershy’s back and it was joined by three other hands of his friends and team members. “We heard from Mira here that you were in contact with your race, can you call them up and tell them about what’s going on? You might not be able to find your planet, but I’m sure we’ll be able to get you home eventually.”

“Yeah, we’d definitely go to infinity and beyond for a cutie like you.” XR waggled his eyebrows and Buzz glared at him cowing his quirky nature for a moment.

“Um, can you let me go? I really need to use the little pony’s room.” All four of the Space Rangers quickly pulled their hands away from Fluttershy and were suddenly embarrassed about how quickly they had backed off.

“Let me be of assistance.” An LGM said and he pulled up a map on the screen. “Nearest available bodily waste receptacle is out that door, three doors down the hallway and on your right. Since you identify as female, you are to use the middle door after entering the lavatory hallway. Males are for the door on the left and the door on the right is for indeterminate gendered species that need to do their unique form of business.”

“Thankfully there’s no Porcelon’s onboard. That one ambassador really should have double checked before he sat down.” XR chuckled derisively making Fluttershy wonder what a Porcelon was.

Author's Note

Lylat device- G Diffuser System- Energy and anti-gravitational field generator.

The device basically allows the Starfox arwings to do everything that they do. This means the G Diffuser is responsible for shields, propulsion and even protecting the pilots from gravitational forces hurting them. It's why the arwings are able to fly across the surface of the sun while only taking minimal damage despite the heat.

Now imagine the G Diffuser in the Great Fox creating a much bigger anti-gravitational field that allows it to fly into atmospheric conditions without falling apart due in part to gravity.

There are problems with the G Diffuser device, it's finicky and hard to keep working and requires a lot of maintenance.

A energy generator that can easily counter anything Gravitina can do perfectly.

Porcelon- a species of alien that look like huge walking toilets... yes this was a real thing that appeared in Buzz Lightyear of Star Command.

56

After having gotten back from the toilet and washing her hooves, Fluttershy was a little nervous about how she would go about meeting the Grand Councilwoman. For some reason nobody would use her name around her, all she knew was that the Grand Councilwoman of the Alliance Armada was always somewhat fair to everyone she met.

The Gargantian’s invading Star Command was one thing, but the follow up attack by Gravitina and an almost missed stealth infiltration by Warp Darkmatter had everyone on edge. The LGM rangers were like all the other LGMs, going back to their jobs as if all the assassination attempts hadn’t happened. It was simply amazing that the LGMs had managed to trick Warp into a trap, they weren’t strong, fast or even powerful on their own. What the LGMs were was highly intelligent when given the opportunity to act, they could come up with a plan of action with more than a hundred minds working towards one goal simultaneously with their unified hive mind.

Still, Fluttershy felt safe and surrounded by a bunch of friendly people who wouldn’t leave her alone to die. Mira seemed particularly wary and on edge knowing Zurg was behind these attacks and the previous mercenary assaults on Star Command to distract them from helping out Rhizome with the hornet assault. Didn’t help that a lot of people were getting injured trying to protect her, at least Gravitina didn’t do much more than minimal damage to the hulls of several star cruisers. The star cruisers were positively pockmarked with dents having combined their firepower and blasted their way through several large asteroids with help from the undamaged Great Fox.

The fact that the Grand Councilwoman was coming to Star Command had the little pony pensive about her future. At least Slip helped her prepare by adding Galactic Alliance languages to her newly updated universal translator, now she could communicate freely without having to look someone in the eyes.

Now she was back in the central command room of Star Command, just waiting for news of the Councilwoman’s arrival.

“Hey you okay there fluffy? I know life is giving you a whole ‘ship’ load of ‘lemons’ at the moment, but that’s no reason to get all down.” XR’s attempts at cheering her up were not very effective, of course the word lemons had to be translated from something completely different or did aliens actually have lemons and they weren’t just a thing on Equus? Fluttershy would have felt the need for him to clarify what exactly he just said, but she thought lemons was a good word for everything that life seemed to be throwing at her.

“Oh I’m okay; I’ve just had quite a few terrible months of horrible times. I’m sure all the mental scarring will heal eventually.” Fluttershy was speaking in a bland and surprisingly sarcastic tone. “Not to mention I’m trying not to think of all the friends back home and how sad they are that I’m not there with them. I’m also trying not to think of how the friends I’ve met along my travels are doing, despite the fact that we may never see each other again. Finding my home in a constantly shifting universe isn’t easy XR.”

“Yikes, somebody needs a pudding cup.” XR muttered and rolled away to go look for one, a snack always cheered up Booster so maybe the same could be said for Fluttershy. For some reason he wanted her to be happy, it was itching at his processors like mad to come up with a way to please her. “Hold down the fort while I go find one for her, something someone from Rhizome would ingest right? I’ll be right back, maybe with some juice too!”

“XR is right; you should try to be more positive. Sure you may have gotten thrust into all kinds of dangerous situations, but at least your still alive and mostly whole right?” Booster thought that as long as you were alive, you could still do some good and you shouldn’t let depression tell you that you can’t achieve the impossible. Buzz showed him that impossible was just a fancy word for not trying nearly hard enough.

“Yeah about that Booster… I can actually see why you’re depressed and all Fluttershy, but maybe you could be a little bit more cheery for your meeting with her highness the Grand Councilwoman.” Mira kind of felt bad about all the things Fluttershy was being put through. If she hadn’t truly cracked from the stress yet, then Mira doubted she truly ever would as she was a tough little thing. Maybe not spirited or incredibly outgoing, but darn if she wasn’t cuddly and friendly as all get out. Zurg hated beings like her in a most passionate manner befitting the crafty bastard and it was understandable that she was being targeted as harshly as she was by some of their worst villains.

“You have nothing to worry about, well make sure you’re not taken advantage of by anyone. Not while I’m still breathing anyway lady. Just enjoy our hospitality ambassador and relax, we’ve got everything completely under control.” Buzz wouldn’t say it, but Fluttershy was the nicest ambassador he had ever met. At times he’s met ambassadors that were so bad that he wished he wasn’t committed to risking his life to protect them. Fluttershy here was a different story as she was just what amounts to a lost and scared tourist, a civilians whose race were at best loosely defined as even being anywhere near space capable.

It was a bit of a combined thought from all the present Space Rangers, but learning of ponies from Fluttershy they knew that her race wasn’t quite ready for the stars and they had only gained a level of space travel that would work randomly at best to just spread them throughout the universe. Travelling by bubble wasn’t unheard of in the Galactic Alliance, just not a popular or even safe mode of transportation. However bubble travel did tend to make for smaller less easily detected targets.

After that they left the command room being manned by LGMs since they decided to give Fluttershy some space while they waited for XR to get back with the pudding cup, Commander Nebula was busy elsewhere preparing for the arrival of the Alliance Armada’s flagship. The Grand Councilwoman only had trustworthy people under her command and she was coming well armed to make sure nobody would dare attack the peace talks with a first contact.

A few LGMs waddled up to Fluttershy swiftly earning her attention at what one of them was holding. It was her universal map and the LGM turned it noticing her attention on him. It showed her all the places she’s been to in a comprehensive manner; there were a lot of newly labeled places as well that she hadn’t been to. Apparently the little green guys mapped out all of the Galactic Alliance for her, they’ve even mapped out areas of space that only the Alliance Armada has been to and areas of space were labeled to not be safe for anyone like her.

“We are sorry, but we still can’t find your home. We have added the full scope of the Galactic Alliance and more to the map data in hopes that we were at least of assistance.” The little blue uniformed green alien hit something on the device and the memory they received from the Head Hunters databanks combined with the knowledge of the Lylat and Aniverse systems filled out the map with even more information. The map zoomed out to what looked like a spiraling galaxy that had the pony staring on in wonder. “You have been very far friend; hopefully The Claw’s ship will see you to your home. We would like to visit it sometime.”

“Why do you keep calling them The Claw? Isn’t the name for their race, Chozo?” It was just an odd thing to Fluttershy.

“They will always be the ‘The Claw’ to us. They have claws that don’t rend or tear unless needed for they started out as warriors; they are now known to us as ancient peacekeepers and builders, we respect them as grand architects. We tend to show great naivety in anything relating to them, for that we apologize if it causes trouble. Their reach for knowledge led them to claw their way to the ability of seeing beyond what can be normally seen, they have seen many truths that we will likely never be capable of understanding.” After a moment the third LGM paused. “Now we have an idea that The Claw originated around this Galactic Federation section of space, however it seems they are no longer greatly present there. This Galactic Federation would not make good friends with the Galactic Alliance, their policies are… self destructive.”

“Is there anything in particular that they did? It sounds like you revere them a lot.” It was easy for Fluttershy to talk to them; they all looked like children and innocent beings. Despite this sense of innocence, they were not as weak as they looked.

“They once saved our race, The Claw as we know them helped us in a time of great suffering and our race would have perished had they not intervened. They saw something of great importance in us; we do not consider ourselves very special beings in comparison and yet they still saw something... something special.” The second LGM looked up at Fluttershy with a bit of concern. “They were exceptionally wise. They did not try to change us as we didn’t need change, they did not give us technology as we weren’t ready for it, they did not try to change our ways as we were but children that needed to learn to grow on our own and they didn’t do more than was needed. It has been a very long time since the ancient legends of The Claw, the very beings we met from beyond the skies of our world long before we ourselves left our planet to explore the vastness of space. We are still eternally grateful to them, for their grip was strong yet gentle enough to pull us from the brink of extinction. As such they are known as The Claw for their grasp of knowledge and how to use it correctly.”

Fluttershy didn’t know what to say to that, it sounded like the Chozo were well traveled to the point that they’ve practically been everywhere. The fact that griffons had some odd lineages that might have been alien in origin said as much about how far they’ve traveled if they’ve been to Equus, it might explain why some griffons were much more peaceful or wiser than others were. It certainly might have explained the odd existence of how the hippogriffs came to be. The Chozo must have been one of the most ancient magical and spiritual races in existence… did any of them still exist aside from being involved in griffon heritage? The information the LGMs discovered didn’t involve any knowledge of the location of Equus or how the Chozo came to integrate into griffon society.

“Hey, fresh pudding cup right here and a juice box too!” XR finally got back from the mess hall, the Galactic Alliance had many sentient robot races as members and as such he had a lot of money just sitting around unused. One of the reasons he likes gambling and a few other quirky things like it. He had job security after all, as he was doing what he was built to do with free health coverage for every single time he gets blown up. He was the expendable one of his team for a reason and he was always taking one for the team in so many different ways, at least his efforts were never unappreciated. Speaking of, the ambassador thanked him kindly and that made him feel rather special.

It had been a few hours and Fluttershy didn’t know how long it would take the Grand Councilwoman to get to Star Command, she thankfully wasn’t being kept cooped up in a single room. Being allowed to wander and talk to others coming and going from Star Command was something that helped Fluttershy stay calm, it was very intimidating approaching some of the aliens she saw as they looked really weird or strange to her. There was no trouble aboard the large station and with Fox and his friends flying patrol around Star Command there wouldn’t be any problems.

The one alien that Fluttershy met that she really liked a lot was the friendly red three legged being with two eyes on stalks sticking from the top of his body that could carry a rhythm. Apparently he was from a planet where dancing and music was a form of communication as much as it was for fun; he could stomp, clap and vocalize out a rhythm that put Fluttershy in a cheery mood. Apparently he was one of the temporary recreational activity instructors aboard Star Command that helped resting rangers to relax a little; he happened to have rotated in recently and was generally liked. He definitely got Fluttershy in a better mood after leading her on a merry little game of copying the noises he made. While the alien was nice, he couldn’t make her forget all her worries.

“Thank you for a wonderful time Mr. Jam; I have a friend who loves to party like you do and she would have loved to meet you. Provided I can find my home planet in both our lifetimes, you’re welcome to come visit me and my friends.” The alien nodded his eyestalks at Fluttershy as he gave her a quick one armed hug, he than waved at the pony as he walked off with an easy going three legged gait up to a big yellowish orange alien that was wearing sunglasses and shorts. The last Fluttershy saw of them, they were headed off towards Star Commands cafeteria.

“Hey, I think I know those two guys...”A look of concentration was on Boosters face as he walked up to Fluttershy after having watched her spend some time with the three legged alien. “Now if only I could remember where from.”

“Buzz, Booster, Mira, XR and ambassador Fluttershy, report to the hangar on the double!” Commander Nebula should really watch his blood pressure; maybe yell a little bit less over the station wide communications. “The councilwoman has arrived, so stop dawdling and get the little lady to the flagship! She wants to meet the ambassador in person and she has all her people on high alert for any sign of attack, only a complete idiot or a complete psychopath would try to get her at this point.”

Torque had hit his max limit to the clones he could make, every single one of them was riding a space cycle and every last one of them was armed to the teeth with differing kinds of cloned weaponry. He decided to make a variety pack, more bang for his buck as it were.

He and his army of clones weren’t the only ones preparing; there were a lot of assassins, cutthroats and mercenaries that were joining Torque for this assault. It was so nice when evil guys could all band together towards one solitary goal. Sure only one of them was getting paid for the kill, but Torque had a good chance as he had hundreds of himself working together whereas they would all be working for themselves.

Things were about to go boom alright. Torque chuckled wryly and revved his space cycle. He didn’t particularly care who died, just that someone did and hopefully it would be the main target. There were plenty of other targets that would earn him a lot of moolah even if he didn’t get the kill they were all after.

What kind of intergalactic psycho would he be if he didn’t spread the joy a little?

“It’s almost time, I’m coming for you little brother and no dirty mugs, bloody psychos, armada assholes, the uppity space rangers or even that bastard Zurg will get between me and you.” As she said this Bonnie holstered two blasters and slung a bandolier of homemade thermal grenades onto her body, her mind was running through all kinds of scenario’s and she’d take advantage of every single situation she could. “Ugh, I can’t wait to have all my plans called into question again!”

Only an idiot would run into a deathtrap like she was about to do, she wasn’t nearly as indestructible as her youngest brother.

Fluttershy had quietly boarded cruiser number forty two with Roller who revved softly as she held him after taking her seat. Roller had enjoyed his time on the treadmill or as the way he tells it ‘the endless road that led to the same spot’. At least he had gotten plenty of exercise; it was amazing how hard the advanced treadmill could be pushed. She had learned that Wheelies even enjoyed being put on one in the very least.

One would imagine that Roller could power a space vessel with the amount of energy he put into rolling forward endlessly. If only Fluttershy knew about the Halberd when she had visited Popstar, she probably would have brought up animal cruelty with Meta Knight even though Wheelies enjoyed hard labor if it involved rolling as hard as they could for long periods of time.

The pony had wondered when the LGMs would be finished putting Head Hunter back together; they were making it more user friendly for ponies while trying not to remove previous controls. Hopefully the LGMs didn’t make things worse and only made things better.

Fluttershy looked out a view port to see that Starfox was flying escort for forty two and she inhaled deeply before exhaling slowly. She pulled out the memory stone; she had a call to make.

“Discord, can you get me connected with Celestia or Luna please?” She was wearing her Rhizome suit for her own protection in case something bad happened, which was inevitably going to. She hoped she could broker a peace agreement between the alliance and ponies before that happened. She didn’t know much about politics to really be getting into them.

“Oh you never call anymore to tell me about how your day went anymore!” The chaotic lord of oddness was as usual sounding amused, Discord saw Fluttershy wasn’t feeling up to teasing so he changed his mood to fit Fluttershy’s immediately. “Right, I’m going to switch you over to line two please hold while your operator gets Celestia on her lollipop. Hey orange juice, Fluttershy wants to talk to you and moon pie!”

“Um… hello is this Fluttershy?” Celestia’s voice came through the stone, after a moment a snarl came from the other end. “Discord, change my horn back to normal this instant!”

“What, I thought an orange flavored lollipop horn would suit you and you’ve got a connection to Fluttershy on it, what can be better than that?” A snapping sound was heard and someone was heard eating something. “Your sister doesn’t seem to mind the banana flavored moon pies.”

“Discord I respectfully ask that you stop tormenting Celestia… for the moment at least. Hello princess, I’m sorry to bother you and everything. I know your really busy and everything, but I’m about to go into a diplomatic meeting and I was wondering…” Fluttershy was getting rather high strung about this meeting with the Grand Councilwoman it was easily noticed in her tone of voice. “If you don’t mind me asking, do you have any advice? I’m representing ponies to the nice alliance people and I’m really nervous.”

“Be yourself, read the fine print if you’re asked to sign anything and above all Fluttershy treat others how you wish to be treated. Oh and don’t negotiate anything that you can’t promise we’ll be willing to part with. An offer of friendship will go a long way I think.” The gentle voice of her beautiful princess calmed her nerves somewhat.

“If that does not work out you can go the way of Discord and wing it, huzzah!” It was a little surprising to hear Luna suggest that in such a joyous manner, it cause giggles to break out.

“I’d rather not, but if it was my only option…” Fluttershy trailed off with a whimper.

“It’ll be okay Fluttershy we believe in you, it’s not like they expect everything of us immediately. We’re new to this whole intergalactic thing, even Discord who now watches over you from beyond our world.” Nice sentiments from Celestia didn’t make the scars all better. “I think you’ll be okay and I trust that you can talk peacefully.”

“I’m scared princess.” Fluttershy felt Roller rub into her side while revving a calming tone. “What if I don’t know what to say?”

“You’re not alone Fluttershy, you have friends with you.” Celestia didn’t think Fluttershy could disappoint anyone. “As Twilight has recently found out, you can make friends anywhere there is life to be found. Be sure to inquire about an embassy while you are there, otherwise you have been proven to be resourceful my little pony. All you need to do is to tell them who you are and what your cutie mark represents, you can show them what ponies are like even though you’re the only one we have off planet. If you get scared then you can seek council with Lady Katrina or any of us.”

“Um, okay princess Celestia. I’ll ask about the embassy when I get a chance and I’ll try my best.” Kneading her two hooves together Fluttershy was in full worrywart mode as the ship came into dock with a long mostly rectangular ship that was as big as the Valhalla was, memories of ventilation ducts ran rampant through her head and the mindless robots that hunted her in them.

“That is all we can really ask of you Fluttershy. Learn to forgive yourself for things you can’t control and especially for the things you can that went wrong.” Twilight didn’t sound sad or happy, she sounded generally chipper. “None of us are perfect and we’re still friends aren’t we Fluttershy? Also have you made any new friends; I know how hard it is for you to talk to other ponies.”

“Why of course we are!” Surprisingly it came out in a loud affronted tone, Fluttershy squeaked at realizing how loudly she proclaimed that. Her cheeks filled with heat at how loud she had gotten, even so she felt the need to reaffirm that despite the distance their hearts haven’t exactly become detached. “Yes, I’ve made quite a few new friends recently. I’m usually not good at talking with other ponies, but these beings aren’t ponies and I think necessity is making me less shy than I normally would be really.”

“That’s actually a good thing, keep doing that Fluttershy and never stop making friends!” Twilight didn’t say anything else. She didn’t have to as Fluttershy felt a warm fuzzy feeling in her heart; she could still feel her friends. To lose that feeling would mean a total loss of who she was and she could feel it gnawing at her.

57

“Welcome to the flagship of the armada, the Grand Councilwoman will see you shortly. Wait for a security detail to show you the way.” The small ensign then made her way off to do who knew what around the ship as Fluttershy took a look around.

There were plenty of non humanoids wandering about; there were even some naturally occurring intelligent mechanical beings. The one thing to be said about the ship… it was big, definitely Valhalla big and much better armed. Everyone here was wearing a space suit of some kind unless they weren’t affected by the rigors of space or was of a legitimate sentient robotic life like XR was.

There were a lot of suited lizards around and they were armed with rifles and watching the entrance to the corridors and other places as well, they were definitely expecting complications. Even Fluttershy herself was prepared wearing her Rhizome suit for the occasion as she and Team Lightyear were led by two beings that had them scanned for any extracurricular weaponry.

This issue of Team Lightyear’s weapons came up quickly, mostly their multipurpose wrist lasers and the fact that XR was loaded with missiles, grenades, plasma and laser based weaponry in the folded subspace compartment inside his chest. Said compartment in XR which somehow including hundreds of random mechanical arms somehow still connected to his body; he was literally the most heavily armed out of all of them and could shoot in every direction at once at the same time. XR was cleared through as Fluttershy vouched for him as a bodyguard which warmed his mechanical heart some.

What didn’t come up was Fluttershy’s weaponry, aside from her glass knife that is. She had a container of water and twenty or so inert pod grenades ready to be used. Sure she only had one pod grenade generator, but no one told her that she couldn’t have some stored away in case of an emergency. It was a good thing Fluttershy was already wearing her universal translator and as such things should go smoothly provided it didn’t get damaged again.

All of this was in her left saddlebag and the odd thing is… pod grenades actually tasted pretty good and would look like a snack item to anyone who checked her bags. They were like giant peas and had a bit of a buttery taste. The only way to even prime a pod grenade was to be wearing a Rhizome suit, so they were completely safe for her to be holding onto as she didn’t intend to set them off unless necessary. It was surprising that they got through security without a second glance or mention. Some Rhizome weaponry was actually somewhat edible to Fluttershy. Though the thorn based weapons even without the acid or paralytic substances involved were highly inedible and tasted chalky.

As an afterthought Fluttershy considered that it would have been prudent to tell the security team that she could possibly use the water she had to lethal intent. Even if she wasn’t going to do so, it would have been nice of her to warn someone about it. Instead she kept silent about her abilities, it was always better to not tell anyone anything until asked about it in case trouble happens and she was definitely expecting it this time. She had enough water on her for a high powered electrical shocks while still having enough for her personal use. Fluttershy wasn’t the best at cloud manipulation, but she could wing it and see if it worked or not in a dire situation because that would be the only chance to find out if she could create an electric current generating cloud.

“Right you’re all cleared, though I hope you understand that we will be keeping a close eye on the robots. That one is armed like a tank and could take out this whole ship on his own if he was performing to full specs and the other is just plain weird when we scanned it.” The mouth full of sharp teeth caused Fluttershy to squeak slightly as it smiled in her direction, these lizard people were definitely carnivores. “If I were head of security I wouldn’t let that mentally warped robot through with that many weapons at the sway of an unknown ambassador vouching for him.”

Fluttershy took a calming breath; she had to trust herself to be calm around them. They were just doing their jobs and they had to eat like anyone else did to live, so what if they looked like scary dinosaur faced beings. Booster was bigger than they were and he was also a big eater, but he was too friendly and colorful to really frighten her. Speaking of, the big Space Ranger gave her a soft pat on the back to help her calm down further.

“Um… Roller’s not a…” Fluttershy petered off as she tried to speak up, the lizard’s scary visage scrutinizing her through both their helmets.

“Hey pal, I had a complete tune up two months ago! Besides that’s not a robot, he’s biological and was checked by LGMs to be completely clean of any foreign contaminants that could be considered dangerous or viral.” XR seemed irate enough for Fluttershy’s sake that she didn’t bother to speak up, the lizard certainly had a reevaluating look towards Mr. Wheel as he sat there beside Fluttershy cuddling up to her. He also seemed vaguely frightened at the angry visage of a floating robotic head getting in his face. XR didn’t like the feeling of Fluttershy being treated poorly in any given way. “If you need a second opinion then Fluttershy here would know, as she is an expert in animal care and has been with him since she arrived in the Galactic Alliance! Also you don’t know Fluttershy; she’s one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen a lot of ambassadors that weren’t anywhere as nice as she is. In fact I’m sure you’ve seen more than your fair share of self important assholes.”

“Calm down XR, while I agree that what he said was uncalled for; you shouldn’t try to make an incident of it! We’re ready to follow you, just lead the way.” Buzz was sticking to the diplomatic sides of things; Mira seemed indifferent to everything at the moment. Everything was kind of calm for once among his friends and team, they weren’t getting aggressive, they weren’t doing anything dumb and they were being relatively calm.

By now XR would have caused an incident, only he backed down immediately at Buzz’s insistence without a fight, but he did cross his arms and muttered a bit.

This kind of confused Buzz; his entire team was acting positively balanced and overly well behaved. He noticed that his team’s entire change in demeanor was all centered on the shy and gentle little ambassador who was starting to exude a calm that even he was beginning to feel. He had to stay tense as he knew that even while on a ship as heavily armed as this one was, things could still go wrong and it was hard not to smile at the squeaks and the adorably shy way Fluttershy held herself. She was the best at not being an entitled jerk of an ambassador that he had ever met despite the position she now found herself in.

As they were led down the hallways, Fluttershy thought about how safe she should feel instead of having this building sense of dread in her gut. The outside of the vessel was defended by hundreds of constantly manned guns, the ones Fluttershy had seen coming in on Star Cruiser Forty Two when it landed horizontally. Star Command Vessels can launch and land either vertically or horizontally; it was a unique feature that Fluttershy thought was interesting given that orientation only mattered when it was landing horizontally.

The inside of the vessel was equally well defended; hundreds of armed armada officers were stalking the hallways for even the slightest hint of something going wrong. Then there was the automatic defense turrets, Fluttershy saw them and knew that they were dangerous having seen similar things on the Valhalla that were usually inactive except when the vessel came under attack, luckily she had been in the hangar during that situation before the turrets were activated. Here the security was very well active even if there wasn’t a visible threat, it was noticeable by the wall turrets visibly moving left and right scanning for an opportunity to shoot an unwarranted intruder that didn’t know how to bypass them safely.

In comparison the Valhalla seemed too relaxed and entirely reliant on their scanners whereas here it didn’t seem as if they couldn’t be careful enough, this Grand Councilor definitely ran a tight ship and nobody here was dropping their guard for too long.

Fluttershy kept a slow walking pace following the two escorting lizard guards that looked like dinosaurs; it’s as if they were expecting everything around them to explode. Nothing happened, but they were still weary as the six of them were led up to the chamber where the Grand Councilor resided ready to receive Fluttershy and begin talking about things.

After a moment of mental math Fluttershy began to wonder something about the design of space bound vessels. The Great Fox had a forward facing bridge; the Valhalla had a bridge towards the rear of the ship above the thrusters and in the case of the Alliance Armada Flagship, the bridge was at the center of the ship away from everything vital.

A bridge in the forward position was likely good for running away from whatever is shooting at you and or observation purposes. A bridge in the rear was good for facing what was shooting at you and having a lot of armaments between you and whoever is shooting at you, it would be mostly used for ambush or assault purposes. It was obvious all space vessels were built with at least some form of self defense, but a ship with a bridge in the dead center of a large generally rectangular vessel? Now that was something of interest as it meant that you were likely in the safest place you could be while having an equal amount of firepower facing in all directions. So this kind of bridge was in a defensive and readily balanced position.

In fact it was becoming a bit of a common thing for Fluttershy to have been on multiple ships where the bridge was mostly exposed. Even if the bridges she’s seen were well armored or shielded, it still seemed kind of dumb to her to put a bridge closest to the outer edge of a space. This ship seemed to be designed so that to take it down you’d have to have enough firepower to split the entire ship into two halves or you’d inexorably pay for not doing that the first chance you had. Boarding it was also a problem since you would have to board the ship from all sides and even then there would still probably be an escape route from a central bridge.

The idle introspection into ship design was cut off when Fluttershy was brought up to a large door. Taking a deep breath she walked forward into the room after the door was opened and saw the tall imposing figure of the Grand Councilwoman who looked down at her with cold emotionless eyes. The room had plenty of other beings working at consoles and making sure the ship was running from their positions and they would talk every once in a while. The people at the consoles would continue to mind their own business unless the Grand Councilwoman needed something of them specifically or if there was a huge problem.

“So you’re the one who has the target painted on her back, to think he is now just as cuddly as you look to be.” After a pause she stepped forward gesturing for her to move over towards a monitor to stare at the stars projected on it. “I hope we can at least be amiable and open with each other, unlike he was at first. At least he’s found a home where he belongs and stopped being a terrible menace, can’t say the same for the rest of his family finding a place where they belong…”

“Um, I would like that we could be friends too. If it’s not too much of me to ask, who are you talking about?” The tall alien gave Fluttershy a simple glance and turned back to the screen, she seemed a bit cold and aloof.

“His name is Stitch, I thought him nothing but a monster and his highly extensive family also nothing but monsters. Some of them are still monsters, but they aren’t bad once you can give them something better to do than what they were made for.” The Grand Councilwoman knew she should try to think in the here and now, but she was having problems focusing after hearing the efforts of the little native girl of the planet Earth becoming a home to all those dangerous experiments. She often questioned if she had been wrong about whether or not one could be made evil, but be given a better purpose in life and had found the question daunting given what happened with Stitch. “I’m sorry; I’ve been a bit lost in thought as of late. I suppose you would like to talk about what you’re here for?”

“Um, I was okay with talking about what you wanted to… I’m not exactly the greatest diplomat in the world or even know what I’m doing as an ambassador. I think I’m here to try and befriend the Galactic Alliance in the stead of my race and I’m okay with doing that.” All Fluttershy got was a stare and a slightly raised brow.

“Quite, now tell me, what is the highest level of technology on your planet?” The Grand Councilwoman had heard a few things about this ambassador; she was wondering what the real situation was to have at least half of the worst criminals the Galactic Alliance had to offer out to get her. Aside from being a first contact race that is. “Also, what would you say is the greatest achievement of your race?”

“Um… well the most technological thing I can think of would be an airship.” As Fluttershy explained what an airship was, the Councilwoman frowned at her slightly. This led Fluttershy to feel a bit of a sinking pit in her stomach. “I think our greatest achievement as a race is that we live in harmony with every other intelligent race of Equus… well most of the time anyway. Every pony has a special talent, something that they are good at and mine is that I’m good with animals like Mr. Wheel here.”

Roller revved in an adorable manner and hopped in place, he like Fluttershy a lot too since she took him to the coolest places ever to roam around at high speeds. He really liked the place with the unmoving moving ground that went nowhere.

“Tell me did any of these other races of Equus build the ship that got you out this far… not to mention alone? Or are you another one of those races that was forced into slavery or abducted?” The Grand Councilwoman tried not to think of those first contact cases where they met the slaves pleading for help from the race that moved in and enslaved them with their technological prowess. Those affairs were always so… messy.

“Um… no, no one on the planet of Equus actually has the ability to build space capable ships as far as I know of. Does the abduction and slavery thing happen often, it didn’t to happen to me and it just sounds horrible. Aside from that I’ve recently learned that a species called the Chozo might have visited my planet and may have seen me in a dream. Does that mean anything to you?” Fluttershy didn’t like the idea of being forced into slavery and was lucky she wasn’t picked up by one of Andross’s units back on Aquas. Realizing she was being stared at she quickly came back to her senses she shyly poked at the ground with her front right hoof drawing small circles in a bashful manner. “Oh I’m sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Fluttershy and I’m a pegasus pony, what’s your name?”

“I agree that it is a horrible thing to subjugate those who aren’t as developed; one of the worst I’ve seen doing that is the Lowardian’s. At least the Galactic Guardian known as Atomic Betty is keeping them in check. They are a rather brutish race that I hope you never have the misfortune to meet without the aid of the Galactic Alliance to protect you. As for these ‘Chozo’ as you call them, hearing that they still see things means a great deal more than you can ever truly imagine or grasp. I imagine that there are very few planets they wouldn’t touch with wonder like a Star Nomad has.” Now the Grand Councilwoman would answer a question she hadn’t needed to in a long time. It was one that was hardly ever asked anymore and here she thought being personal with others was dead and everything was all title all the time. Still she held her regal tone and calm demeanor as she stared out at the depths of space with her arms folded behind her with the being from a new race standing beside her. “I have been simply called Grand Councilwoman for a long time, but as a friend you may call me Veritas.”

“I think Veritas is a nice name. I’m actually the second of my race or any being on our planet to leave our atmosphere in a long time. A little over one thousand years ago princess Celestia launched her sister to the moon, it was in the last few years that she came back and rejoined all of us on the planet.” Fluttershy found the Grand Councilwoman Veritas to be unflappable; she was looking at her with a bit of mild intrigue as if telling her to continue her story. “Well we have these beings on our planet we call princesses who are immortal, they’ve been documented as existing long beyond the normal lifespan of any pony and they are our leaders despite how few of them there are. Luna was the only one to leave our atmosphere before I did; she was sealed on the moon for being a bad pony and wanting our world to be plunged into eternal darkness.”

“How would she have gone about doing this?” Veritas the Grand Councilwoman was not one to say that something was impossible, at least not anymore after witnessing even Jumba Jookiba find his own place in the universe where he felt like he truly belonged. Though she missed Agent Pleakley at times, he was always drawn back to The Ohana. Family meant a lot to some and Veritas could understand the sentiment as a long lived entity.

“Well she could control the moon before Celestia sealed her on it using these things call the elements of harmony, oh my… I haven’t told you about all our princesses yet. Celestia is the princess of the sun, instead of the planet revolving around the sun she makes the sun revolve around the planet and her sister does the same thing only with the moon.” It was a bit surprising that she didn’t receive an incredulous look for saying that, Fluttershy continued on. “While it is true that not many of us have been off our planet, we have the ability to at least jump into alternate dimensions that is not technologically related. Would being in another dimension technically count as off planet or being on the same planet? Oh dear, I have a lot to think about and I’m sorry for not being good at this. Anyway of the other two princesses we know of, one is my good friend Twilight who is the princess of friendship and the other is Cadence the princess of love.”

“Does this Cadence force love to happen between two individuals?” Veritas was just asking for clarification, she was still wrapping her mind around a planet that had a sun and moon revolve around it. She hadn’t seen anything like it quite yet, but she wasn’t about to say such a planet existing wasn’t possible. There was strange sense of calm exuding from this pony and Veritas found it relaxing.

“Oh no, she’d never do that. She’d likely help you find true love or help you if your current relationship was going badly, but she’d never force anyone to do something they didn’t want to. Well unless it was by accident or she was turned evil. So normally she wouldn’t do something like that of her own volition.” At this point Fluttershy liked Veritas, she was letting her talk and she wasn’t being judgmental or anything. She actually let Fluttershy finish her thoughts out loud, but she still seemed cold and distant as she stared out at the stars. After a moment Fluttershy found herself doing the same thing, somewhere out there among the many stars was her home waiting for her to return.

“So tell me more about you’re race.” It was easy for Veritas to say that she had already accepted ponies as a part of the Galactic Alliance if they wished to be a part of it. At the very least Fluttershy was pleasant to talk to and she wasn’t demanding or anything.

“Well, do you want to know about just ponies or all the other intelligent races on Equus as well? I’m sure they’d like some acknowledgement too.” The shy little pony couldn’t fathom why she was receiving the smile that she got from Veritas. “I should mention that I still have contact with my home world, I just can’t find it. Princess Celestia asked me if there was a chance of an embassy and since you mentioned them; do know how I can find a Star Nomad?”

“I’m more than interested in learning about every being on your planet, but only the most prominent races.” Now here was a being who thought of others instead of just herself. In fact Veritas thought the meeting was going quite well, even if Fluttershy was obviously not a brave diplomat she was still quite friendly. “An embassy can be easily arranged. As for finding a Star Nomad to help you find your home world. I would suggest you try the next Galactic Conjunction, one always tends to be drawn towards that particular event and the next one should be happening soon.”

From there they simply spent time talking, while others watched on as the Grand Councilwoman known as Veritas opened up to the pony.

Author's Note

Provided Fluttershy lives long enough to reach the Galactic Conjunction to meet a Star Nomad things might actually start looking up for her.

I wonder what your thoughts on bridge placement in space ships are.

Something I just want to bring up, Fluttershy has an odd effect on sentient robots. Robots that gain sentience tend to have more primal emotions. As such if given the chance to interact with them, Fluttershy has an interesting effect while she's near them.

Even then Fluttershy is still quite unaware that she is having any kind of effect on those around her.

58

After a bit of talking, Fluttershy had described multiple races and species to Veritas the Grand Councilwoman. They discussed things from Griffons with some possible ancestors being Chozo to multiple species of ponies coexisting well with each other and the capability of interbreeding between just about all the intelligent lives on the planet. If that wasn’t the full scope of things same sex relationships were possible of producing offspring, even two males being together could have children.

Veritas didn’t seem surprised as it was a similar thing in the Galactic Alliance. Except robots and biological could not breed since it was obvious as to why that was, though marriage was allowed to robots was something that had been contested for hundreds of years in the past. Only sentient robots were allowed to get married though, otherwise the marriage in question wouldn’t be legally recognized and the robot in question would be labeled something else more risqué. The Grand Councilwoman wanted Fluttershy to drop the subject. The shy pony did drop it completely with a vibrant blush going throughout her face in embarrassment at how the topics had gotten that far before she realized what they had been talking about. If it was not a sentient robot it was labeled as a extracurricular toy, there were many crazy beings in the Galactic Alliance.

It led to the subject that sentient robots could adopt and take care of biological children provided they could pass a test on how to raise said child.

“That reminds me, we really should check up on Savy SL-2 on Tradeworld some time to see how she and the rents are doing.” XR put a four fingered hand to his helmet and rubbed at it a bit, he had edge closer to the conversation Fluttershy held with the Grand Councilwoman to listen in on it. “You know… we never did confiscate that miniature plasma bazooka from her. I only bring it up because her adoptive parents are robots. We were able to save her parents in the aftermath of an energy sucking vampire attack because the vampire didn’t destroy their cores; last I heard she was a top Ranger Scout.”

“It’s Tradeworld, I’m sure any child who grows up on that planet has good reason to be so well armed.” It was as if it was the simplest thing in the world to Veritas, she was so calm about it because she knew what that planet was like. She’s even heard of stranger things and a well armed child hunting an energy vampire with a high powered energy weapon was one of the more interesting missions Buzz’s team took part in. “Illegal things happen there every single day, as long as it doesn’t threaten the Galactic Alliance as a whole the Galactic Guardians and the Alliance Armada will leave it in the hands of Space Rangers to deal with. You do your job admirably at the very least, now if you will please let us continue to speak with some privacy?”

Personally Veritas would have used a chemical based projectile launcher as to not give the vampire something to feed on, the report on Rhizome weaponry from the other incident shows that they should have permanently dealt with that vampire before the Wire Wolf situation happened. That poor Space Ranger, being forced to turn into a robotic monstrosity. She watched as XR back away back to his position with a sheepish grin on his face.

“I… I have a question I’m not sure I want to ask…” It wasn’t about Tradeworld; Fluttershy had more tact than to open that can of worms. Goodness knows if a planet had children that grew up while being consistently armed with energy weapons, she really did not need to know or question why it was exactly like that on said planet. Veritas just stared down at her blankly. “Before I ask the question I want to, I just want you to know I mean you no offense. Would you be open to the idea of answering a rather personal question?”

“Ask.” It wasn’t a question or a statement; it was simply a command by one of the more intimidating beings that this pony had likely ever met that was quite genial if a little emotionally stiff. It was just how Veritas usually was, she had seen much in her lifetime and there wasn’t a question that could bother her much or so she supposed. She hardly ever smiled and there were few things that generally warmed her heart enough to get one on her face.

“Are you a… well you wouldn’t happen to be a…” Fluttershy became very withdrawn and looked around to make sure no one was near them and the Grand Councilwoman just continued to stare at her with those sharp piercing icy colored eyes. She let a bit of saliva build up in her throat so she could swallow and get the question out with a whisper. “I just want to know if you’re a Star Warrior.”

Fluttershy noticed a visible reaction of very well hidden shock, Veritas kept her calm demeanor despite that. Fluttershy watched as she brought her arms from her back and pretended to brush something off of her gold and black uniform with her left hand and she looked down at her two hooves while making it look like she was still looking at Fluttershy. After a moment she actually was looking at the pony before and she knelt down to meet Fluttershy’s eyes.

“It has been a long time; many have forgotten what we have done or our struggles that were legendary in their own right. We are but stories to children now, so tell me, what do you know of Star Warriors?” The gaze Veritas gave Fluttershy was much sharper than it had been, but it wasn’t any colder. “It is important that you keep quiet about it.”

“Well… I’ve met two Star Warriors…” Fluttershy started off only for Veritas to stop her with a touch to her withers, the Grand Councilwoman looked slightly livid.

“While I don’t think it impossible, I find it highly unlikely given we are so scattered that I have yet to meet another one of us for a very long time.” Veritas was at Fluttershy’s side. “Not many of us survived the ‘Void Wars’ and those who had quickly died shortly after its end from their injuries alone. I was one of the luckier ones. Nightmare, an entity born of the void, was bent on destroying all life in the universe including its own for last. The Star Warriors and the Galaxy Soldier Army paid a grave price to hold off the darkness, many immortals fought and fell for the right of this universe to continue its existence. Who could you have possibly met that could have survived such horrors? I barely recovered from my wounds without permanent injury; I can still feel the scars even if they have faded completely away.”

As Veritas got a distant look in her eyes, Fluttershy herself was feeling something similar. Nightmare… Fluttershy felt like she had been directly punched in the gut hearing that name, Nightmare as in Nightmare Moon? What was this Void War? Meta Knight only mentioned a war; he also mentioned that barely anyone survived from it and if Fluttershy was right Kirby’s parents were casualties of it.

“In my travels I met a Star Warrior named Kirby, he was very childlike but really powerful. I think the other Star Warrior I met whose name was Meta Knight was watching over him from a distance.” As she spoke in a hollow tone Fluttershy couldn’t help but make a connection between Nightmare Moon and this Nightmare that Veritas spoke of. “He was wearing a metal mask and his eyes changed color every once in a while and he had this strange sword, he also did this thing where he disappeared by wrapping his cape around himself. Oh and he was on the same planet I found Mr. Wheel here, right Mr. Wheel?”

Mr. Wheel nodded and revved, Fluttershy’s presence was keeping him completely docile. The being with the pointy protrusion that came from his side was obviously very dangerous, but surprisingly he wasn’t afraid of Meta Knight. Veritas saw the biological wheel creature agree to having seen Meta Knight and her reaction to this news warranted.

“HE STILL LIVES!” The Grand Councilwoman’s wild emotional shout had attracted everyone’s attention; she coughed into an enclosed hand. Buzz quirked an eye at her and she regained her cold composure and demeanor immediately. “Yes, well… I have just received some rather surprising news. Please continue going about your business unless something dire comes up. I am fine; this news is nothing to worry about.”

“Why are you so shocked?” Fluttershy couldn’t help but wonder, the sinking feeling in her gut doubled.

“Was this Meta Knight a small spherical shaped being?” Receiving a nod from the pony, Veritas was dead silent for more than a few minutes just staring at her. “I do not think many things impossible, but if Meta Knight truly lives he must nearly be in constant pain. Like a parasite that fed on negativity, Nightmare had tried to possess him multiple times. It fed him near endless amounts of darkness, hatred and pain trying to steal his form and turn him against us like it had done so to several Star Warriors before him. There are very few Star Warriors I would believe that could have survived such suffering had they not died of their injuries, he is not one of those that I had ever considered being capable… clearly I was wrong. He was always strong in both his heart and mind equally despite his small stature, I have always underestimated those of small statures even when I have as many such under my employ… there were so few of us left. His willpower must have been completely unbreakable to have survived unimaginable torture, from what you say he’s even watching out for a newborn Star Warrior.”

“Are you okay?” Fluttershy could see the Grand Councilwoman shed a few tears, she quickly wiped them away and was once back to being cold and aloof. Licking at her lips, Fluttershy debated about whether or not to tell Veritas about what happened with Nightmare Moon in better detail.

“I am fine; this news has made me feel… somewhat bittersweet. As a Star Warrior my powers were not geared for combat, but more to diplomacy and leadership. I led a regiment of Galaxy Soldiers to their doom; they were the precursors to the Galactic Guardians that exist now. I used my powers in combination with many others for boosting the morale of everyone around me to struggle to their very last. A few of those who fought in my regiment were Chozo; one of them was the only survivor of my entire regiment in that final battle with Nightmare.” The far off look in her eye must have scared Fluttershy; she tried to continue keeping her composure strong as to not frighten her further. Meta Knight was one of the few that refused not only evil, but to even be able to beat back death itself as well from beyond the brink? Even after the loss of so many loved ones, to just continue soldiering on despite the fact that he should be nothing more than a living corpse was both awe inspiring and very grim to the likely state of his existence. It sounded like he was doing well from the way Fluttershy tells it.

Veritas could not have known how close to the truth she was that Meta Knight practically was a living corpse, well that was until Kirby and sometime afterwards Fluttershy healed his heart with their very natures so that he could feel again. His heart had quite literally stopped pumping blood, his body had been running solely on darkness alone and was the very reason he had survived at all.

“I guess we were lucky that things didn’t get that bad…” Fluttershy had not meant for Veritas to hear that, but she did and Fluttershy winced at the hard stare she received. She decided to continue her thought knowing it was bound to make the freshly opened wounds that much wider. “Remember what I said about Luna wanting to cover our entire planet in eternal darkness? She went by another name at the time and Luna is also the princess of dreams so… at the time she was trying to make night eternal she called herself… um… Nightmare Moon…”

A grim frown immediately crossed Veritas’s face and it stayed there; Fluttershy watched as she closed her eyes took in a deep breath and then opened them.

“You are right, your people were truly lucky to have defeated Nightmare as swiftly as you did before it could spread its influence to too many others. Your people are especially lucky to have saved your princess from such corruption. I am now much more interested in finding your planet now; you are now part of the Galactic Alliance for bringing this news to me alone. I will immediately declare your planet under protection until your race is ready to traverse the stars on its own four hooves, claws or other appendages whatever they are… once we find it that is. You are now officially a protectorate of the Galactic Alliance; you can be assured that I will make sure of that when I discuss this with the Galactic President.” After saying that Veritas stood up to full height and squared her shoulders returning to a more regal appearance, then quietly said something that only Fluttershy would hear. “I now know for sure that Nightmare will never truly be destroyed; evil is a sadly necessary part to the continuation of all existence and as long as evil continues to exist, then so will it. I will fight it again should it attempt to engulf everything once more; Meta Knight will always have my aid should he find need of me. ‘We will never stop fighting until our last breath and the only way to make us do so is with a true death, our bodies may bend but our souls will never rend.’”

It sounded like a prayer of some sort; Fluttershy guessed it was a Star Warrior saying. Then Veritas turned to look at her strangely.

“I have a feeling that those two you spoke of are not the only Star Warriors in existence… I have a theory that your princesses may actually be...” Before she could continue any further alarms started blaring on the bridge, she stopped and looked up with a droll expression on her face. “I was wondering when we would be attacked, it seems I will have to cut my theory short and tell you my thoughts later Ambassador Fluttershy. I have business to attend to and your safety to think about.”

“Ma’am sorry to interrupt, but we’re detecting thousands of contacts incoming from all sides and their weapons are definitely active we’ve already got incoming missiles and the gunners are already taking them out. We’re detecting small arms, heavy weapons, battleship class weapons… Star Command cruisers are already moving into position to intercept as are the mercenaries with the ship designated Great Fox and it has already launched their compliment of fighters. What are your orders?” The small grey anteater like being sitting in the chair turned to the Grand Councilwoman looking up at her as she stood tall at the tactics screen.

“You already knew to prepare battle stations, we will undoubtedly be boarded and they will be after not only the ambassador here, but my life and other high profile targets as well. Summon the escorts to get them to their ship and launch every available fighter we have to assist those mercenaries and the cruisers.” She was cool and collected as she looked at the tactical screen that popped up before her and Fluttershy. She turned to Buzz and his team; they all threw her salutes as she addressed them. “Buzz you and your team are in charge of evacuating the ambassador safely, see that she stays safe or else…“

Letting the threat hang in the air Veritas turned around and started dishing out commands and orders at a quick pace. The two lizard soldiers from before quickly arrived to escort them back to their ship. Fluttershy whined slightly as Booster picked her up and his ears flattened in anger at a familiar sight on the tactics screen before he turned away. Mira looked at the screen and decided to comment on it.

“Torque… and what looks like every criminal in the Galactic Alliance, well that’s just great. This is looking to be a pretty rough time, huh Buzz.” Sure mindless remote controlled robot drones were one thing Mira didn’t mind, but an entire army of living thinking beings with a penchant for murder. At a bet half of them wanted to capture Fluttershy alive to sell at a lesser guaranteed price given that Zurg might stiff paying someone anyway. She didn’t think the Grand Councilor was wrong in saying that Fluttershy wasn’t the only target in a very target rich environment, considering Buzz himself was on quite a few hit lists as well.

“Well Mira, it looks just like another Tuesday to me.” Buzz moved into the hallways following the two suited lizards.

“Don’t worry your majesty, we’ll do our best.” Booster declared while hugging Fluttershy into his big armored form slightly crushing the air out of her.

The entire ship shook as it took a hit from something; Fluttershy was immediately carried out of the room. She saw a glance directed at her from Veritas the Grand Councilwoman; she has likely survived far, far worse than a bunch of poorly organized thugs and psychos out for blood.

Fluttershy hoped Veritas would be okay, it was strange that the Grand Councilwoman never asked how she guessed that she was a Star Warrior. It was the hidden pain in her eyes; it was almost as deep as Meta Knight’s had been. She was surprised that she had even picked up on something being odd about Veritas.

The entire ship shook and explosions were heard, Fluttershy whimpered in Boosters arms as he ran down the halls following the two large meat eating lizards. Another explosion from somewhere far off was heard.

“We’ve been breached and there are boarding parties coming in, repeat The Luxmea has been boarded. Oh, what I wouldn’t do to be on the BRB nine thousand right about now! All personnel prepare to defend yourselves to the best of your abilities; sectors one, five and thirteen have currently been breached. ” The two lizards stopped moving and looked to each other at hearing the communications officer.

“We’ll have to go through sector six and three, it’ll take longer but there are no boarders there currently.” The lizard turned down a different hallway with the Space Rangers following; they kept their energy rifles at the ready and when they turned the next corner they started firing immediately taking down three yellow four armed enemies that disappeared with popping noises.

“This is Rahzu, reporting in that sector six also compromised, we’ll try to plow through. Is sector three at least clear?” The lizard heard something speaking back to him. “Right, we’ll continue moving forward.”

“All personnel are advised to take precaution, someone has started hacking the inner defense turrets and they’re shooting at everything including the boarders, someone is messing with their IFF systems.” That particular communications officer was sounding much more frantic than before. Another explosion sounded in the back ground. “We need a fire team in sector four and will someone find a way to shot those turrets down!”

They continued forward down several passageways which had all kinds of other personnel fighting back a mass of four armed clones that popped when shot or thugs with powerful weaponry. Both sides were getting injured and through it all Fluttershy whimpered sadly in Boosters arms, because so many people were being hurt because of her.

Booster skidded to a stop and Fluttershy looked up to see one of those turrets pointed at her. Booster quickly got behind a wall and sat Fluttershy on the floor; he quickly leaned out to fire several shots at the turret that was firing blasts of splattering energy at everyone.

“Darn it we’re pinned down.” A missile flew by Rahzu and blew the turret up.

“We need to keep moving. There’s no way I’m letting Torque get Fluttershy!” XR exclaimed as he stuffed his oversized rocket launcher back into his subspace chest cavity. XR charged forward on the war path, he was quickly followed by Booster, while Buzz and Mira covered their backsides.

The lizards stayed in the middle with Fluttershy offering their firepower when needed. She tried to keep up with the pace they were setting, as they turned down a T-junction two explosions went off knocking her and the two lizards down.

Fluttershy dazedly shook her head and tried to move, she was pinned underneath something. She looked at the two corridors and saw that they were blocked off by a thick wall of metal and debris.

“Fluttershy, are you okay!” Booster could be heard yelling.

“Hey, are you alright Fluttershy, please don’t be dead!” XR sounded really worried.

“Ambassador Fluttershy, are you alive!” Buzz also yelled wanting to know if the one charged with his protection was alive.

“Fluttershy if you can hear us, say something!” Mira could get pretty shrill when she was worried about someone.

“Help, I’m stuck under something!” Fluttershy looked around and saw that the two lizards were at least still breathing. They had taken the brunt of the two blasts for her.

“Mira phase through that rubble! Do not leave her alone, that’s an order ranger.” Buzz had always found Mira’s abilities useful in many situations like this.

“I’ll try; I’ve been having a bit of a problem getting my powers to work recently.” A few seconds later Mira quickly ran straight through the rubble. “Hold on Fluttershy, I’ll get you out from under this.”

“Mira, look out!” A shadow had dropped from the ceiling and slammed harshly into Mira’s head knocking her to the floor.

“That could have been bad; them Tangean’s are really tough cookies to deal with.” The pony could not get a good look at the figure from her position as tears were blurring her vision, nor did she see how tall she was but her voice had an accent reminiscent of a gangster. The pony saw the barrel of a gun pointed at her.

“Go ahead, make it quick.” Fluttershy closed her eyes and waited, a shot fired and she felt the weight lift off of her and now the gun poked her in the chest.

“Oh I’m not here to kill you personally, though I am here to get you killed.” The explosions hadn’t been a random coincidence; it had been a part of Bonnie’s cunning plan. She swung the barrel of her gun at Fluttershy’s temple. “Goodnight Gracie!”

Author's Note

Bonnie got to Fluttershy, but how did she plan it to end up like this? Well let's see that when it's brought up.

One wonders what the Grand Councilwoman will have to say about Fluttershy being kidnapped.

This has nothing to do with the story so stop reading now, I've been on a Star Wars hole poking spree recently.

The Death Star is one of the most poorly designed doomsday devices ever given it's weak point, while small, will destroy the entire thing in one shot.

Nobody in the rebel alliance even bothered to question how they were supposed to make their torpedo's do a ninety degree turn like Luke's apparently can. They lost just about everyone on the Death Star attack anyway, it would have been simpler to come in at an attack angle that would naturally give them a better shot straight down the pipe. You know, instead of flying halfway around the death star through a trench made specifically so people would fly down it in a straight line and be easy pickings? Whereas in open space you'd have more room for evasive maneuvers.

This is kind of the reason why I brought up the bridge thing, since they built a second Death Star that you could fly into and hit the exposed core. Something that the rebellion didn't require Jedi for, meaning they made it that much easier to destroy. All it would have taken is one brave pilot like Russel from Independence Day to 'shoot the core'.

Star Destroyers have redundant systems right? Well their three shield generators are not shielded themselves, which is another dumb design problem. The entire ship is already practically immune to laser fire even without the shields because of how thick the armor on those things are, the only reason the shields are there in the first place is to prevent explosives from destroying the ship. To reiterate the problem with this, the shield generators can be easily destroyed by concentrated laser fire because they aren't shielded.

Star Destroyers are poorly defended from below and behind without tie fighters to pick up the slack, guess where their shield generators are located? Two above the bridge at the back of the ship, one underneath the ship.

Tie Fighters don't have shields either, it's like the Empire actually wants its people to die. At least the rebellion gives you shields that can take one or two hits and a robot that can fix said shields mid flight should they go down.

The Empire actually has tons of resources for shielded fighters with repair droids, mind you this technology existed before the emperor took over.

59

“Goodnight Gracie!” The sight of Bonnie Jookiba knocking Fluttershy was caught on the inner sensor network.

The bridge was now covered in scorch marks and explosion damage and the Grand Councilwoman just stared at the screen with a thinly veiled disdain behind her blank face as she watched a replay of the events leading up to this moment. She turned to the Space Rangers, she didn’t say a word, but she was staring at them with some level of contempt. She was barely even slightly ruffled and they looked like they had been badly roughed up in comparison. It wasn’t exactly odd that she was the one that came out of it looking better than they did; even if she wasn’t wearing armor she was still a Star Warrior. She has had a long history of fighting whether people remember it or not, she could even easily go toe to toe with experiment Stitch. The end result of that fight would have her looking like these rangers did.

“Who was that… she really knocked me for a loop, I didn’t even see her coming.” Rubbing at the knot on her forehead Mira groaned slightly in pain, she and the other three rangers had helped capture just about every thug that attacked the ship.

The battle had been quick and painful for all the thugs that had been involved in the attack. The crew of the Luxmea was quite good at their jobs with handling the boarders, given that not a single crew member that ran Veritas’s bridge was so much as scratched, things went well overall. There were only seven severe injuries reported and those personnel would be back on active duty within the week. The medical teams onboard were excelling in their jobs at keeping most of the thugs alive, only about sixty three thugs had died in the brutal reprisal to their sudden boarding parties and more than twice that number had been severely injured in the first five minutes.

The truth of the matter was that Veritas actually fought the boarders personally without getting touched and used her powers to boost morale. The Grand Councilwoman noted that only two beings had escaped Fluttershy’s mercenary guards, her crew and the surrounding Star Command support. One was the terrorist Torque; he hadn’t personally entered into the fray and let his clones do the talking. The other was something that riled a bit of anger in Veritas; she was still underestimating small wily opponents.

“You wouldn’t have…” The reason why the Grand Councilwoman had tried to have Fluttershy evacuated was because she could have gotten caught in the cross fire, however everything was orchestrated from the very start of the attack. No idiot would have tried breeching her ship at it its strongest points unless they had a death wish, as such all the fools had to have followed her plan to the letter. Only her plan didn’t involve them getting what they came for and giving her time to get away scot free with a stolen Armada Cruiser. “Arvida… I know this may seem like an odd question to you, but what color was the ship she stole from us?”

“I believe it was the red one ma’am, we’ve just found out that she snuck aboard in one of the refrigerated cargo containers we picked up from capital planet.” She was as tall as an LGM and was a grey bipedal alien that looked like a cross between an aardvark and an armadillo. She was still going over all the tactical data of the fight, being the personal bridge officer of the Grand Councilwoman was a big deal for her and she would not let her ladyship down. “She pulled a living meat icicle scenario on us.”

“Of course it was. It’s always the red one with them.” The Grand Councilwoman sighed into her left hand as she rubbed at her temple, the thugs and her crew had been played off each other as a distraction while an Armada Cruiser was stolen out from under them. From the reports it had been completely fine before the pilot went to launch it and it wouldn’t start, after looking over the recordings it was apparent that Bonnie had hotwired it to look like it needed repairs ahead of time so she could use it as an escape route later.

“Excuse me for butting in ma’am, but do you know who that is? She doesn’t show up in Star Command’s database.” For the record Buzz had remotely accessed the database for information on all the captured thugs, Torque was still at large and so was the unknown assailant that had caught Mira off guard.

“She wouldn’t be, she tends to stay out of sight when she commits crimes. This has earned my attention greatly and it was quite cunning of her, she used every thug that attacked as pawns. She was most certainly the brains behind this assault and she definitely planned for it to go poorly so she could escape the situation much more easily.” After standing there for a moment Veritas turned around to Buzz and his friends. “I’m impressed by her gall to say the least; she’s a highly dangerous individual who is not to be underestimated. I’ve apparently made that mistake one too many times, though something bothers me about this situation.”

“Didn’t that thing say she was going to get Fluttershy killed? Shouldn’t, you know, we be going after her with extreme prejudice?” XR smashed his hand into the palm of his other with an angry look on his face. “What do you think she’ll do to Fluttershy? She could be torturing her for her own sick twisted amusement right this minute! Oh I already dislike the looks of her, ugh reminds me of that darn Yukari.”

“She is not a killer, nor is she one to torture anyone and she tends to keep off the radar by not being caught in the act of what she was made for. She can plan things so well that she had distracted both sides while she stole Fluttershy out from under us in the midst of all the chaos.” After a moment of contemplation, the Grand Council went back through several recordings. Every single thing that happened since Fluttershy left the bridge was orchestrated by Bonnie, from telling her own men which way to go to hacking the defense turrets. She wasn’t the best of hackers having left a footprint behind in their network, but she was good at hotwiring things that it was hard to tell she tampered with their Armada Cruisers at all.

“Well, who is she and what is she going to do with Fluttershy?” Booster thought the little alien looked adorable. Then again he was a sucker for cute things, but if she hurt one hair on Fluttershy’s head he’d… sit on her. Yeah, Booster wasn’t one to try and kill anyone. Sure he could beat the stuffing out of just about anyone, but he was always a sweet guy at heart and he tended to follow his heart quite well. It was telling him that something was up with this situation, which is why he asked about it.

“I find myself lacking an answer to what she is going to do now that she has Fluttershy; I find the possible answers as terrifying as you likely do. As for whom she is? She is the illegal genetic experiment one four nine, also known as Bonnie Jookiba.” The Grand Councilwoman received a shock look from both Buzz and XR, while Mira and Booster looked questioningly at them. “She is a master thief that can steal something without your knowledge. She is very swift witted, uses mostly small arms, can cling to just about any surface, hotwire and hack most forms of machinery and she is especially good at evading capture. She can also dodge almost anything within a certain extent at high speeds to the point that it looks almost like she’s being precognitive.”

“Wait, you don’t mean Jookiba as in Jumba Jookiba? That guy! Whoa no, I don’t want to be anywhere near a Jookiba experiment! Do you realize how high a threat level his six two six experiment registered in the Galactic Alliance? Zurg stole some of Jookiba’s work for that Project X thing he used to try and take over Buzz’s body! Nah uh, not dealing with that guys work! No way no how! I don’t want to go!” Feeling his body getting slapped from behind, XR came to his senses and realized he was getting hysterical. “Thank you Booster, I needed that. Still though, a Jookiba experiment! I’d do just about anything to rescue Fluttershy, but even that’s asking a little bit much of me.”

“What’s a Jookiba experiment?” Mira had noticed how quiet Buzz had gotten and just had to ask and know the answer to that question.

“They are biological organisms made by a mad Kwelakwanian scientist named Jumba Jookiba, he’s caused a lot of mischievous havoc throughout the Galactic Alliance before his capture. Strangely enough, none of his experiments has ever killed anyone despite coming close to it several times.” At this point Buzz looked away from his team. “I’ve fought and detained a few of his experiments; the one even I couldn’t handle was experiment six two six. That things threat level is well earned and it hasn’t been heard of since it escaped a prison ship.”

“Well you’ll find this opponent slightly easier, Bonnie is nowhere near as powerful as her youngest brother Stitch is. Still though, her cunning should not be underestimated in the slightest and she is usually seen in the company of another experiment. That would be experiment one five zero, who is also known as Clyde Jookiba, it is odd that I did not see his presence here.” While Veritas contemplated that, she turned to her bridge personnel once more. “Arvida, have you found out where the ambassadors little round friend has gotten to?”

“No ma’am, all I know is that we’ve scanned the ship for his life signs, he’s not on board and we haven’t found that barely sapient creature. He’s probably followed the ambassador to wherever she was being taken to. Given the general intelligence of this Bonnie in question, if she’s gone into hiding somewhere then we have reason to believe that she most likely went to…” Arvida was cut off when the Buzz spoke up darkly sending chills down her spine.

“The criminal capital of gamma quadrant. Tradeworld…” Buzz’s tone meant he wasn’t happy, he knew how criminals thought. If there was one place he would go after having just abducted an ambassador for unknown nefarious purposes, then he would have to bet that Fluttershy would have been taken there. It was the planet where anyone could lie low, it was also a place of total chaos that was easy to get lost in given the scope of the main city on that planet.

Even if they didn’t find a direct trail, Buzz just knew this was all going to come back to Zurg somehow. In fact he was betting on it, which is why he was going to ask Fox and his team to hang around Planet Z. While they did the stake out, he and his team would be trying to intercept this Bonnie character to find out why she took Fluttershy. They would do just that as soon as repairs were made to a ship that could fly them there.

“Oh, my head….” Fluttershy whined a bit, as she slowly stirred and realized that she couldn’t move, it didn’t take her long to realize her front hooves were tied behind her back and her hind legs were also equally pinned. She took a glance around the dreary room she was in; she was still wearing her Rhizome suit and she likely still have her memory stone on her as all her other stuff was sitting at a nearby table. Also sitting at the table was a creature slurping up noodles from some broth filled soup.

A quick movement from the creature and a blast of energy splattered the wall next to her. Fluttershy shuddered at how close that had been to hitting her, the little being eating the noodles was obviously her kidnapper given the way they expertly wielded that blaster. She was likely the one that also knocked Mira out.

“Yeah, don’t even think about escaping, especially not while we’re on this planet. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you before we got to that jerk Zurg, got it Sweet Cheeks?” Bonnie might have come off as more intimidating to Fluttershy, if she weren’t so adorable.

Fluttershy wasn’t about to tell this stranger that she liked being tied up, it was a kind of kink hers that she liked being tied up every once in a while. She felt both safe and unsafe at the moment considering the stranger had a blaster leveled at her. After a moment of checking her lips Fluttershy decided to say something.

“Oh no, I wouldn’t dream of escaping while you were here, um… whoever you are. My name is Fluttershy.” Fluttershy wasn’t going to begrudge her kidnapper her name or anything like that; she was just being a polite hostage. Now that she looked at the one who had taken her hostage she noticed something of vague interest and decided to bring it up. “Excuse me for asking this and I know you have some reason for holding me against my will, but are you some form of Etecoon?”

“Yep, I should have definitely gagged you when I still had the chance.” Bonnie started rubbing her face, she really missed having someone to talk to and she shouldn’t have been too surprised when she didn’t bother gag her captive. Due in part to her genetic programming she got from her father, she really hated incarcerating others. However the situation warranted that she had a captive audience so she may as well converse with her.

Looking at the creature with the pretty face, Bonnie couldn’t help but see that disgustingly expectant face of her captive waiting for an actual response to her question instead of the one she just gave. Darn those big eyes of hers were adorable… oh great, now she was questioning her own sexuality and she wasn’t even made to have one in the first place! She quickly downed another gaggle of noodles and some of the meaty flavorful broth. She wished she had a Reuben to go with her meal, but six two five wasn’t here to make one for her. Why did she keep smiling at her like that?

“What, what is it!” Bonnie angrily stated while pointing a blaster at the pony who continue to look at her expectantly without being phased by the gun in her face. Her captive continued to stare at her without worry. “Fine, I’ll answer you’re stupid little question then!”

After a moment to gather her head, Bonnie couldn’t believe she had given in so easily. Then again she was holding someone else in a form of prison that would lead to a rather slow and painful death sentence. It was actually painful to try and ignore something that her programming was saying that was wrong of her; she was supposed to only steal things that aren’t alive and thinking. She and Clyde never kidnapped since it hurt them to even hold someone else against their will, unless it was required to escape a situation.

“Okay, yes my father used DNA of an extinct species called Etecoons to create me, there are you happy!” How in the world was this being making her so mad without trying, Bonnie took several deep breaths and tried to calm down before she did something she’d regret.

“Oh they’re not extinct, I’ve actually met some.” At least Fluttershy hoped that the Etecoons were still alive and spending time with the mother Dachora and her chick right this moment. After a moment she realized that Bonnie said something that made her frown at her sadly. “What did you mean by create you?”

“Look can you shut up and let me eat in peace! I swear if I didn’t have to deal with a cute broad like you, I’d be much better off.” Having gone back to her meal, Bonnie could feel Fluttershy’s eyes digging into her from the side and she resisted the urge to look at her captive. “Stop staring at me like that.”

“Like what miss um…?” Fluttershy said simply with a small smile. She always thought she’d do well in a hostage situation, just not in the capacity that she was the hostage. This being was small, cute and furry; the very things Fluttershy preyed on with her adorable nature. Said being had tied her up in a way that it wasn’t painful, but wasn’t loose enough to let her escape. This being didn’t have to worry about her health and it was rather thoughtful that she did.

Bonnie didn’t dignify this with an answer and continued her meal with a slight blush on her face; she was a little surprised that Etecoons still existed out there somewhere. That was par for the course given that most of her brothers and sisters had Etecoon genetics in some form or fashion; her father had found some lifeless ones a long time ago which led to her eventual creation.

Bonnie’s family could call each other cousins and they wouldn’t be wrong genetically, though she still found it a little odd that her youngest brother fell in love with one of his older sisters. At least when Jumba created her and the others in her family, he gave them all the capacity to feel emotions just like any other normal being. Their father, if he could truly be called that, also gave them reproductive organs as some sort of sick twisted joke considering that they were all genetically unique and unlikely to have children of their own.

Once she was finished with her meal she contemplated knocking out the ambassador again, she certainly wasn’t one of those uppity first contact types everyone hears so much about.

“I’m just giving you a fair warning, its better that you really don’t try anything funny. This planet is quite dangerous for someone like you.” After that Bonnie sat down a computer and started surfing.

“Oh I’m not very funny at all… but my friend Pinkie is.” It was a little optimistic of Fluttershy to believe that she’d get the name of her captor so soon; she just had to keep trying. “Wish I could have found my home planet before I got captured, isn’t it nice to have a home? I’ve been lost for so long without the ability to find my own.”

“Don’t care.” Bonnie said offhandedly waving her hand absentmindedly at Fluttershy, knowing that she was scrutinizing her appearance and was trying to ignore the innocent stare of her captive watching her every movement.

Fluttershy took in her captors form. Mostly green and yellow, had antenna orange and yellow tipped antenna and pretty big ears, there were blue stripes on her joints at her arms and legs. A very unique feature on her appearance was the boomerang shaped marking on her forehead. She also had solid blue eyes, two teeth sticking out of the top of her mouth and a little brown nose. She looked somewhat like an Etecoon only with more of a koala flavor to her with that stumpy tail; her small fingers looked to be rather nimble despite not being very long.

“I’m wondering… if it’s not too much that I ask as your prisoner… but am I making you angry? I’m really sorry if I am, I really don’t know anything about you.” In truth Fluttershy knew what she was doing, it was similar as to what happened with Rarity and the Diamond Dogs. Only in this case she wasn’t trying to whine her way out of the situation, she was trying to befriend her way out of it.

“In a way you are, but it’s because you aren’t a jerk like I am and you definitely don’t deserve what is eventually going to happen to you Sweet Cheeks.” Goodness knows that Bonnie could only guess at what Zurg had in mind for her; he’d definitely get his sick twisted jollies from Fluttershy. “I swear you have nothing on you worth stealing! A container of water, that’s a dime a dozen. A knife made out of glass, while I admit it is a little odd; anyone who breaks a window can quickly make one of those. Those things that tasted like peas from earth, only covered in butter? Not worth much except as a snack. Even the translator on your head is pointless to steal. Out of all that, the one thing that you had that was actually worth stealing is that stupid stone of yours. For some reason I can’t even keep a hold of it past the freaking door!”

“Yes, it’s actually impossible to steal and was given to me for the sole purpose of being a gift of friendship with the race that gave it to me.” Fluttershy didn’t want to state the name of the race incase this being went after them. “It’s called a memory stone and it’s also indestructible too.”

“Yeah, found that out when I shot the darn stone several times and it just kept reforming in your bag. That freaky stuff just doesn’t sit right with me, it’s almost like it’s taunting my talent as a thief.” After a moment Bonnie realized she had just given away what she was point blank and that she was opening up to this creature. She turned away in a huff. “Ugh, just forget it.”

“Why are you a thief? Is it your special talent or what you wanted to be in life?” Fluttershy knew she could eventually get a name out of this mysterious being if she kept talking to her.

“You could say that, but who cares about what I wanted? I was created in a lab and not born like you were.” Wait, why was Bonnie even telling her that? Is something wrong with her? She continued on. “I was specifically made to steal things and that’s exactly what I do because it’s what I was made for, like all my six hundred and twenty five brothers and sisters! Now stop being so pleasant with me.”

“Why would I do that, you’re very lonely and I think you need a friend right now. My special talent is that I’m good with animals.” The glare she received didn’t make Fluttershy flinch as she smiling even more at this being. She’s never had a mother and that was just sad. “It also sounds like you don’t get along with your family very well; do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m Bonnie… Bonnie Jookiba… now stop yapping!” Bonnie started grumbling to herself about when she would call Zurg as she made her plan to free her brother, all the while clutching at her skull with a hand. “Mm…not lonely…”

Author's Note

Bonnie is designed to steal just about anything that is considered valuable or of value. Kidnapping a living beings is something she hates, because it's actually a deeply rooted part of her genetic programming that it physically hurts her to do it.

She and her brother Clyde hate being captured, so they hate it when they have to incarcerate others for a lengthy amount of time. They were made as free spirits, so freedom is such a big deal for them.

Every time Fluttershy talks she's forcing Bonnie to acknowledge her existence and what she's doing, Bonnie is trying to ignore her because it's quite painful because she can't.

However she's doing this so Clyde can escape his situation, so it evens out to a constant dull throb.

60

“Look I have her, you want her and I’ve played your game. Now when do you want me to deliver?” Bonnie was glaring at the deep glowing red eyes of Zurg’s purple helmet as he chuckled darkly.

“Oh, the games not over yet, I believe Torque is still in play. If you can get away from him and any of the rest of the thugs while evading Star Command and the Alliance Armada to somehow manage even reaching Planet Z with the ambassador still alive, then I might consider the game over and let you in through the defense systems for an attempt at your goals.” Zurg gave out a dark laugh. “This is all kinds of delectable on the evil scale to me already, don’t disappoint me now. I sorely need that new torture subject, my current one might not last another week.”

As the screen cut off Bonnie had suddenly had a glare on her face and her fists was clenched and shaking. Zurg would pay for everything, even if she had to blow up his whole planet to do it!

“He’s really scary… also I’m sorry to tell you this, but I might need to use the bathroom soon.” Fluttershy certainly didn’t like Zurg; she also didn’t understand why Bonnie was listening to him but something about the game and the fact that he was currently torturing someone seemed to have Bonnie looking positively filled with a murderous rage. Maybe getting her mind off of it for a moment would make her look less murderous? “How do hostage situations like this usually work when the captor is trying to keep the hostage alive and well? Does that mean you have to get me something to drink as well as feed me? I know you’re obviously not going to untie me any time soon and I’m okay with that.”

“Oh for the love of…” Bonnie was once again clutching at her skull with her ears dropping downwards as Fluttershy mentioned being a hostage; it was causing her to have a slight migraine.

“Are you okay? You look to be in a lot of pain.” Honestly if she wasn’t currently tied up, she would be at Bonnie’s side trying to make her feel better. “I also want to know why you’re so angry.”

“What do you care, I have you tied to a freaking chair and I plan to hand you over to the nut job that’s been torturing…” Bonnie quickly closed up and didn’t say anything else. She looked away while crossing her arms. “Look, just drop it. It’s better that you don’t like me, I think you’ll even learn to hate me Sweet Cheeks.”

“I don’t think I can really truly hate anything, at least for a long time anyway. I can fear and maybe be deeply upset with someone, but I don’t really get angry easily unless a friend of my mine is in danger.” Speaking of, Fluttershy wondered if everyone else was alright and what had happened to Roller in all the chaos? She hoped that he hadn’t gotten lost; he was one of the few constants she has had since she herself got lost in the universe.

“Yeah, believe what you want. I’m not about to untie you, but you do need to take care of your business… doing it in that suit wouldn’t be so unpleasant would it?” Clutching at her head again Bonnie couldn’t help but let out a grunt of pain.

“Actually the suit I’m wearing runs on clean water and sunlight, it’s got a very good life support system. Unfortunately the people of Rhizome have yet to actually make these suits to where they can handle bodily wastes. Professor Triffid said he was still working on it and that was before… right.” The pink petals at the back of Fluttershy’s head wilted in front of her face as she gazes at the floor.

“Whoa, what hit the depression button on you?” Her headache wasn’t alleviating as long as she personally held Fluttershy prisoner, her programming was quite painful in this respect. Holding others prisoner was something neither she nor Clyde could do for an extended period of time and they personally hated jail with a passion. Some people actually belonged in jail and she knew that to be a truth, even if she didn’t like it. “Look maybe I can untie you, but I don’t feel particularly good about letting you out of my sight so you can drain you’re fluids into a Porcelon’s mouth.”

“What’s a Porcelon?”Fluttershy squirmed a bit as she felt a pressure build up between her hind legs, at this point she was about ready to promise Bonnie anything to dodge the embarrassment of going on the chair she was tied to.

“They are a race of these guys that basically look like living toilets; some are smaller than others and sometimes get mistaken for bodily waste receptacles...” Bonnie had a disgusted look on her face as she stuck her tongue out, she had seen the oddest fantasies on the Galactic Alliance interconnected networks about them and she wished she hadn’t. Some people will always come up with the weirdest crap involving the subject, quite literally. She had to wonder how some people could even find something that horribly repulsive in any way, shape or form, attractive.

“What if I promise you I won’t even begin an attempt at running away? Oh, I know I can make you a Pinkie Pie promise!” Of all the things Fluttershy did not want to do, is pee herself in this chair. She was a civilized pony and she didn’t like the idea of doing something like that, especially not in front of her captor. “I Fluttershy do hereby Pinkie Promise…”

Pinkie’s ears started twitching; her hair was in an almost constantly half deflated state wanting to always hear news about how Fluttershy was doing from Discord. Once she got off work, hearing from him that Fluttershy was still among the living brightened her day considerably.

What she had felt, was that someone was making a Pinkie Pie promise. Somehow the feeling perked her up considerably. After a moment she stopped working in the bakery at Sugar Cube Corner and walked up to Mrs. Cake.

“Excuse me Mrs. Cake I have to go somewhere for a minute, I’ll be right back!” Getting a nod from Mrs. Cake, Pinkie Pie hopped off as she felt a second tingling feeling that she was needed to shout something at someone a long distance away.

“That I will truly be your friend and that I will not run away from you until I’ve assisted you in handing me over to this Emperor Zurg or finished helping you in your goals involving him. It doesn’t matter whichever comes first.” Of course Fluttershy knew this had to happen now or she’d be stuck at Bonnie’s side forever unless something were to separate them against her will, but she could live with it.

Unfortunately Fluttershy also realized a huge problem with her wording, but it was too late to take it back. Now she couldn’t physically run away from Bonnine, she could only run towards her or walk away from her. There were loopholes however; at least flying away did not count as running away.

“Hah, do you really expect me to believe that you promise that you will let me hand you over to that ruthless dictator?” Bonnie certainly didn’t look convinced. “He’s going to do horrible things to you when I get you to him, you do realize that right?”

“Of course, I made a promise and I will stand by it. Because breaking a promise is the quickest way to lose a friend…” Fluttershy would not bend now, she was speaking in a solemn tone and her promise was set in stone because she invoked Pinkie’s name for it. She would help Bonnie Jookiba, even if it got her killed and was the very last thing she did.

Fluttershy knew what would happen to her, but at least Bonnie will be able to rescue whoever it was Zurg was torturing, it was obviously really important to her and who was Fluttershy as a good friend to stand in the way of that? Obviously Bonnie loved this individual enough to kidnap her, which seems to be tormenting her physically for some reason. Of course at the end of her statement, the most expected event in the universe happened in front of Fluttershy and it shocked her as much as it did the person who had her tied down.

“FOREVER!” Pinkie screamed as she popped out of the couch causing Bonnie to jump in shock, she even had pulled both her blasters and had them aimed at Pinkie who just stared at her. Then Pinkie started speaking in an alien dialect that Bonnie obviously understood and that Fluttershy heard through her translator. “Oh hey, you’re new. Here have a cupcake! That’s for someone nearby who made a promise in my name; it’s been a while since someone so far away did that. Now whatever you do, tell that pony whoever they are that they can’t break a promise made in my name or you’ll get one just like that right in the eye! Oh hey there Fluttershy, I hope you and your new friend are having a lot of fun, I would hug you but you seem a little tied up at the moment. Uh oh, I have to get back work!”

With that Pinkie went back into the couch leaving a very confused experiment holding a cupcake and a saddened mutated pegasus pony who stared longingly at the couch. After a moment Bonnie slowly set the cupcake down on the table, holstered her blasters and looked under the couch cushions to find nothing was there.

“Did that seriously just happen?” It was all Bonnie could say as she turned to Fluttershy, she looked at the cupcake and then back to Fluttershy quirking her brow at the pony.

“That was my friend Pinkie Pie and yes, that did just happen. I would have asked her to stay with me, but that would have been selfish of me since all the ponies back home need her more than I do at the moment.” For the life of her Fluttershy could not understand why Bonnie was staring at her with such an incredulous look on her face. She knew Zurg was going to be horrible and would do painfully agonizing things to her, but she was accepting of that as long as she could help Bonnie be a better… created being.

“Okay I’m back Mrs. Cake and you’ll never guess who I saw, I saw this weird little green alien thing with these weird things it pointed at me and she also had…” After a moment Pinkie’s face went blank, her pupils shrunk and her hair immediately deflated. She slowly turned around and walked out the back door to Sugar Cube Corner while being followed by Mr. and Mrs. Cake with worried looks on their faces. After which she slowly trotted up to the nearest tree and started bashing her head against it while repeating one word over and over again. “Stupid… stupid… stupid…”

A few hours later at the municipal hospital found in Ponyville, Pinkie groggily started coming around to a bunch of worried faces. She could vaguely see the edges of bandage wrapped around her forehead; she felt she might have stitches in there too.

“I should have stayed with her!” Pinkie wailed as she finally fully woke up and came to her senses; this scared every pony in the room. After it was explained what happened all her friends just stared at her with sad frowns.

“It’s okay Pinkie, it’s not like you could have done… well whatever it is you do…. to bring her back with you right?” After a moment Twilight realized that she was right in Pinkie not being capable of bringing Fluttershy back with her. Pinkie could have, as she said so herself, stayed with her and been at her side. Seeing the destroyed look on Pinkie’s face, Twilight knew she wasn’t capable of moving other ponies around unless it was between two points on Equus. Say something to cheer her up; you’re the brain pony here! “Maybe we can tell her to say that line again so at least one of us can be with her!”

“It doesn’t work like that Twilight! It only works when I’m not expected to appear! So if we tell Fluttershy I’m expected to appear the next time she does say something like that, then I most certainly won’t! It won’t work if she’s truly expecting me now either, even if we don’t tell her! She’ll be so upset that I won’t appear with a cupcake next time!” Pinkie then started sobbing into her hooves hysterically and was brought into a hug by Rainbow Dash. She was deeply upset about the missed opportunity to be stuck somewhere else in the universe with Fluttershy, she even talked to a strange alien that had obviously tied her up.

Oh no what if Fluttershy was in Danger because the alien was going to hand her over to some torturous complete monster on a hellish stormy planet because it was torturing her brother and she needed to rescue him? Pinkie started bawling all that much harder, she could have helped both of them! She only gave them a single cupcake…. wait… what if it was enough?

“Look I don’t know if I can fully trust you, but after that… well…” Bonnie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She went with her gut on this one, with a pull and a twirl Bonnie fired her blaster once. Her aim had not been off and the ropes fell to the floor leaving Fluttershy to shake the numbness out of her legs and to look towards her questioningly. “Go to the bathroom, it’s over there and don’t you dare take forever in there.”

Fluttershy went through the bathrooms sliding door as indicated by Bonnie and as soon as the door closed behind the pony, Bonnie felt an immediate load off of her skull. She logically knew she was still holding Fluttershy captive, but allowing her some freedom had eased her headache by a lot. It wasn’t likely going to go away until she finally let Fluttershy go into Zurg’s clutches and the weird thing about that promise; she actually believed Fluttershy meant it with her heart. Heck Bonnie should have had a harder time believing anyone who would make a promise as insane as that one sounded.

Lifting an ear Bonnie could hear the sound of tinkling and after a moment a few plops sounded in the toilet, some wiping paper was being rustled in there as well. After having invaded the pony’s privacy long enough Bonnie sighed and went over to the fridge to find something to eat.

There were a few alien vegetables and some meat for a sandwich in the fridge; Bonnie knew Fluttershy was an herbivore and that she shouldn’t feed her meat. Maybe she could make some ramen and chop some of the vegetables into it, she didn’t know exactly what would be safe but she decided to take a wild guess that most inert plants wouldn’t have too much of an adverse affect on her. Hopefully Jo-adian produce doesn’t cause her anything more harmful than some gastrointestinal problems.

Sighing to herself she started working on the soup and noodles for the pony. She wasn’t very hungry having already had her fill and she watched as Fluttershy walked out of the bathroom with clean hooves and a bright smile on her face. The pony simply just walked over to the couch and planted her butt down.

“What, you’re not going to attack me or anything?” Bonnie was almost expecting Fluttershy to rush from the bathroom to try and attack her physically. None of the blows would have hit her, but she was still rather expectant of them to come

“Why would I do that, I think we’re making some wonderful breakthroughs in your aversion to befriending others.” As an afterthought Fluttershy decided to add a snippet she knew would make Bonnie irate, it needed to be asked and she wasn’t about to avoid the elephant in the room. “Zurg is torturing someone you love isn’t he? Also it hurts you to kidnap and hold me hostage; I can tell you really don’t like this. Have you been feeling better since you um… shot the ropes off me?”

“Yes, to both your questions Sweet Cheeks. I’m am unrepentant thief, not an unrepentant kidnapper.” That was about as much as an apology as Bonnie would give to Fluttershy. “Besides I don’t have an aversion, I’m friendly!”

“Then why can’t you simply just accept that I’m willing help, especially since I promised I would let you do that to me? You said you even wanted to do that to me.” It was okay for Fluttershy; she already knew that the Grand Councilor would keep her word. Now it was crossed bridges and all.

“No one is that nice, especially not here anyway. This place is a hotbed of people who’d kill you the soonest you walked out a door if they thought they can make some money off of your lifeless corpse. If you ever get lost here, you better not trust someone you don’t know or else rape is truly the least you’d have to worry about.” For some reason upsetting the pony made Bonnie happy. “Yeah and if what I know we both heard was correct, four arms is still after you… and me. I’m going have to keep you alive and out of trouble too.”

“I made a Pinkie Pie promise because breaking one is the best way to lose a friend…” Looking around expectantly Fluttershy looked down at the cupcake on the table with a sad frown. “Forever….”

“Yeah the crazy chick was one of you cute and cuddly types, ponies you called yourselves? Don’t know how she honestly did it, but I know that at least one of my hundreds of brothers and sisters would be just as good at doing something like that. Now drink some water, I’ll get your meal and then I’m going to look up a good ship to steal to get us off this planet.” Standing up Bonnie went and pulled the haphazardly made noodle soup off the stove. Everything Bonnie used was a hundred percent stolen; she accepted no substitutes. She wasn’t that bad a cook at all, especially after making so much prison food.

“Why do you need to steal a ship, don’t you already have one?” If she didn’t then Fluttershy was about to ask bonnie about how much she has stolen.

“Yeah, keeping an Alliance Armada property is not a good idea or even a smart one. Especially since they know what planet I’m on already, ditched the thing after we were low enough in the atmosphere. It was a good thing you weren’t awake for that. I’m really good at stealing things, so everything I own is stolen. This room, my blasters, the holster and the remotely detonated grenades I used in my kidnapping plan… even the ingredients for the soup you’re currently eating.” Bonnie smirked and waited to see what Fluttershy would do, the pony didn’t stop eating the soup which led to some confusion on her part.

“The ingredients are gone; therefore this soup itself isn’t stolen. I think it’s nice that you’d give me some food that I can handle that I couldn’t pay for anyway. For someone who doesn’t care that much, I’m a happy hostage knowing you’re willing to take care of me.” After slurping down some noodles, Fluttershy smiled at Bonnie’s flabbergasted expression.

“I stole the keys off a thug that was part of my assault plan on the flagship.” This was something that Bonnie would hope that Fluttershy would hate her mentioning.

Fluttershy simply reached over and pulled Bonnie into a one hoofed hug and the alien blushed vibrantly as Fluttershy drank some of the soup with her other hoof perfectly balancing the large bowl on it. After she finished she nuzzled Bonnie’s antenna and smiled at her.

“Well you’re the nicest thief I’ve ever met.” And Fluttershy meant it too; Spike wasn’t so nice when he started stealing things. She was sure that since Bonnie saw no value in her stuff, she’d be allowed to have it back.

“Please don’t say that, you don’t know what I’m like. I might even shoot you on purpose if you keep cuddling up to me like this Sweet Cheeks. Besides I’ve heard I got people killed attacking the flagship, doesn’t that bother you?” After a moment of looking at the ceiling to ponder this, Bonnie just stared blankly at the pony as if she were a complete idiot.

“Somewhat, but I know your really trying to be nice. Besides you’ve never killed anyone yourself have you?” After that Fluttershy noted that once again that Bonnie was struck a bit speechless. “They knew what they were getting into and you didn’t take their lives, you shouldn’t feel guilty about what they chose to do in the end.”

“No, never killed anyone personally and not for the lack of trying either mind you. Father made us all to be evil, yet every single one of us has failed at killing anything and one of my brothers even has a built in plasma cannon for a head!” It really made Bonnie wonder about the odds though. “If Clyde were here with me he’d tell you all about our other brothers and sisters, he spends more time with them then I do.”

“He’s the one Zurg captured isn’t he, you really miss him if you’re doing all this for him even when it hurts you.” A bit of sadness entered Fluttershy’s voice; she looked to the cupcake. She picked the cupcake up and held it out to Bonnie. “Eat this it will make you feel better.”

“How is eating this supposed to make me…” She looked into the adorable eyes, rolled her own and took a bite out of the sweet snack being proffered to her by Fluttershy. After a moment she greedily took the rest of it into her mouth. “Meega Nala Queesta, that’s good! I’m beginning to think you’re alright.”

“I hope my translator is wrong, because that is possibly the most vulgar thing I’ve ever heard in my entire life.” After a moment Fluttershy’s face turned a little green. “I don’t think anything can even beat it really.”

“Belgium… so hate me now yet?” Bonnie only received a stare so powerful she could swear her heart stopped.

Author's Note

Just Fluttershy bonding with Experiment 149 Bonnie Jookiba.

Torque shows up and things started blowing up. One can say he's not happy with Bonnie.

Note: This chapter was blind fired with little editing. I think it's mostly okay.

61

“Ugh, I can still taste the soap even now.” Spitting on the steps as she trudge up them, Bonnie looked around warily. They were at a hover train station and needed to go halfway around the planet to steal a good cargo ship that could survive going through the atmosphere of Planet Z as well as its defenses on the way out.

Fluttershy had been silent so far and had been a little bit worried about how badly Bonnie had understated things were on this planet. Sure it was a grand economically driven place and had lots of good in it and it was fairly obvious if Bonnie wasn’t here she’d be attacked for little more reason than just existing. The thugs Bonnie beat up on the way thought her to be an easy target because of her size and they were horribly wrong to think that. The pony had never seen such efficient brutality from something so small against another living thing, while she logically knew Bonnie was dangerous she didn’t and wouldn’t fear her. She had yet to kill anyone personally and would only come close to it.

“Then you shouldn’t have said such a horrible word.” Fluttershy didn’t think she would ever tell anyone what Belgium translated to; it was a very bad word in her native language. She was stopped by a yellow spot in the palm of a green hand raised to her face, making her suit create a bubble around her head protectively. After a moment she brought the bubble back down and looked over the side of the railing Bonnie was standing on as she pointed towards something from the overpass they were one.

“Look Sweet Cheeks; I’m going to level with you. If we don’t catch that cargo train there we’re not getting off this planet. At least not without trouble, getting filled full of holes or getting caught by the Space Rangers. None of those situations really helps us get to Planet Z.” Looking around the hover train yard she didn’t see any deadly armed assassins casing the crowds going for the civilian rides coming into and out of the station. “Though it is good to know you’re willing to work with me on this, ever stolen a cargo vessel before?”

“Well actually, sort of. I’ve been on three stolen ships; only two of the times were really my fault though. The first time was to save a bunch of people from being tortured, the second time because I was curious and actually ended up saving someone’s life and the third time was because I didn’t want to be trapped in the bowels of a ship for the rest of my life.” Stealing was okay if it was to save a life or if you needed to survive, at least that’s how Fluttershy looked at it and she knew Bonnie didn’t need to steal to live. Bonnie was far too intelligent to need to steal for a living.

The pony preferred to ignore the fact that Bonnie stole a lot of things from the thugs she beat up and that she was making her carry the stuff. This made the pony an accessory to the crime of stealing from criminals who were attempting to do the same to them in the first place.

“Huh two out of three isn’t bad, quiet down and come over here. That’s the hover train we need to board, we need to do so discreetly since it’s a cargo train and it’s guarded.” There was a good reason it was guarded, Bonnie wanted to steal something from it and it was ironically the only train going their way towards the cargo vessel she wanted to steal. “I would spring for a passenger train, but they ID you on those and I haven’t made a fresh fake one in while and I’m not about to go to a supplier who would squeal on my location.”

“Um… are you sure there isn’t any other trains going our way?” Far be it for Fluttershy to question a thief who has a deep long running history of stealing things, much less that she was leading her straight into danger and had promised to already be her friend. If she was a good friend, then Bonnie would be one in turn too… eventually.

“You know that makes me feel good, I like to have my plans questioned. Almost makes me wish you were someone else Sweet Cheeks. Now come on, we need to sneak by those guards.” Bonnie had already told Fluttershy why the cargo vessel she was stealing was necessary, not much could go through the stormy atmosphere of Planet Z without taking some damage unless it was well armored.

The cargo ship Bonnie was set on stealing was perfect for that job being a heavily armored piece of work; the reason why they were taking the train was because it was faster and stealthier than stealing a civilian vehicle and hotwiring it. Sure she could steal a spaceship to fly there much faster, but she was trying to lay low while keeping Fluttershy safe. Even one sign of vehicular theft would acquire them a lot of heat they didn’t need, so they hoofed it to the hover train station. Bonnie’s MO was rather highly traceable, so she only stole from the muggers who tried to accost them along the way which happened often enough that Fluttershy was spooked and quivering with fright.

The reason why Fluttershy didn’t fly them to the train station was very much the same reason that a bright, pink, green and yellow suit was highly noticeable. It would have been especially more noticeable had Fluttershy carried Bonnie with her. Again they were trying to lie low, though Fluttershy still attracted trouble by sticking out like a sore thumb and she looked like a real pansy in every sense of the word.

Shivering in her plant based suit, Fluttershy watched as Bonnie stood at the top of the stairs that led downwards towards the guarded train rubbing her chin. Looking at the magnificent silver train at the front of a long line of flatbeds with large containers of varying sizes and shapes bound by energy beams, she could tell that the cargo train was likely never parked under an overpass so sneaking aboard wouldn’t be as easy as jumping down on top of it. Having seen other hover trains enter and leave the station, they were much faster than the trains back home and Fluttershy didn’t like the idea of being on one.

“Um… I could fly us there?” Fluttershy suggested as she watched the patrolling guards with the rifles pace around the cargo train protectively. Bonnie never asked questions about why she had a fang pony out of her lips, the mismatched wings that would make her incapable of flying or even mentioned her bat like ears seemed a little odd. Thinking back on it, Veritas didn’t ask much about it either aside from the fact that she was not exactly the norm for her species.

“Can you do it silently without them hearing us?” It was a simple idea, but something was wrong with the idea and Bonnie could already see it coming. She was already panicking slightly by what she saw “Never mind, you’ve got to get on the train. I have someone to draw off; don’t worry about me I’ll catch up!”

Looking behind her to see what had got Bonnie so worked up that she scampered off Fluttershy’s eye dilated at the sight of fifty Torque’s converging on the train station in the distance from the sky and some were even already firing on it and the noise of shattering glass could be heard along with a lot of screams as several explosions went off in the station.

Looking down the stairs Fluttershy saw that the guards were reacting immediately to the danger and one was motioning towards the train and a noise was heard it lifted up and started to slide forward slightly. Then almost every guard ran towards the invading clones past the stairs, Fluttershy quickly made her suit sprout the two false wings and she made them flap lifting her into the air. She quickly flew towards the train and she heard an explosion behind her, she looked back as she landed on the rear pallet of the train and saw people everywhere running scared.

Managing to get onto the train without getting spotted Fluttershy crouched down and mentally made the suit cling to the surface of the bed of the pallet she was standing in. Her bubble helmet would come up automatically once the train started picking up speed.

“Where are you Bonnie, I know you took her… so tell me where the mark is and come play with the big boys.” Torque had quickly figured out that Bonnie had betrayed him and didn’t care why she took the ambassador alive. Now he wanted both her and the first contact dead, maybe stuffed to be mounted as well if he leaves enough chunks of them left for it. His five eyes were looking in all direction, the muggers Bonnie mugged had been very helpful in telling him where the flower suited pony and the little thief went. They muggers were quite willing to talk after he stabbed a guy in throat in front of them; he liked how quickly they squealed. “I might even let you live too.”

The gruff voiced alien was hovering above the station. He watched as his clones were busy taking out the stations security while all them little civvies’ ran around scared, he even chuckled when one of his clones shot a civilian in the back for the fun of it. About thirteen civilians died before they all made it to safety, some had even taken cover inside the nearby trains.

“Yeah, yeah, blow it out your tailpipe!” A blaster shot struck the back end of his bike sending him spinning slightly and he glared at Bonnie.

“You shouldn’t of done that you little trog, scratching the paint of my baby is a one way ticket to a plasma enema!” Seeing the look on from the experiment as he dodged several wild and anger driven shots, Torque chuckled as his lower two arms pressed the metal plate on his belly. Two cloned bikes with riders appeared next to him. They immediately started firing and sent Bonnie running. “Yeah that’s right little Bonnie, come to papa and I’ll show you a real good time!”

As all three hover bikes fired an endless stream of energy that followed Bonnie, she miraculously blurred out the way of every single shot with a roll, a jump or just running a random path along the walls and ceilings of the station. All the while she was firing back with both blasters randomly holstering and unsheathing them as she went to keep up her maneuverability. She managed to nail only three of the clones in all her dodging, but there were still more flooding the station where those came from. They all were soon focusing their fire at her as she dodged her way into the passenger train by shooting her way through a window.

“*Boshtaret Tikapatari Belgium*, you’d have to hit me first you psychopath!” Bonnie only stopped moving to catch her breath; she could only dodge rapid firing guns like that for so long before her ability to evade almost everything made her tired. She didn’t have a limitless capacity to dodge like that forever or keep moving at those insane speeds, she wasn’t built for stamina like most of her brothers were.

“Aw, you always knew how to sweet talk me Bonnie, here’s a present for you!” Laughing wildly as he pulled a rocket launcher from his a built in holster in his hover bike, Torque immediately fire a shot at the train.

“Everyone get down and stay down, move to the rear of the train while you’re at it!” A rocket slammed into the side of the hovering train putting a large dent in the wall and sending several people to the floor crying out in pain from the stunning shockwave that passed through the wall. Bonnie didn’t bother to stop and help anyone as she made her way for the trains controls while under fire from all the swarming clones. The fact that Torque had concussive rockets was a bad thing for her health in an enclosed space as this train was, even more concerning with all the bolts of energy punching through the windows.

From the backend of the caboose flatbed cargo holder, Fluttershy saw the train station becoming a dot in the distance and frowned. Hopefully Bonnie would be able to catch up with the cargo train and she didn’t rightly know how that would be possible given the speeds it was starting to move at, she turned around and started moving forward to hide under the strapped down containers.

Carefully the pony put herself in the space between two large red containers with one stacked on top of it, she watched the back end of the train and the sky for any threats. She was shivering at all the pain and suffering that went on behind her, her heart went out to all those people that she couldn’t help.

She reached into her right saddlebag with her feathered wing and started rummaging through the random things Bonnie had her carrying, she quickly found what she had been looking for. She pulled out the Memory Stone and quickly tossed into one of her ears after lowering her suits protective bubble for a second.

“Discord, are you there?” There was a moment of silence on the other end and this made Fluttershy worry.

“I’m so sorry Fluttershy; I should have stayed with you!” The immediate blubbering of Pinkie could be heard on the other end.

“It’s okay Pinkie, Ponyville needs you more than it does me at the moment. There are a lot of animal caretakers in Ponyville and there are plenty of ponies who can fill in for me, so I’m not as important.” The reason why Fluttershy was calling was so that she could talk to Discord, but she wanted to say this while she wasn’t busy doing anything. “Don’t worry about me, I’m going to still try and come home though. Um, whose horn am I on this time and are you with Discord?”

“Yes I’m with him and he’s watching two different things at the moment and your new friend isn’t doing so well. Also don’t say you’re not important Fluttershy, no one could replace you and your hugs!” After a moment there was a sound of scuffling and Pinkie then sounded a little less sad. “So what did you need Fluttershy?”

“Can you tell me what my friend is currently doing?” Fluttershy poked her head out from under the cargo containers and looked around the back end of the train as the city passed by at high speeds.

“Hey Fluttershy your friend is awesome, those flying bicycles she’s fighting off are really cool looking too. How fast do you think you guys are going on those trains?” After a moment of hearing Rainbow’s voice, there was a slapping sound and she gasped. “Oh right, a lot of ponies here in Ponyville miss you, so don’t put yourself down like that! Don’t let those aliens push you around either; you can definitely kick their plots because we believe in you!”

“I agree with what Rainbow Dash said! All this space stuff is cool.” Scootaloo must have been watching whatever was going on with Bonnie as well, because she made a comment on it. “Whoa, how is she even doing that?”

Fluttershy saw a passenger train slowly approaching on a parallel track while being swarmed with clones of that mean alien constantly bombarding the train with concussive rockets and blasts of energy. None of the attacking clones had a metal plate on their belly that the primary Torque had.

From her position Fluttershy could see Bonnie standing atop the train and shooting back while deftly dodging around all the incoming fire. A concussive rocket slammed into the top of the train behind Bonnie and blasted her towards the back causing her to bounce across two cars until she came to a stop when she grabbed hold of the third car with a single hand. She clung to it stopping her momentum and fired the pistol still held with a death grip in her other one taking out two clones and their rides.

Holding her hooves up to the face trying to put them to her mouth, Fluttershy only ended up smacking the protective oxygen bubble her suit made. She thought Bonnie looked okay, for someone who was repeatedly hit by shockwaves from exploding rockets and was obviously tired from moving around at insane speeds on a moment’s notice. Something shook the hovering platform she was sitting on with a loud bang and she ducked into the shadows. Looking behind her to see something at the other end of the containers, she froze. It came up to her quickly and started rubbing up against her side while purring like an engine.

“Roller, where have you been? I was so worried about you… even though you’re the one that’s supposed to be worried about me.” It took Fluttershy’s attention off the situation in front of her and on the wheel creature that suddenly appeared out of nowhere and joined her in the shadow of the large container at the caboose of the cargo train.

Roller jumped up and down revving loudly and motioned its carapace upwards slightly; Fluttershy looked up in time to see a laser rip through a few of the Torque clones. Apparently Roller had been clinging to the hull of several different star cruisers and hitched a ride to end up here.

It was Star Cruiser Forty Two and it quickly strafed past and started to swing around to really start laying into the clones being produced constantly, half the clones now had other things to worry about as the star cruiser matched its pace to that of the passenger train and started firing on the Torque clones at random. None of the shots had been aimed at Bonnie who holstered her weapons and was quickly running on all fours for the front of the train, while dodging the fire from the clones still focusing on her.

The Torque clones only needed one hand to drive and fire their vehicles weapons, the other three arms were armed with rifles or pistols of varying wildly varying strength. This meant at any given time there was approximately three hundred or more weapons constantly discharging in Bonnie’s general direction, most of it was still dangerous to be hit by even for her resilient hide. The damage all this was doing to the train was adding up.

Fluttershy trotted in place feeling useless and rather helpless at the moment as she watched Bonnie get knocked to the side of the second car by a concussive rocket. Frowning she just didn’t know what to do.

“Come on Fluttershy, do something! Don’t just stand there, that’s your friend right?” Even Spike was there watching this… well it wasn’t quite a train wreck yet and one could hope neither one would wreck.

Gulping slightly at the idea that just popped up into her head, Fluttershy figured it wouldn’t be bad to ask if he could do it. She didn’t like the idea of putting Roller in danger.

“Roller, fetch!” Flutterhsy pointed to Bonnie and Roller nodded to her and shot off the back end of the cargo train. While Roller was busy doing this she generated a pod grenade with her suit and looked up at all the clones attacking her friend. She bit her bottom lip and pulled back her hoof; she closed her eyes and threw it as hard as she could.

“Booster, XR, any sign of ambassador Fluttershy?” Buzz hoped she wasn’t on that train.

“There are a lot of life signs in the rear of the passenger train Buzz, one of them might be her.” Booster was one scanners and looking around frantically for the specific level of life signs Fluttershy gave off.

“And the passenger train is out of control.” XR was at a console of his own looking over the damage the train had sustained. “Why of course it is, nothing is ever easy for us!”

There was a loud plinking noise as something bounced off the glass and Mira’s eyes widened as she knew what that familiar green sphere was.

“Uh, Buzz…” Mira didn’t get to say much when steering the ship became that much harder when half their thrusters died and the other half powered up to compensate for it.

The sound of explosion going off caused Fluttershy eyes to open and she looked on aghast that she had accidentally hit the low flying Forty Two, its back end was covered in red vines sending into a horizontal death spiral. Its spin caused it to cut through the mass of clones burning them all. Only the original Torque had managed to get out of the conflagration. His hover bike wasn’t as lucky having taken too much damage. He ditched it while jumping onto the train and started producing more clones.

Two tubes popped up on the cruiser and four figures launched out them before it slammed into the ground. It rolled for a few second before exploding against a building.

Torque immediately turned to the Space Rangers itching for a fight. He completely forgot the lightly injured Bonnie lining up a shot on his back from atop the engine of the passenger train, only to miss her shot because she was swiftly accosted by Roller.

“Oh dear…” It would be in Fluttershy’s best interest to mention that this was a complete accident the next time she saw the Space Rangers. After all the stories she’s heard about them losing their cruisers from Mira, they were certainly going to be really mad at her for that.

“Whoa, nice throw Sweet Cheeks, didn’t know you had it in you! Say… wasn’t that one of those pea things?” After a moment Bonnie had a suddenly ill look on her face as Roller let her off. “Wait a minute… those things explode!”

Fluttershy sorely hoped that Mira, Booster, XR and Buzz would be okay fighting that multiplying monster, a minute or two later the passenger train veered away from the cargo train as the rail led it off in a different direction.

Author's Note

Could you really stay mad at Fluttershy? Even after she's caused an incredible amount of property damage that would cost an unknown unfeasibly large amount of currency?

Rhizome technology was geared towards taking out machinery. Add that to the list of bad things Fluttershy has ended up doing thus far.

62

Despite her explanation that the pod grenades were mostly harmless, the exception was the fact that she just brought down a Star Command Cruiser with a single lucky throw, Fluttershy noted that Bonnie still looked greener than her fur should be.

Roller seemed to be watching as buildings and landscape pass by at high speeds aimlessly whirring in interest at all the things he was seeing. He was lucky to have been fast enough to keep up with the hover train.

“Are you alright Bonnie? You don’t look like you’ve been shot…” Fluttershy would worry about Mira and the others later, they were trained Space Rangers and could take care of themselves. She was idly trying not to think about that four armed alien that attacked people who weren’t even in his way.

“Yeah, I’m just peachy Sweet Cheeks.” Bonnie mumbled as she sat in the shadow of the containers with the two other beings. “Torque only grazed me a hundred or so times, never directly touched me.”

“I’m guessing that there’s a bit more to what you want to say.” Fluttershy shyly guessed at that being the next thing Bonnie brought up; while Bonnie hadn’t been directly hit she did witness her getting blown around by those weird explosive devices. What was weird about them was that they didn’t create huge explosions. “If you don’t mind me saying this, you need to tell me if you’re hurting right now so I can maybe figure out a way to help you.”

“Yeah I doubt you can immediately help me with my internal injuries, but I’ll be fine since daddy doesn’t make quitters where it counts.” Bonnie’s breathing was heavy and she started coughing a bit. “Whoa, those concussive rockets really messed up my insides. That’s what Torque was actually hitting me with, I can’t really dodge shockwaves. I can only really minimize the damage they do to me. It’s one of my more obvious design flaws when it comes to my specialty for evasion. Hah, a few more of those and my internal organs would have turned completely to mush and then where I would I have been? Some perfect evasion I happen to be.”

Bonnie tried to stand and fell down; Fluttershy was immediately at her side helping her up.

“Don’t talk like that; I don’t think anything can be absolutely perfect and I think you did your best. You need some rest.” Fluttershy was slowly petting Bonnie like she was wounded animal and Bonnie didn’t disavow her of that idea. On some level Fluttershy knew Bonnie was just trying to see her as a means to an end and she could tell that the alien was failing horribly by the affectionate nickname.

“Can’t rest, we need to steal cargo on this train before it reaches its destination and that requires us to force our way through security.” Bonnie tried to shove Fluttershy away and she stumbled about a bit before she latched on to the plant suited equine. “Darn it, my adrenaline went down and I’ve lost some of my finer motor controls. That’s another one of my flaws. Torque may seem like a dumb thug, but he was constantly wearing my ability to evade down. I can’t stay in my high speed movement state like that for too long. Ugh, I’m practically useless like this and I still need to pull off this heist as everything else is counting on it!”

“I know I’m going to regret asking this, but maybe I could um…” Fluttershy was meekly staring out at the passing blurs as the train hovered its way forward, after she steeled her nerves she looked at a dizzy looking Bonnie currently being held up by her bat wing. “What would you need me to do?”

“Oh you have got to be…” Lyra started only to be shushed by every pony watching the two differing spectacles. Many a pony had witnessed some of the weirdest things they’d never thought they’d see such a sweetheart like Fluttershy would do; admittedly it was pretty good entertainment if it wasn’t as horrifying that the kindest mare they all knew and loved was suggesting that she could even commit a successful train robbery.

Discord had his attention split between Fluttershy’s ranger friend’s battling with Torque and Fluttershy dealing with her captor in the most amiable of manners possible. He had a strange look of contemplation on his face as he looked at Bonnie’s internal injuries. It was surprising how well this Bonnie held up to being within close proximity of those rather nasty weapons. A normal pony would have died in one or two near misses and was glad Fluttershy hadn’t been anywhere near one of those rockets. It was hard to protect ones internal organs after all.

“Kidding me… you? Oh, please tell me you’re joking because I doubt you’d handle the train’s security as easily as I could have. Whelp we’re screwed, there’s no chance I can even steal what I need to in my condition.” It did wonders for one’s mind when you felt like your entire universe was snapping in half. This left Bonnie to contemplate what was hurt worse, the fact that she was going to fail her brother or the fact that Fluttershy, as innocent as she could be, was suggesting she could do this.

She didn’t even know why she felt bad that Fluttershy suggested that she do the job, since even the pony by this point should know she loved stealing! Maybe it was the fact that Fluttershy didn’t take the same joy in the adventure of theft? From the way she understood it, Fluttershy was one of those greater good types that only stole within reason and for a good cause. It was somewhat touching that Fluttershy was actually asking to help her with all this, since Bonnie thought she had a pretty good gauge of her moral code. It was nuts enough that Fluttershy actually made the promise in the first place, but to actually make her follow through on it? For the life of her Bonnie actually felt bad for any thought of actually abusing Fluttershy’s promise and trust, she hadn’t even thought twice about doing that with ‘little girl’ and her youngest brother.

Now that Bonnie looked back on the Star Cruiser going down, it had to have been a complete fluke that Fluttershy had managed a lucky chaotic chain reaction like that given that she would had to of been originally aiming for one of the many Torque’s with that ‘mostly’ non lethal weapon.

Fluttershy and the wheel just sat there in silence staring at Bonnie, she inhaled slightly with her eyes closed and let out a heaving breath that turned into a coughing fit. Fluttershy didn’t look like she was going to take back her offer to assist; in fact she had something to say about it.

“So what do you want us to do?” She would be cringing internally the entire time and likely be having more nightmares about this later; the stolen Head Hunter was still quite a shameful thing she still regretted slightly.

“Um… is that guy biological?” Noticing she was getting a flat look for trying to change the subject or attempt to misdirect the pony, Bonnie couldn’t help but sigh and say what had to be said. “Okay fine, you want to help? Don’t come crying to me when things get too rough for you and Mr. Wheel here.”

Mr. Wheel revved that danger wasn’t something to be avoided if you wanted to be big and strong like the big bad wheelie warriors of his species.

“Yeah, yeah, face your fears and everything. Obviously the size of a predator doesn’t scare you so much as the inability to move likely does, am I right?” Her comment was right, since Bonnie watched Roller freeze slightly and shiver a bit. The wheel whined that not moving was what happened to many who wouldn’t do so anymore or those who disappeared forever into the pink void creature. Bonnie acknowledged that the barely sapient animal had a good concept of death and wasn’t as fearless in that respect. “Yeah, death is something we definitely want to avoid. Especially with you Sweet Cheeks, I need you alive and well or did you forget what Evil Emperor Curd wants me to do with you?”

“I know I can help you Bonnie, I’m your friend and you need to trust that I can do what you need me to. You can barely stand alone, with me and Roller helping you I think we can stand strong together.” If Fluttershy concentrated hard enough she could actually hear Twilight mumbling something and scribbling down what she just said, likely as a friendship lesson.

“If you’re already regretting this, then we’re on the same page.” Bonnie shakily took a few steps and climbed on top of Roller, she took a seat on top of him which annoyed the wheel somewhat that she didn’t ask. “We need to start moving forward now, we’re wasting time. Oh, and whatever you do, don’t fly above the train. The heavy anti-air guns would waste you with a single blast if they detect you, they’d do that even to a Space Ranger’s suit. Take cover behind something when we start getting shot at and then we’ll wing it from there.”

“Right, come on Roller!” Immediately Fluttershy was galloping for the front of the cargo flatbed and leapt to the next one with a hop, skip and a simple thruster enhanced boost from her suit to make the gaps between pallets.

Eighteen flatbed pallets later and three pallets before they would have reached an enclosed cargo car, a beam flashed through the air and Fluttershy quickly backpedalled and ducked behind the left end of three cargo containers sitting right next to each other that reached up to fifteen feet up. Poking her head around the container she quickly pulled back as five shots passed through the space her head occupied seconds before. She had caught a glimpse of several spindly humanoid forms with rifles standing on top of the enclosed car.

“Okay, that has Compu-Klerm written all over it. At least the things we’re here to steal don’t technically exist, they can’t complain about what they shouldn’t have to the authorities anyway. Stay here I need to see what exactly we’re dealing with here, because I certainly don’t remember this being included in the security details I got.” Slowly Bonnie gripped the right container lifting herself off of Roller who was taking cover at the right side container and poking out slightly only to pull back when he got shot at. Bonnie crawled up at an angle towards the top of the middle container and poked her antenna up over the edge, slowly her head and eyes followed. Getting the barest glimpse of what they were dealing with she pulled back as several blasts scorched the edge of the container as she slid downwards. “Compu-Kill Guard Robots, who in the hell did they bribe to get those on the train? That’s definitely not standard security measures and they have us pinned.”

“Are they really bad?” It was unlikely for Fluttershy to know the depths of the danger they were in, she hardly understood machines and it seemed like Bonnie was better at understanding how they worked than she did personally.

“They are damningly accurate, have incredibly reflexes and you should never try to get up close and personal with them. Fortunately they have a very short range of operation; they won’t be able to come after us since they can’t go too far from their activation point, what range they can work in still makes them quite deadly even if they can’t come to us. There is no reasoning with them, so just know that your friendly face isn’t going to help here.” Letting go of the container looking a bit weak, Bonnie looked at Fluttershy with wilted ears and antenna. “So, got any bright idea’s Sweet Cheeks?”

“Actually I do, but I need a minute to talk to my friends. The memory stone gives me connections to everyone back on my home planet and I currently have it in my ear. Rainbow I could use a little help.” After a moment Fluttershy sighed and then said it slightly louder. “Rainbow, I’m sorry for being loud with you, but I really need your help right now! Rainbow, I know I heard you were there, please answer me.”

“Whoa, the big red guy is going to feel that one later. The little mechanical dude is pretty cool too.” Yelping Rainbow felt a sharp jerk on her tail and she looked away from the rangers still fighting Torque, it was awesome how they were handling the dangerous four armed guy who had a lot of weapons and clones. Why was Applejack pulling on her tail, she was missing all the action.

“I know you hate having your tail pulled Rainbow, but Fluttershy is asking for your help and you better answer her or I will throw my hoof across your jaw like last the time we wrestled.” The stern farm pony had taken some time off to come see how Fluttershy was doing, just to see she was in another fine mess they probably couldn’t help her get out of. She started asking for Rainbow Dash for whatever reason and Applejack decided to help expedite the process of getting Rainbow’s attention. “She needs you, so get on it.”

“I’m here Fluttershy what do you need?” Fluttershy on the screen pulled out something while pointing through the cargo container while asking Discord to show them the problem. They could see the five spindly humanoid death machines all aiming high powered laser rifles around the back ends of the metal containers Fluttershy, Roller and Bonnie were taking cover behind. There were four on the roof of an enclosed car and there was one in the doorway, the next car beyond had a large structure slowly rotating and pointed at the sky on top.

Looking back to Fluttershy, the equine quickly mumbled out what she needed and pointed at the water container she had pulled out, Rainbow looked at the water with scrutinizing eyes.

“How pure is it? Hmm… okay, it should be possible. Thankfully you have one of the best weather mares in Ponyville helping you out and you know I’m awesome Fluttershy. However doing what you want to do is going to be a bit tricky.” The other ponies just sat and watched as Rainbow mentally prepared to start instructing Fluttershy.

“What the… whoa, how in the world are you…” Bonnie stumbled backwards out into the open and Roller quickly bumped her back into position behind the containers before she could get shot by robots. Their reaction times were much faster than before and nearly just as deadly. “Okay yeah, that’s pretty neat Sweet Cheeks. Provided all this doesn’t end in hard feelings, I’ll introduce you to Sparky as he would love to see something nifty like that.”

Fluttershy was visibly shaking as she held a roiling black cloud in her hooves away from her face, with a frown and a bit lower lip. Rainbow was pretty clear in her instructions and it didn’t even use a little more than half the water she had on her. She hoped this was enough to do what she needed it to.

“Okay, thank you Rainbow. Roller I need your help, move there and stick you tubes straight out like this.” The wheel monster rolled up the side of the container and stuck his tubes out like Fluttershy wanted him to. Fluttershy carefully got a tight grip on the cloud in her left hoof and reached up with her right hoof to wrap it around his right hand tubes. “Please move up slightly, a little more, now stop.”

Fluttershy’s rear legs were now dangling; she was hanging from Roller with one hoof. Doing a mental calculation she hoped she got his right the first time, as three of her legs were going to be in danger of being shot and she was the only one of them that could handle clouds.

“Okay, thank you very much Rainbow. Roller I need your help, move there and stick you tubes straight out like this.” The wheel monster rolled up the side of the container and stuck his tubes out like Fluttershy wanted him to. Fluttershy carefully got a tight grip on the cloud in her left hoof and reached up with her right hoof to wrap it around his right hand tubes. “Please move up slightly, a little more, now stop.”

“When I tell you to, you will flick your tubes up as hard as you can and then flick them back straight down.” Taking a deep breath to prepare her body for this dumb stunt, even then Fluttershy knew this was going to sting even if she didn’t get shot. She hoped the Rhizome suit takes the brunt of it. “Be prepared to catch me if I lose my grip Bonnie. Okay Roller, now!”

Fluttershy body went upside down and she extend the cloud she was holding in her left hoof while she curled hind legs up to meet it while keeping a tight hold of Roller’s tubes in her right hoof to make sure she didn’t go flying off. Her rear end came up and over the edge of the container and her hind legs struck the cloud forcefully while she was completely upside down and a bolt of lightning flashed out.

Fluttershy grit her teeth as her three suited legs got scorched. She was quickly pulled back down as a laser flashed by her right hind leg, only to be slammed into the cargo container back first where she lost her grip and fell forwards only to have a pair of arms go around her waist to make sure she didn’t tumble off the back end of the platform they were on.

“Ouch, that looked painful. You okay there Sweet Thing?” It didn’t surprise her that she was worried about the pony’s health, what worried Bonnie was that the worry was a bit more than it should be for someone she was just using as a means to an end.

“…” Inhaling Fluttershy lifted up her scorched left hoof as the Rhizome suit grew over the damaged burnt section. “I’ll be okay… did I get them all?”

Four bouncing piles of metal quick flew by the cargo containers, three on their left and one on their right, which certainly answered the question quite readily.

“You missed one, I’ll take care of it. I just got to find out which one though.” Bonnie poked her head out of the left side of the containers and then pulled back while a laser scorched the fur along the left side of her cheek. “The one in the enclosed cars doorway, of course it is. At least you got all the ones on the roof. Stay put this will only take a second.”

“BLITZNAK!” Bonnie screeched on her side as she quickly sheathed her remaining gun and used her left hand to try and cover the wound bleeding an odd colored turquoise fluid.

A second later the fifth and final robot bounced off the top of the containers spooking Roller into Fluttershy’s hooves, looking up for the barest of moments time seemed to slow down. The spindly humanoid robot had three holes in it, one in the dead center of the head, one dead center of the its chest and a particular spot on its lower torso between the legs. After a moment of watching it bounce away Fluttershy got to her hooves and almost immediately regretted it, she made her way over to Bonnie who had her eyes clenched shut as she held her wound.

“Need to keep going…” Bonnie stood up and started trying to stumble forward only to be pulled backwards into Fluttershy’s embrace.

“Look at you; you’re hurting even worse now! I think you might have stolen something that I can use to cover the wound.” Fluttershy searched her suits bags and pulled out her glass knife to start tearing apart the one of the shirts Bonnie had stolen off the back of some thug. Leaving someone lying naked in an alleyway stripped of all their belongings was something Fluttershy would rather forget. Cutting strips from the shirt while keeping Bonnie held between her stinging hind legs, she forced the slightly struggling Bonnie to let go of her wound so she could tie the strips of red cloth tightly around her right arm. “There there, are you okay to keep moving?”

“That’s my entire family’s favorite color, just so you know.” Bonnie mumbled as Fluttershy kissed her forehead making the pain go away slightly. Bonnie let herself be hefted onto Roller’s back and Fluttershy took the lead hopping across the flatbeds. They reached the enclosed train cars where they cautiously picked their way through them where Bonnie looked over each container with a scrutinizing gaze.

They didn’t run into any trouble, though they did find tons of illegal Galactic Alliance black market contraband that definitely warranted the deadly robots. Three cars later they finally found what Bonnie had been looking for.

“This is it; this is what we’re looking for. They’ve got to be in here, please help me crack this thing open!” A minute later the excited Bonnie got her wish when Roller broke the container open and inside were three metal barrels each with green, red and blue highlights of varying sizes from smallest to largest. “Now that’s what I’m talking about, we hit pay dirt Sweet Cheeks!”

“They remind me of cider kegs.” Fluttershy was wondering why these three metal barrels had Bonnie so happy.

“They’re not, trust me. They’re called DOK’s.” An eerie smile crossed over Bonnie’s face as she started rubbing her hands together despite the small twinge of pain she got from her arm for doing it. Her internal organs were also a reminder to how she felt like crap at the moment. “They are from a line of observation robots called Clyde’s; the irony should not be lost on you as to why I want them. There are three model types used in this particular brand and they are all rare, powerful and really hard to find. They look like they need some repairs as only one looks even remotely operational, but when I get them all running…”

After Bonnie left that hanging in the air, Fluttershy couldn’t help but feel a chill run down her spine from head to tail. It wasn’t hard for her tell that Bonnie was taking whatever Zurg was doing, has already done or will do to her brother rather personally.

Author's Note

After some time off to enjoy life and in general read fan fiction's that are one million words long, it's finally back to it then.

Compu-Klerm - It is a corporation that Buzz and his team has run afoul of once or twice. The corporations owner is especially unscrupulous.

DOK's (Desperate Operations Kitted robot) - Barrel or vaguely egg shaped robots built to handle numerous situations which came in three types.

The DOK robots are not made by Dr. Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog, but you think they would be because of how much they look like something he'd make.

If you want to know more about DOKs then look no further than the words 'Toonami: Lockdown'. It was a fun once in a lifetime event for me, I might have been dithering a bit on whether or not to include these guys.

63

Fluttershy stood by and watched as Bonnie went to work on the small blue DOK, apparently when they were fully functional they were dangerous and in this inoperative state they were nothing more than a pile of metal. She looked to Roller who was looking out the door to the container for anything that might be coming, Bonnie had assured them that the train’s normal security might have been overridden by the robots with the deadly laser rifles that would have ripped through even Mr. Wheel’s carapace. Frightening prospects aside, she giggled at Bonnie lamenting that the big red highlighted DOK was the most damaged one.

“This is DOK number 777, the fact that it’s still in an operable state says a lot about how well built these old pieces of technology are.” Things were too quiet for Bonnie’s taste and she tried to fill the space with the sound of her own voice. She pulled out the circle on the left side of the barrel and stuffed her left arm into and started tweaking the inner workings protected by the outer shell, a second later a hatch in the shell opened up when she pulled her arm out and pushed the rod back in. “Give me a minute or two and this thing will be running, might even help me get the other two into a comparable state. Wish I was more of an engineer like some of my brothers and sisters, they’d have this thing running in seconds instead of minutes.”

“Why do people always create robots for violence? I mean I’ve been to so many places, they always seemed to be used for violent purposes and from what I know they are almost always made for it. How do some of the robots I’ve met have souls while others don’t? It’s been kind of a thing that bugs me and none of my friends are space travelers except for maybe Katrina as she’s on a planet that has guard robots.” There were always questions buzzing around in Fluttershy’s heads and since she didn’t have anything to do she’d thought to ask them of a being who was created with a soul. She didn’t exactly understand how one can simply create life either and was just as curious about Bonnie’s family. “Everyone is special in their own way Bonnie. I think it’s just as amazing that you even know what to do to make it work, because I haven’t a clue how robots work aside from the fact that I’ve been assaulted by a lot of really bad ones.”

“Oh, we’re getting into philosophy one oh one here. Dad always likes to talk about doing things because you can, not because you should or it is even a good idea to begin with. Robots as you’ve probably met come in several levels; they start out simply as tools. Do you know what a hammer is?” Looking up from the innards of the machine she was burrowing the upper half of her body into, Bonnie saw Fluttershy nod. Bonnie went to Fluttershy and pulled a tool or two she stole of some thugs she could use to help get the DOK operational. “Well the more complicated you try to make the hammer the more likelier you are to create artificial intelligence which can bleed into becoming a real intelligence, when a robot gains real intelligence they also gain emotions close to that of a wild animal. A simple machine that can perform functions at the actions of the user is a robot that has no self reliant ability, like a hammer. A machine that can do some of the work by itself for you is when you hit artificially intelligent territories, basically giving the machine information to do a job and then it will do that one job without the constant need for observation or hands on approach where you are wielding the tool personally so much as the tool wields itself. That’s what robots start out as, highly advanced tools which can do some things a biological entity can’t. After a certain point of advancement you’ve created a new race that has limited senses with which to interact with their environment and you can even teach them right from wrong. Not all robots are made for violent purposes, you’ve only been unlucky enough to meet the ones that are and the reason for their existence is so that others don’t have to fight. It’s a perfectly good way to avoid personal injury or suffering when you can just send something that doesn’t feel pain and never tires except when it runs out of energy.”

“Well how does the soul form or when does it form in a robot? When your dad made you, did you already have a soul? I’ve met a robot that can actually feel pain and some that have emotions.” Fluttershy wasn’t the only one curious with perked up ears to hear the answer as she could hear scribbling through the memory stone still lodged in her ear. XR was one of the first metallic beings Fluttershy had met that can feel things. “I don’t entirely understand how something lifeless can suddenly gain life.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m considered an illegal living entity. My dad creates every last one of us with emotions and the ability to know what we’re doing, he makes us start with a soul and puts information into our head to tell us what we’re good at and what we’re made to do. He also made use to be quite constructively destructive or highly annoying. The contention comes in when we don’t want to be what he made us to be anymore, that’s a huge problem for me and my brother. We’re hard wired to be kleptomaniacs and breaking that programming is impossible as far as I can tell, I’m the living version of a robot being that I’m an artificial life that would not naturally occur in nature.” After that Bonnie became silent as she worked over the DOK and tamped down on her anger at her dad, she hated him so much and yet loved him at the same time for giving her life. She continued working on the innards and after a moment she made the panel close and stepped back. All she had to do was wait and see what happens. “As for the thing about the soul forming, that’s when robots actually gain the ability to feel loss when they lose parts of their bodies or their minds. How it forms… well that is an interesting theory made by my father who spends most of his time making biological creatures like me. It’s all about energy, all life in the universe can be spawned from energy and robots are always powered by some source of energy. When something unexpected happens to robots energy like they get struck by lightning or are improperly rebuilt after destruction, a soul can start to form from that moment. Heck something as simple as sneezing on one might cause them to get a soul as any form of energy can cause a robot become more than what it was made for. Sometimes it could take millions of years for a robot to even gain a sense of identity if given a minimal amount of artificial intelligence to act outside the box they start out as.”

“Which is why you resent the rest of your family, because your father made it that much harder for you to get out of your box? Were the rest of your family able to do that?” Cringing at being so tactless, Fluttershy witnessed Bonnie looking at the floor while clenching her fist. It took a moment, but Bonnie finally relaxed.

A movement occurred that gained the three’s attention the little blue highlighted barrel went through an activation sequence. The top lifted upwards and it produced three small tubes with lenses that acted as the DOK’s eyes. The stand at the bottom of the barrel pushed upwards as the two circles at the sides pushed outwards and the rods unfolded into two five fingered arms then pushed back inwards slightly. At the bottom two wings unfolded and telescoped out of the structure, two jets formed and erupted from the bottom of the wings and the machine was hovering before them. After a moment the machine ceased hovering and sat on its stand and a beam swept the space in front of it, afterwards it was seemingly waiting for them to do something.

“While I can think outside the box to steal just about anything, I just haven’t been able to move outside my personal box when it comes to breaking my habit of needing to steal which is what I was made to do.” Having it brought up to her face made Bonnie a bit sour about how she and her brother couldn’t break their programming through using their talents for positive reasons. They’ve tried once or twice, but it always came back to that hunger to commit larceny. She just stowed the stolen tools back with Fluttershy, then turned to address the DOK. “DOK Seven Seven Seven, are you operational?”

The robot lifted its left arm, it gave them a general thumbs up gesture with its hand. Fluttershy had little clue what that meant but Bonnie obviously took it as a good sign so she didn’t say anything.

“I am Bonnie and this is Fluttershy, will you take orders from us?” Again they received another thumbs up and this time Bonnie frowned. “I guess it’s artificially intelligent, not really intelligent and given enough time and energy like I was...”

Fluttershy was about to ask why Bonnie stopped talking when the robot went through several motions with both its hand and seeing the dumb looks it was getting, it projected a screen with scan data of the three biological beings in the container. It was also projecting one image of itself and text.

“Huh would you look at that. He’s smart enough to tell us that he’s not artificially intelligent. He hit real intelligence a long time ago.” The machine made some loud clicking and whirring noises and then chirruped at Bonnie’s statement. “He’ll follow us because he’s has nothing better to do at the moment and the last thing he remembers is the destruction of the guardian of a ship that had captured the one he was previously a part of.”

“Well there’s something I know you can’t steal Bonnie and it can only be given to others. It’s something I think you are beginning to like. Um… hello there, I come in peace and I offer my friendship to you and maybe we can get your two friends moving as well.” Pointing with a hoof Fluttershy watched as the three lenses pushed inwards and outwards for a second, it stopped projecting an image and it turned to see the other two DOKs in disrepair. It quickly snapped back to the ones before it and gave two thumbs up. “Um, can you fix them?”

The robot just waved a hand at Fluttershy in answer; it started its jets and moved closer to the other two DOKs and landed on its stand a short distance between them. It turned its head around after casting a beam over the other two DOKs, it turned to Bonnie and Fluttershy to project an image of the damages incurred on them and what it would take to make them operational again. Only Bonnie could read the readout, while Fluttershy was rather clueless as to what it was trying to show them. Judging by the images, Fluttershy saw that they were hurt badly and she didn’t know how to heal them as she only worked with biological beings like Roller.

“Yeah, that’s going to be a bit of a problem there designation ‘Lucky Day’, just telling you right now we’re stealing you so you can help us out with a project of mine.” Bonnie saw the readout on the projected screen change and read it. “He says as long as we can assist in the repairs of his two comrades, he doesn’t care where he’s taken or what we want him to do. He wants to feel useful and he’d like to be friends with us or more importantly you.”

“That’s very nice of him.” Fluttershy said with a smile to the machine which projected something to Bonnie.

“He says he likes your presence and his scanners show odd energy fluctuations in your body giving off waves of unknown energy that make him feel operationally a hundred and twenty percent despite only being eighty eight percent combat ready.” Taking in more of the readout on the holographic display coming from the robot, Bonnie included in a deadpan tone. “Lucky Day here just doesn’t have any weapons at the moment and is sad he can’t be at peak operational efficiency for you.”

“It’s okay; you don’t need weapons to be my friend. You just woke up and you’re good enough to me.” Fluttershy trotted up to the robot and gave him a hug, the robot went into a slight shock and then returned the hug as gently as possible as to not hurt her.

“Well that’s all fine and dandy, but we need to get off this train before it reaches the next station. With the other two DOKs inoperable we’re not going to be able to get anywhere and this small one won’t be able to carry both of… them?” Bonnie watched as the little lightly armored DOK lifted both its comrades and barely managed to carry both of them in its arms. “Yeah well we still need to safely get off the train without damaging you even worse, we’re currently in a high speed hovering vehicle and if you were to fly too high the anti air turrets could get a lock on and vaporize you.”

The DOK moved outside the container he was found in and started sending out a beam to scan its environment while Bonnie, Fluttershy and Roller followed. It set down the two damaged DOKs and started scanning the containers and after a moment it stopped and reared back its fist before punching a small hole in a chest like container and started peeling back the metal flaps with both arms. It pointed another digital display in Bonnie’s direction.

It took Fluttershy a moment, but she noticed that some of the cargo containers on the upper part of the enclosed car were missing their contents. That’s likely where two of those deadly guard robots came from.

“On sight procurement of supplies granted, none of it belongs to any of us anyway and it’s illegal for the ones who do own it to have. So do go ahead and take whatever you might need.” After giving it the go ahead, Bonnie watched as it picked through a bunch of illegal weapons until it came to a particular weapon which it scanned. After a moment it started pulling out and cannibalizing parts from some spherical offensive drones known as a War Heads and started in on fixing the green highlighted middle sized DOK. It also took a moment to take up a laser pistol in the cache of weapons and stashed it away for later. “Yeah, if you can get that one operational before we pull into the station we’ll be able to get off easily.”

Thirty minutes later, the train pulled into the station with tons of scorch marks all along it and several destroyed anti-air high powered laser cannon turrets. It was barely hovering and severely damaged and looked to have been put through hell. Forty miles from that were two operational DOKs, one of which depleted the rest of the train’s security forces in five minutes by itself while armed only with a single pistol.

“So it wasn’t as easy as I thought, but hey, at least we’re all still alive and got two of them up and running. Maybe the cargo ship we’re here to acquire will have enough spare parts to get the big guy operational.” It was kind of funny to Bonnie that as soon as the DOK had almost finished getting the second DOK barely operational they were beset by two more groups of those Compu-Killers. Fluttershy had obviously stayed out of the firefights that started up and was amazed what that one DOK alone was capable of.

“Yes, but did he really have to destroy half the train while doing it?” As the little blue DOKs name would suggest and was readily apparent to Fluttershy, he was insanely lucky for a robot to have survived that mess. Even Bonnie had gotten shot in mid motion dive, whereas Lucky moved so fast it almost seemed like the shots that weren’t even fired at him.

The small blue DOK ‘Lucky Day’ scouted out the path ahead of the procession moving through the space port; it had its procured pistol held readily in its left hand as it scanned around for any sign of danger to his new friends and somewhat owners. It had been some time before he had been a forward scout and emergency repair robot, now it was happy to perform the job it once had long ago.

The medium sized green one was called ‘Lead Affront’ and she was armed with a high powered laser rifle stolen from one of the Compu-Kill robots that was held in her right hand. Ms. Affront was also carrying the big red highlighted inactive DOK on her left shoulder following behind the three living beings that were making their way to steal a cargo ship. The last thing she remembered was the destruction of the Guardian of the ship that took theirs captive. Lead was an all purpose model DOK who happened to specialize in hacking and forward assaults. She wasn’t fully operational until her shields and servos were repaired. At the moment she could only look like she was dangerous, which she would proudly do for the new friends and or owners.

So far nobody was stopping them or accosting them, then again two dangerous looking floating robots with a large heavily damaged third one made it well know to the aliens meandering around the space port that they were definitely not someone you’d want to mess with. So they thought it better if they ignored the two biological beings and the third mechanical looking one between the two truly dangerous things.

Lead whirred and clicked several things while looking out for hostile targets, she was having a nice conversation with Roller who apparently could speak robot despite not being one himself with his revving tones and his own whirs and squeals. Their conversation was quite enlightening for the both of them.

“Hey Lucky, have you found it yet?” After calling out the leader of the procession Bonnie received a flat handed shake meaning he hadn’t yet and was still looking for the requisite ship to requisition. “Okay, any more questions about souls you’d like to discuss? I don’t think I finished telling you that most souls are made of pure energy which a portion forms a consciousness.”

“It’s okay, we don’t have to talk about your family if you don’t want to.” Fluttershy saw the look of respect she got from Bonnie and decided to ignore it, because Bonnie would likely never admit to having looked at her like that.

“Actually I do feel like talking about it. My family is not exactly the cleanest around. Each one of us has an annoying or destructive purpose in life and that continued to be a thing up until my youngest brother, experiment Six Two Six whose name is Stitch.” At this moment Bonnie decided to bite the bullet and fully open up to Fluttershy about how she got to this moment just as they were standing outside the docking room to the cargo vessel they were here to steal. “Everything my dad ever worked for in making us little unnatural monsters and vast nuisances was flip flopped entirely by one incident, it started when they finally managed to catch my brother after his bloodless rampage all over the Galactic Alliance.”

Bonnie told the story of Lilo and Stitch. She started with the story about a little girl who didn’t have her parents anymore with only her big sister to watch over her and how they would soon be torn apart from one another. Things turned around completely when Lilo found her youngest brother and the fact that he crashed in the worst possible location for spreading havoc everywhere. Then she went in-depth about why an island was a bad place for a being that was almost completely incapable of swimming. Her youngest brother was meant to be a little monster and a brat, another one of a kind monster like all of her father’s creations.

Even as Fluttershy listened to the story, she took noted that the Lead had already hacked open the ramp leading into the ship and had led them aboard. It was quite sad that the little filly was like Apple Bloom in a way, the story of how that filly redeemed Bonnie’s brother Stitch by flipping him from evil to good with friendship alone was both bitter and sweet. It all took place on a planet called earth where strange things could go completely ignored by the native people who at times didn’t want to acknowledge that something strange was out of place.

“After that, well that’s another story entirely. It’s about when the rest of us got out on the island. We were quite disoriented to find ourselves on a new planet. Me and Clyde started doing what we always do, I now find myself regretting that we did it even knowing we can’t change our ways.” It was at this time that Bonnie started strapping herself into the pilots seat and Lead took the copilots chair while Fluttershy sat down to be strapped in by Lucky. “Some of the things we did were pretty cruel to do to a child, we got her hopes up that we can be reformed like Stitch and then we subsequently dashed them harshly. We did it several times in fact, even after she named us. The two of us are always hurting the ones we love and ourselves. That’s why we separated from the rest of our family.”

“I’m sure she did her best to help you too, I’m sure they all understand and forgive you. I’m sure they really miss you.” Fluttershy could feel her ears wilting, her eyes watered and her heart filled to the brim with pity for Bonnie. At this point Bonnie didn’t say anything as the stolen cargo freighter rose through the atmosphere, Fluttershy just watched as she rubbed lightly at the blood stained red cloth wrapped around her right arm from where she was hit and lost a blaster.

“I don’t think you’re unnatural or a monster.”

Author's Note

Object lessons in things gaining souls mentioned this chapter. Fluttershy is of course curious about how robots work given this chapter is about getting the DOKs back into operational parameters.

DOK-777 is found early on in the Toonami: Lockdown game. If you recruit it, it can survive to and possibly through the final boss battle depending on how well you manage it's abilities. I'm one of those who managed to do so even if it wasn't easy and you could recruit better DOKs along the way, but this scrappy guy is to be remembered. The DOKs the humans players controlled were always given RED, BLU or GRN codes followed by numbers, the regular DOK codes were the NPCs to the game that could join you or help you by giving you objectives to meet.

Johnny 5 the war bot who got struck by lightning and became more of a pacifist. Even without his power cell being on he can still move, the second movie really forgets this trait entirely. He did turn himself back on in the first movie as he still had some semblance of being able to move, despite the very fact that he shouldn't have been capable of doing anything at all at that point.

XR was destroyed and instead of being a monotone robot that was supposed to learn all of Buzz Lighyear's moves, his repairs made him come back wrong because the LGMs weren't in the best state of mind with their Unified Mind stolen. Of course the character flaws are what make him a better being. In one of the episodes of the series it is shown that XR actually acquired a soul because of the incident that cause him to become flawed. During that episode Team Buzz required his power source for something else and left him functionally dead for a while, his spirit told them to turn him back on at the end of the episode.

Third example, minimal artificial intelligence given a long time to become sapient or act outside the programmed box? Wall-E is a prime example as he gave a spark of his own soul directly to Eve/Eva and she returned the favor later on with returning said piece with a portion of her own to revive him out of desperation and love.

64

The beige colored ship with three thrusters, heavy armoring and a small shield generator rose past the atmosphere. It’s was generally trapezoidal in shape with the front being smaller than the back end with two small side fins. It came with two manually operated bubble shaped laser turrets that could fire at any part of the ship and hit anything around it. The real name of the ship was not so much important as the ships making a blockade around the planet.

“Attention cargo vessel, this is Captain Atomic Betty of the Galactic Guardians, if you are receiving this message please stop your ship now. I will give you some time to comply.” The voice was feminine and young sounding and it caused quite the reaction in Bonnie. Looking on the monitors to outside, they could all see a small aerodynamic looking red and white ship.

Bonnie had her seat pushed as far forward as it would go so she could reach the controls, she immediately complied by slowing the vessel down to a stop. She looked rather nervous as she glances at Fluttershy who was looking at her with a bit of intrigue.

“Under the orders of the Galactic Guardians and Star Command we are tasked with making sure no ship goes by without being inspected by at least one ship of the current planetary blockade. I’m now going to ask a few questions, if the information doesn’t check out we will proceed to disable and board your ship. Who is the captain of your vessel, what is its name and what is your cargo?” The voice sounded a tad irritated and Bonnie looked to be positively sweating and she was looking to Fluttershy with a fear on her face.

“Uh… this is captain… sorry, I’m just kind of nervous… this is Captain Sweet Cheeks, we’re currently onboard the cargo vessel called…” The stuttering and bashful Fluttershy watched as Bonnie started talking to Lead Affront who gave her a thumb up. Then Bonnie came over and whispered to her some information which she repeated. Lucky came up and project the cargo they were hauling and where it was going, for some reason it sounded vaguely familiar to Fluttershy. “The Boojiboo… and we’re hauling ice cream to the planet of Bathyos as cargo.”

“You can’t be serious; do you not know what planet you’re leaving? Why in the world would ice cream be going to Bathyos of all places, it’s a water planet. It sounds fishy to me and I know fish, care you explain yourself Captain Sweet or is it Cheeks?” This Captain Betty voice took on a rather stern tone, Fluttershy was about to answer when she was cutoff.

“I prefer to be called Sweet.” It was one of Fluttershy’s defining characteristics after all. She was a sweetheart and she knew it, she liked being nice and nice things.

“Now hold on there chief, they might actually be carrying ice cream in there. If they have all my favorite flavors can we confiscate all the ice cream if we take them in?” A chipper masculine voice sounded this time while smacking its lips in a way that sounded like he was rearing to confiscate the ice cream anyway, even if it didn’t belong to him.

“Sparky we are not confiscating all their food or food related cargo on false charges, not after the last three times. You know Admiral Degill is still on your case about that!” There was an angry reprimanding tone in Betty’s voice. “Speaking of which, doesn’t Degill have a cousin or two on Bathyos X-5?”

“Affirmative captain, he has three distant cousins there.” A slightly tinny robotic voice stated with a bland tone. “Captain Sweet Cheeks, we would like permission to scan your ship to verify that it does in fact have ice cream as its main cargo, we’ve already received data that verifies your captaincy and the name of the ship.”

“Of course… I’m sorry if I’m a little jittery, I’ve run into space pirates before and I can’t help but worry about the presence of so many ships.” Fluttershy didn’t have to tell them when or where said space pirates were when she saw them. It wasn’t so hard to be nervous with so many star cruisers of different makes holding an orbit around the planet and that it was all because of her that they were there.

“I don’t like it. Fluttershy shouldn’t have to lie.” Applejack’s nose scrunched up and it was a few hours before it became dark, she was selling a lot of apple juice to thirsty ponies coming to see what Fluttershy was doing off planet.

“Who says she’s lying? I find telling nothing but the truth tends to cause more chaos than anything.” Discord chuckled as he looked into the cargo area and all the ponies saw the ice cream in there. “Bonnie has given her the nickname Sweet Cheeks long before this. The ship has been stolen, so as the current unofficial owners they can rename it Boojiboo and as you can see there is ice cream in their cargo hold… a ton of it really. It does give me some ideas.”

“Huh, well…” Applejack had to stop and think on that one, Fluttershy hadn’t lied but she did omit the truth a bit. Wasn’t omitting things a lie?

“No Discord, you are not turning all the water in Manehatten into strawberry ice cream.” It sounded like Twilight was just as miffed at Discord as Betty sounded about Sparky.

“Oh come on, not even a little sea salt ice cream iceberg?” The mismatched chaos lord chuckled. “Well if not in there then what about Ponyville’s lake?”

Surprisingly it was not just Pinkie who responded with chanting that he should do this, Fluttershy could even hear Rarity chanting the words ‘do it’ alongside her and at the end of the chanting she included a ‘please darling’. In fact some of the other ponies were interested in have a lake full of sea salt ice cream as well as long as it didn’t mess with the environment too much.

“Well, since you sweet little deer’s asked so nicely….” One could hear a few rolling of eyes at his declaration and the sound of two little whitetail does barking at Discord in surprise at the sudden species change.

“Confirmation acquired, they do have ice cream captain. Enough of it loading down their cargo bay to be considered a true shipment. The scans do not pick up any illegal substances, active weaponry and or anything dangerous showing up. None of the life forms aboard the ship appear to be in injured in any way. Nothing abnormal, which itself is strange and an oddity considering we’re over Tradeworld of all places.” After a pause of silence the obviously robotic X-5 concluded his thoughts. “What are your orders and how should we proceed from here captain?”

“So there’s nothing in the ice cream, no injuries and a legitimate course heading for Bathyos? I’m a little confused considering what I know of Tradeworld, but they might be part of the twenty percent that don’t have any illegal dealings.” It sounded like Betty was straining with her own conscience on this situation.

“Well I guess I’m cool with that, too bad about not being able to confiscate that ice cream though. So what do you say chief?” Sparky sounded a little sad that he wasn’t getting the entire cargo hold of ice cream all to himself.

“… okay, let them through. Against my better judgment I don’t have a reason to hold them here.” Captain Betty was apparently going to let them go. “Captain Sweet, just one more thing before you leave, which is if you are willing give us a moment of your time. We’re searching for an ambassador that was recently kidnapped. Have you heard anything about her on the streets or have seen her personally? She has yellow fur and pink hair; she’s an adorable quadruped alien that’s shorter than a cyclocentaurian, without the upper torso and has two eyes.”

“Um… I can’t say that I have… Captain Betty. We must be going now… Lead set course for Bathyos.” It was honesty at its finest; with a bit of omission as to what Fluttershy’s has heard and seen exactly. She hadn’t heard anything about herself, she hadn’t been on the streets long enough to hear anything with Bonnie leading the way. She can’t exactly see herself either, unless she looked in a mirror and she hadn’t seen one since she got to this planet.

The heavy cargo ship zipped away on a straight course for Bathyos at Fluttershy’s command and Lead took control of the ship. Bonnie released a breath she had been holding in and unstrapped herself; Fluttershy looked after her as she passed through a closing door leaving the bridge.

“We’ll make that delivery to Bathyos, it doesn’t feel right to not deliver the cargo. Will you be okay here by yourself Lead?” Fluttershy got a raised thumb from Ms. Affront and she unstrapped herself to go after Bonnie. It took a bit of wandering, but she found Bonnie sitting down with a bucket of ice cream which she slowly ate from. She looked up at Fluttershy and then went back to eating with a slightly depressed look on her face. A moment later, Fluttershy joined Bonnie in eating some alien ice cream in the peace and quiet of the kitchenette galley area of the recently renamed Boojiboo.

It was an hour later and empty cart of ice cream that Bonnie decided to talk again; she wanted to broach the topic of why Fluttershy looked more depressed then she felt. She knew Fluttershy currently didn’t feel like she got ran over by a train, at least Bonnie knew that she’d be better in no time given some time to sleep off her injuries.

“Okay what’s the matter with you? You sick or something? I know I’m still feeling a bit of my internal injuries here.” If there was one thing Bonnie didn’t like, it was seeing the cuddly pony looking depressed.

“Well yes, I’m currently homesick. What’s the matter with me is that if all robots can eventually get souls then all of the ones I destroyed could have had a chance at life and I…” All those robots, even those four killer robot things on the train that nearly took her head off with their first few shots. They all could have eventually become something greater and more than what they were made to do. It was like preemptively ending a life that had yet to begun, she actually felt horribly sick to her stomach when she compared it to an aborted...

“No sense in worrying about the past, you made a judgment call and there’s no worrying about ‘what ifs’ when you can be worrying more about what will or could happen. You’re doing the best with what you have, just like everyone else in the universe is. If you haven’t croaked yet, you must be doing something right, Fluttershy.” Bonnie smiled as the pony stared at her in shock when she brought her into a one armed hug wrapped around her neck. Yeah calling her by her name and then giving her a bright crap eating grin was sure to brighten her mood, even if it was by a tiny amount. “Whatever happened, happened, you just need to keep pushing forward. Who knows, you might actually convince some heartless creature that they can change for the better like a little girl once did for someone I know. She might even become a real friend if you give her some time; I don’t think she’s all too good at it and needs more remedial lessons in being good. I’m going to go find a place to lie down; it’s going to be a while if we’re going to make a stop at Bathyos before we go to Planet Z. And for what it’s worth I’m actually feeling sorry about all this.”

Fluttershy watched as Bonnie stood up and left well stretching out her arms and cringing when her right arm caused her some pain, she left through the sliding door with a silly swagger in her steps. A small smile formed on her lips.

“It’s about time Fluttershy started getting through to her. Still though, it’s kind of interesting what’s going on with this Bonnie.” Even princess Cadence came to see how Fluttershy was doing in the universe and Shining was off in the distance playing with Twilight to get her mind off of the situation for a while. Also there were a few ponies eating sea salt ice cream. “I don’t think I’ve seen connections form quite like that between two beings before. It seems rather tenuous, tentative and unusual.”

“Well Bonnie appears to be a chaotic being; she’s so used to using others that when friendship is promised and ultimately delivered without any strings attached she doesn’t quite know how to feel. Considering she has a brother, she has problems making close connections with anyone outside her family.” Chuckling Discord had experienced it himself when Fluttershy befriended him, he tried just using her to stop the elements of harmony from turning him to stone again and that disposition had quickly changed. Just because he was chaotic, it didn’t mean he couldn’t have friends all over the place. “She knows that she’s doing something horrible and knows she’s immediately forgiven for it without question. She’s trying to use and think of Fluttershy as a means to an end and is finding it quite hard to keep thinking like that with dear Fluttershy being so nice about it all. I happen to know that exact feeling quite well.”

“You’ve made a lot of friends with your antics lately, are you sure you’re still Discord lord of chaos?” Cadence the princess of love was asking because Discord was more worried about a friend than causing chaos, she thought it was nice that his chaos was less mean spirited then it used to be.

“Are you sure you’re wings didn’t just turn into floppy pickles covered in horseradish sauce?” Discord returned with a smirk.

Fluttershy explored the ship, this was very different from the cargo vessel the Croakers had, there was less wide open corridors and muggy atmosphere. She was walking around when she noticed a glow from the corner of her eye, her suits helmet immediately up as she wandered closed and she saw Lucky Day repairing the third DOK, the big red one that was still inactive. He was working on the inner workings and taking a moment to scrape dirt and what looked like cauterized biological material out of its nooks and crannies. She didn’t even have to ask what the big robot was good at; he was definitely made for battle or protecting others given his size.

Lucky turned to her to wave and then he went back to work on the DOK almost twice his size and mass. He didn’t have enough resources to get the red highlighted DOK operational and would need to find a lot of parts for him.

The red DOK in question was ironically designated ‘Absolute Resolve’; he was a Protector and Demolitions class of DOK. His shields, when they were operational, were impenetrable by most forms of handheld weapons fire no matter how focused. His armor used to be highly explosive resistant and was currently too dilapidated to be useful at the moment. Everything about Absolute needed to be fixed and he was barely salvageable, if he was repaired correctly he’d be a veritable tank when it came to a fight despite his slow deliberate movements. He was one of the DOK’s that had been essential in ending the problem from their last memories of being operational, he was one of the DOKs that was given a built on site rocket launcher made from spare parts found on the enemy vessel.

The pony waved back and left Lucky to work on his friend, the red one still looked worse off than the other two by a fair degree. Idly she wondered how long the robots had been asleep and what had happened to them to leave them in such poor condition. Was it technically sleeping or was it death until they woke up alive again? Shivering slightly at the implications, she decided to think of other things as she found the bathroom and pulled off her Rhizome suit. She also flicked the memory stone from her ear and held it to her chest for a moment before placing it off to the side.

Sighing Fluttershy decided that she needed a shower and saw a mirror and she looked at the pony that was looking back at her. Her eyes were worn and weary, her mane was a short sweaty mess, she had three scorched hooves and the only good thing she could think about herself was that she at least looked healthy and fit. She just didn’t look like herself at the moment, the bat wing, the fang, the ears and the twisted cutie mark mattered little at the moment compared to everything else that recently happened to her appearance.

Roller revved and bumped against her leg and squealed sadly at the slightly damaged hooves, he was also rather apologetic about hurting her back on the fast floating giant quick moving animal thing.

Lifting the one hoof that wasn’t covered in a blackened scorch mark, Fluttershy started rubbing Roller’s carapace gently and he nuzzled up into her touch. She giggled slightly at how Mr. Wheel saw the train as some form of living thing, could trains be given an artificial intelligence? Well he might not have been too far off in his odd belief if that were true. She gave him a nice smile, which told him that she was physically okay with her action alone and that she wasn’t going to stop moving anytime soon. He believed her at her soothing touch and affectionate body language.

As she stepped into the shower and started it she sighed at the warm spray of water struck her fur. She closed her eyes and thought back to Equestria, the planet of Equus and all the things she would be able to do once she got home. She didn’t want to forget what her world was like and the beauty it held. Memories of her little rambunctious bunny, her friend Harry the bear and all the other animals flooded through her head as she started scrubbing her body down. She knew some of those animals wouldn’t be there when she got back.

A clean and refreshed Fluttershy stepped out of the shower and shook off the excess water, she looked a bit better and the scorch marks on her hooves were less noticeable. She also had the knowledge of how to create a lighting cloud from Rainbow, something she hoped she wouldn’t need to use again. Once she got her suit back on she set out into the corridors looking for a bedroom and saw Lucky floating towards the bridge and she got his attention by waving a hoof.

“Um… excuse me, I know you’re busy and everything, but do you know where I can find a place to sleep?” The robot raised a thumb at her and Fluttershy felt like this was going to be a recurring theme with the DOKs as their easiest way of saying yes.

Following the hovering barrel shaped robot to a hallway with rooms it pointed out a few rooms that were unoccupied and it showed one that had Bonnie sleeping inside of it. Looking into the room she saw the Bonnie was having tossing and turning, it looked like she wasn’t sleeping very well.

“Thank you very much Mr. Day, you can go about your business.” The little blue DOK saluted Fluttershy and then flew off, leaving her to move into the room Bonnie was in. She took off her suit and held out the Memory Stone.

“Could one anyone who is there tell Princess Luna I need a little help with a friend, she’s having nightmares and I’m about to cuddle her and go to sleep myself.” Knowing that she was being watched constantly was actually more of a comfort than not being watched, she knew her friends were still worried about her and hadn’t forgotten her which was more comforting than knowing a bunch of random ponies were watching her zany, weird or dangerous exploits.

“Sure can do sugar cube, it is nighttime here anyway and I’m mighty tired from a hard day’s work and all. You got a lot of folks wishing you well out there you know and even I’m taking some time out of my day to see how you’re doing too. I need to be getting on, Good Night Discord, Fluttershy and everyone else.” A chorus of voices answering Applejack was heard on the Memory Stone wishing her a good night’s rest as well.

Watching Bonnie whimper as she tossed and turned on the bed broke Fluttershy’s heart slightly, she slowly crawled up onto the bed carefully trying not to wake her up. Slowly she brought Bonnie into her hooves and started singing lightly into one of her ears to calm her down as she nodded off herself snuggling the poor thing.

It was a few moments later that Fluttershy met with Luna and then they both would see what was in the mind of Bonnie Jookiba. Bonnie was with a larger masculine looking version of herself that came in two shades of brown and his left arm was mechanical, they were being captured by some red monsters. The scene changed to an arena of sorts where a whole ton of weird aliens that looked similar to Bonnie were being caged in by the red four armed monsters that were perfect copies of each other.

“Shouldn’t we do something?” It looked like a memory to Fluttershy, if that was true then was this Bonnie’s family?

“We should let it play out.” Luna was curious to see where this went.

A ship in the sky prepared to fire some kind of weapon only to be destroyed, Bonnie found herself being rallied to fight by a blue version of the red monsters, despite the good start the tides quickly turned and Bonnie’s family started losing. The scene ended well enough as after the battle when the family won by singing a somewhat sad sounding song together, it quickly changed to a scene where Bonnie joined in a picture with some of her family.

The picture became more prominent and it seemed to catch fire, it separated two of the beings from the rest of the others and it showed Bonnie and the one who had an arm wrapped around her. The picture split down the middle and changed slightly to show Bonnie and the other being reaching out for one another.

“That must be her brother Clyde.” At least Fluttershy now knew what Clyde looked like and then the real nightmare started.

Author's Note

I don't like bringing the movie 'Leeroy and Stitch' into this, but remembering your entire family being threatened with annihilation would be pretty dark and memorable.

Boojiboo- Stitch's word for 'Great Affection'.

Callback to an earlier chapter when Fluttershy was in the general area of Rhizome.

Fluttershy of course sings 'hush now, quiet now'.

Things to consider here, the only reason why the ploy worked is because while Betty knows what to look for she doesn't know Fluttershy's voice. She likely has a clip of Bonnie's voice and an image of her. It's a good thing she didn't ask to see who was on the bridge on a screen.

66

Bonnie looked at Fluttershy’s hoof and took it in her hand, she felt herself be pulled into a standing position and she looked to the other being. She was beginning to piece together some things about the stranger in front of her.

“Let me guess, you’re both real and inside my head.” At the moment Bonnie took on a studying look as she took in Luna’s form.

“We are technically in your dreams, but how did you know this without being told?” Sometimes the dreamer would be more freaked out and awaken immediately; it was odd to Luna that Bonnie took a more thoughtful approach to this.

“One of my brothers has the ability to get into your head quite literally, he is experiment two seven six and his name is Remmy. His special ability is dream eating. He attacks you at the height of your happiest dreams and turns them into complete nightmares. Oh and if you wake up while he’s in your head, he gets kind of stuck up in there. Dad likes to imply that it’s permanent, but it isn’t really. All waking up will do is make it exponentially harder to get him out of your head. I easily found out how dad knew Remmy had that problem.” After a moment Bonnie looked at the horrified gazes of the two ponies, the one with the horns and wings was worth asking about. After a moment she tapped her foot and dream version of Remmy appeared. “Yeah, my dear old dad got Remmy here stuck in his head once and yes he does look like this. It took my father a while to figure out how to stop getting nightmares and get Remmy out of his head safely without hurting him. He’s done causing nightmares and is much friendlier nowadays. So, I’m guessing you saw some things then? Also who’s the dame Sweet Cheeks?”

“You’re taking our invasion of your privacy better than I thought you would.” Fluttershy blushed and was a little perplexed by Bonnie’s sudden laid back attitude at the moment. “I was just curious as to why you were having nightmares. This is Princess Luna; she can visit the dreams of ponies and the dreams of others that I happen to be sleeping right next to. She’s an alicorn and controls the moon of my world to usher in the night.”

“Wait, you’re sleeping right next to me? Huh, well that’s something. Sharing dreams is nothing new to me. My privacy being invaded is something I can actually live with; I’ve actually had an all out fight for a bathroom once with fifty of my sisters. That certainly didn’t end well for me and that was definitely a full scale invasion of privacy.” Bonnie frowned in thought for a moment with her arms crossed and after a moment she smiled a bit, the image of Remmy disappeared.

A few images of experiments with the names associated to them appeared, Fluttershy read the names above their heads as Angel, Belle and Carmine appeared behind Bonnie and just as quickly vanished. Fluttershy thought the gooey looking Carmine was a little odd.

“What I couldn’t live with is what happened after Clyde got Remmy stuck in his head for a week, I swear he wouldn’t leave me alone by myself for a month after that! Remmy sometimes has control issues when it comes to not causing nightmares. To this day he still likes to sleep inside people’s heads and watching them dream, at least that’s what Clyde told me.” It was true, for Bonnie spent an entire month where there was no such thing as privacy when her little brother couldn’t take a hint that she needed some alone time.

“How I wish my sister paid that much attention to me before I turned into a literal existing nightmare, what you have with your brother is special and should not be so callously tossed aside.” Luna noticed it was a bit of a bad move to talk about siblings with Bonnie considering her sudden glare.

“Don’t you think I know that? I mean you have seen my dreams or at least some of my memories right?” Two hooves wrapped around Bonnie bringing her into a hug and two more joined in. “I swear you ponies are all hugs and kisses. Also your princess is really beautiful and all, but can we move on to a different castle?”

“Well, I know you have a plan to rescue your brother or else you wouldn’t have wanted the DOKs so badly. They are rather friendly and helpful, well for machines built for hurting others.” At least Fluttershy hoped Bonnie had a plan and a good one at that.

“Do you have a plan? Fluttershy is really dear to us back home and it was only an accident that has ripped her away from all that she knew and tossed her into a universe we’re not exactly prepared for. We wish that she would find our planet again so she can return to her mostly carefree life of tending to and regulating woodland animals.” After a moment Luna decided to add. “We would like her back mostly in one piece as well, it is bad enough she has undergone an unwarranted horrific magical mutation and has witnessed a planet exploding as the worst of what has happened to her thus far.”

“I do have a plan, but it’s a freaking crapshoot and a long shot from even going entirely right even with all the DOKs operational. It puts Fluttershy at risk of getting hurt badly and knowing Zurg he’ll give me about five minutes to retrieve my brother before he has his hornets come at me with lethal intent. You can’t trust a guy who emphasizes the word ‘evil’ in his name to really do what you want him to; much less trust him at all and I certainly don’t.” At least Bonnie knew she could be honest with Fluttershy about how well her plan would go. Bonnie just couldn’t trust the pony with all the details of what the plan exactly entailed even if she trusted her to succeed. “I really need a way to stack the deck in my favor, but I’m just not seeing it. I’d just be happy if I could see my brother one last time, the guy torturing him is not one to play nice or even take it easy on someone.”

“Let us tell you of our history as we have already seen some of yours. It all started when I and Celestia took control of the sun and moon in our apparently one planet system…” It was still hard for Luna to believe a lot of solar systems could have as many planets as four up to sixteen planets depending on how well their orbits worked.

Bonnie yawned and opened her eyes, she was lying in bed and felt extremely comfortable, at her back she felt a soft cushion of fluff and around her body were two hooves wrapped her as if she were a stuffed toy. Normally she didn’t like being captured, incarcerated or held against her will, in this situation it was different. She trusted Fluttershy a little better now. It was still a scary thought that she just made a friend she could truly expect to be what they were, a friendly and overall nice being that had little to no alternative motives in dealing with her. Sweet Cheeks really should have stopped worming into her heart like she did.

It was amazing to hear of a world where two ponies controlled the orbit of such important objects that kept their planet alive; Bonnie knew finding something like that would take a while or a lifetime. It was a big universe and there were infinite directions one could go in. She thought Luna was a real strange piece of work, controlled the moon of Fluttershy’s home planet and had the ability to walk into dreams. She had asked if Celestia was the one to enter pony’s daydreams and got a laugh out of Luna as it had not occurred to her to go looking for dreams in the sunlit hours.

“Oh um, sorry, you can get up now Bonnie.” Fluttershy had woken up as quickly as Bonnie had and released Bonnie from her hooves.

“I like you’re princess, she’s got some moxie in her.” Of course Bonnie would like Luna, though she could stand to try to talk about her problems without jumping straight to planet annihilation mode. Even Jumba is taking forever in getting to planet annihilation experiments. She had to mention that she only had three brothers that were considered world ending calamities, but they never quite ended anything.

When asked for an example of one of her world ending brothers, Bonnie had to explain how experiment six zero seven, Launch, was made to collapse the entire universe into itself by ripping apart the fabric of time and space. Truth of the matter, Launch could only jump through space; luckily he couldn’t actually jump through time and he could not actually cause the collapse of an entire universe. She had to talk about Launch quite a bit considering all the implications behind what his abilities were supposed to be and what they actually were, he could go anywhere in space within a certain distance. Apparently his maximum jump range was between the planet of earth and its moon which is how he earned his name. It took a while to find him on earth’s moon when he thought it was made out of cheese at the time due to a bit of miscommunication by a certain little girl. It was surprising to find out that Luna herself and only certain types of pony could do a similar thing by teleporting.

“Um, there is one little thing I wanted to ask you, but I didn’t want to ask it in front of Luna so could I do it now if I’m not being too much of a bother?” It was something Fluttershy wanted to air out in her head, on a go ahead gesture and a breath later. “Did your father ever hurt you? He sounds not so nice, even if your memories make him out to be friendly and maybe even likeable.”

“Okay look, he’s not exactly the greatest guy in the universe, but he’d never knowingly cause permanent injury to one of his experiments nor did he ever hurt us intentionally or even badly. He did however create us to be evil though, so you might want to excuse him for that one as it is his favorite thing to do even if he’s not really all that evil himself. He just likes push the boundaries of the definition, a lot.” It wasn’t like she hated her father, but bonnie could find plenty of reasons to not be around him for extended periods of time. He was veritable chaos maker and magnet at the same time, but at least life was never boring. “He just really likes creating life with a chip already stuck in its shoulder, sometimes excessively big ones. Builds character really and I certainly have lots of that Sweet Cheeks.”

Lucky Day floated into the room and projected something for Bonnie to read.

“Are we already at Bathyos?” Fluttershy hopped off the bed and went to put on her Rhizome suit.

“Yep, we’re above Bathyos and Lucky here is getting cute because he’s calling you Captain Shy and claiming that becoming pirates wouldn’t be hard for us to do at this rate. I’d have to agree with him, except I don’t like pillaging and I prefer the more quiet approach to stealing things.” Taking a moment to watch the suit wrap around the ponies form and then generate the adorable flowery petals, Bonnie turned to the DOK and wondered what kind of supplies they could get. “Okay Lucky, you have things to do after delivering the ice cream. We need parts to repair the big guy tend to every other need you and Lead might need. We’re also going to need a bit of food, preferably vegetables and fruit since we both can eat that easily enough. Also get some water and fruit juice while you’re at it. After that you and Lead can do anything you want.”

After Lucky gave an affirmative that he had his orders, he quickly left to go fulfill it immediately so he could take some time to acquire the parts he needed for himself and the other DOKs. Then he’d get some food and drink for the ones with more biological needs of sustenance, the DOKs could easily charge themselves off the ships power source.

“I almost expected you to ask for something alcoholic.” Booze was a universal thing that Fluttershy didn’t like; intoxication was in fact capable everywhere there was a civilization. Even Rhizomian’s had beer, even an alcoholic variety of root that could inebriate and was glad that she had asked about that drink before ingesting it.

“Nope, I don’t drink. It only numbs the pain; it won’t make it go away. I’m a little surprised you know what alcohol is considering you seem to come from a world of sunshine and hippies.” Bonnie quirked an eye at Fluttershy as if asking for an explanation, she didn’t believe for a second that Fluttershy drank or imbibed.

“Oh my world isn’t perfect, what with the large carnivorous creature living near my hometown. My friend Rainbow Dash back home has a small problem when it comes to drinking apple cider; she like regular and sometimes she gets into the hard stuff from time to time. Though it does make her act in an adorable manner and she neighs a lot when she starts stumbling around.” It was one thing to Fluttershy to be addicted Applejack’s apples; it was another thing to be completely addicted to cider of varying levels of intoxication. “She always needs me to fly her home after she’s had enough. She never goes drinking without a designated flyer; I wonder who she’s been getting to do that for her now?”

The ship shifted slightly and Fluttershy looked questioningly to the door of the room and Bonnie hopped off the bed.

“Guess we’re landing and just hit the atmosphere. I’ve been on and stolen enough ships to know that particular feeling that likely just passed through you. Bathyos is home to all kind of sapient aquatic lives who have somehow mastered space travel without the ability to ignite things on fire.” It was one of the greater mysteries to Bonnie. How you could create an amphibious ship to go from moving through water to flying in space with an equal amount of ability for doing both? They were some really tough space ships because of how much pressure they could take.

“Is it okay if I stretch my wings? I want to look around and see some of the native life here.” All the alien did was make a shooing gesture and Fluttershy trotted out of the room taking it as a go ahead to get some fresh air.

Bathyos wasn’t a resort planet; above water the planet was either two things, calm or stormy. They landed next to a calm beach with quite a few other ships and an island with a small city and Fluttershy was happy to breath in some salty air of the beach they landed next to, she always enjoyed going to the beach and it was some nice sunny noon time hour where they landed on the planet. The island wasn’t very big, but it did have some local aliens around. Fluttershy didn’t go near them or try to attract attention to herself since she was supposed to be kidnapped and acting like a fugitive would have been weird considering she was wanted safely back by the Galactic Alliance.

After a while of playing in the sand and letting her suit soak up some water, Fluttershy became curious and started following around a small nine legged crustacean like alien. Wildlife on other planets was always something Fluttershy was curious about, the nine legged crustacean almost looked like a clam at first until Fluttershy saw its legs moving it across the beach.

After some time befriended some of the more intelligent creatures in the nearby waters, Fluttershy looked down the beach and saw Bonnie staring out at the ocean. Didn’t she say her entire family was on an island like this one? The prospect didn’t seem as bad given they learned something about themselves and became friendly instead of dangerous.

Fluttershy left Bonnie to have some alone time while she frolicked with the strange lizards crawling around on the beach that looked like an odd version of a turtle with its finned legs. Having tired of seeing and talking to so many wondrous animals that liked her back, Fluttershy decided to start building a sand castle.

It looked more like a sand pyramid with a moat by the time she was done, but Fluttershy was proud to have accomplished that much without a bucket. She still had a lot of other things to look into, like helping Roller who kept getting stuck in the sand and helping him figure out that he had to hop around instead of roll.

Roller would continue to whine about how loose all the sand was, it was definitely not a wheelie’s favorite place to be. Other than that he was enjoying spending some time with Fluttershy, he made a mound of sand too and had wondered where Fluttershy went as soon as he did. A plant covered hoof stuck up out of the sand at an awkward angle.

It was moments like these that made all the bad stuff not seem so horrible, Fluttershy really was enjoying her day at the beach and seeing all kinds of strange wildlife. Curious, she called out to Roller and went to check on the ship to see what Lead and Lucky were doing. The two DOKs were moving packets loaded with ice cream down the ramp and one of the DOKs was getting a confirmation for the ice cream order from an adorable looking sapient bipedal shark.

Fluttershy sat by knowing that after all their business here was done; they’d be heading straight into danger. She thought on Bonnie’s nightmares and family, beings made to be evil from the start yet gained the ability to go beyond what they were. Whatever happened she was going to stick to her promise to be Bonnie’s friend, she wanted to at least settle the conditions of the temporary part of the Pinkie Pie promise.

“Okay the DOKs are just about done with their shopping around here, so what are you doing Sweet Cheeks?” Bonnie came and sat by Fluttershy and stared at what she was looking at before, the horizon where the sun was setting.

“Just something that reminds me of home, Celestia would lower the sun and then with Luna the moon would rise. This sun isn’t like the one at home, but it does paint a really pretty picture.” It was good to be calm before a trying situation; at least Fluttershy would like to think she was calm when she got pushed up a mountain towards a dragon and inevitable doom. Dragons had tough skin, were resilient to magic up to a certain degree and unlike Spike, the bigger more adult dragons wouldn’t think twice about killing and eating a pony.

“Yeah it is a pretty sight I guess, now let’s go get you killed Fluttershy!” Bonnie said in a jovial joking tone.

“So are you going to tell me exactly what the plan is?” Fluttershy was a little worried about what Bonnie would do or what she planned on trying to achieve.

“Might as well, I’m actually going to give you to Zurg, the DOKs are going to try and sabotage one of his factories and draw attention to themselves while I’m busy getting Clyde. As for you, how high exactly is your total pain tolerance? I mean spiritual, physical, emotional and possibly even metaphysical.” Even the pony could see that Bonnie was grimacing at the idea that someone would even consider the idea of torturing her.

“It’s pretty high really. I’ve been shot at least once or twice and have been scratched, scraped and battered since I left my home planet. Survived some alien sickness thanks to the Etecoons and Dachora I met on a planet that exploded and that kind of sent me into a deeply depressed state. Not to mention I ended up, waking up on that planet looking like this, then got shot by these crustaceous beings called Space Pirates. Oh and the Dachora had such an adorable little chick, I think I’m its godmother and I know they are okay because they were being moved to a preservation. At least I hope they were after that planet exploded, they were quite intelligent for animals. I never knew something so young and adorable could be so powerful, I actually got to witness it being born...” After a moment Fluttershy realized she was being glared at as she started to monologue into talking about animals. “Oh sorry, I must be annoying you by going off tangent.”

“How exactly did you get off the exploding planet?” Actually it sounded like an interesting story to Bonnie, a race named ‘Space Pirates’ sounded familiar.

“The Etecoons and Dachora started this ship that was previously owned by this race called the Chozo.” For the life of her Fluttershy could not understand why Bonnie looked scared.

“Did you just say Chozo, as in the LGMs idea of The Claw, The Architects and The Warriors? Do you mean those Chozo?” Bonnie just slapped her left hand to her face and groaned as she finally remembered why she heard of Space Pirates as a race before. “Well crap, that explains a lot.”

“What’s wrong? Was it something I said? What does it explain?” Fluttershy was a bit confused.

“Have you been to a section of space that has something called the Galactic Federation?” Pausing to receive a nod Bonnie continued on. “It is very far away from the Galactic Alliance and dad is likely the only person from within Galactic Alliance borders to have been to that section of the universe and back. He snuck off on his vacation time and then stole a lot of information and got some genetic material from there, it’s probably what led to my zany family’s existence. If you see a white furred, red eyed talking gerbil… you know what? Don’t even mention seeing a Chozo ever again period, unless you can absolutely trust the person you’re talking to implicitly. Now come on, sunset watching is done and we’re going to Planet Z!”

Somehow, Fluttershy didn’t think Bonnie’s frantic change in mood was entirely normal and how did Bonnie even know she saw a Chozo? She never once mentioned seeing one in her dreams.

Author's Note

I know I'm leaning a little too heavily into the Lilo and Stitch crossover here, but there's a madness to my methods.

Milestone: At this point and time I think I will have almost surpassed the word count of Twilight's Mane Passion.

Jumba had to figure out that Remmy gets stuck in your head somehow, but his claims of permanency are completely suspect given how he knew exactly what would happen if someone woke up with Remmy still in their head. Most likely he implies it's permanent because he's a bit of a jerk.

Angel Jookiba (624)- Sings songs to make any previously made experiments evil again and sometimes leaves them completely under her control. Can actually sing the song backwards to turn experiments good. (Jumba wouldn't need an experiment like this if he didn't have a problem with some of his experiments going good on their own before Lilo ever became involved.)

Belle Jookiba (248)- Made to just sneak up on and scare people with a powerful, sometimes ear deafening, shriek. Is mostly a meek and harmless prankster. (Jumba seems less like an evil genius and more like a fun loving guy that likes to laugh, Hamsterviel funded things like this?)

Carmine Jookiba (008)- Made to produce melted caramel from her body, just don't eat her drippings off the ground. (Created by Jumba to cause sticky messes, happens to be a failure experiment because the caramel she drips wasn't sticky enough.)

67

Fluttershy cowered in the copilot’s seat with her hooves over her eyes as the cargo vessel shook from being struck.

“I just got to wonder how you attract so much trouble, I’d swear you were one of my brothers or sisters if I didn’t know you had an entire naturally existing race.” Bonnie was steering the ship like mad, swerving swooping and pulling all kind of crazy maneuvers in space. “I’m starting to think that kidnapping you has jinxed me and I wouldn’t put it past the universe to do something like that to me.”

“I’m sorry…” Fluttershy mumbled from behind her hooves she was holding up to her face in an adorable manner by trying to hide behind them.

“You got nothing to be sorry about; it’s just that I’ve had a slight run of bad luck since I’ve met you.” It was what Bonnie thought to be true since there was Torque finding them at the train station, the compu-kill guard robots and then this happened when they were halfway to planet Z on a route no one would possibly be near. “I mean getting attacked by Valkyrans couldn’t have possibly been your idea. Lucky Day, Lead Affront, please tell me you guys are at least dealing with their fighters?”

A whirring clicking noise was heard and a few buzzes, it sounded particularly angry to Fluttershy and it was likely Lucky making the noises. Then another series of chirps and warbles that sounded higher in pitch were heard, meaning that it was Ms. Affront who was less angry and more determined sounding. The DOKs were both working the turrets, Lucky had been in the middle of finishing some repairs on Absolute Resolve when the attack came and was immediately moving to man one of the turrets, as Lead had quickly instructed him that they were under attack in under millisecond it took for the Valkyrans to appear in their colorful grinning ships.

“Well that’s bad, they have disabler’s. At least Lucky Day is good at precision shooting, so far they haven’t been able to come close enough to hit us with one of those. Lead is doing a better job of keeping them off us, but the DOKs can’t deflect laser fire and our shields are going to eventually overload if too much stress is put on them.” Though they’ve taken a few hits Bonnie knew they could make an escape with minimal damage to the ship, she needed it in good condition to get through the atmosphere of Zurg’s planet when it came time to escape.

Fluttershy looked at the visuals on the monitors coming from their aft section and could see how each DOK worked their turret in a unique way. Lucky was making quick and well focused shots on any particular threat that got near them, he usually hit with dangerous efficiency. Lead would fire in bursts while only aiming in a general direction to suppress the fighters trying to jockey into position to hit them easily with rockets that would disable the Boojiboo entirely. Lead seemed to be aiming to get the other fighters to fly into the shots from Lucky’s turret.

The pony was learning what Valkyran culture was like in a very quick manner, they were not very nice to say the least. Their ships were painted in bright colors with evil grinning faces on the front. They always had at least four fighters coming at them at any given time and the carrier which was much bigger than their ship trying to keep on their tails, anytime a fighter was damaged a new one would come out to replace the one that returned to the ship. They had to run out eventually right? They couldn’t just keep sending them out of the carrier that looked to be the same general design of the smaller ships only larger in scale.

The first few minutes into the chase, Bonnie told Fluttershy that the Valkyrans were raiders and were a less friendly version of what she does. Bonnie rarely used anything remotely close to excessive violence to steal when subtlety was much easier; the Valkyrans had no subtlety except for their technological cloaking devices that allows them to sneak up on you. They still had to drop their cloaking fields to attack which gave Lead time to prevent them from getting caught off guard.

It was easy to see this situation rankled Bonnie somewhat to run into space raiders who were nowhere near the normal shipping routes they should have been watching for easy targets. She was flying evasive maneuvers at random and the DOKs were doing an excellent job at compensating for it. The ship was kept mostly on course for planet Z and the Valkyrans weren’t about to stop Bonnie from getting there now.

The Valkyran ships had problems hitting the cargo ship, in fact the longer it took to even get a single hit in the angrier they seemed to be getting with their flying. Of course they could not have known Bonnie was not only made for evading physically getting shot by projectiles, but her evasion abilities translated into her piloting skills and it was taking everything they had to even have shot it five times up to this point and the shields prevented any real damage from occurring.

“Um… Bonnie… what does this mean?” Fluttershy was looking at several things lighting up on the console in front of her.

“It means we’re being hailed and not just by laser fire and missiles, they are trying to call us. Could you try talking them into giving up already? This is getting very annoying.” The ship jukes left and right out of the way of laser fire and Bonnie grunted in the effort as her mind worked to keep up with everything that was going on. “Damn this ship has a fat ass, thankfully that ass is armor plated on top of having shields. I got to remember to thank dad for all the evasion skills he gave me.”

Fluttershy looked at the console and hit the glowing button with a hoof and an angry female face popped up on the screen.

“So you finally show your… what are you? You look like a cyclocentaurian, only smaller and less arms.” The anger quickly faded away and the figure just stared at Fluttershy in complete confusion. She was a tall, bulky with muscles feminine humanoid woman that had a thick long red braid hanging down her back. She was wearing what looked to be an advanced form of Viking armor and was holding a glowing mace in one hand.

“I’m a pony; could I ask you to please stop attacking us?” Fluttershy gave a hopeful smile that this could be resolved as peacefully as possible.

“No, you will cease your running cowards! Give us your ship and maybe we’ll even bother with sparing your lives… pony.” The woman waved her mace at the pony in a threatening manner on the screen. “We might just throw you out the airlock anyway after ripping off some of your limbs.”

“Well now, that doesn’t sound very nice.” At this moment Fluttershy thought that she might as well try to keep this Valkyran distracted.

“Of course it’s not, we’re Valkyrans! We will capture you, it’s only a matter of time before your gunners tire and your captain will be whining to us to spare the lives of their crew.” This woman didn’t seem to be able to feel any other emotion than haughty and victorious.

“Hi my name is Captain Sweet Cheeks. What’s your name? I hope we can become friends.” Of course Fluttershy knew it was unlikely to happen; if it did then that would have been a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. She was going to stick with her captain name just in case something bad happened if she used her real name. “Why, I think we’re having a pleasant conversation so far already.”

“Do you even live in the same reality as I the mighty Captain Herja of the Bloody Retaliation? We will destroy you!” The red headed lady known as Herja didn’t seem to have any sense of what was adorable; therefore she was not affected by Fluttershy smiling at her.

“But if you destroy us, doesn’t that mean you’ll get less in the end if you can’t catch us?” It didn’t sound challenging, but Fluttershy already knew she would take it the wrong way.

“You do not think Herja can catch you? We will show you by taking you alive for your impudence!” it sounded like Herja wasn’t the smartest Valkyran around.

“Didn’t you want to destroy us a second ago? Oh I know, you want to take use alive because you don’t like killing. Oh that’s so wonderful, so we can actually be friends!” At the moment Fluttershy thought she was a pretty good distraction for the other captain. “It’s so nice of you to not want to kill us, I’m sure we can all talk about our feelings over some tea and cookies.”

“Captain Herja has no need for friends, we are the mighty Valkyrans! We all hate tea and eat the flesh of beasts! You insult us with your mannerisms.” The more the other captain heard the angrier she kept getting and that just meant things were going well.

“I’m sure you’re entire race is strong and all, but I think you need a bit of anger management before we can really be friends. I think you also need to smile more, it’d make you look prettier.” Fluttershy would giggle at the glowing red with anger face, but she didn’t want to give up the act quite yet.

“I will only smile when I can drink freely of the blood spewing from your neck after I have pulled your head off!” Herja was definitely not a happy camper at the moment.

“Do you really think you should be antagonizing her like that Sweet Cheeks?” Another blast rocked the ship, it had only been struck a total of six times and the shields were still going strong. Bonnie and the DOKs were doing an impressive job of keeping the ship relatively intact and strong, the shields hadn’t even dropped below eighty percent yet and always kept reaching full again after every shot that had hit thus far.

“Why would you think I’m doing that? I think we’re making good progress, now she just wants to kill me and not the entire crew.” It was a sad universe they lived in when the nicest pony in the world was being sarcastic, but Fluttershy was going to keep on trying to be kind and friendly despite this person making a lot of promises of pain and suffering. “So Captain Herja, did your mother hit you a lot when you were younger? Was your father a nice man?”

“My father, the weakling that he was, died before I Herja was born! My mother is a great warrior, like all mothers of the Valkyran race!” Herja was still being overly hammy, but there was a slight crack in her voice and Fluttershy hadn’t missed it.

“So you have issues with your mother and you’ve never had a father figure in your life, so therefore you’re following a job your mother forced upon you. Your life must be really sad that you’re not your own person and you are overcompensating for it by being outrageously violent.” At this point Fluttershy could hear Bonnie snickering; she couldn’t even begin to understand why that was. “I’m guessing you’ll never have a child of your own because you don’t want to be like your mother, despite the fact that you already are by doing things like this. It’s time to stop being what others want you to be and be what you want to be.”

“I loathe you right now… because you’re right. I always wanted to be a bounty hunter, but mother said I had to be a raider instead.” After a moment she glared at Fluttershy through the screen and then gave a wicked grin. “It’s a good thing I love being a raider, it keeps me away from my mother and allows me to be as violent as I want to annoying ship captains like you!”

“I’m sensing a lot of hostility from you, so have you given up on taking my ship and crew? That’s rather nice of you.” Giving a cheery smile Fluttershy wanted to keep going, but she and Bonnie have place to be.

“Hostility is the most of what you will get from me and no I haven’t given up on you!” The other captain’s mace smashed into something and caused it to start sparking and smoking.

“Why thank you, I like you too and I haven’t given up on you either.” It took a moment, but Fluttershy could see that Herja took a while to figure out what she meant. After that Herja gained an exceedingly angry look and started spluttering nonsensical expletives.

“We’re approaching the system planet Z is in, looks like we’re going be dragging them along since they won’t leave us alone.” At this point the raiders should have given up by now or at least that’s what Bonnie thought they should do considering they’ve already lost fifteen fighters and the carrier only looked like it could carry twenty four as a full compliment. “Lucky, Lead, please tell me that you two at least have an idea.”

The sound of two robots sending negative sounding noises back made Bonnie frown. She looked to Fluttershy who was smiling to her about something. Roller was still sleeping in the back corner of the bridge and didn’t particularly seem like he was going to wake up anytime soon. Okay what was wrong with this situation?

“Okay, what is it that’s got you so happy?” Bonnie continued to outperform five ships at the same time even as she looked to Fluttershy without really paying attention to where they were going.

“Oh, just that the scanners picked up five ships coming at us.” Seeing the experiment rolling her eyes, Fluttershy smiled brightly. “Could I get a little help here guys? The ones chasing us aren’t very nice, but don’t hurt them too much.”

“Well of course there are five ships coming at us, they’ve been … oh… that’s who you were talking to.” Bonnie turned her head back to look forward and they were getting close to being a quarter of the way into the system Planet Z occupied. It was seconds later when four ships shot by at impressive speeds along with a large white ship firing heavily damaging blasts of energy into the carrier behind them.

“This is Rob Sixty Four; we are willing to comply with your request for assistance. It is nice to see that you are okay.” Despite his bland mechanical voice, Rob had somehow put a bit of emotion into it when he appeared on Fluttershy’s screen.

“Gee saved by us again space hippie, don’t make it a habit of us coming to your rescue.” Now Falco appeared on Fluttershy’s screen and he gave an insufferable smirk to meet Fluttershy’s genuine small smile.

“Can it Falco, concentrate on taking out the bogey’s on that cargo ship.” Fox Mccloud popped up and he looked serious. “We can take them down without killing them; that’ll be no problem for us. How’s the ship you’re on doing?”

“Oh it’s doing perfectly fine Mr. Mccloud, thank you for asking. The pilot is a bit tense, but I think she’s okay.” Closing her eyes and sitting back Fluttershy waited for the situation to resolve itself. “I need to talk after you’re done disabling their ships though; as this isn’t the only thing we need your help with. Lead, Lucky, the new ships are friends of mine, so please don’t shoot at them.”

“Ah I see you’ve arrived. It’s about time little Bonnie.” Zurg sat on his throne with his constant frowning mask looking at the image of Bonnie with a tied up Fluttershy behind her. Said tied up pony was struggling quite a bit to get out of the bindings, but it seemed rather futile.

“Yeah, no thanks to you… you just have to make everything so hard don’t you? So am I going to be let through or what? I got what you want; now give me a chance at what I want.” Bonnie did not just fly all the way across such a wide expanse of space while being chased by Valkyrans to just up and quit now.

“Hmmm… fine, let her through the planetary defense grid. All anti-air defenses are to be focused on the spot she’s coming through, nothing else but the ship she is on comes in or gets out.” Having finished giving orders to his rather pathetic minions, Zurg turned backed to Bonnie and stared at her on the monitor. “Once you have given her to me, I’ll give you some time to at least see your brother. I’m quite sure the reunion will be a deliciously short lived. Whether you can get out with him or not is on your own ability, I doubt you can surprise me as I have every eventuality planned for. Since I know Team Lightyear is still busy with bringing Torque in, I know that I’ll at least have some fun with my newest toy for quite a while.”

Bonnie didn’t say anything and flew down through the hole that had opened up in the roiling atmosphere. The skies on planet Z were always dark and or blood red in color with dark lightning arcing through the clouds, the planet was known for its factories and generally creepy air about it. She shivered as the ship passed through and started to make its way for the ground once she was giving the coordinates on where to land the ship, at the landing site she could see some huge robots that made her gulp slightly.

“Oh great he’s got hyper hornets waiting to escort me to his palace, those things are big, dangerous and just as dumb as the rest of them. The biggest difference is that they are better armored and can take a lot to put down.” After a moment Bonnie started dragging a sullen looking Fluttershy towards the ramp, she continued talking even though the pony couldn’t understand her without the translation device. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Even if you can’t understand me, I know you can understand my emotions clearly.”

Fluttershy tried to give Bonnie her best reassuring glance she could possibly make while her mouth was gagged and with all her limbs tied up. Roller sat by Lead and Lucky whining sadly, but Lead started petting him making him feel a bit better about all this. He almost understood what was happening, his basic understanding of the situation was that Fluttershy was going to be temporarily given to a predator that likes to play with its food and quite roughly at that.

The pony gave a few muffled squeaks of reassurance as Bonnie opened the ramp. She only had one side arm, two hastily cobbled together thermal grenades and a communication device in her other holster.

Lucky and Lead didn’t like the plan either, but they were about as ready as could be given Fluttershy was going to be in the most danger. After the ramp closed up a third figure floated out of the shadows, it stayed silent while both Lucky and Lead gave him the thumbs up gesture.

Absolute Resolve returned their gestures and Lucky placed the straps of the Rhizome suits dormant form of a backpack over Roller’s pipes. Hopefully Roller could get the suit to Fluttershy in time to be of use. He was small and fast enough to go unnoticed in comparison to the three DOKs larger profiles. Of course he wasn’t entirely bright, but hopefully he could find the pony on his own without getting sidetracked.

Things were about ready to start and the DOKs were doing this for Bonnie as much as they were Fluttershy, their lives mattered little in the grand scheme of things as they never wanted to live forever. Since they were repaired and were in a serviceable condition, they may as well help to the best of their abilities. They were now simply waiting for Bonnie’s signal to let Mr. Wheel loose on planet Z and then they’d begin their own distraction operations a few minutes afterwards.

Bonnie had to wonder if Zurg really did have a plan for every occasion as she was led towards the palace with two of the hornets carrying Fluttershy. There were very few things Zurg tended to miss when he planned, usually his plans were against other evil beings and he was quite a manipulative bastard. He could sometimes even manipulate the heroes accurately; at least Bonnie thought she knew his weakness from that.

It kind of came to Bonnie as to what Zurg was incapable of seeing, he had his minions, brains and a robot army. He had a lot of power and influence based around Galactic Alliance space in the criminal underworld, but there was something out of all that that Bonnie knew he couldn’t have possibly understood.

“I hope you’re right about this Fluttershy.” The experiment mumbled as she looked to the whimpering pony held by the two hornets. “I never quite understood what the rest of my family saw in it, I guess Clyde could see it given he always catches what I easily miss. Here’s hoping the power of friendship is not just a load of hooey.”

“Grub, have you identified the prisoner?” Zurg didn’t see a frown or a smirk on Bonnie’s face; it was completely flat and placid which gave him a distinct sense that she had something planned. Then again all evil doers at any level had a plan, just how good of a plan was it that she could be so calm?

“Yes you’re evilness; she is the one who was confirmed as sighted on Rhizome having led to our humiliating defeat Evil Emperor.” The grub was continually wringing his hands in utter fear of the emperor.

“You have ten minutes to go find your brother before I tell my hornets to attack you; now I’ll be just taking my new prisoner straight to the torture chamber if you don’t mind.” Zurg smirked as he watched Bonnie run off with a determined look on her face, once he was sure she was far enough away he turned to the grub. “Give the hornets the command to start hunting her down in four minutes, I’m feeling generous today.”

Author's Note

Bonnie getting to see her brother, Fluttershy being tortured and a rescue team made of DOKs and a biological wheel monster.

What could possibly go horribly right?

68

Fluttershy quietly neighed as they swept a beam over her body. She couldn’t understand what they were saying, but the bright part of it is that they couldn’t understand her either. These were the bug like beings in Bonnie’s dream, only they weren’t dead and in a pile of bodies. Poor Bonnie, that must have been terribly upsetting to wake up to and Fluttershy wouldn’t know how to feel about it if it happened to her personally.

“Well, they appear to be scanning you for any electrical devices. It’s a good thing they don’t actually know about magic or else you would never have been able to get away with putting the Memory Stone back in your ear.” Twilight was watching the screen Discord put up, the alien bug things seem to confer with one another and they nodded before they continued moving forward with Fluttershy. Watching on as Fluttershy was being carried to what looked to be an operating table in the middle of a vast open room, one that hadn’t apparently been cleaned in its existence. Given that most of the surface was stained with blood, Twilight could only hope Bonnie was right about Zurg starting slow and taking a few days to actually ramp up the torture. “She said that it may take a few hours before she can actually rescue her brother. I know you’re frightened Fluttershy, but you have friends who will come to your rescue even if Bonnie doesn’t give the signal. Whatever he does to you, just know that we’re all here for you until the end.”

A ring of hornets stood around the room pointing all of their weapons inwards at the table. When she was forced onto the table, Fluttershy didn’t struggle as they forced her on to her back and started wrapping straps around her legs and wings. After they finished binding her to the table, the bindings grew taut and gave Fluttershy little ability or room to move. She tested the straps and whimpered as the bat wing was squeezed painfully, she wasn’t about to try and escape with so many hornets pointing their weapons at her.

Evil Emperor Zurg appeared in the window of an overlooking structure high above her; he was looking down at her with an amount of contempt on his frowning masked face and said something sinister sounding. It was probably an even thing on whether or not it was a good thing she couldn’t understand a word he said. On the one hoof she couldn’t understand his threats or what was coming, on the other she couldn’t prepared her body for what was coming and he may get very upset with her for not reacting to whatever it was he was going on about. She didn’t know whether Bonnie had been caught, killed or if she had managed to evade the hornets and all she had to go on was the rather sour tone in Zurg’s voice.

When Zurg gave off a delighted evil chuckle and changed to a more devilish tone, a cylindrical machine could be seen lowering from the ceiling above the pony. Whatever it was, it was bound to be painful, so Fluttershy swallowed as the thing started charging up. The end of the cylinder had a fork with two prongs and the glow of energy running between them; it was unmistakable what Zurg had in mind for torturing her with first.

The world exploded into a symphony of pain for Fluttershy when the fork shot out to lightly stab her in the chest. Her shriek was a mixture of what a horse and a bat would sound like in extreme duress, her voice was so horrific that all the bugs in the room with Zurg covered their antenna as the glass cracked, Zurg’s mask seemingly changed to a smile.

The only reason why Fluttershy was still screaming was because of the shock of being jabbed with something covered in a low enough voltage to not have nearly as much as an effect her on her as her scream would make it out to be. She was trying very hard to pretend to be convulsing in more agony than she really was, it was fortunate that Zurg had no inkling as to how her biology worked. The most painful thing from all this was having two blunt prongs jammed into her chest. Sure the electricity still hurt, but it wasn’t hitting mind rending levels yet.

A pegasus was quite resilient to all forms of weather, including lighting. Even the weakest pegasus could survive a lightning strike with little more than bad cough and the inability to fly for a while. A good example of this was Derpy, she wasn’t a weather pony and she’s been struck by lightning at least sixteen times. Unicorns never went out in a lightning storm because their horns tended to magically attract lightning strikes, they are the most likely of ponies to be hit with lightning if a pegasus wasn’t around and it would actually hurt them more than it would hitting a earth pony. This was a bit more painful for Fluttershy than it normally would be for an average Pegasus, mostly because of her partially mutated form.

Zurg’s mask seemed to frown and then hit something on the console and the electricity flowing through the fork jabbed into Fluttershy’s chest increased its glow and intensity. He would continue turn it up slowly over time.

Fluttershy convulsed violently against the straps, she was almost wrenching her legs out of their socket. If she didn’t know any better, she’d swear she wasn’t gagged on purpose because they wanted her to hurt herself by either biting through her tongue or clenching her teeth too hard. Instead she kept her mouth open and let out wails of pain as she continued to take it.

Fluttershy had always had love, but she also had an extreme level of tolerance for almost anything including pain. It let her know she was still alive and not becoming numb to everything.

This went on for a while, before it stopped and Fluttershy was panting when it was all over. She didn’t know how long she had been strapped down or electrocuted for, she just knew she survived it. Looking around, she wondered what would come next and what the worse they could possibly do to her. A door opened at the side of the room and in rolled what looked like a brain in a jar connected to a robot suit. It just looked at her in surprise to see that she was still conscious; she whinnied weakly in slight fear of the thing.

The mechanical hands moved over her body and started checking her, she tried not to giggle as they tickled and she was trying to resist showing any signs of discomfort. She had to give Bonnie time and keep them distracted. Zurg’s voice sounded off again and the brain looked up at him and the mechanical hands of his suit came together and then pulled apart as if expressing his thoughts on Fluttershy, the fact that he had a normal sounding voice was a bit of a surprise to Fluttershy.

A long spindly mechanical arm ending in a needle came down from the ceiling, as the prongs of the electrifying fork was roughly pulled from her chest it returned to the ceiling.

Fluttershy watched as the brain pulled out various chemical compounds and he put them into the thing connected to the needle before turning to bow to Zurg. Zurg lifted his left hand and he dropped a single finger on a button and the injector rammed its way into Fluttershy’s neck.

It took it a moment for Fluttershy to understand what kind of substance they injected her with, because it took a while for it to really get started. Her veins were filled with fire and she started screaming so loudly that the present brains glass casing started to slowly shatter and spew liquids; this caused him to evacuate the room as quickly as he could much to Zurg’s amused chuckles. The glass to the observation room above her completely shattered, thankfully only a small portion of it landed on her.

After a certain point Fluttershy could hear her pitch exiting a range where it couldn’t be heard, even by her mutated sense of hearing. The results of her screams were quite visible when two of the nearest hornets short circuited and blew up. The hornets could detect how powerful Fluttershy’s agonized scream were becoming with their sensors and pressed against the walls to avoid the fate of the other two hornets that were destroyed.

She spent quite a while screaming her throat raw like this. Thankfully it was not as bad as some of the times stuff like this happened when she was still in Equestria and she knew her friends were fully with her right now.

“If only I could get my hooves on those jerks, I’d give them what for!” A lot of ponies agreed with Applejack. None of them wanted to know what Fluttershy was just injected with; though they obviously knew it hurt like hell given her screeching became impossible to hear.

“Hey guys, this is nothing. You should have seen the entire month Fluttershy went around with platypus venom in her. She almost got away with that one without any pony knowing.” A lot of incredulous stares were directed at Rainbow Dash. Platypus venom wasn’t incredibly lethal, just extremely painful. “She’s likely had worse than whatever they just put in her.”

“Why do you say that Dashie, also what month did this happen and what’s platypus venom like?” Of course Pinkie’s mane went flat, as she was rightfully horrified that something worse than this has happened to Fluttershy.

“You don’t want to know what platypus venom is like, I’ve had it described to me and that stuff isn’t pleasant for any pony. Its better off that you don’t know, besides Fluttershy has been poisoned by a lot of animals and she never really bothers to tell us about it when it happens. I still wonder to this day about how in the world Fluttershy managed to stay perfectly calm about it. I was in the right place at the right time to witness her scolding the Platypus who filled a little toy pool for little fillies with its own tears.” Rainbow put a hoof up to her chin and took on a thoughtful look. “I can at least tell you the first thing she did when that stuff finally wore off, I made a Pinkie Promise to not mention exactly when that happened. So let me just say that she gave you a real big hug around the time it wore off. ”

“Wait… so you’re telling me that Flutteshy could have been lethally poisoned multiple times and she never told anyone!” There was a sharp and completely frightened tone in Twilight’s voice; she obviously did not like hearing that her friend didn’t tell them about these kinds of things.

“But Fluttershy gives me big hugs all the time! Oh my goodness, she’s turned into a platypus, it all makes sense now!” Pinkie’s mane inflated and she smacked her left hoof into the other.

“I don’t believe you have the right train of thought there darling, wouldn’t it impossible for her to be a male platypus?” Rarity had her eyes glued to the projection Discord was showing them and she wasn’t about to look away even if the table and decor was gruesome to look at.

“Oh no, so your saying my mind has gotten on the wrong train and now I’ve lost it!” Just about every pony who heard Pinkie, including Fluttershy, lost it at the irony of her statement.

Zurg looked positively furious when Fluttershy started laughing uproariously as if the poison filtering throughout her body was nothing she couldn’t handle. In fact, in his anger he was clenching the control panel with his hands so hard he left divots in the metal that it was made of.

Despite the pain she was in, Fluttershy thought that laughing through the pain made it so much easier. Only every pony now knew her secret about having been poisoned multiple times and she really didn’t like the idea that they’d all look at her differently because of it. Oh they were going to be so upset about her not telling them about all the times her animal friends had accidentally poisoned her. It wasn’t their fault and her pony friends weren’t going to hurt her animal friends over something as simple as an accident. Besides they didn’t know which of her many animal friends back home had poisoned her, so they can’t really do anything about it if she doesn’t tell them.

It had to of been more than an hour at least since she was strapped down and Fluttershy was nearly done working through all the pain and was sweating fiercely. She looked up at Zurg with a flat stare; he just looked back with an astonished look on his face. After a moment he started ranting and raving at his bug and brain minions while gesticulating towards Fluttershy wildly. Then he said the only word that was understood by Fluttershy and almost everyone else in the universe at the end of a chain of what sounded like curse words.

“Whoa, I didn’t recognize it until he said that word, but how long have we been watching them tort…” Rainbow’s mouth was grabbed and yanked away by Discord.

“Yes, yes, the place with the waffles and chocolate. Anyway, we’ve been watching Fluttershy in pain for the last three hours. Quite frankly it got stale after the first two seconds, just be glad I’m filtering out what the fillies, colts and foals are hearing and seeing.” A side glance to the fillies watching the screens made Rainbow less angry, after a moment Discord snapped his fingers and appeared in a dapper suit in front of the ponies. “Why even I would never say such a horrible word such as that, we all know it begins with a B and ends with something that rhymes with ‘belch them’.”

“Belch them’? Really Discord, that’s what you’re going with to try and get someone to say that word?” Chiding the chaos lord over his playfulness was getting easier and easier to do the more time Twilight came to understand him and chaos itself; it was something Twilight wished she wasn’t learning. “Look, can we all just get back to what’s happening with Fluttershy and talk about this later?”

Fluttershy glared at Zurg so hard he freaked out and back away out of sight, he was acting like thoroughly a scolded puppy and looked to have had his soul fried and served up on a silver platter. His minions looked on in shock at seeing someone so scary and powerful brought so low, he cowered in the corner no longer finding the torture of his new prisoner any fun at the moment. Of the words Fluttershy didn’t like, that was at the top of the list given the level of vulgarity that the word represented. The fact that she still understood it meant that it had naturally passed into her language barrier much to her consternation as to how it did that without a translator.

It was a while later that the pony just sat there waiting for the next torture they’d bring on her; she had mostly recovered from the trauma of the injection. So far it didn’t seem she was permanently hurt in any manner, but she was definitely emotionally and mentally scarred again. It would all just become a blurred memory soon enough, she may need therapy after this.

Fluttershy hadn’t exactly meant to use her stare, but she had at least freaked out Zurg so badly with ‘The Stare’ that he had stopped torturing her. What he hadn’t done was immediately set her free and the hornets were slightly more alert than ever before. She didn’t like the idea of someone who was evil being this scared of her. It seemed wrong somehow, but what was she to do, she was still strapped down and quite sore.

It took a while but eventually one of the grubs came back and then started something new, water started dripping from the ceiling and started to strike her body one drop at a time. What kind of torture was this? It didn’t seem like much to her.

“What kind of pain could that cause, weren’t the other two things much worse?” Wondered a curious muffin eating mare named Derpy Hooves, who nibbled at the fluffy baked goodness as she watched this.

“I believe it is psychological this time instead of physical, not being able to rest at all and constantly being distracted by the dripping of water.” At Discords words, all the adult ponies agreed. The fillies and colts had gotten bored with watching the cartoons Discord put on for them. “Now that’s rather clever, then again she was always resourceful.”

Fluttershy had a small cloud sitting on her belly and a small tube shaped portion of it extended towards her mouth. The water trickled out of the cloud straw when she tilted the cloud on her belly by exhaling. She was feeling much better since she had something to drink; the hornets had no idea what to do about the cloud that had formed and the prisoner wasn’t technically trying to escape or exactly moving from her spot of being strapped to the unhygienic table. As she had told Bonnie, she had a high pain tolerance and nothing hurt worse for her than seeing an animal or friend being hurt pointlessly.

A pegasus didn’t necessarily need their hooves to manipulate the weather, though a lot more concentration was needed to do something like this and Fluttershy had nothing better to do with the water that slowly dripping down onto her body. She didn’t have the ability to create a lightning cloud as that was something that actually did require her hooves; otherwise she would have done something to free herself using that. She didn’t feel too particularly keen on committing violence towards the robots that were just doing their jobs of watching her.

The brain pod came back in with a repaired glass tank and just balked at the sight of Fluttershy sipping water from the cloud every once in a while, they have had her about for five hours and for the life of him he did not quite understand how her biology worked. No being should be able to easily resist all the way up to eleven when being shock tortured, then there was the fact that the toxic concoction he injected into her wore off when it was supposed to last for days. Sure she was hurting, but she wasn’t anywhere close to broken as Zurg wanted her to be.

The brain pod would have sworn that she was some sort of god like entity by the way she seemed to be fine after the first two things they put her through. The fact that she had frightened their Evil Emperor so badly that he ran out of the room screaming like a little girl with a simple look had him personally spooked; even then the emperor still had the wherewithal to order them to continue torturing her.

The brain didn’t think he could put her through a fourth round of torture, her tolerance for pain was much higher than any previous being they’ve had. This was the very chamber they operated on Torque without any anesthetic to give him the ability to clone himself. It stood to reason that she had been through something far more traumatic than what they had already done to her; either that or her biology was really that tough naturally. The brain highly doubted something so cute and fluffy could have been this naturally resistant to pain or suffering.

Taking a scan of her body, the one of many naturally occurring brain creatures noted the oddities that went on around her form. Apparently she was under some form of strange mutation outside the norm for her species, the odd weather based phenomenon on her belly was being actively controlled by her and she wasn’t any more physically resilient than a normal Grub born on this world was. This was an oddity to be studied; there was much about her that could be learned.

He was about to activate the next torture device, but then the brain in the pod paused and looked at her big soulful eyes. He just couldn’t do it with her looking at him like that. Though he wasn’t about to go against his orders as he was too afraid to, he could however delay his actions. He would just wait until whatever that Bonnie had planned came to fruition and he might even free her in the ensuing chaos to say that she got out of it on her own.

“Thank you for not hurting me.” Fluttershy said in a quiet voice, hoping that at least her emotions carried to the brain thing. Not all the people here were bad.

The brain pod stopped and looked back at her before continuing on his way with a small seed of rebellion planted in his mind.

Speaking of Bonnie, not a single hornet had seen her after three minute and thirty seconds had passed of her free reign time. She was small, bright green and against the dreary backdrop of Zurg’s evil empire she should have stuck out like a sore thumb. Instead she went to ground so well that Zurg was having a problem finding out where she was, her brother was missing from his cell which meant that she had succeeded in getting him out somehow despite his size and general weight.

Zurg had forgotten that she was also cunning, stealthy and unlike him Bonnie actually had friends. Thus she was viciously preparing for her revenge against the evil emperor before giving the signal.

After what became of her brother, Bonnie was furious and it had taken her an hour and ten minutes of careful navigation to reach him. She spent the next ten minutes pleading with him to not force her to do what he asked of her, then she caved in and now Bonnie was definitely out for blood and her eyes were an eerie red color instead of their normal solid blue.

Nobody messed with Bonnie Jookiba’s Ohana and got away with it unscathed, she had personally taken the last few hours to hack through Zurg’s information network, communications and had access to the functions to most of the factories on this planet.

Bonnie was going to bring this whole world down around her!

Author's Note

Bonnie's definitely cheesed off.

69

It was always the little things that evil overlords, emperors or conquerors tend to miss. It’s always the smallest detail that goes unnoticed until it’s too late. Oh, that rebel won’t be able to bring down my empire on their own, let them go. Then the rebel proceeds to do that by sheer force of will and possibly alone if she or he has to. In this case Bonnie wasn’t alone and she had found a relatively big oversight in Zurg’s security that she hadn’t actually seen before until she went looking for a backdoor.

The security systems of Zurg’s computer network were airtight. Lead Affront might have been able to hack it if given time, but she was preparing with Absolute Resolve to cause problems for Zurg’s forces. Lucky would stay behind to watch the ship as he didn’t have a shield generator and would be better suited for operating the two turrets in the Boojiboo, mostly in case Zurg tried to have the ship taken.

Zurg’s security was mostly an enclosed system, so well enclosed that an outside source trying to hack into it would be found and terminated with extreme prejudice. There was one big flaw with the system in that it doesn’t respond well to hacking it from the inside.

One disabled hornet later and a bit of time jury rigging the robot to enter the system for her was much easier for Bonnie. She was not an expert hacker and despite the fact that she was made to steal, Bonnie wasn’t good at stealing things that weren’t physically there like data or information.

The oversight of hornets already being in the system let a devilishly smiling experiment with a predilection for petty criminal offenses send out the signal to begin bringing the empire to a low point it won’t likely recover from any time soon. The empire would be hard pressed to mess with anyone for a while after this. That is provided that Bonnie allowed Zurg to live through what she was about to pull, she just had to redirect everyone in on the plan slightly as to not seriously hurt them.

The first thing Bonnie did was expose all of Zurg’s secret operatives throughout the Galatic Alliance to the Galactic Guardians and the Space Rangers. She would get progressively worse from there, especially when she started setting red alerts in factories before setting them to self destruct. She didn’t have the ability to take control over the hornets nor could she get control of them from where she was, but what she could do was quite crippling to Zurg’s ability to terrorize anyone much less Fluttershy.

Bonnie stopped and her eyes changed to blue when Fluttershy came to mind, she quickly found a way to overload the power to the building with the torture room to make it impossible to continue whatever it was they were doing to her. After hopefully sparing Fluttershy some pain, her eyes switched back to a blood red color and then she began aggressively dismantling the empire the best she could.

The signal was sent, the empire was going down.

Fluttershy squeaked when the lights went out in the room a few minutes after the brain thing left, she looked around and then a bunch of glowing lights from the hornets three horizontal slits lit her up on the table. She hadn’t escaped, so they weren’t going to start shooting her yet as she was still under prisoner status instead of fugitive status in the hornets scanners.

At least it wasn’t completely dark in the room and she could still see the robots shining their lights in her eyes. She did start hyperventilating a bit because of how scary the room looking without its lights on, she was quivering and being strapped to a table covered in the dried blood of the previous occupants didn’t make for a good mental condition.

An explosion was heard and Fluttershy ears went straight and her body stiffened in fright. She started looking around and tried to discern where that explosion came from. She couldn’t see anything being destroyed in the range of her echo sight.

“Discord… what was that?” Fluttershy neighed quietly trying not to be shot by a bunch of robots in the room.

“Well Fluttershy it seems Equestria has a bit of unusual company from an unknown source. Whatever it is, it seems to have appeared at the tree of harmony and it really looks out of place. Maybe it can be a new friend or maybe it will be something that has destructive potential. All I know for sure is that I have a new ‘special’ friend to play with either way!” A moment Discord stopped and then there was a scuffling. “I hope you don’t mind if I investigate this phenomenon, while the chaos you’re causing is more than enough for my daily recommended needs. I need to see to this; I will try to stay in touch with you while I do so. The visitor is strange and looks like one of Lyra’s humans, yet she has a magical aura that surrounds a particular object on her forehead where her life force is focused, better not let Spike or any dragon near her then. Oh who am I kidding; I’m going to teleport Spike there for the fun of it!”

“Discord, does she look like a giant cat that walks on two legs?” Hopefully it wasn’t who Fluttershy thought it was; she knew that it would have been her fault somehow if that happened.

“No it’s not one of your Aldebaran friends; it’s something much stranger... it appears to be feminine despite not exactly having a true gender.” Discord then went silent. “Sorry if you don’t hear from me in a while Fluttershy, but this is a pressing matter. Just know that I will always be watching you my dear, take care while I go investigate a possible threat.”

Apparently Discord left to investigate whatever caused that explosion in Equestria. She just laid there in the dark surrounded by a bunch of robots that were prepared to shoot her at a moment’s notice at the orders of a madman who was afraid of her. Fluttershy hadn’t meant to scare Zurg, the fact that she had managed to spook him so horribly made her sad. Sure he was evil, but Fluttershy didn’t like anything being afraid of her.

After a while, Fluttershy’s ear twitched and she heard him coming. Then she saw him coming in her echo sight, he looked slightly bigger than usual and since when did he have extra limbs? Her question was quickly answered when Roller rammed into the closed sliding door. The destroyed chunks of the door flew through the air and took out several hornets before they could even react, the other twenty or so hornets in the room immediately started moving forward and opening fire.

Roller, as fast as he ever was, shot by several hornets stabbing them clean through with the two brown spider leg shaped roots come from the top of his carapace. His carapace itself was covered in a large singular pink petal, he had a green pack at his back between his four green cover pipes and his entire wheel was wreathed in a circle of forward pointing sharpened yellow petals.

The yellow petals on Roller’s wheel acted like a chainsaw when he leapt at a hornet and sawed straight through it without stopping. He was wearing Fluttershy’s rhizome suit only resized and shaped to his form and Roller was using it with a vicious efficiency having the suit reworked to his needs, but still in Fluttershy’s colors.

The hornets continued to try and march on Roller, who swerved around their shots and then he stopped at the side of the remaining few hornets that weren’t stabbed, shredded or mercilessly eviscerated in the last few seconds. All four of the robots stood in a row and turned to witness a bright yellow glow coalescing in front of Roller; apparently he had just gained new adaptation after being shot at so much. A five pointed spiraling star shaped blast of energy shot out of Roller and punctured through all four remaining hornets destroying each one contact.

While the short ranged star shaped energy bullet dissipated quickly, it had been powerful enough to completely decimate each hornet it struck leaving little behind but a meager pile of scrap metal and a slightly winded Roller. Mr. Wheel followed that up by rolling up to Fluttershy whining pitiably and with worry in his revving noises, how something so small and powerful could go from brave to sad in seconds was not beyond Fluttershy’s understanding.

“It’s okay Roller, I’m okay… though it is a little dark in here without their lights and I don’t like the dark very much.” A second after Fluttershy said that a small star sparked into existence hovering above Roller’s body, lighting up the darkness around him as he rolled up to the table she was still trapped on. “That’s much better Roller, thank you very much. Now if you could please, that is if you don’t mind very much, cut through the bindings holding me down and preventing me from moving?”

It took a moment to walk Roller through how to free her and when the barely elastic binding straps were finally removed, Fluttershy sat up and felt how sore her body really was. The electric shocking had causing some numbness in her body, which was to be expected, what wasn’t expected was that moving too much was quite agonizing.

The toxic substance they injected her with was still in her body and making any big movements hurt, it made her wonder how she could still feel pain if her whole body was so numb and stiff. Sitting still had made the effects seem like nothing, moving around was completely and rather vastly different affair. This was really bad since it made her smash muzzle first into the floor trying to get off the table, pain flared throughout her whole body.

Roller rolled up to Fluttershy and rubbed against her gently and revved questioningly about whether or not she was truly okay, he really didn’t want her to stop moving forever. She was his best friend.

“I’m… okay, I’m not fine. I hurt everywhere Roller. Can you please give me the suit? It might help me a bit, at least it’ll offer me some form of protection.” Trying not to show her pain as she cringed on the floor Fluttershy watched as Roller smacked himself with one of his tree root appendages. A second later the growth retracted back into the backpack on his pipes. The wheel turned about and lowered the pipes to slide the backpack into Fluttershy’s extended hoof from where she lay on the floor.

The living wheel had to watch the pony struggle to put the backpack on and then the suit sprang up around her, she weakly pulled out the universal translator and put it on her head and activated a new feature that hadn’t been on it before. A small microphone popped out at the side of Fluttershy’s mouth and she inhaled to speak into it, hoping she wasn’t making a big mistake here.

“This is Fluttershy. I’m in a lot of pain, but I’ll be okay. I’m sure whatever they injected me with will go away eventually and the lightning shocks weren’t so bad. What’s going on, is anyone there?” Fluttershy tried to stand only to flop onto her belly as her legs went out from under her after wobbling like a blob of jelly. “I might be a bit incapable of walking at the moment after what they did to me.”

“Yeah, we read you loud and clear Fluttershy, Bonnie has really messed up Zurg’s communications network to give us a secure channel. I think she’s currently wrecking the planetary defenses… yep they just went down, try to find a way out of there if you can little darling. We are starting our air raid now.” Peppy sounded ready for the raid on Zurg’s planet. “Slippy form up and please pay attention to your six for once!”

“After that find a safe spot Fluttershy and hold out until we can get Fox and Falco a safe landing zone down there to drop the Land Masters. The streets are currently swarming with those robots, so be careful. While most of them are being distracted by the two DOKs and Bonnie, but they still might go after you.” Slippy was sounding as chipper as usual. “Don’t worry about us. If we can survive Venom, then we can survive this easily. This planet isn’t nearly as bad as Venom was. Whoa would you look at those DOKs go, they are really impressive machines.”

“Slippy… you’ve got bogeys on your tail already, pay attention and do your job already!” Several shots were heard firing after Peppy shouted at Slippy.

“Sorry Peppy, I’ll get right on it. Thanks for the save by the way.” Slippy’s voice sounded properly cowed.

“Right, get out of the building and find a safe place to stay until Fox or Falco can pick me up...” Fluttershy muttered to herself as she stumbled trying to get into a standing position and horribly failing to do that because the pain made her legs go limp. “Roller, can I ride on you?”

Roller revved that he would be glad to carry her as long as she needed to be. He moved closer to Fluttershy and waited patiently for her to slowly position her body on top of him, while she was doing so he reoriented the star shaped energy to in front of himself.

“Okay, um… do you know the way out?” As Fluttershy pointed to the ragged gaping hole in the door Roller left behind in his recent rampage, the wheel quickly set off to wherever she wanted to go since she obviously can’t go by herself at the moment.

Fluttershy and Roller were almost outside when her ears twitched in alert. She saw something large in her echo sight and her eyes widen

“Oh no, stop right now!” The wheelie did so just in time as a plasma blast ripped a large hole in the wall in front of them and to the left. What stepped through the hole was one of the hyper hornets, Roller charged up the star he had been holding onto for light and launched it at the hyper hornet.

The bulky yellow machine rocked slightly with the star blast and the end result was a one foot wide dent about a half a millimeter deep. The machine scratched idly at the dent with its left claw and then lifted its right plasma cannon and fired.

Roller quickly zipped forward and to the side around the shot and then went straight for and through the hyper hornets legs with Fluttershy hunkering down to avoid getting hit by the robots pelvic region.

The machine was too slow to react to the maneuver and started to turn around; its bulky armor was a bit too much for Roller’s new offensive based adaptation to really deal with. It was about to give chase when it stomped down on something small, green and round. Red vines erupted throughout its armored legs covering its lower torso and ended up causing it to topple over. After a moment the vines glowed brightly doing their best to damage the armored behemoth, the hyper hornet slowly stood up with the armor plating on its legs slightly damaged and ripped away the vines before it stomped off to search for targets.

Fluttershy hoped the pod grenade slowed it down enough, they continued out into the open wasteland streets of Planet Z. This planet was horrible with its red skies full of electrical storms, there were a lot of factories everywhere and the color of this massive labyrinth she was in the middle of was a dull grays, browns and dirty reds. It didn’t seem like there was much life on this planet, given the roads were mostly gravel or metal.

The pony didn’t get much time to take in the sights when they came under attack by a group of flying hornets, Roller immediately set off down the robot infested streets while trying to avoid all the shots being fired their way from all angles. A yelp elicited from Fluttershy’s mouth when a shot struck her suit in the right flank. Despite the suit not being penetrated by the constant laser fire, every hit hurt like she was being set on fire.

“Come, this way!” A waving mechanical hand from a nearby alleyway called out. Deciding to trust a strange Fluttershy directed Roller to turn into the alleyway of the massive cityscape and they saw one of the brains in a robot thing. “Follow me quickly… oh of course you’ll be able to, you’re riding that strange machine.”

“He’s actually biological and of a highly adaptive species.” It was a wonder that Fluttershy had to point this out so often. She watched as the robot suit rolled up to a wall and the two mechanical arms started manipulating something, a loud clanking noise was hard and the robotic suit with the brain in a dome backed up. A ramp leading downwards opened up in the wall.

“While that is a very interesting thing to know, please follow me. I promise I mean you no harm.” The brain thing looked at Fluttershy pleadingly as she looked at the ramp then at him, she looked him in the eyes thoroughly.

“Okay, Roller down the ramp.” Her instructions immediately obeyed, Fluttershy was carried downwards into the room.

The brain thing looked left and right before ducking into the entrance and it closed. Fifteen hornets came into view of the alleyway only to find that they have lost track of their quarry and left to go join the fight against the two shielded machines that were decimating hornets left and right.

“If you don’t mind me asking, who or what are you? Did Zurg rip your brain out of your body?” Though she was squeamish to think it and didn’t like the idea at all, Fluttershy wanted to get her questions out the way while she could.

“Zurg knows me as Brain Pod number eighty six, but my name is Styg Glip and I am a Cerebrian. Given the fact that you can now understand what I’m saying, that thing you’re wearing must be a translator. Zurg is going to be so mad if he ever finds out the reason why you weren’t scared of all his torture plans for you. Welcome to planet Z by the way, heck of a place… quite literally at that. At least the lower atmospheres aren’t poisonous like the upper atmosphere has become like almost everything else on this world, small miracle that.” The robot on three wheels paused and the brain retracted from the head in the robot as it sunk into the robots body. The water drained from the dome, after a moment the robot opened up and out popped what looked like an octopus like alien with six tentacles. “Just for your information we naturally look like this; the reason for the robot bodies is because we’re of fairly frail constitutions. We make up for it by being incredibly intelligent.”

Fluttershy just stared at the brain, the two short eyes on stalks that stuck close to it; leading down the stem like body to where a mouth was found and further down was a spread of six tentacles. Somewhere under the tentacles was likely an orifice for going to the bathroom. He spoke in an open manner and didn’t seem particularly deceitful; he didn’t even come off as haughty or thought himself above others, but he did seem a bit off in his own little world.

“I can tell that you’re a little overwhelmed, most people are when they see us pop out of our shells for a bit. We do prefer wet places; as such those liquid receptacle domes are perfect for us. I’m exposing myself to you immediately like this as a sign of trust and with a hope that you are not anywhere near as bad as Zurg is.” Styg Glip extended a long thin tendril and Fluttershy took it in her hoof and blankly shook it while still staring at distractedly at the fact that he was a living brain. She didn’t even notice the pain shooting up her leg. “Yeah we have that kind of effect on people, this planet has just been one wreck after another, but the Cerebrian’s and Grub’s call this our home. Just know that things went way downhill long before Zurg was a thing on this planet. Word of warning for your species, don’t go too heavily into industrialization as that is what became the biggest problem for good old planet Z here.”

“I’m Fluttershy, why are you helping me again Mr. Glip?” Fluttershy was trying very hard not to stare at his large seemingly exposed brain.

Roller wasn’t staring and was idly looking around the room at the various stores of things on the shelves; he was far more interested in how fast the robotic body was.

“Why do you think? I want to ask you’re for help in getting off this planet safely! Zurg treats us Cerebrian’s okay enough, but we’re basically slaves that just build things for him. The Grubs… they are not quite so lucky on that front given their usefulness to Zurg is always on the lower end of things and relatively short lived at that if they fail him too often. I’m sure you’ve seen those little bug fellows around, they are almost as meek as we are at times.” The brain had been walking around on its tentacles pacing in front of the quiet pony; he turned to her with a determined look in his eyes. “You scared Zurg and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Sure he’s fled a few times after a setback or acted like a sissy at times, but outright total and complete fear of something? While I’m curious as to what you exactly did to get such a reaction, that’s not quite important right now. So, what’s the plan and will you help me?”

“I’m waiting for my friends to drop their vehicles off and they are going to help escort me back to the cargo ship I arrived on safely. They are currently preparing to do just that Mr. Glip.” After a moment Fluttershy decided to swallow her apprehension and she pulled the Cerebrian into a soft hug, he seemed like he needed it. Sure it may have hurt a lot to do given the toxins having a nasty effect on her body, but she felt the effort was worth it as Styg relaxed in her hooves. “Also yes, I will be glad to help you since we’re friends.”

Author's Note

Kirby Super Star 2-player mode with wheelie rider. One player controls the wheelie, the other player fires star blasts. Mr. Wheel just gained the ability to fire star blasts, so it's not as out of left field as you might think it would be.

The star gun was one of the most powerful attacks in Kirby Super Star, but it was only available to two players. It did a lot of damage against bosses.

Added to the list of things Fluttershy has managed to quickly befriend, a Brain Pod from Zurg's Evil Empire.

Edit: I've been a bit distracted lately because someone recently got me Bravely Default and it has been quite the distraction, not to mention computer problems and general life being a bother.

70

Styg might not have known Fluttershy for long, but after she hugged him she cringed, or was it a flinch? It had him wondering.

“Are you okay miss, Shy, was it?” The brain looked at a wincing Fluttershy.

“Whatever I was injected with really hurts when I move too much.” It was an understatement as her body felt like it was on fire again, after a moment that fire cooled down and she sighed slightly.

“You mean you didn’t wear it out or even beat it? How are you even still standing? That stuff was supposed to be stay strong and last for half a year’s time on this planet!” There was a look of awe in Styg Glip’s eyes; he had a good reason for it as a Cerebrian couldn’t survive even a quarter dosage of the stuff for more than an hour. A Grub certainly would survive it though and they might even enjoy such a toxic concoction, then again their biology tended to make some of them something of a naturally existing masochistic species. It was kind of obvious why some of the Grubs actually liked Zurg and it made him shudder to think of it.

“Well…” Fluttershy was about to explain when her ears pressed against her head as several loud explosions were heard along with several other very powerful sounding dull thumps followed them. She tried to clutch at her head with her flailing hooves, the vibrations and loud noises really hurt and it caused her to lose some fine control of her legs causing her to smack herself in the face. She still managed to finish her thought despite curling up on the floor with Roller whining about her being in pain. “On my planet I’ve been poisoned by something like this, there’s a naturally occurring creature that makes stuff like what I was injected with. They are really quite friendly and I was poisoned by it by accident, spent a whole month feeling like this, so I’m used to it. What was all that?”

“Hold on a second and I’ll see to it.” Using its six tentacles the brain creature crawled back into the robotic body and then moved it over to a control panel in the wall which revealed a screen showing several scenes of destruction across the empire. “My word… this is… incredible, how did they manage to hack into the system? I’m finding no outside interference whatsoever and every factory on the planet is going into meltdown. What we just heard was five of them exploding at the same time. Why, this is just positively amazing, someone has actually managed to find a way to topple most of the empires manufacturing strength! It’s the only real strength the empire has aside from subterfuge and… the subterfuge has also been wrecked, our operatives in the Galactic Alliance are being captured. I shouldn’t even be seeing information like this unless someone has busted our communications systems wide open! That should be impossible, hornet control is still going strong and that’s a given considering it’s on a completely different system that’s entirely under Zurg’s control.”

“I don’t think it’s impossible… Bonnie must be really angry. Oh I hope her brother is alright…” It made Fluttershy wonder what happened to just escaping with their lives, this seemed like Bonnie was more on a warpath and that escape wasn’t entirely on her mind. A really dire inkling of fear started to run down her spine and that wasn’t the pain she was in from the injection, Bonnie didn’t have a communication device.

“Isn’t that Jookiba experiment one-four-nine’s name? Well that certainly explains it, she must have found out what was done to her brother, she’s certainly doing a good job of wrecking things.” Styg just took in the damage that was already done and saw red alerts popping up all over the planet; every facility was quickly being evacuated as they were all beginning to overload and self destruct. “Glad I won’t be around to help rebuild all this… speaking of… can I bother asking for your help with getting a few of my comrades off the planet as well and how much cargo space is there in that vessel that you came down in?”

“As long as they won’t continue doing bad things, I’ll gladly help anyone who needs it. I’m sure we have enough room but um, food might be a problem though. I’m willing to share what we do have with everyone. Hopefully you like ice cream because we still had a bit of a surplus after making a delivery to Bathyos.” After she got done explaining it, Fluttershy couldn’t help but notice the incredulous look she was receiving from Mr. Glip.

“Bathyos, really, that makes… well some sort of sense, but still!” The robotic arms were thrown in the air by Styg’s robot suit and Fluttershy not knowing what to say about it just shrugged and winced slightly at the action. After a moment Styg turned around and started bringing up several beings on screen. Various Grubs and Cerebrians appeared on screen looking around fearfully. “Everyone we’re leaving the planet now, we have a ride out of here and you really don’t want to be here when the rebuilding starts! Fluttershy, can you get your people to help escort some fugitives to this ship of yours?”

“Um…” A beeping was heard and after Fluttershy clumsily hit her face with her right hoof, she managed to hit her communications correctly on the second try.

“We’re now dropping our Land Masters outside the city, Fluttershy are you okay? You weren’t caught in any of those explosions were you?” It was nice of Fox to check in on her. “I didn’t even think Bonnie was this dangerous, but she looks to be causing more havoc and headaches than even Katt did to the Venomian army.”

“I’m fine Fox, but can I get a little favor from you and Falco. You know, since you’re already going to be helping me get back to the ship already?” She tried to keep her voice as pleasant and sweet as possible because Fluttershy knew that someone was going to be angry at her for this.

“Oh no, what did you do space hippie? I felt like something just crawled up my backside and died, this escort missions is bad enough as it is already. I can’t even begin to think of what you could possibly say to make this situation that much worse.” After a pause Falco sighed. “I know you’re going to anyway, so hit us with it already.”

“Can you figure out a way for them to know where everyone who wants to leave is Mr. Glip?” The Cerebrian in the robotic suit nodded and started transmitting some data to everyone to respond and then he looked to Fluttershy as he sent the data of all those who wanted to escape from under Zurg’s cruel foot. Said data was sent to the two blue and white tanks that just landed outside the city. “Some information is being sent I think… these are some people who want to leave planet. Can we help them?”

“You can’t be serious…” Inside his Land Master Falco looked at all the little green blips, the one large blue blip was Fluttershy’s location deep in the city and there were hundreds of green blips between him and her. Off to the side was a pink marking that marked the location of the stolen cargo vessel Boojiboo. “She is… oh brother; this is going to take some work.”

“Looks like we got our work cut out for us. Peppy, Slippy, move to cover the Boojiboo we’re about to move a lot of people and things are going to get hectic if we’re going to save all of them.” Though he really didn’t want to say it, Fox knew Falco was right in saying that this was going to get worse. Now he had to actually watch where he was shooting or he’d hit someone friendly in a target heavy environment. “Fluttershy we’re going to need a little more help, can you get the DOKs back to the ship? We’re on it either way.”

“Hold on a second… hello Mr. Sixty Four, are you there? Can you please get into contact with Ms. Affront and Mr. Resolve that we need help protecting some people who require escort to the Boojiboo, well that is if they are done doing what they were supposed to be? That would be really helpful.” A sound of a beep was a heard and then Fluttershy got a response.

“This is Rob Sixty Four, complying and sending orders to DOKs for assistance by updating them on the situation. Keep up the good work!” Rob had just dropped both Land Masters on the ground and swung around to escape the swarm of hornets that started attacking the Great Fox. “Be safe Fluttershy and avoid damage to your chassis, it is very nice.”

The Land Masters having been dropped on the ground began trundling forwards and started taking out swarms of hornets with charged shots and oval shaped energy blasts from their cannons. Slippy’s fighter flew past the tanks taking out a few hornets as it went.

“Is it me or does Rob always act a little different when Fluttershy is around?” Distracted by Fluttershy’s conversation and the new objectives as he fired a charged blast into a hyper hornet on the ground, Slippy once again found himself the victim of being tailed by ten hornet robots shooting up the rear of his fighter. “Oh, not again, why is it always me!”

Slippy flew past the Boojiboo and Lucky just happened to be in the upper turret at the time, he started firing into the bogey’s on Slippy’s rear end until they were gone.

“Thanks for the assist Lucky!” As soon as Slippy was done thanking Lucky Day, he received some data accompanied by loud whistles and beeping noises about an incoming mass of hyper hornets stomping their way towards the Boojiboo. They were the ones that could actually damage the cargo vessels armor, if that happened then the Great Fox might become the only way off the planet. “Of course, we’ll take care of it right away!”

“Wait for them to clear a path before moving everyone! This is the day we’ve been waiting for, freedom!” A lot of shouts of ‘freedom’ were returned to Styg by multiple Grubs and Cerebrian’s on the screen. He had made certain only those who wouldn’t betray each other to Zurg were in on this; he wouldn’t want to betray Fluttershy’s trust in him already and he was hoping she’d hug him again before they had to part ways. “This is Styg Glip signing out; can the cargo vessel hold three hundred plus people?”

“I think it can, we’ll make it work anyway even if it can’t… wait…” A sudden eerie thought had just occurred to Fluttershy. She hadn’t thought of it until now, but why hadn’t Bonnie planned for getting herself back to the Boojiboo? A sudden fear for her friend filled her chest with an icy cold rock in comparison to the fire still in her veins. “Do you know where my friend Bonnie might be Mr. Glip? I’m kind of worried about her and I’ve had this sudden chilling thought.”

“Well… in all likelihood she would be… oh… well I can certainly see why you would be worried. This plan doesn’t exactly involve her leaving this planet alive does it? You do realize that you’d be more of a hindrance to her in your current condition if you tried going after her right?” The glare Styg received was so overwhelming that he couldn’t speak or think of anything for a moment, the only thing he could think of doing right now was answering Fluttershy’s question in its entirety. Now he understood what had Zurg so badly spooked, at least he wasn’t afraid of Fluttershy because she actually felt very nice to be around. “She’s probably going after Zurg in his main tower; it is where Zurg controls his hornets from. That place is dangerous and heavily guarded.”

Bonnie just continued walking forward unscathed; behind her were forty five completely wrecked hyper hornets. All them were well armored, had heavy weapons that could cause splash damage and they both outweighed and completely outgunned Bonnie by a metric ton considering she was barely bigger than a little human girl.

They never even stood a chance against Bonnie with a single blaster pistol that was quickly running out of energy; the blaster pistol in question wasn’t even capable of puncturing the armor on a hyper hornet which led one to wonder how she even managed to bring down forty five of them.

Experiment one four nine was halfway through the tower having decimated hundreds of regular hornets and a decent amount of hyper hornets. Anything that shot at her was irrevocably totaled within seconds. Despite the stress of using her evasive abilities in an offensive manner, she was doing somewhat fine even if her body was beginning to get really sore.

Bonnie stopped for a moment to catch her breath and reached into her right hand holster to squeeze something lightly and then she looked at the red cloth wrapped around her right arm. Her eyes flickered briefly between red and blue for a moment. She continued marching onward into a horde of hornets coming straight for her with glowing red eyes, the blaster resting at her left hip had far less than half a charge left.

Zurg wasn’t going to escape Bonnie’s wrath; she was dead set on killing him!

“Then I’ll just have to go after her anyway.” If there was one thing Fluttershy didn’t want to do, it was leave Bonnie alone and she also had to know what became of Clyde as well.

“Can you wait until we get to that cargo ship? It’d be easier for us to fly you up there and you’d have help getting into the building, maybe with one of your friends to escort you too.” Of the reasons why Styg suggested this, Fluttershy’s survival was the major one. He’d never get another comfortable hug like the one he recently received if she was killed.

“I guess I can wait for everyone to get on the Boojiboo.” The pain she was in was nothing compared to the idea of losing a friend, especially when you could have helped them and Fluttershy wasn’t about to lose Bonnie.

“Hey space hippie, you have one of those guys defecting from this place with you right? Can you ask him where they got the designs for some of these things; they look almost Venomian in nature. Even these red treaded guys look very familiar.” The sound of Falco smashing something could be heard over Fluttershy’s headset. “Fox is inbound; he’s going straight for you and clearing the road. I’m protecting the Boojiboo from incoming enemies with Peppy and Slippy… why does saying the name of that ship make me want to vomit?”

“It’s likely because Zurg did get the idea for his hornet tanks from Venom; the Grubs recovered some things from that toxic planet after this mercenary team… wait a minute, I knew you guys sounded familiar for some reason. You’re that crazy team that rammed your way through Area Six!” One of the things that Styg knew Zurg had gotten from having some Grubs infiltrate the Lylat system, was one of the things that he had hoped that the evil emperor hadn’t managed to get working yet.“Needless to say he didn’t get much, but what he did get is quite bad. Hopefully it’s not operational.”

“Damn it, I knew some of these things looked too familiar. I’m near your position Fluttershy; I’ve cleared a good path for you so get a move on and start heading towards the Boojiboo. The DOKs are almost here as well to cover your egress. Do you copy?” Fox looked around the streets and continued to shoot down the hornets and hyper hornets that kept coming at the Land Master. He rolled the tank to the left and fired twice ripping a large hole out of a hyper hornet.

“Copy what? Oh… um… yes, right, I hear you! I’ll be right out with Roller and my new friend Mr. Glip; we’ll be heading straight for the Boojiboo now.” The bubble helmet of Fluttershy’s Rhizome suit popped up and she moved over to Roller. After Fluttershy was situated on the wheelie, they turned to Styg.

“Right well, ahem, can you swing that tank around to right and clear that street, we’ll be coming out there.” The tank immediately did that and Styg rolled his robotic suit up to the doorway. After waiting for a few seconds he opened it to see Fox’s tank right outside firing round after round of energy into a throng of hornets in the sky above them.

They poked their way out of the doorway before quickly moving behind the Land Master. After using it as cover for a few seconds Fluttershy told Roller to go to the ship they arrived in and he set off at a quick pace with Styg trying to keep up, his robotic suit wasn’t meant for high speed movement.

A shot nearly struck Styg only to be blocked by Lead Affronts shield, as she appeared swiftly from a nearby street. Her shield was bright, spherical and slightly blue tinted, it stood up to the incoming shots from the hornets until a hyper hornet struck her shield with a shot that caused it to drop, even then she kept her firing her rifle with incredible accuracy. The hyper hornet that had shot her went down from a blast of plasma to its side.

Absolute Resolve moved in front of Lead wielding a hyper hornet’s arm that he held over his left shoulder, he had his left hand dug into his new weapon. He took the next volley enemy fire stoically, not a single one of their shots caused his shield to fluctuate or even flicker once. His shield looked to almost be made of solid matter; it would take something like Great Fox shooting at his shield to even bring it down. Absolute slowly returned fire; he did this by sending a charge through his fingers that were dug into the stolen hyper hornet’s plasma cannon. It fired a powerful blast of plasma wiping out the group of hornets that had been tailing him and Lead.

The two hovering robotic barrels with arms took up position behind Fluttershy and the others while continuing to ward off the two main types of hornets. One of the rarer less seen red hornet tanks didn’t survive a shot from the plasma cannon Absolute wielded with dangerous efficiency; he took his time to aim his shots for maximum damage potential. He was now armed and dangerous, he didn’t have a weapon at the start of all this and had just started out as a powerful mobile shield unit for Lead.

As Roller sped his way down the streets to where the Boojiboo had been set down, other Cerebrians and Grubs could be seen running for the ship and entering it. Fox in the Land Master was slowly following while trying to desperately keep all the hornets from grouping up on the escaping people.

There were hornets everywhere, coming in almost endless waves in several variants from all directions. They were starting to quickly becoming overwhelming for Starfox, it was thanks to the factories exploding that the hornets were in such a disarray, they were only now beginning to come out of that and it was beginning to show with the ever increasing amount of firepower that was slowly being arrayed to take out the Boojiboo. Falco’s tank was sitting on top of the cargo ship, it was firing endlessly into the encroaching forces.

Roller had reached the bottom of the ramp unmolested and took Fluttershy inside while Absolute stayed outside to continue helping Fox and Falco deal with the heavier problems with the plasma cannon he ripped off a hyper hornet.

Lead Affront quickly boarded the Boojiboo and went towards the front of the ship; the robot put her body into the pilot’s seat and remotely took control of the turret beneath the Boojiboo to lend a hand in the defenses while she started a warm up sequence to get ready for takeoff. For Lead, splitting her focus between two tasks wasn’t very difficult.

Roller rolled up to the copilots chair and let Fluttershy off onto it. Fluttershy gently patted his carapace while looking over the scanners and seeing a mass of red dots forming up on them. She frowned in worry.

“Those hyper hornet things are getting a little too close for comfort Fox, there’s just way too many of them! We can’t hold them by ourselves for much longer.” While he didn’t like the situation; Falco didn’t stop firing for a moment from his perch on top of the cargo vessel.

“It’s a good thing you won’t have to. Light them up Space Rangers, to infinity… and beyond!” From the sky twenty Space Ranger cruisers swung down from the dark red clouds and formed up five to a group. They then swept outwards from the Boojiboo and started firing into the streams of advancing hornets. “We heard there was a situation here, looks like we made it to the party just in time.”

“Is Fluttershy okay? Oh please tell me she’s alright.” A worried Booster said over the communications.

“Yeah, that’s something I’d like to know too! It took us forever to book Torque; I swear those bureaucratic nimrods would have kept us there forever if they could.” Even XR sounded worried and slightly angry.

“Guys stop worrying so much.” A weary Mira sounded off in a particularly stressed tone. “I’m sure she’s fine and somewhere in this mess, she can take care of herself.”

“I’m doing well enough; I thank all of you for worrying about me so much.” There was a silence for a moment and Fluttershy wondered why they were so quiet. Maybe they were just happy to hear her voice again. “Once all the fugitives we’re helping here are on the Boojiboo, we’re going to help Bonnie!”

“What! Help her? But she kidnapped you! We’re just happy to hear that you’re still alive, especially in the middle of all this.” XR didn’t sound happy at the prospect of helping Bonnie.

“Even so, aren’t Space Rangers supposed to help those in need? Well someone I call a friend needs help and I’m asking you to help me help her!” Fluttershy was firm and quite assertive on this one, all her friends on Equus would have been proud if they weren’t currently too busy with something else at the moment.

Author's Note

Welcome to the villains shopping mall, today we have half off on dangerous stuff just left lying around after a war ended. Brought to you by NEIGH, Necessary Evil Incorporated for Gallantry and Heroes.

Yes, Zurg has had a thumb in just about every pie he can find. It's a good thing he's never even heard of the Aniverse sector or its Complex problems. The guy likes his general hornet robot design too much.

Will Zurg survive Bonnie? Good question, should the most evil emperor of a bastard himself in Galactic Alliance space really be killed? Goodness knows the power vacuum aftermath would be horrific to deal with.

Just a reminder, Bonnie is not as physically strong as Stitch is nor does she have a super computer for a brain or a hyper resilient body (Which is Clyde's ability, that eventually led to Stitch's dense almost indestructible molecular structure and his inability to swim.) to handle the stress of her evasion ability being active for too long.

Snafu Jookiba (120)- His primary function is to expertly ruin any enemy plan and Bonnie is number 149.

Fluttershy is still a kind and friendly pony even now, who happens to keep running into the middle of dangerous situations and stops to help anyone she can since she can hardly help herself. Almost exactly like what Wander does huh?

71

“You see Mira; this is exactly why we don’t attack Zurg’s empire! He’s got a million of these things and we’ve barely taken out a thousand of them.” Even with twenty Space Ranger Cruisers, Buzz could see all the other teams weren’t taking to being swarmed heavily as well as his was.

“Heck, I swear all those exploding factories have taken out more than we have in the last five minutes.” XR was among the Space Rangers that launched from their ships to lend some extra firepower. He popped his chest open and several mechanical arms with various weapons popped out and fired a spray of rapid fire mayhem into a nearby swarm of hornets coming at their circle of protection around the Boojiboo. “Have you gotten everyone onboard yet Fluttershy, we’re kind of being heavily pressed out here and we might start taking some biological casualties if this keeps up.”

There were at most fifty Space Rangers flying around, at least two from each ship each which carried teams of four or more rangers. All of them were assisting the Zurg’s defecting people in reaching the Boojiboo by taking out as many regular hornets as they could while the cruisers dealt with the more heavily armored hornets. The Space Rangers were successfully drawing a lot of fire away from the cargo ship; each and every person got their armor scorched at one point or another in the vicious aerial dog fight against a mass of incoming hornets from all over the planet.

“Almost, we have one last Grub to pick up, so please give him or her some time!” Nobody liked to hear Fluttershy plead like that and the Rangers started pushing the hornets back again. Absolute moved away from the Boojiboo to go retrieve the last fugitive cowering behind cover.

Fluttershy looked to one of the camera’s that showed her what was going on outside and there were robots raining from the sky in droves. On the screen she could see Absolute Resolve quickly floating backwards towards the Boojiboo with the Grub held in its right hand while blasting hyper hornets with the plasma arm cannon propped up on its left shoulder, the large DOK soon disappeared from view.

“Wait for me to get on. Falco lock your Land Master down, can someone cover me while I retreat?” Fox’s Land Master spun around and boosted straight for the Boojiboo after a moment jets erupted from the bottom of the tank until it lifted up high enough to land on top of the cargo ship. Behind Fox the cruisers kept the swarm of hyper hornets from giving chase. As if it were synchronized both Falco and Fox’s tanks suddenly clamped down to the top of the Boojiboo. “Peppy, Slippy, form up on the Boojiboo and fly support, we’re on the move.”

“We’re clear, everyone made it. I might even say it’s a miracle that none of us died!” As soon as Styg finished his sentiment, the ship lurched into the air as Lead started steering it to a respectable height to start moving forward.

“I’m glad no one got hurt too, Lead please head for the tower. We have to go there to find Bonnie and…” No one could have prepared for what happened next and it had stunned Fluttershy into silence, a part of the tower started to rip apart and something was rising out of its remains. It was huge and it didn’t look very friendly, it started to cascade over the city with its massive size. Her ears went down and her eyes started watering. “Bonnie!”

“Ah crap, now that’s definitely a Venomian super weapon.” Falco had the weapon in his sights and it was ridiculously big and showy, hopefully it went down as easily as everything else Fox has demolished in the past. He turned his turret and shot a pack of hornets with an exploding ball of charged energy. “Do you think we can take something like that on Fox? I know I’m full of myself, but I’m not nearly stupid enough to want to fight that monstrosity on top of having to deal with all these robots attacking us.”

“Getting some scans now guys. It’s not completely online yet, but I can tell you that thing has a lot of firepower.” The massive object continued to rise away from the portion of Zurg’s tower it burst out of and Slippy sounded really worried about it. “Massive reading coming from the two arm like structures, they likely contain battleship class laser cannons. I don’t think it’s completely out of the ground yet… I’m also detecting a lot of weapon ports, so expect a lot of missiles.”

Slippy was right as the main mass continued to rise until it was standing at full height, it was a giant two legged purple robot and its armor had little dots poking out of its body all around its frame. It towered slightly over Zurg’s Tower which was partially collapsed.

“Buzz, please tell me I don’t have to stay out here with that thing.” Booster was one of the rangers out of their ships and he could be heard whimpering on his communications device. The machine slowly started lighting up, what Booster said next sounded like a little child afraid of the dark. “Can I come back aboard Forty-Two now?”

“All Rangers back in your ships now! That’s an order, not a suggestion people!” Every ranger started following that order immediately; Buzz wondered what this so called super weapon would do once it finally got online and he didn’t want any rangers outside their ships when it’s weapons came on line, he had no idea what it was going to do. It was as massive as the one Zurg went after Professor Reddschift in, the Ranger Robot he fought the last one in wasn’t here and he was about to call a retreat when the massive machine finally did something.

Slowly a large pole rose out of the back of the giant purple humanoid machine with Zurg’s Emblem imprinted on it. A beam of light shot skyward before spreading out ward over the whole city enveloping everything in an impossibly large energy shield. Now the Boojiboo, the Space Ranger cruisers and Team Starfox were trapped inside the massive dome with the robot. It was even worse since the Great Fox was trapped outside the dome and couldn’t assist with its weapons or send anymore quick repair stations or bombs to the Arwings and the Land Masters.

“Well now, that isn’t good… this is going to be one heck of a rough time.” Even if it was going to get really bad Peppy stayed with the Boojiboo, it was full of innocents and he was not about to let any hornets bring it down. He noted Slippy on his right also keeping position as they flew a slow circle towards the side of the unmoving machine following the cargo ship.

“My empire may lie in tatters at the moment Lightyear, but I have you now! You’ll never take down my newest toy, The Total Obliteration Machine! You’re trapped and there’s no way out this time, this is the perfect super weapon!” Zurg let out a long lasting evil cackle after the hammy proclamation when giving the name of the large death machine that had entrapped everyone with the machine under the shield. He stopped caring about what happened to Bonnie, as he had most likely killed her when he escaped while having collapsed the portion of the tower he was in while raising his newest super weapon from the ground.

“We’ll see about that Zurg, cruisers form up and attack!” While Buzz rallied his twenty cruiser compliment into a concentrated attack, Zurg didn’t seem to be doing anything in particular with his robot as he was letting the Space Rangers attack it.

It became quickly apparent that the energy weapons from the cruisers were having no affect as the large bipedal robot flickered as the shots hit a second set of shields that covered the robot itself.

“Stop shooting at it, it’s absorbing the energy from your weapons and its shields aren’t weakening!” Slippy was horrified at the implications of what this machine was capable of and was glad that Andross had been incapable of fielding something like this.

“Ah, yes, the special feature of what makes TOM so great. You can’t hit me, you can’t escape me, but I can hit you…” Zurg left that hanging in the air and you could practically hear him smiling as both the robots arms came up with their palms pointed at the cruisers and the cargo ship, they started charging up.

“Everyone scatter!” Buzz had made the order just in time as two massive beams launched from TOM; all the cruisers successfully dodged out of the way and only the Boojiboo was too slow to escape getting hit entirely as it was grazed.

The beams hit the outer barriers created by TOM and the energy moved towards the top of the barrier and funneled back downwards into the pole sticking out of its back. This meant that even if it missed, it could effectively recycle its own shots infinitely.

“It hardly lost any energy from firing that, I think it only lost energy from hitting the Boojiboo’s shields. A direct hit would have immediately destroyed the cargo ship. Give me some time while I analyze the data!” Trying to find a way to bring down this monstrosity Slippy was analyzing every bit of data he could get on it.

Lucky spent most of his time shooting towards Slippy’s rear end to stop the hornets from attacking his fighter.

“That dropped the shields by eighty percent and it only grazed us!” Styg was starting to get hysterical as they were now in the impossible situation of having to deal with a resource heavy monstrosity that would be nearly impossible to take down. “It’s fully operation, we’re all doomed!”

“Doesn’t it have a weakness somewhere? The hornets under the shield with us are also something to worry about.” Another Cerebrian comment on, this soon prompted several Cerebrian’s aboard the Boojiboo to start thinking of a solution before they all died.

Nobody except for Roller was paying any attention to a sniffling Fluttershy; he noted the pony was just staring at the wreckage of the tower sadly and she put her hoof to the screen as tears streamed down her closed eyes.

TOM took a few steps back and the outer shield noticeably followed its movements, meaning that it was still highly mobile even with the outer shield up. It leaned forward and crossed its two massive arms.

“What’s it doing now?” After having asked the obvious question Mira’s eyes widened when TOM flung its arms outwards and sent hundreds of missiles into the air heading towards them. They were smart missiles to avoid hitting the hornets as they each started targeting the cruisers or Fox’s team and the cargo ship. “We got incoming Buzz!”

“Try to take some of them down.” Buzz narrowed his eyes at the missiles, behind him Booster came in with XR and they quickly moved to their stations.

Mira steered the cruiser around to fire on the missiles, her pupils shrunk when the shots from the cruiser did nothing but knock the missiles she hit slightly off course. They still exploded once they were within close proximity of the Forty-Two damaging it slightly; the explosions started a chain reaction that prevented the other missiles from reaching their targets.

“What the… those freaking missiles are shielded too!?!” The familiar if rather shrill voice of Betina Bucks-a-ton called out. “We need to outmaneuver them when he fires more; they seem to be on a proximity fuse. Somebody please tell me there’s a way to bring either shield down.”

TOM turned to and hundreds of small beams started spraying everywhere in the general direction of the cruisers more so than the cargo vessel that was being bogged down by a swarm of hornets since it was slower than the cruisers and weighed down by two tanks.

“That’s definitely Venomian alright.” Four voices rang out in despair at the same time in a well synchronized matter.

“Come on guys it has to have some kind of glaring flaw! We’ve dealt with things like this before haven’t we?” Fox didn’t think the situation was hopeless even as he knocked some incoming missiles off course by bringing around the Land Masters powerful cannon. “Even the Cornerian Army took care of a robot like this one and that was while we were busy heading off towards Sector Y to support the fleet.”

“Yeah but that one wasn’t double shielded, not to mention it also absorbs shots from energy weapons! We don’t have anything that can do any damage to that thing through its shields; we’re all out of Smart Bombs from the raid and we can’t reload since we’re blocked off from the Great Fox.” There was a lot of despair going around and it seemed to be pretty hopeless, even to Slippy.

The best anyone could hope to do was shoot down the hornets that were still attacking them while trying to survive for as long as possible against the monstrously powerful TOM.

Two more powerful beams erupted from TOM and struck the back half of a cruiser sending it spinning towards the ground.

“This is Team Plasma; we’ve taken too much damage! We’re requesting transfer to another cruiser as we’re going down, we’ll be sitting ducks out there for all those smaller lasers and the hornets!” Betina’s team wasn’t the only cruiser going down, the Space Rangers were evacuating each cruiser that was going down and quickly moved to board another one. Seven cruisers had fallen, but their crews had managed to safely escape the crashing ships, but not without injuries.

A crying Fluttershy slowly opened her tired sad eyes to stare blankly at the monstrosity on the screen that would be their doom, after a moment she blinked and then again.

Styg was now in the copilot’s seat and quite busy trying to find some way of getting around the shield that was preventing TOM from taking damage; the screen showed something in particular that had caught Fluttershy’s eyes.

Slowly Fluttershy’s tears stopped and she started rubbing the wetness from her eyes with her hooves as she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, it was oddly out of place on TOM. She slowly stood up and trotted up right next to Styg ignoring the protesting pain shooting through her entire body.

“Styg zoom in right there!” The excitement in Fluttershy’s voice caused Styg to flinch, but he did as he was asked and his head reeled back again in shock at the small unnatural streak of turquoise on TOM’s left leg.

Without being told to do so by Fluttershy, Styg quickly panned the visuals upwards and they saw a bleeding Bonnie crawl her way up into an opening in the machines lower torso.

“She’s alive! But she’s also badly hurt and losing blood!” Fluttershy’s ears went from up to down again.

“Well we’re going to be badly hurt if we take any more hits from Zurg’s super weapon. Our shields are at four point five percent strength and even hornets could break it now. What can this Bonnie really do? Unless she has some kind of explosive device, she’s not going to be able to do much to help us.” Styg’s eyes showed a look of depression.

It will always be the smallest of details that can make even the biggest of problems go away.

The last grenade was pulled out and the red eyed gremlin that was driven by hatred and fueled by grief gave a sadistically evil grin as it flicked the pin off with a thumb. The Thermal Detonator was hurled to where it would do the most damage.

Drops of turquoise followed in the little gremlins wake as something rather important broke in the ensuing explosion. The gremlin was waiting for its prize to be exposed, it wanted to take everything from the one it hated and it would taste ever so sweet when it did.

Beware of gremlins; for no machine is ever truly safe from them.

Just as TOM was about to launch another wave of missiles it stumbled a bit and started smoking slightly. It titled a bit off balance before it recovered and prepared to launch another attack, but before it could do so an announcement was heard and with that announcement nobody was going to let the opportunity slip by.

“Huh, that’s odd; the inner shield just went down on that thing.” One of the remaining eleven battered and blasted cruisers immediately reacted to Slippy’s words, the other cruisers then started attacking TOM with a vengeance when Forty-Two actually managed to deal quite a bit of damage to it on the first pass.

“Everyone hit that thing with all you got, the shields were good but the armoring is lousy. That’s exactly like a Venomian built machine; it just starts falling apart when its shields are gone!” Following up his words Fox started charging his gun and after striking the giant robot with it, he started firing rapidly into the body and its armor started stripping away at a ridiculous pace.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s it, you’re doing it!” Even as he was cheering the others on Slippy continue to take down hornets that were still intent on attacking the Boojiboo. The star cruisers were really causing havoc on TOM’s armor.

Fox and Falco’s shots destroyed all the weapons along the arms and body of the TOM. At one point when Falco fired a charged blast from his cannon into one of its legs, the entire robot faltered and fell over backwards to the ground. Afterwards something strange happened to all the hornets. The hornets just started to lifelessly fall from the sky as several explosions ripped across the Total Obliteration Machine and the outer shield fell as well.

“Yippee, we did it!” Of course Slippy was happy to see that monstrosity go down. Just like all the other super weapons from Venom, it definitely needed to be destroyed.

“We have to go down there and find Bonnie! Lead lower the ramp, I’m going to fly around to find her as quickly as I can.” At least Fluttershy hoped Bonnie was still alive, she just had to be. Despite the pain of galloping and jumping off the ramp to activate the fake wings of her suit and the pollen spewing thrusters, Fluttershy was more worried about what happened to Bonnie than her own health at the moment.

Bonnie had just saved all their lives, now it was Fluttershy’s turn to save Bonnie! If only she could find the small green, fluffy and cute being. It took a while, but flying over the head of the destroyed machine Fluttershy saw two beings on the ground, it was Bonnie standing tall and pointing her blaster at Zurg who was trapped under a piece of metal.

“You know there’s something to be said about underestimating someone of my size, then making that person extremely mad at you when she has a loaded blaster and you find yourself in a very vulnerable position! Just… like… this one!” Bonnie started off slowly and then started screaming as she pointed her gun at Zurg who was trapped by the rubble and no escape plan would save him this time.

Zurg couldn’t really say anything, his plans, his giant robot, his empire and everything else he had was completely ruined. He was hardly in a position to think clearly or at all. He did at least silently acknowledge that he had a blaster in his face and that there was no way for him to get out of this one.

“Bonnie, are you okay?” Fluttershy dropped to the ground and gritted her teeth at the pain flowing through her body; she trotted up to Bonnie who still had her gun pointed at Zurg as she turned to glare Fluttershy in the eyes. Fluttershy could see what was on Bonnie’s mind at the moment and a rocket scientist wasn’t needed. “Don’t kill him.”

“How dare you come here and tell me that I can’t shoot him! After all he’s done to Clyde; well I’ll show you what he did to my brother!” Bonnie kept her grip on the blaster in her left hand and reached into her right holster to pull something out, she held it out towards Fluttershy, but she didn’t look away from Zurg or move her blaster off of his exposed prone form. All she had to do was pull the trigger; she was savoring the moment for when she did. “He’ll never come back the same even if I do save him; he made me Death Knell him!”

“I don’t know what that means Bonnie, please talk to me.” It was clear to Fluttershy that Bonnie was hurting deeply; she looked at what Bonnie was holding out to her. It was a small colorful little sphere and on it was a very familiar number with a grey splotch halfway covering the number five.

“You see that innocuous gray splotch on this sphere Sweet Cheeks? Imagine the sphere being my brother; now imagine that slowly growing grey splotch being how long he has to live. The bigger it grows the closer to death he is and the harder it is to bring him back as anything remotely resembling the brother I once had. Death Knell is a last ditch chance for an experiment to save their life, it is a very unfriendly process and it is only meant to be done when someone you trust can get you back to my dad in time.” The red eyed Bonnie took a glance at Fluttershy before returning her attention back to Zurg and began steeling herself to fire her blaster. “The larger the splotch is before the experiment is put through a recovery process to save what’s left of them, the more they lose. And you will always lose something.”

“You know… I never said not to shoot him Bonnie, I just said don’t kill him. Dying is easy, life is hard.” Trying to reach through to her friend with her voice, Fluttershy just wanted to run up and comfort Bonnie. She stayed in place not wanting to get hurt trying, Bonnie was like a wounded animal as unpleasant as it was to think of her as such. “Please don’t Bonnie, I’m asking you as your friend. I know you’re not a killer.”

“Yeah, life can be pretty rough Fluttershy.” As Bonnie said this, she avoided looking back at the sweet pony as she made sure her blaster was aimed correctly. Making her decision, she pulled the trigger.

Several bitter tears started splashing against the ground after the shot rang out.

“Ohana… it means family…. nobody gets left behind… or forgotten… aloha oe… Zurg…”

Author's Note

This ends the Zurg arc and the aftermath of Bonnie's decision whatever it was.

Yep TOM is rock solid, except for his gooey innards.

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Back into Wander Over Yonder territory...

72

“Once a year, the planets align to form a racetrack. Some parts of the race course can be deadly such as sharp icicles dropping from above or has horrible worm monsters show up on some sandy road to swallow the contestants, only the bravest of the brave would really want to join in this event. This is the Galactic Conjunction Six Thousand!” The announcer received a cheer from the crowd that was watching as the racers stretched out at the starting line. “Now for the rules, each contestant has to be riding or pulled by something. Robots with souls can only be in the event as riders, it is unfair to the biological contestants that they never tire if they are the mount. Objects that are pulled are allowed so long as they have no self propulsion capabilities. If your mount can fly it is only allowed to do so in an emergency, but you will be disqualified. Hovering mounts are viable as long as they don’t hover too high off the track as to be considered flying.”

“This year we have beaten the number of contestants from the previous Galactic Conjunctions as we have over four thousand competitors this time bashing and crashing their way along the course! While attacking other racers is allowed, it is not highly recommended. Who knows what the race course will look like this year, who knows what obstacles there will be? All we need to know is who will survive to finish and who will take home the grand prize!” There was a roar of approval as the announcer finished working up the crowd into an excited frenzy.

At the front of a lot of other aliens was a nervously shaking Fluttershy who was biting her bottom lip, she was standing next to an excited looking Roller who was both happy and ready to race. The pony smiled meekly at Roller’s passion of going fast and excelling at it and here were a lot of animals and beings that were going to be going really fast. This is something Roller really wanted to do, he passed inspection and was recognized as a biological creature and Fluttershy was still wearing her Rhizome suit for protection as usual. The suit had become like a second skin for her and a comfort during trying times.

“Now let’s take a look at some of the contestants and it looks like we have some previous winners here folks! It’s the friendliest face you’ll ever see in space and his faithful loving loyal companion and an aggressive femme fatale of a Zbornak that is one tough ride. It’s Wander and Sylvia the Time Bomb! Hopefully Wander can keep Sylvia from attempting to rip someone apart this time.” A spotlight shined down on the two named individuals, while a lot of the audience chuckled.

One of the individuals was orange bipedal furry guy with a big green floppy hat with a black band and yellow five pointed star on it, the only other thing he was wearing was blue shoes and white sock with some colored stripes. He stood up on top of Sylvia’s saddle and smiled brightly while waving gaily at everyone in good cheer.

Sylvia was a blue round bodied creature with a long neck; snout and tail which made her look like a walking noodle. Her arms ended in three stubby but strong looking fingers and her legs had small thick muscles and ended in two large toes making her look to be built for running. She was simply wearing a bridle around her nose and mouth, along with a blanket and the saddle that Wander stood upon. She also had scruffy looking red dorsal fins on her head and the end of her tail. She stood tall and waved to the crowd and threw two punches before she started stretching out.

Fluttershy was staring at them; after the race was over with she was going to have a word with Wander, since he was one of the beings she had been looking for. A real Star Nomad, he looked rather silly, goofy and friendly as Janet had described him and Sylvia definitely looked tough, but not nearly enough to survive two halves of an entire planet crushing down on her. She fiddled nervously with the second translation device she had Slippy make for her before he and the rest of Fox’s team set off for the Lylat System, they were going to make sure no one else found blueprints to any other Venom based super weapons. The translation device was in the form of a collar or choker, this meant Fluttershy now had a spare translation device just in case she lost the one she was wearing around her neck that she was less likely to lose.

“Now let’s look at another of the contestants. One of the most interesting ones I see here today is a new race to the Galactic Alliance that are called ‘ponies’. She’s an adorable ambassador that befriends everyone she meets while melting their hearts with her loving nature and she helped the people of Janet Rhizome in their time of need by assisting in repelling an invasion force. With her is a biological wheel creature that’s just as strange as any of the other wacky mounts here, he even looks to be quite sporty and he eats things with his tire.” The spotlight shined down on Fluttershy and Roller, causing the pony to squeak and cower while Roller looked up at the light in interest. “Let’s welcome the friendly, noticeably shy and also incredibly brave ambassador, Flutter ‘Felicity’ Shy and her companion Mr. Roller Wheel!”

Roller revved in excitement at being recognized while Fluttershy cowered in his shadow looking around at everyone staring at her and began hyperventilating slightly at all the attention. Why oh why did Fluttershy ever agree to do this? Oh right, she was looking for a star nomad, which she had finally found after so long. She needed to win the grand prize and she had to spend some time while the LGMs finished getting the Head Hunter in a condition that was likely to be better than the state it was in when she stole it.

Fluttershy knew where her next destination was, but not where she needed to go exactly once she got there and she should have asked Veritas when she had the chance. That is why she was here at the Galactic Conjunction and cowering behind her companion with a simple mentality and a strong sense of loyalty that even Rainbow Dash was proud of. She just had to win the grand prize, she wasn’t about to make the trip to the planet Earth on the Head Hunter without someone whose been there and knows where to go.

Oh how Fluttershy wished her friends or even Discord would respond to her, she hadn’t heard back from them in a while. At least Katrina has been nice to talk to about all of her troubles, that Aldebaran was a miracle worker when it came to listening to her woes and dispensing wisdom that made her feel better. It was nice to hear from the old cat lady who helped calm Fluttershy’s nerves when she couldn’t get in touch with any of her friends back on Equus.

Fluttershy thought back to how she even got signed up for this event as she was surrounded by a madhouse of aliens and animals aplenty of the likes she had never seen before. The biological thing that looked like a doghouse with the four crab claws for legs and multiple eyes was a particularly odd one to stare at. She had plenty of time to recall how all this came to pass, as it would be ten or so minutes before the race officially started. She could hopefully ask Wander for help after it was over and that he’d be able to find her home world.

“They lost of thirteen cruisers on planet Z alone, many Star Command personnel are heavily injured, people died in Torque’s attack on the train station and in general things have been unpleasant recently. You also were personally involved in uncovering dangerous black market materials on a cargo train and helped cause the collapse of an empire. Are you sure you won’t press charges after everything she caused to happen?” The Grand Councilwoman asked of Fluttershy just to confirm things. “Bonnie is under arrest for the many crimes she had committed before you were kidnapped or foal nabbed as you prefer to call it. Even if she is a hero, she still has to accept the punishment for her actions. You on the other ‘hoof’ as it were, have diplomatic immunity in this case.”

“No ma’am, I won’t.” Fluttershy abruptly answered without a second though with a smile on her face, before she returned to looking at the document in front of her with a frown. “She’s my friend, I promised I would be her friend and I will not break my Pinkie Promise. I have already satisfied the other conditions of the promise, but being her friend is the one thing I will never take away from her.”

“Fine, then that has been decided at least. Now then, I think you need something to get your mind off of this mess. As such I have already arranged an escort to the Galactic Conjunction for you. Take note of what the grand prize is, since I know it will be of some interest to you. Do not forget you are looking for a star nomad while you’re there.” Veritas slid a piece of paper over to Fluttershy next to the documents she was looking at. She was actually smiling for once as Fluttershy realized why she pointed out the grand prize; the pony looked up and nodded in acknowledgment of what she could do at the Galactic Conjunction. After a moment Veritas’s smile disappeared and she went back to business. “Be thankful that I got away with setting the bail as low as I did, it is not often I bend the rules. You are quite the exception and the friendship you have formed with Bonnie makes me think you can do her a world of good with your presence, instead of allowing her to fester in a prison. She is doing well medically and should make a full recovery, even then she is quite horribly depressed and I have her under constant watch just in case she tries to hurt herself. I must ask, what became of her brother Clyde Jookiba? Aside from that I have sent out expeditions to help find the planet of Equus. Should you be incapable of finding a star nomad or should the star nomad prove incapable of finding your planet if you do see one, I will continue to expend what resources I can to your cause Fluttershy.”

“Thank you very much Veritas, for having people out there looking for my home planet. As for Clyde…” A depressed look came across Fluttershy’s face; she moved her feathered wing and reached it into the right hand bag at her side. It came out holding a small sphere that was familiar to Veritas; the grey splotch was almost encompassing the five on it entirely and parts of the one and zero were covered as well. “He’s dying… Bonnie asked me to hold on to him for her, even if he dies she wants me to hold on to it until she’s released from jail. I think she believes her brother will die while she’s in jail with how she acted by putting him in my hooves.”

Fluttershy explained what Bonnie told her about Death Knell; it was definitely a dire protocol that Jumba had instilled into every one of his children and Veritas didn’t look too pleased with it. They were currently on the Luxmea in a meeting room and had been in the middle of a debriefing of everything Fluttershy went through.

“Is there any chance he can be saved?” Veritas actually showed Fluttershy a little more emotion than she would most people, she didn’t think any of the six hundred and twenty six experiments were truly evil. She was saddened to think of actually killing any of the annoyingly adorable trouble causers now. That was aside from the fact that she watched Jumba euthanize experiment ‘Leroy’ and all of his clones, all the while telling Lilo a lie that they just sent them all to an asteroid prison with Dr. Hamsterviel where they were having a dance parties all the time. All six hundred and twenty six experiments knew of the truth though and it would be up to one of them to eventually break it to Lilo, it would most likely be up to her best friend Stitch.

“Yes, but it requires that I find her father Jumba and even then, what she said about Clyde not coming back the same.” Huffing sadly Fluttershy looked away from Veritas. “It’s a bit worrying; if I try to save him, does he lose all his memories? Does he come back missing parts of his body? I have no idea what she meant exactly, he could even have an entirely different personality from the one he had before. I wouldn’t even know the difference if he did have a different personality, but Bonnie would. All Bonnie said that was for certain is that he lost something from entering this state and will continue to lose more as time passes. The more that time passes, the less chance he’ll be able to come back at all even if it does make him different.”

“It is worrying to me as well; I understand only a little of what Jumba actually does when he creates his children. He’s the most infuriatingly brilliant member of his species, knowing that you will eventually go to meet him to save Clyde you are to never tell him I ever said that.” Veritas stood up and put her arms behind her back and started pacing in thought while Fluttershy watched her. “Bonnie must trust you implicitly to give you her brother for safekeeping. Clyde obviously means more to her than anything she could ever hope to possibly steal, I even suspect that you mean just as much to her.”

“…” Fluttershy made a noncommittal soft neighing sound and quietly looked at the sphere in her hoof; she slowly put it back. Veritas knelt down and pulled her into a hug since she must have looked like she needed it. She recalled what Bonnie had said about the word ‘Ohana’ before she collapsed on the ground from exhaustion and the blood loss.

A beeping noise was heard and Veritas stood back up at full attention. She was quickly back to looking impassive and cold like she always did, but Fluttershy knew better now that she was like Princess Celestia in having to make hard decisions all the time. The tall alien made her way for the door to the room and hit the intercom on the doorway.

“What is it?” Veritas spoke evenly and got directly to the point as if she hadn’t just given the sad little pony a nice friendly hug a few seconds ago.

“I’m here to escort Fluttershy to the Galactic Conjunction ma’am; I can wait if you still have pressing matters with her.” A familiar voice to the pony was heard, but she didn’t react to it too much.

“A few more questions and then we’ll be right out.” With that Veritas went back to sitting down with Fluttershy. “I know you intend on going to the Galactic Conjunction, but do you intend to enter the race?”

“Well it would be nice if I won it and it might be fun for Roller. Then I can take Bonnie with me to earth and she can actually introduce me to her family.” Fluttershy wasn’t a very competitive being, winning it would mean that she would be able to effectively buy Bonnie’s freedom. She was going there to find a star nomad originally, she might as well try as she had nothing to lose if she didn’t win and it couldn’t possibly be that dangerous right? Now that she thought of it, she had a question to ask. “I forgot to ask this, but what will happen to the three DOKs, Lucky Day, Lead Affront and Absolute Resolve?”

“Nobody has any reason to hold those three and as sapient machine they are free to go wherever they please and do whatever they want now within the bounds of our laws. I haven’t heard much about them and they disappeared as soon as they were released from custody after giving us all the information of what happened during the time they were activated to the time you left planet Z with the defectors.” A certain look of concern crossed Veritas’s face as she pulled out and slid a strange data pad to Fluttershy. “They were last seen riding a shuttle down to Capital Planet, I hope they don’t become an issue later. They did however leave this behind; I believe it is meant for you.”

“I’m sure they won’t cause too much trouble.” At least Fluttershy hoped the three different sized floating barrel robots didn’t do anything problematic, she was sure they would only use their weapons in self defense. After having assisted in the wrecking of planet Z, they no longer had a reason to stick around and they apparently didn’t.

Fluttershy looked down at the pad and tapped her hoof onto the screen, a light showed up underneath her hoof and a second later a few pictures appeared on the screen. The three DOKs were wielding the weapons they were designed to work best with and they were saluting at the camera. Below that there was Fluttershy, Roller and Bonnie with hearts above their heads. Touching the screen with a hoof with a warm feeling in her chest, Fluttershy caused it to move upwards slightly. Blinking she pushed forward on the screen and the pictures scrolled upwards leading into some writing.

“The first one is from Lucky, it reads ‘New Mission: Find planet Equus’. The second one is from Lead; she says ‘See you pony, someday, somewhere’. The last one is from Absolute; it says ‘Happy to serve’.” Veritas read it for Fluttershy’s benefit since she couldn’t read the language. “I believe that answers any question I might have had about them and their current motives, anything you would like to ask before you leave Fluttershy?”

“Do you think Zurg will ever be able to use his arm again?” It was hard to be upset with someone who doesn’t like seeing anyone get hurt and Fluttershy was just that sweet to ask about how the tyrannical bastard was doing. Zurg was still in a catatonic state even now and even though she was worried about his health, Fluttershy didn’t exactly feel sorry for him. She knew he was a ruthless, even with his own people from what she saw in Bonnie’s dream of all those dead Grubs. She still hoped that Zurg at least had a chance of being a better person in the future or in another life.

“I’m sure he’ll live.” Flatly responded Veritas who personally thought that Bonnie should have killed him, but that was just her cold analytical side talking. Fluttershy still showing compassion even for someone who likely hated or feared her to his core was something incredible to see and it gave her hope for future interactions with the intelligent beings of Equus. She knew that not everyone could be like Fluttershy; she could only hope that enough of them were near enough.

Opening the door, they came face to face with Betina waiting for them. She was out of her ranger armor with her dark blue hair up in a ponytail and was flicking her ears back in a shy manner. The one eyed centaur seemed particularly shy out of her armor and at the hip of her upper humanoid torso was a holster with a blaster in it. She was also wearing an ‘I love vegetables shirt’ to cover her upper torso and had a purse slung over one shoulder.

“I’ve needed this vacation for some time now Fluttershy, most of team Plasma got injuries escaping to another cruiser and I had nothing better to do so they put me on light duty as your bodyguard.” Betina ‘Betsy’ Bucks-a-ton looked worn out though she was smiling at Fluttershy in a slightly cheery mood. Her beautifully cared for tail flicked back and forth nervously on the seat and her lower body sat in the seat in the same manner Fluttershy was sitting next to her. “You know it’s kind of weird knowing that there are more four legged beings out there aside from us Cyclocentaurians. It’s not often you see a fully sentient four legged beings like us.”

“There’s a lot of intelligent four legged species on my planet like me Betina, I’m sure you would love it there. There are centaurs that look like you except they have two eyes, sometimes horns and they actually have noses. My world had a particular problem with one named Tirek, he was draining all the life and beauty out of the world until me and my friends stopped him.”At the moment Fluttershy was safely riding on a space bus heading to the Galactic Conjunction with her minder acting as a low key chaperone. “Sorry if hearing that makes you uncomfortable, but not all centaurs or four legged beings on my world are nasty like he was. Um… so have you tried talking to Booster recently? I noticed you’re tail um… yes… well, if it means the same thing as it does for my species.”

“I kind of get tongue tied around him. Sure I can speak plainly as a friend, but to ask the biggest and sweetest guy I know out on a date. Yeah, hard to do that when you liked him back when he was still a big goofy loveable janitor working towards a dream he now lives, that was before he was promoted to a full on rookie ranger for saving our part of the universe.” She looked away while rubbing the side of her head sheepishly with her right hand as she blushed. “Now he’s up there in the ranks with the likes of Buzz ‘freaking’ Lightyear, one of the most decorated Space Rangers out there.”

“I’m sure you’ll be able to ask him out some day, I know he’s open to the idea at least. Um… do you know what’s going on with Mira and Buzz? They always seem rather tense around one another and who’s Sally? I heard you mention her and something called Cosmo’s?” The conversation led Fluttershy into getting to know Betsy better and she learned about how oblivious Buzz Lightyear was by being so thoroughly married to his job.

Author's Note

I would like to know how this chapter turned out. Cyclocentaurians do exist in the cartoon, but in general it's this one Space Ranger who's a background character who appears infrequently throughout many scenario's.

Oh and my cable box recently exploded, missed the recent episode on TV and viewed it on YouTube. I must say Yakety was a cute little yak. Last week was pretty bad, but tragedy really does something for my inspiration at least.

I will now spend a day or so playing Bravely Default or other video games.

73

“So in essence the Space Rangers are going to be busy for quite a while with so many of us out of action and the lack of cruisers to keep things under control means we’ll have to pull double shifts. We might have busted almost all of Zurg’s contacts and his empire, but this doesn’t mean that the criminals of the Galactic Alliance have stopped doing anything.” After a moment Betina looked a little put off with her ears wilted. “In fact I and the other rangers are going to be busier than ever, even the Galactic Guardians are increasing their patrols. This is basically all the vacation I’ll be getting for a while, hope this will be fun at least.”

“I hope so too.” Fluttershy couldn’t wait until the bus arrived; she wondered what the Galactic Conjunction would look like. She immediately became incredibly shy the second she stepped off the bus when it finally came to a stop, for the second she stepped off she saw thousands of different kinds of aliens.

“Wow, they weren’t kidding when they said a lot of races from across the alliance gathered here for this event.” Betina looked around at all the alien beings meandering around. “Stick close and don’t wander too far off. If you need something just ask, I’ve got some money.”

Betina eventually guided Fluttershy and Roller to the booth where they could sign up for the race; there were all kinds of merchants here peddling their wares and snacks of all kinds. There was even a booth from Rhizome here selling food, the owners recognized Fluttershy and were happy to see her again.

Thus Fluttershy was here with five minutes left while the people waited for the race to start. She had gone through most of her preparations for this race; eat a snack from the Rhizome booth, had something to drink and went to the bathroom.

Roller did something similar to what Fluttershy did. Only he just ate and absorbed some liquid, he needed no bathroom and he was ready to put his tire to the test and was revving in excitement to start going. He understood what racing was, but he didn’t exactly understand why they had to wait for it to start and was getting a bit impatient.

The sound of four hooves walking up to Fluttershy drew her attention and she saw Betina with a LGM riding her back trotting up to her.

“Your ship should be done soon friend, it will be waiting for you at Star Command when you are ready to pick it up.” The LGM was like every other LGM, average, green and three eyes. Only he seemed livelier than the others. “I will ride back to Star Command with you and Ranger Bucks-a-ton, should we survive.”

“Hey if this is going to be my vacation time, I might as well do something exciting. This little independent thinker here wanted to enter, but he couldn’t find a good mount so I volunteered to do some running. I’m not that bad at a gallop, doubt I’ll place in the top ten though. A lot of these other guys look pretty fast.” Checking her pistol’s charge, Betina started eyeing the other contestants with something approaching scrutiny as she holstered her blaster. This race would be the perfect opportunity for someone to attack Fluttershy with impunity; it would be legal to as they had both signed a waiver. She wasn’t about to let the ambassador run into trouble without some backup from a sister who also had hooves. “Hope you get first place Fluttershy. You’d really save us some money if you do; I’m going to try for first place as well if I get a chance to do so. I’m not exactly good for it if this becomes a marathon.”

“I’m sure we’ll both do okay Betina.” As far as sweet sentiments went, it was nice to Fluttershy that someone was watching out for her on the racetrack. She shivered at all the stares she had been getting as she slowly mounted Roller, the race was about to begin and she was incredibly nervous about the waiver regarding injuries during the obstacles. At least they said they’d rescue trapped racers if they got stuck. After a moment she decided to ask about something Betina mentioned. “Um… what do you mean by, ‘it will save you money’?”

“We’re all friends here Fluttershy, please just call me Betsy.” Betina gave a broad smile to Fluttershy as she kept eyeing the crowd of races for the more malicious looking types. This race was something she actually wanted to do and if she could look out for Fluttershy while doing it then that was just a bonus to her. “Anyway, what I mean is that even if neither of us wins, I and the other rangers are willing to chip in and pay Bonnie’s bail for you. We’re hoping you win though, as it would be much easier on us.”

“Really, oh that’s wonderful news Betsy! I found a Star Nomad and I’ll be able to take Bonnie with me when I go to earth to save Clyde and I’m hopefully one step closer to home. Maybe we should…” Fluttershy was about to suggest she drop out until she saw how Roller looked raring to go. She thought about how he’d be so disappointed if he wasn’t able to race, he wanted to compete and she just couldn’t do that to him after getting his hopes up. “Try our best to win this race Betsy.”

“Just be safe, you don’t need to win for our sakes.” Betsy just looked at how Fluttershy stared down at Roller who was bouncing with excitement; she smiled a bit at that. Despite Fluttershy’s obvious nervousness of being in one of the biggest yearly events in the Galactic Alliance, she was still willing to go through with it for a friend and close companion.

“I too would help pay for Bonnie’s bail, we are eternally grateful for the opportunity to work on a ship of The Claw.” The LGMs didn’t want to be left out of helping some friends.

“Racers take you’re positions, the countdown is about to begin.” As the announcer for these events spoke, Roller moved into a position to the far left side of starting line which he felt as being far enough away from Sylvia.

Roller was being smart by not being near or behind Sylvia as he recognized an apex level creature when he saw one, especially when her eye got somewhat red and her comb sharpened out slightly. All Wheelies knew a dangerous being when they saw one and Kirby was definitely one of the most dangerous ones to ever exist, size really didn’t matter when it came to identifying something as being very dangerous. He thought he was making a very good judgment call to not be anywhere near Sylvia when this started, judging by her stance it would be especially bad to be directly behind her when she started running.

“Now Roller, don’t go until the countdown finishes.” It was a little misunderstanding on Fluttershy’s part as to why Roller moved to the far left side of the starting line and so close to it. That misunderstanding would soon fix itself.

Roller revved that he understood and had a reason for moving to this position, his pipes went erect and his eyes narrowed, his carapace moved forward slightly and Fluttershy readjusted herself to hold onto him better.

“Get ready, three… two… one… go!” As soon as the announcer finished counting down and the lights above the arch hit green an explosion happened to the right of Roller as he shot off after the blue blur on two legs.

Fluttershy was slightly shocked at how fast Sylvia had left starting line, she looked back and was even more shocked to see that a lot of the competitors that had been too close to Sylvia had been blown over by the sonic boom she caused. Looking forward she could see that Roller was intent on keeping up with Sylvia. The Zbornak was one of the fastest beings Fluttershy had ever seen, she was faster on foot than Rainbow was in the air and that was saying something considering the sonic boom that disabled quite a few of the other races. She could completely understand why Roller moved to the left now.

Not all the racers had been unlucky enough to be caught by the explosion Sylvia caused at the starting line, but it was easy to see why she was called ‘The Time Bomb’ given what she just did. There were still other racers who had managed their own start just as good as Sylvia without getting caught in her rather explosive start.

She turned to face forward and looked ahead the track seemed straight so far, an ominous glow coming from above caught Fluttershy’s attention. Looking up, she quickly jerked to the right and Roller responded immediately moving them out of the way of a flaming rock that struck the track.

“What the flipping grabnar!” Sylvia sidestepped out the way of a flaming boulder while keeping her momentum; she looked behind her and her eyes widened. “Why is he here? Wander we got company, Lord Haters trying to kill us legally now and I’m terrified at the prospect that he’d do anything legally!”

“Come on Sylvia I don’t think he’s trying to kill us, he’s our friend and I think he’s just making things more fun for everyone!” A smiling Wander received an annoyed grunt from his best friend in the whole universe as she leapt out of the way of another fireball crashing into the ground. He continued to stay optimistic as Sylvia charged down the straightaway followed by several other racers who had managed to catch up.

Fluttershy being curious as to whom Sylvia was talking about, turned her head back while letting Roller steer himself. She saw a large four legged beast that looked something like a bandersnatch with large tusks dragging a big catapult like device with a throne on it. Said throne held a skeletal headed creature with glowing green angry eyes and he positively looked livid, he seemed to be yelling at a bunch of bipedal one eyed beings who worked together to load another fireball onto the launching mechanism.

“Wander, I’m not your friend and I’m totally trying to kill you!” The skeletal creature could be heard shouting forward to Wander, his voice carried really well for someone who didn’t have vocal chords.

Fluttershy’s ears wilted at hearing that someone was actively trying to kill the star nomad she just found, she just couldn’t let that happen. Looking to Wander, she saw that he didn’t seem to be panicking like his mount Sylvia was about the flaming balls of fire striking the racetrack. She had to think of a way to keep him safe, she was also curious as to how much ammo that catapult had as it didn’t seem like it was running out of shots anytime soon.

“Captain Sweet Cheeks you’re end is nigh and I will drink from your neck right here and now!” Following the familiar screaming voice was a loud yodeling scream that came from behind Fluttershy. The pony hunkered down and soon the pink petals on her helmet flew temporarily into the right side of her face for a few seconds from the force of the missed attack that would have taken off her head.

Through her left eye, Fluttershy saw a large four legged, snake fanged, sickly yellow colored lizard creature and that Herja the Valkyran Captain of the Bloody Retaliation was riding it. It made her wonder how this could possibly get any worse; obviously the rangers hadn’t captured the Valkyrans that Fox and his team had quickly disabled. It was about this time that the first obstacle came into play as the road split into two different slightly narrower roads that corkscrewed and intersected with each other multiple times.

The large snake monster lunged to take a bite out of Fluttershy when Herja pointed her mace at the pony. Roller quickly veered up the left road while the oblivious rider and large dangerous lizard creature hit the median and nearly fell off the space bound racetrack. Its tail lashed out and the vicious looking spikes at the tip caught the edge of the right road before it fell too far.

Fluttershy felt the blood rush to her head as her entire body inverted upside down for a few seconds and they almost collided with Sylvia as they crossed paths. She was surprised that Sylivia was managing to stick to the track so well, most likely because of her forward momentum was incredible enough that it didn’t matter if she was running along a wall, floor or ceiling.

The two roads twisted into each other several more times, sometimes crossing when Fluttershy was horizontal, upside down or right side up. It was beginning to get dizzying to her until they came out of the two opposing corkscrews right side up.

Roller, who was paying some really good attention to the track, started drifting into the upwards counterclockwise spiral. Looking up a bit at were the spiral ultimately led to, he saw that it led to an almost straight vertical drop. Once they hit the top of the spiral, he straightened himself out and shot forward and straight down with Fluttershy screaming at the sudden change in direction. While Roller wouldn’t let her get hurt, he wasn’t about to slow down now.

“Stop dodging and bloody yourself upon my mace you cowarrrr…!” A screaming Herja fell past a confused Fluttershy as the lizard didn’t handle the sudden downwards turn too well and it fell right off the edge. It rolled as it hit the bottom of the steep downwards slope that was quickly becoming less steep. After the tumble both Herja and her horrific spiny lizard creature looked to have been temporarily stunned and battered as they came to a halt on the racetrack.

Having passed by what would soon be looking like a constant attempt on her life, Fluttershy looked around and noticed that she and Roller had gained a small lead over the other races with Roller’s ability to handle and adapt to the track so well. She looked at what was ahead, the racetrack opened into a large vast looking ocean or a really big lake. There were these funny arrow symbols at the end of the track leading straight into the water.

“Hot, hot, hot, hot, my hooves are burning; they are literally on fire here!” A panicking Betina went skidding right on by Fluttershy and Roller at high speeds with her hooves on fire and kicking up a lot of sparks. It looked like she was trying to slow down and was failing horrible at it. She hit the panel at the end of the road ahead of Fluttershy and she sped up even further to start skidding across the water with her legs splayed out like a water strider. The LGM cheered her on as a wall of steam rose up from her hooves as they were quickly doused from skidding across the top of the water. “Much better, but I’m still out of control!”

Fluttershy grimaced at what was happening to Betsy and soon Roller himself hit the panel as did Sylvia a second later, followed by a bunch of beam weapons firing at her backside by Lord Haters one eyed henchman wielding blasters. She noted that unlike Betsy, the little one eyed guys didn’t seem to have any depth perception making all their shots miss horrendously and they were more likely to hit anyone but Wander and Sylvia.

Everyone was moving across the top of the water at high speeds, Roller and Sylvia were actively keeping their momentum going whereas a hapless Betina was still coasting on her previous momentum ahead of them. The large monster that was dragging Haters catapult was having problems keeping up the momentum and was slowly starting to bog down into the water because of its size.

It was a few seconds after they all hit the water that several humongous blue serpentine monsters that had cobra hoods with gills burst out of the water at the racers trying to swallow them whole. Sylvia continued to run forward and decked the monster that came at her in the side of the face knocking it back into the water.

Trying to keep her balance as she skid across the top of the water while quickly losing speed, Betsy started shooting at the serpents to keep them from going for her.

Roller had drawn ones attention in particular and dodged several lunges. It soon jumped high into the air and came down on Fluttershy and Roller with its mouth wide open and unhinged ready to swallow them alive. Not happy about the large creature bearing down on them, he charged up a star shaped mass of energy above a cowering Fluttershy’s back. When the water serpent was close enough, he fired it into the chin of the beast causing it to create a small wave as it flopped in a boneless manner back into the water.

“Are the scary monsters gone yet?” Ask a silly question because they almost ran into another ones mouth as Fluttershy looked up from her hooves, she gave off a yelp as Roller veered around the closing mouth full of teeth trying to snap down on them. Fluttershy shuddered as she stared back at the lurking terrors shadow as it slid beneath the rolling waves they were shooting across the top of.

Looking forward Fluttershy could see that they were almost three fourths the way across and she could clearly see Betsy falling into the water. She wondered how much harder it was for Betsy to swim and saw some shadows lurking in the water around the alien centaur.

“Roller, we have to save Betsy, get us close as you can to her!” Fluttershy cared more about her friend than the race; she also cared about Wander’s safety as she had lost sight of him and Sylvia. Roller listened to her and swept his way across the top of the water for Betsy; she had to think of a way to help her. After flicking her green covered tail underneath her yellow petal skirt a figurative light bulb appeared above Fluttershy’s head. “Betsy grab on!”

Betsy was kicking and trying to stay above the water, both she and the LGM looked to Fluttershy in shock that she’d change course for them. Roller slowed down as they passed by Betsy and she managed to grab the end of Fluttershy’s tail in her right hand. This was while she was firing shot after shot at the leviathan type creature rearing up out of the water behind them. The blaster pistol she held in her left hand was having some effect of keeping it from lunging forward and swallowing them all as Fluttershy and Roller towed her and the LGM to safety.

Roller kicked up more water as he increased his speed and started dragging the extra weight along as Fluttershy clamped down tightly to him with all four hooves as her tail pulled taught. Roller dragged the other two racers the rest of the distance and up to the racetrack where Betsy finally let go and quickly caught her footing as she wobbled a bit before standing tall. Roller stopped for a moment.

“Go on, we’ll be fine now!” Betsy didn’t need to tell Roller twice and she yelled at the duo as they sped off. “Thanks for the save; hey, I’m the one that is supposed to be watching your back! Goddess, I need a breather.”

“She has saved our lives, we should be eternally grateful!” The LGM said with a cheeky smile on his chubby little face.

Now that they were back on the racetrack, Fluttershy continued looking out for what the next obstacle was as the track veered to the right into an asteroid field. It was full of massive rocks that bounced off the track despite the fact that they looked like they should be going straight through it. Something that felt like magic was in the air and given how the racetrack formed each year, Fluttershy guessed it was some cosmic magical power that was like Discord creating these wacky and quite dangerous race courses.

Up ahead a large asteroid was sitting on the track and it had a Sylvia shaped imprint on it, she had apparently ran into it at full speed without somehow snapping her neck. Sylvia was busy trying to lift the asteroid off the track as it was obstructing her and the other racers. While they were all stopped, the other racers had to dodge being pelted with smaller asteroids and the like constantly hitting the track.

Looking up Fluttershy could see a bigger asteroid slowly falling towards the other racers that were too busy dodging the asteroids to really pay attention to the danger they were all in. Roller came to a stop; he did not want to be in the path of the massive asteroid that was about to crash into the track.

“Roller we need to warn them… please?” It was up to Fluttershy as Roller seemed reluctant to go near where the asteroid was crashing down on everyone, but he did so anyway. “Everyone come back this way, there’s a… are they even technically asteroids if they’re in an atmospheric environment?”

The soft spoken pony hadn’t drawn all the other dodging racers attentions, there had to be some form of atmosphere as the other racers weren’t as protected or wearing suits.

Roller thought Fluttershy was being too quiet and he revved loudly getting everyone’s attention, it certainly shocked Fluttershy back to the matter at hoof. He whined that Fluttershy should point out where to look now and she quickly pointed straight upwards with her left hoof, all the racers ran back the way they came when they saw it. They all made it to a safe distance out of the way of the humongous asteroid that crashed into and subsequently knocked the other impeding asteroid off the path.

“The racers seem to have narrowly avoided getting crushed thanks to a timely intervention by Flutter and Roller, but will our racers be able to take on all the other upcoming obstacles? Stay tuned as they continue through the crushing asteroid zone!” The announcer was talking to everyone who was watching the race on screen; a number popped up showing that as many as four hundred and sixty seven racers had been disqualified thus far or were unable to continue.

Author's Note

Played video games, visited family after they had a knee replacement in a rehab center that doesn't care about people being lactose intolerant apparently. Given that the person in question received a grilled cheese sandwich, ice cream and cucumbers covered in sour cream for a meal.

It's not funny to being allergic to some foods.

I was there and ate the ice cream personally. If you go to a rehab center make sure they know about your food allergies, because I swear someone with peanut allergy went into an anaphylactic shock somewhere in there and it was most likely covered up.

Can I make another chapter and will the race last four thousand more words?

We'll see, because this is kind of Roller's jam.

74

After the asteroid was out of the way the race was back on, Roller and Fluttershy had fallen behind a bit but at least they were still ahead of Herja. If the captain with the glowing energy mace was even still in the race and it was hard to think she was so easily incapacitated by a long fall down a steep ramp. Her lizard monster also looked positively dangerous to be bitten by.

Keeping her eyes out for asteroids Fluttershy would steer Roller when direly needed and otherwise left Roller make his own decisions about which way to move around the obstacles that left the road full of dents and slight divots. It was a rather bumpy ride to avoid all the asteroids; one had even struck Fluttershy in the side of the helmet knocking her for a loop. The other racers weren’t as lucky as to be wearing a protective suit and were likely getting badly injured by all the rock flying around the track they were racing along.

After glancing around again, Fluttershy spotted the guy Sylvia called Lord Hater coming up behind her quickly. She watched as his powerful mount barreled his head straight through several large asteroids without a problem. The catapult that was being dragged along had a green glowing barrier that stopped the asteroids from striking anyone on it, it even appeared to be repelling the dangerous rocks.

There were all kinds of things for Fluttershy study in this race, like the vast difference in racing mounts going on throughout this race. Some had incredible running speed like Sylvia; others had incredible durability and stamina like Lord Haters mount that no obstacle would ever really stop for long. It was so interesting seeing so many species of animals in action, how their muscles flexed, how they moved so gracefully along the track at such speeds that quite frankly scared her about their safety. She didn’t know how any of these thousands of racing alien animals physiologically worked or how to heal them if they got hurt; she at least knew how Roller worked after some intensive study into his species.

Roller found this all exhilarating as he was being challenged so well that he didn’t care if he didn’t pass the end of the road first. He just wanted to roll and he was doing what all his species naturally does as he zigzagged along the track dodging asteroids mostly on instinct while trying to not let Fluttershy get hit by too many more of them.

After a while of dodging meteors that came in all sizes they came to an empty road stretch of road that curved left and they could see Sylvia up ahead still keeping a good lead and setting a good pace. Without any obstructions Sylvia and Roller were among some of the fastest beings on the track depending on whether or not they were allowed to accelerate to full speed properly.

Fluttershy gave a sigh of relief that they hadn’t been squash or smashed by a large chunk of rock, she was having some bad flashbacks to when she was in the stiletto class fighter and about to die because of her curiosity. Quite frankly she was still inquisitive about space and all the many wonders out there, but she was certainly less naïve about how everything worked.

“Commander Peepers why aren’t we going faster, we have to get Wander!” With a twitching ear the pony looked back at the large four legged beast catching up with the leaders of the pack. He was yelling at one of the cute looking eyeball guys who happened to be wearing a strange helmet with a sharp looking lightning shaped blade on it.

“We’re currently as fast as we can get sir. That is unless we lighten the load, but we’d lose all the extra firepower. You know the same firepower that we need to get Wander with? Lord Hater, it is my solemn duty to try and carry out your orders, but we’re a bit constrained by the fact that if we continue attacking Wander the other racers might intervene on his behalf as I recognize some of them as being people he’s helped before.” The small one eyed guy seemed to be the leader of the other one eye beings that all looked alike in their strange uniforms. “The loss of ammo would help us move slightly faster though.”

“I don’t care; just take out the other racers as well if you have too, I want Wander gone!” Lord Haters comment pretty much had Fluttershy’s ears wilting. “Start with that colorful looking one on the wheel thing! You know I hate the colors pink and yellow Peepers!”

“We’ll get on it right away Sir! You heard Lord Hater guys, attack everyone! We’ll lighten up our ammo stores and it’ll help us deal with any of the competition that may have a chance of trying to stop us!” The other one eyed beings started a chant ‘hate’s great’ and ‘best villain’ alternatively at Commander Peepers words that were rather disheartening to the nearby pony.

“How can anybody like hatred? Oh, they must mean Lord Hater.” It wasn’t hard to for Fluttershy to figure out that Lord Hater was not a nice skeleton thing. Especially after he just told them to target all the racers starting with… the pony was not slow on the uptake when she looked down at Roller and all the other racers who didn’t have wheel shaped entities to ride on. Oh, she was the first target they’d be aiming for first.

They were still on the soft curve to the left until things straightened out and in the distance Fluttershy could see nothing but a solid wall of ice in the form of a humongous castle. It was so massive that she couldn’t see any way around it which meant that they were going through it; she was in awe of the scale of such a thing. With a jerk she came to her senses as a flaming rock exploded next to her and Roller, she whimpered as she looked over her back and saw another racer get knocked from his mount. That racer soon got up and so did his mount, meaning that they were okay if injured.

Roller picked up speed and fired a few star shots, ones that still drained him a bit, every once in a while to take care of a few of the harder to avoid rocks as they crashed down around Fluttershy and him. The little one eyed guys aim wasn’t that big a deal, but the amount of flaming rocks that they were managing to put into the air in such a short amount of time was.

It wasn’t long before they reach the entrance to the massive wall of ice, to see that it looked like a wide open cave system inside and it continued onwards, there were a lot of holes off to the sides of the main path of the open entryway each leading into a slide.

Roller immediately lost traction and fell over as soon as he hit the ice trying to dodge a flaming rock and went sliding down a nearby chute by himself with his momentum used against him.

Having been thrown from Roller’s backside, a flailing Fluttershy was sent falling to the ground. The sudden rolling impact with the ground had hurt quite a bit. The following slide down a long lit icy tunnel in a constant downwards pull that suddenly shifted to her somehow slamming against the ceiling when the gravity suddenly flipped randomly on its own was worse.

Scrabbling to find purchase on the ice, Fluttershy mentally tried to get her suit to clench on to the ice as well as it could, it slowed her down, but it didn’t stopped her from sliding down the path until she shot out into a dark wide open space at the end of the lit tunnel. She then felt herself suddenly start falling sideways and saw as much once she saw the tunnel she exited from zoom off, despite how little sense it made. It was a few moments after that when she slammed into a large blue object roughly causing her to yelp at the force she hit it with.

“Ugh, what the...” The voice sounded like it was Sylvia. After a moment of falling in odd directions through the bright expanse, changing several times in mid-air as they did, it was confirmed that the pony was latched onto the Zbornak who was currently missing Wander from her back. “Hey, let go of…”

Before Sylvia could say anything further they slammed into a large pile of snow together, she slowly stood up and looked down at the shivering form hugging her. After a moment Sylvia sighed and pried Fluttershy off of herself, she couldn’t get angry with Fluttershy because she was scared, alone and crying. They were both in the middle of a lit massive cavern with several more slide openings at the far walls, with snow almost leading all the way up to any one of them.

“Hey its okay, we’ve finally stopped. You’re that ambassador, uh, Flutter was it? Stop crying, I’ll protect you. Sometimes I swear Wander is making me too soft. Come on, if I remember right this place is a madhouse of gravity wells and slippery surfaces.” Sylvia gently placed Fluttershy into a sitting position on her back which made Fluttershy look up at her. “Been in this race several times before, so I know what’s up with this place. It’s not at all difficult to get through to the exit, but doing it without getting hurt is pretty hard. This place is meant to slow you down drastically and that’s the thing; this area is about going slow and steady. Racing through it at break your neck speeds on the icy parts will make you quite literally do that and the snow covered parts like this one are dangerous for numerous reasons. Tried to slow down before I hit the ice, as you can see I wasn’t successful and of course I got separated from my rider again. Just like the last time the racetrack went through this crazy place. Took me a while to come to my senses the last time I was here, by then that race was over and I had to be rescued. That happened a few years before I met…. anyway, the names Sylvia, don’t take my kindness for granted.”

“I... I’m Fluttershy… I prefer to be called that if it’s alright with you, but Flutter is okay to.” Fluttershy noticed that Sylvia stood up and started to slowly walk across the snow, her head and wide eyes swiveling about all over the place. She was worried about Roller first and Wander second, she was also worried about whether or not Betsy was okay. “Um, I know we don’t know each other very well, but if it’s not too much of me to ask…”

“Shh… quiet Fluttershy, don’t talk for a bit.” Sylvia didn’t mean to cut Fluttershy off, but she was looking around the snowy expanse while slowly treading softly. Each step of her two feet sent a very soft crunch in the snowy cavern they were both in. It was silent for a moment and then after another step Sylvia stopped and looked over her shoulder at something behind Fluttershy.

Being curious as to what Sylvia was looking at, Fluttershy slowly turned her head and tried to find the spot Sylvia was staring at. They weren’t alone in this cavern as something was blending in with the snow almost perfectly, had Fluttershy not had the ears she did from her mutation she would have never heard it moving much less seen the horrific looking eyes in the snow. Slowly her ears flicked and she heard more things moving in the snow.

“Yeah, this is one of the parts that I hate about this place… we’re in one of ‘their’ rooms.” When Sylvia whispered to the pony, they saw a slight movement in the snow as the creature or creatures in it dove downwards.

Fluttershy’s echo sight couldn’t be right, what sort of creature adapts to survive in cold inhospitable looking place like this that didn’t seem to have any food? Not to mention that the creatures looked horrifying in shape to her eyes, she almost didn’t want to know what they looked like above the snow that Sylvia was standing on.

“Hold on to me tightly, do you know how to fight?” As Sylvia’s eyes darted about the place she put up her arms and the muscles in her legs and tail tensed, she was being very quiet because she knew what the things in the snow were. Why couldn’t they have fallen into an easier snow room?

“I don’t like fighting, but I will defend myself if pushed and I’m armed with mostly non lethal weapons. They work better on robots, I really don’t like violence so please don’t kill anything in front of me.” That was an accurate summation of the pod grenades Fluttershy had, they were more lethal to robots with souls than they were to biological beings.

“Yeah, but the things we’re dealing with are dangerous. The reason why I’m talking so quietly is because they hunt by either movement or sound and no promises about the killing thing.” Sylvia had a vicious streak in her, she only tended to beat the tar out of whatever attacks her first to the point that it will live to regret its decision in attacking her or Wander.

“We are invading their home and woke them up, would you want to be killed in your own home by an intruder?” Not once can Fluttershy say she ever hated an animal, she likely never would. In cases like this it was best to leave the animals alone in peace.

“My home is with Wander and wandering the universe, so yeah that’s not going to work with me. If you don’t want me to hurt them, then maybe you could distract them if you have something to throw in those bags of yours?” After a moment of silence Sylvia noted that Fluttershy was holding a green sphere which she threw as far away as she could. It caused a lot of the figures in the snow to jerk a bit towards it when it landed, this left Sylvia wondering what that would do. A bunch of vines exploded harmlessly throughout the surrounding snow a distance away.

Instead of waiting around to ask questions, Sylvia immediately made for one of the slide tunnels and made it to them without being caught by the creatures that Fluttershy was staring back at in interest.

Looking back Fluttershy could see that there had been fifteen large creatures that were a horrific cross between a spider and shark with spindly limbs that were tipped with sharp blades of ice. They looked incredibly dangerous and frightening, a part of her saw the beauty in them even if they were vicious looking killing machines that went at the wriggling mass of vines biting, slashing and breathing out blasts of strange mists. The lighter mist did nothing while the other mist which was thicker froze the vines solid. She then lost sight of them as Sylvia went into the sliding tunnel.

“What were those, they were really interesting. The hairs on their spindly legs seem to make it so they can feel the vibration of whatever is moving on top of the snow as the thick skin of their bodies doesn’t seem nearly as conductive and is to prevent injury from tougher prey.” As Fluttershy spoke on about what she got from a few seconds of observation Sylvia looked at her in a funny manner. “They also seem to have a strong sense of community given how they are working together. I’ve noticed that some of them can spit chemicals that are likely to put the target to sleep or quickly freeze them, should they prove to be immune to the former so they won’t be able to fight back. They look quite efficient in how they digest foods and can go a long time between meals.”

“Those things are called Blackout Blizzard Bellows and that was rather informative for your first time seeing them and not knowing what they are. Now we need to go through about two more tunnels and hope that our friends have enough sense to do the same, no matter where you end up you’re always going towards the exit if you can reach a tunnel. I instead got into a drawn out fight with them once, couldn’t take a single one of them down.” The two were flung out into the open cavernous space again after Sylvia finished explaining the third important thing to know about this place, they were once again being tossed around randomly by gravity with Fluttershy clinging to her tightly.

“That’s nice to know, I’m really good with animals of all kinds. I like to observe creatures, even ones as dangerous as those looked to be.” After a few moments of being flung through a dark void with random gravity shifts, Fluttershy felt herself getting sick to her stomach and her face was turning a bit green. They were then flung in a single direction until they entered a room.

They slammed into the floor in the middle of a room full of ice; Sylvia observed the room and tested the floor while looking towards the ceiling. Even Fluttershy was glancing at the ceiling where a millions long needles made of ice were hanging above their heads. Sylvia gulped and hundreds of spikes fell in front of Syvlia and Fluttershy at even the barest of noise she had made from doing just that much.

Neither of them dared to talk, as Sylvia slowly edged her way towards one of the tunnels by sidling towards it. Nothing was making a sound until a familiar large yellow spiny lizard creature with snake fangs slammed into the floor and roared in their direction causing Sylvia to lunge for the sliding tunnel as millions of sharpened needles rained down from above.

After they entered the tunnel Fluttershy whimpered about the poor lizard that probably just got skewered back there, it looked to have been Herja’s mount. The angry yelling captain was still in the race, well that is if her lizard survived that and it probably did as its skin looked thick enough to survive being hit with so many icy cold needles.

Back in the previous room the snake fanged lizard had managed to get into one of the slides despite being covered in icy needles that had been loosely lodged in its skin, it was still moving perfectly fine.

As the lizard went down one of the slides the view in the entire room flipped upside down to the ceiling where Wander landed in the middle of it with an excited smile as he looked around in wonder at the beautiful crystal needles hanging along the ceiling.

“Wow, I bet Sylvia would have liked to see this, it’s beautiful!” Wander got up and continued towards one of the tunnels making a lot of noise in excitement about how pretty this place was. The little orange fuzzy guy had no clue about the danger he had avoided as hundreds of ice needles rammed themselves neatly back into the floor they fell from as he left.

Both Fluttershy and Sylvia slid out of an icy tunnel into bowl shaped room where they were at the lips of the bowl full of cold looking water. Opposite of the icy bits they were on, there was a large rocky surface with tiny bits of magma flowing through it in veins. On the ceiling was another bowl that was full of steaming flowing magma. The room was just comfortably warm.

“We’re halfway through, we can stop worrying about traps as the next area of this place is all about going as fast as possible and I’m not about to leave Wander behind for this part.” Looking up at all the tunnels from the icier part of this they seem to all converge on this one room, Sylvia sat down and waited for Wander to show up since he would obviously take his time to look at things. “So I’m staying right here.”

“There’s something that I wanted to ask earlier, but we were kind of busy. I was wondering if I can talk to you and Wander after the race, I have something really important that I need to ask of him.” Entering her doe eyed adorable mode Fluttershy hoped that Sylvia would be willing to hear her meet Wander.

“If you really need his help and most people usually do, Wander always tries to do his best to make others happy. He even got Lord Hater to smile once which was quite the accomplishment. It’s like it’s his mission in life to drive me nuts with his kindness. He always stops for everyone who needs help and I can’t help but love him for it!”A frustrated Sylvia looked into the water in the large bowl. “Yeah, we’ll meet up after the race; I’ll make sure of it.”

“Um… are you and Wander…” It wasn’t hard for Fluttershy to see that Sylvia liked Wander a lot; then again she was letting him ride her around and seemed genuinely happy in his presence. She took a seat next to Sylvia.

“I try not think about it, we’re the best of friends and we’ll always be together. That’s all I really want from him, he’s the greatest guy I’ve ever known.” Sylvia smiled a bit as she looked at her reflection in the water. “Sometimes I don’t even know what he sees in me. So why exactly are you looking for Wander?”

“I need some help from a Star Nomad and I was wondering if Janet was right in saying that Wander was one.” Clenching her eyes shut she waited for Sylvia to tell her that Wander was not one.

“You’ve met Janet! How’s that old planet been doing? It has been a while since we’ve visited her; I wonder how much she’s grown since then.” It took a moment for Sylvia to realize why Fluttershy had her eyes clenched shut; she put a hand around Fluttershy’s withers. “Also Wander is a Star Nomad, so you’ve definitely found the right guy.”

“Oh thank you!” It was the start of another friendship as Fluttershy latched on to Sylvia, giving her as tight a hug as she could. She would then proceed to drop a bombshell on Sylvia that was quite shocking for the Zbornak. “As for Janet, well, she’s had a few million children since you last saw her.”

Author's Note

If you can't tell yet, Herja's mount is basically a Ludroth from Monster Hunter only with a few differences such as being much tougher.

Not really important to the story, but I thought the imagery would help out some.

The end of the race coming up next, along with the victor.

75

“So you’re special talent is being able to communicate with just about any biological being? I and Wander have seen a lot of things like that, many unique and wondrous impossibilities are almost an everyday occurrence for us. Not to say the universe is perfect, but you do what you can to enjoy the view of traveling the stars.” The conversation of friend meeting friends had Sylvia talking with the pony like they were old buddies. Sure Fluttershy had likely seen a lot of bad things and even Sylvia herself personally has had a few bad experiences. “In the end I think it’s all worth it, but to each their own. The rigors of constant space travel and exploration aren’t exactly meant for the meek, but the experiences you get are rewards in their own way.”

“Oh no, not again, why is it that I have to be both cold and wet!” The voice of Betina was heard and they saw the centaur zoom over both of them into the cool water where she created a huge splash.

“I guess it’s true what they say, throw a quadruped into enough water and they won’t want to drink it.” Sylvia commented absently while scratching her side.

Fluttershy put her hooves to her face and started giggling; the situation was rather silly to watch.

“I’m okay, thanks for asking!” Betina slowly moved up the slope out of the bowl to where Fluttershy and Sylvia were while looking towards the ceiling with the flowing bowl of magma above them. There was a shivering LGM on her back, but he was still smiling despite looking a bit cold. As she got on to the lip of the ice and stone bowl she shook out her right hind hoof of excess water. “So what’s the hold up here and where’s your friend Roller?”

“I got separated from him; Sylvia here says he’ll be along in no time. I’m waiting for my ride and she’s waiting for her rider. In fact you’re the first person we’ve seen to get here and you still have your rider.” After a moment Fluttershy’s good mood dipped a bit. “Is he okay?”

“I am fine friend, though very cold. I suggest we proceed forward with the race while we still have an advantage.” At the LGMs words Fluttershy and Sylvia nodded.

“Go on Betsy, I’ll be okay with Sylvia until Roller appears.” It didn’t take much for Fluttershy to notice Betsy was apprehensive about continuing on without being able to keep an eye on her. “Don’t worry I can take care of myself.”

Betsy frowned and started trotting in place in indecision, after a moment she got a determined look and galloped for the exit on the stony side of the room. A minute after she left their view Wander gleefully slid out of the ice slide and fell upwards to the edge of the magma pool above them.

“Wander; get back here so I can destroy you!” Hater wasn’t sliding along the ice, he was actually running on it sparks of dark green magic were firing of from his yellow gloves in the form of lightning. His black and red robes looked like they were on fire due in part to how much anger he was putting out to give it that appearance.

“Um, aren’t you going to save him?” A panicked Fluttershy stood up as she asked this, she was bit confounded as to how Sylvia could look so laid back. Especially with Hater chasing Wander around on the ceiling above so close to the magma… or were they on the ceiling to Hater and Wander’s perspectives? How were they not being burned up by the heat? Okay her head hurts now, because gravity and physics didn’t make much sense here. Did Popstar exactly make any sense either, being as it was a world that was halfway between reality and that of dreams?

“Nah, I’ll let Hater suffer a little longer before I bother rescuing him from Wander.” Sylvia leaned back putting her hands on the icy floor and watching as Wander and Hater ran around in circles along the ceiling. Every once in a while Hater would fire a blast of dark energy out of his hands and it always missed. “The show is worth the price of admission and I wouldn’t want to ruin Wander’s fun too soon.”

Fluttershy thought it would be the other way around with Sylvia rescuing Wander from Hater, but after a moment of watching she sat back down. It became apparent that Sylvia was likely correct in needing to rescue Hater from Wander as he got bashed and smashed around trying to grab, hit or zap the little orange happy go lucky guy. It seemed to Fluttershy that Sylvia understood the situation better than she did. The orange fuzzy spoon shaped being just gleefully running all over the place full of energy, but never too close to the magma pool except for one moment. After a moment she bit her bottom lip and squeamishly closed her eyes.

Hater released a frustrated pained screamed he shot straight into the middle of the water in front of Sylvia and Fluttershy after falling towards the small magma pool butt first.

“Hey Sylvia, there you are!” Wander ran along the wall and down to Sylvia and Fluttershy, he saw the pony and his smile became that much bigger. It was like telling Pinkie Pie there was an all you can eat cupcake buffet opening nearby. “Aw, you made friend and I must say ma’am that you look so absolutely positively adorable!”

“Why thank you… um…” Fluttershy was about to continue when she heard a revving noised that caused her ears to perk up. It was followed by an angry scream, looking up at the ice slide Roller shot down the wall leading from the slide narrowly missing getting a chunk of his carapace taken off by a swinging energy mace.

The mace was wielded by none other than captain Herja who flew off the icy slide, instead of going down the wall like Roller did by clinging to the ice slightly better than he had previously. Herja continued to spin in the air as she fell until her mace struck the side of a floating Lord Hater’s skull. The resulting impact created a large explosion that sent the water in the bowl almost all the way up to the magma contained in the bowl on the ceiling.

“Okay, now I’m feeling kind of sorry for Hater. Anyway, come on Wander we got a race to win!” It didn’t take Sylvia saying much for Wander leap onto her back while talking excitedly about all the things he saw in the icy cavernous areas of this place. The Zbornak darted off around the bowl and out the exit while listening to her friend go on about how exciting this place was.

After a moment of waiting to see if Hater and Herja were okay, Fluttershy quickly got on Roller and sped off after Sylvia into a really warm long tunnel that had molten threads of magma throughout and the gravity was always pulling towards whatever part of the ground they happened to be on.

“It seems we’re down two thousand six hundred and ninety nine racers who have dropped out, became disqualified or have become too injured to continue!” The announcer had kept the Galactic Alliance informed as to what was going on in the race, they had some small robot drones keep track of the racers and to save some of them before they got killed by the obstacles. The number of racers was drastically getting smaller the further along the track they went. “Now that some have left the icy side of the zone, they are now entering the burning portion of the place where if you aren’t swift you’ll definitely get hot foot! Make that two thousand seven hundred folks… ooh that one has got to hurt, let’s watch a replay of that one!”

Roller’s tire felt like it was melting and the heat was oppressive. He didn’t mind the cold, the cold was okay. The heat was a different problem; it was sapping his energy quite badly. He could hear Fluttershy squeaking in fear as they shot off of a ramp through a ring of molten rock all around them. If it weren’t for the ice along the track keeping things cool, the convection alone would have been a bit too much for the both of them.

The ramps along the track that sent them through the air at center of the tunnel made for some quick relief as it was colder in than center of the tunnel and hotter along the flooring of the tunnel. There were also many branches to this tunnel; some had fewer ramps than others so that meant the longer you were in those passageways the hotter it got, as the center of the tunnel after going off a ramp was much cooler they went for the ones with the most ramps they could get.

No matter what branch they took Fluttershy noticed that the routes all kept converging back together and wondered when that would end. They were going higher and higher as if they were traveling upwards. The tube no matter what portion you were on, the gravity was always pressuring them to the ground or towards the rivers of magma below it. They swerved around upside down and launched off a ramp high enough to flip right side up again before hitting the rocky ground again. Her suit was protecting her from the heat somewhat, but it wasn’t doing too well as fire and heat were big problems for it.

Roller revved loudly as he aimed for another patch of ice and spun his tire in place for a bit to cool down. The heat was beginning to affect him badly and he was one of the tougher creatures in the race. The star shots he fired earlier had taken a bit out of him, but he was still mostly okay to keep going. A Wheelie never stops for much once they get moving and he wasn’t about to let a little thing like heat take him down.

“Are you okay Roller?” It had to be asked because Fluttershy knew Mr. Wheel must have been getting heavily exhausted in this heat. She was thankful that no matter their orientation thanks to how the gravity worked here, she wasn’t getting sick from changing from ceiling to floor to avoid falling into the small rivers of magma that lined every branching path they went through. They swerved through a serpentine pattern and followed the rockier part of the floor to avoid the heat as it swept a spiral around the tunnel they were in.

Roller made what amounted to a grunting noise and continued onwards despite how hot everything was getting. The flooring of the branching tunnel they were in was becoming narrower and the magma was becoming more and more pronounced all around them, things started growing unbearably hot. After a point the floor suddenly swerved awkwardly forcing them to go through a loop in an odd hairpin turn manner and after that they saw open space. They had shot out over the racetrack having escaped the heat and now they were falling upside down.

Mr. Wheel quickly reoriented to take the brunt of the impact and hit the track roughly while making loud squealing noises. He started to breath roughly, after a moment he felt Fluttershy caressing his carapace softly. He tried to keep going for her, but he started squealing in pain from the attempt to keep pushing himself forward.

“Roller please, you have to stop!” Fluttershy was worried about those noises he was making, which in general meant that Roller was in pain or that something was wrong with him. It hurt her ears and her heart to hear him in pain. Looking back at the rock wall, she saw there were a lot of glowing holes; it seemed all of the tunnels came out pointing at the track. She wondered if Sylvia and Wander made it out of that safely.

Roller did stop and shuddered as he came to a rest next to a sweaty looking Betina. As he did this Fluttershy took a moment to pull out some water, she proceeded to pour it on Roller and her suit as it had almost entirely become a sickly brown color. He whined at Fluttershy about not wanting to stop while the Rhizome suit she wore slowly went back to its healthy green, pink and yellow colors.

“Yeah, I know the feeling. Not going to complain about being cold and wet anymore.” Betsy stood up on her four hooves from her sitting position and wiped some sweat from her head with a hand. The LGM looked perfectly fine on her back, most likely because his home world sometimes had a muggy atmosphere. Besty cantered a small circle testing her legs out. “Okay, I’m good to go again little green dude. I’m glad to see you made it out of there alright Fluttershy. Wander and Sylvia already took the lead back; that Zbornak is made of some stern stuff. Without my ranger training I don’t think I would have gotten this far.”

“I still have a few bumps and bruises from those ice tunnels. I’ll count to sixty and then we may continue. Until then you are not to push yourself or move mister, do you understand me?” As they sat there with Fluttershy slowly counting away the seconds after Roller revved his understanding at her stern tone, several other racers had went past them onto the next part of the racetrack. Some of the racers that had come out had been on fire; she winced at the fact that they weren’t lucky enough to be able to continue after rolling around on the track to put out the flames. Despite Roller’s whining that he was okay and raring to go Fluttershy was doing this to make sure he was rested enough to continue. “Fifty nine, sixty, okay, you can…”

Roller shot off with a blur cutting Fluttershy off as she had to hold on for dear life. His tire was shooting up yellow sparks as he made his way to catch up with the other racers. He was determined to not to be called slow and he was rested enough to put on some speed. They soon came upon the next obstacle when the track ended leading to shifting rainbow colors on what looked to be six strange looking parallel rails. Roller aimed for the middle of the right three rails.

“That doesn’t look very safe.” It was all Fluttershy had to say about it before they hit the fifth rail and started to move along it at an increased speed. As the rail went along, Fluttershy’s eyes widened at the sight of what looked like shooting stars and fireworks exploding in the distance which brought her eyes to the two large glowing orbs. They were close to the finish, the two orbs was the sign that you were near the end of the race. The race was said to always end the same way, by passing between those two orbs.

Roller suddenly leapt to the rail on his left avoiding the jaws of Herja’s ride as it snapped at Fluttershy’s tail. The lizard creature was grinding along using two of the rails to place its legs, whereas he only needed the one rail to grind along.

“You think you and your exceedingly ridiculous mount can continue to make a fool of Herja, well I will show the both of you!” A Valkyran like Herja was someone Fluttershy was beginning to wish she hadn’t met. After everything Herja or her mount had been through, they still looked perfectly healthy and unscathed if only slightly tired.

“I don’t really mean to make a fool of you.” It was Fluttershy’s honest opinion at least; Herja spent most of the time doing that to herself. Herja was more of a grey area to Fluttershy being that she didn’t seem very evil, but she wasn’t very good or friendly either. Their culture was violent and had different moral codes as that’s just who they were. Even Fluttershy herself wasn’t innocent of being violent when the situation warranted it. “It just happens.”

Herja obviously did not like that as an answer as she made her beast lift a leg and tried to claw at Roller who bounded out of the way to the left again. The lizard moved over following the wheel so Herja could attack Fluttershy personally, only when she went to swing her mace it was shot out of her hand by a blaster round and went sailing off into the void of space. She screamed in frustration as she didn’t see who just did that to her so she could proclaim revenge on them.

Quite a fair distance on ahead but still on the rails at around seventh place, Betsy smiled while holstering her blaster as she hopped to a different set of rails to bypass another racer. Her hooves skidded along the rails without injury, the rails seemed slippery yet they also seemed to hold on to whoever was riding them. The six rainbow rails were pretty straightforward part of the race and she had gotten a clean shot off on the Valkyran attacking Fluttershy.

Depth perception problems her flank! They said she’d likely be a poor shot with only one eye and she was still proving them wrong to this very day. A one eyed species with depth perception wasn’t a load of malarkey, just highly uncommon.

Herja clamped both her hands onto her mount and was directing it to attack Fluttershy with an incredible ferocity that had the pony whimpering as Roller kept dodging out of the way by jumping to adjoining rails or speeding up temporarily.

After several attacks Roller was starting to get angry that Herja wanted to hurt not only him, but Fluttershy as well. He didn’t know why Herja or her mount were so determined to hurt his friend since he slept through the Valkyran’s attack on the Boojiboo. After barely avoiding getting Fluttershy’s leg bit off with another one of his quick rail to rail dodges, he was now righteously angry. Enough was enough!

Angling his carapace backwards and lowering his pipes down, Roller slid a confused Fluttershy onto his pipes. He revved loudly and heaved Fluttershy forward with his four pipes, sending her sprawling through the air. Seeing that she was okay and had reoriented her fall to land on a rail, he turned his full attention on to the lizard and it’s rider that had been attacking them.

Not having seen what was coming Fluttershy had no idea Roller was going to throw her like he did, she managed to control her unexpected flight forward and landed on the middle of the left three rails. She lifted her two right legs and daintily placed them on an adjacent rail to her right and looked back watching to see what Roller would do.

Roller did the one thing that not many of his kind would have expected of him; he slowed down incredibly and avoided getting bitten by the sideways sliding lizard’s mouth. Then he leapt to the right onto the leftmost of the right three rails putting the large lizard’s left side directly in front of him. He shot forward as fast he could and rammed the lizard while bringing his carapace down into its flesh taking a rather bloody chunk out of its hide which swiftly disappeared into Roller’s tire.

Herja had to hold on tight as her mount was sent spinning into the air by the impact with the small, but obviously powerful creature. The lizard managed to land them upright on the two far right rails, though they were completely unbalanced. Her ride had a bad injury to show for her failure to lead her lizard to glory, the wound was bleeding quite badly. She was correct to be afraid as to what the wheel monster was going to do next.

Roller sped up next to the lizard and with a fast twitch to the left before swinging hard to the right to start spinning rapidly clockwise. That spinning tornado of power leapt right into the lizard’s injured side with enough force to knock it completely off the rails and into open space with a screaming Herja. After a moment to watch them fall away from the rails, Roller revved loudly in victory before he sped up to pick up Fluttershy.

The pony was staring back at the wheel with something approaching awe and horror; she had hoped the waivers that said the racers safety was taken into consideration were correct. Looking at the falling form of Herja some mechanical oval things appeared and enwrapped her and her mount in a barrier of some sort, this caused the plant wearing equine some form of relief.

As Roller got himself underneath Fluttershy once more, he relished in the taste of that lizards meat as a nice snack while in the middle of a race to help pick up his stamina. He sped up along the rails and moved to the inner rails. He caught up with pack as they got off the rails leading into the final stretch.

Every mount had put on a burst of speed for the final stretch, the bit of straight track led to a wide arrow symbol covered ramp. Ahead of that ramp were many more of these speed panels floating in space between the two golden giant glowing orbs that looked like a strange cross between a sun and a moon. The reason for this was that you could actually look at them and not be blinded by them and they didn’t seem to give off any heat in their glowing splendor.

It was moments like this that Fluttershy wished she had a camera. Hitting the panels they managed to catch up with a jumping Sylvia as they leapt from panel to panel across the open void of space between the two large orbs, even Betsy was enjoying herself at the incredible speeds they were going at with each jump.

Hitting the last bit of track at the end after jumping across all the panels, they could finally see the finish line. At the moment there were only seven racers out of four thousand plus beings to make it this far. They were all jockeying for first place with every ounce of speed they could put out and with a loud sound the finish line was crossed by the racers within a second of each other.

The top three racers would be shown on a large screen a few minutes later.

Author's Note

Cliffhangered!

'Cliffhangered' define- When someone can't help but make some people wait another day for a resolution.

Let's not forget Roller is an overly extreme omnivore, he did eat robots after all to earn the adaptation for clinging to most surfaces. Of course he'd get angry that someone would cripple Fluttershy's ability to go fast.

This is what I was listening to and thinking of when I wrote this chapter, minor inspirations and all that.

Kirby's Air Ride was a good game, though a bit unrealistic where driving on lava was concerned with all the Wheelie rides.

76

After passing the finish line at high speeds Roller skidded into a complete stop, he closed his eyes then gave off a revving noise of success and for a few minutes didn’t do a single thing after.

Fluttershy worriedly got off of him and wondered what was wrong until she heard the whirring noise of the wheel snoring away having tuckered himself out on going fast throughout the insane race. She gently hugged him and gave him rub on the carapace in which he starts snuggling into her soft grip.

Fluttershy looked up at the large screen that the audience gathered for the Galactic Conjunction was also looking up at. She was curious at what their placement was among the seven racers at the finish line looking up along with her. She was just happy to have survived everything.

“As you all know, but for those of you who do not, anyone who passes the finish line still get prizes. If you’re within the top ten you’ll win a lot more and there are still three slots open for eighth, ninth and tenth place. There are still three hundred active racers still on the track, so we can only guess as to how many will finish this year. Now we’re going to announce the top five racers while we’re waiting for the others to finish.” The announcer switched the big screen to show the fifth place person. “In fifth place we have the mount Red Baroon and his rider Snup P. Peabody!”

The screen show the white dog with a red tie and goggles sitting on top of the living dog house with a chimney with crab claws four legs and multiple eyes at where the entrance would be. Fluttershy had seen them at the beginning of the race; the dog house with crab claws for legs was pretty fast to have made it to the finish line without trouble. The crowd cheered and there were a few white dogs with red ties, one of them even had a red haired glasses wearing humanoid with them.

“In fourth place and a fresh newcomer to the race who has survived all the obstacles for her first Galactic Conjunction, she’s popular with the crowd and was such a sweetheart during the race. She’ll stop to help you if you’re in real trouble and her wheel friend is a spunky speedster, mount Mr. Roller Wheel and his lovely rider Flutter Felicity Shy!” At the roar of the crowd, the pony cowered behind the sleeping form of the tuckered out wheelie as the spotlight came onto them.

Well Fluttershy had done impressively out of four thousand alien racers, some of which were more violent than others. Now if only she could stop being so shy and frightened by all the eyes that had fallen onto her. All the happy cheering was really nice, but the pony obviously didn’t like the attention she was getting.

“In third place, he enters every year with his Tortugan mount and hopes to someday get first place. His Tortugan is trained to be the fastest of her kind and he’s a dapper little guy who always tries to keep smiling even in the worst of situations. The mount Shellaby and her rider Squib!” The spotlight now fell onto a pink skinned turtle with a several shades of purple coloring its shell who was obviously Shellaby. On her back was a small green square headed guy with four small limbs who waved at the cheering crowd, on his head was a small purple banded bowler style hat and sticking out from under it was tufts of purple hair.

Fluttershy had seen that turtle thing run, it was amazing what Shellaby can do with a cross between turtle flippers and a tortoises legs for mobility. Shellaby ran much faster than any turtle or tortoise she had ever seen and that would be an understatement of the small alien turtle’s abilities.

“In second place along with a substantial amount of prize money they’ve earned, these two contestants will receive free jellyfish pies from eateries across the Galactic Alliance for a year. She has lost her explosive temperament and her rider is still one of the friendliest guys you’ll ever meet. Sylvia the Time Bomb and her rider Wander!” As the spotlight fell on them, Sylvia perked up immediately at hearing there would be Jellyfish Pie in her future and looked positively filled to the brim with joy. Wander on the other hand looked slightly sick at the idea of even tasting another jellyfish pie, but he wasn’t about to let Sylvia’s prize go to waste and would take her by a place at least once every other day.

Fluttershy had thought Sylvia and Wander had got first place, but if they didn’t and they were ahead for most of the final stretch. Then who did get first place?

“Now to the winner of an all expenses paid one week vacation to Mahambas Six for four including food and spa trips that comes along with the largest amount of prize money earned for getting first place. The winners of the Galactic Conjunction annual race, one is of the Galactic Alliance’s finest officers and the other is an independent thinking engineer of his species. Let’s give it up for mount Betina ‘Betsy’ Bucks-a-ton and her rider LGM Soxnin!” After the announcer had spoken the spotlight fell on a shocked stiff Betina who had little clue as to how she managed it. “Let’s look at the finish line replay; she’s quite the sprinter and a top notch Space Ranger on par with the best the Galactic Alliance has to offer and a darn good shot with that out of uniform pistol of hers! We will show the race highlights after the rest of the competitors either fail or manage to pass the finish line. We will also be selling highlight photos of the race; all the contestants will get a packet of these memorable captured images for free!”

The giant screen showed the finish line just as Sylvia was about to pass over it, Betsy shot by with her one eye closed and charging with her shoulder forwards and passed barely a jiffy over the line ahead of Sylvia. The centaur had looked to be going for broke at the very end and had managed to squeeze a ridiculously small victory out of it.

“I…. won?” Betsy just stood there with her ears laid back and her arms went limp and her rear end in slapped against the racetrack while she tried to comprehend just what had exactly happened. Her inability to comprehend her victory continued on through standing on the first place spot at the podium where Sylvia made her apologies to Squib about an earlier race where she had gotten aggressive with him.

They were the three top racers.

It was after the race and Fluttershy was meeting with Wander and Sylvia over at the Rhizome’s healthy snacks booth. Sox came to the meeting place leading a still stunned and highly boggled Betsy by one of her hands with that same blank look in her eye. She still apparently couldn’t believe she had won and it would likely be a while before she finally came to her senses, otherwise she had been helpful in carrying a sleeping Roller around.

“So what did you need to see us about?” Sylvia was already hankering for a taste of that sweet jellyfish pie; sure Wander might not have liked it nearly as much as she did. It was a delicacy that many species enjoyed and possibly an acquired taste to others. Plus even if she hadn’t wanted her prize, she could have effectively traded it for something that she did like.

“Well it all started when…” Fluttershy had to give them and abridged recap of every painful thing that had happened to her, the friends she had made along the way and the distances she had traveled.

“That’s why I asked to talk with the two you or specifically Mr. Wander here. Um… what’s wrong with him?” It almost looked to Fluttershy like Wander was about to explode all over the room.

“Oh you poor thing, as a Star Nomad of course I’ll help you! Golly, I would have done that anyway even if I weren’t one, first I need to give you a big hug without the suit in the way!” Wander of course didn’t care about clothes very much, neither did Sylvia. Public nudity wasn’t bad unless you were intentionally flashing people in the Galactic Alliance, so it was perfectly okay.

Fluttershy nervously rubbed at her front left leg as the suit retracted into a backpack form, then Wander gave her a big hug wrapping his fuzzy soft arms around her in a very comforting hug. After a moment she began hugging him back and nuzzling into his embrace. After a moment they separated feeling warm fuzzy feelings.

“That should be enough. Now come on, let’s go find your home!” After a moment Wander stopped and noticed Fluttershy wasn’t following him in his excitement.

“I have things to do first. Can you find it first and then find me afterwards to take me there?” Of the things she still had to do was paying Bonnie’s bail with Betsy’s help and then going to earth to stop Clyde from dying. “You can find my home right?”

“Of course I can, though it’ll take me a while to find the right planet I know I have the right stuff to do it! The one with the geocentric system and beings like you on it called ponies right? Shouldn’t take too long to find and I gave you a hug so it should be much easier!” Wander took on a thoughtful pose, it shouldn’t take him very long to find her home planet or find his way back to Fluttershy at all. No matter where she went Wander would always be able to find Fluttershy after that hug. “So what are you going to be doing in the meantime while we are off finding your planet for you?”

“I’ve got a friend to bail out of jail and then we’re going to try and save someone’s life, hopefully he’ll be okay. I’ve also got a ship that I need to pick up as well… I’ve got some really important things to do before I can go home even with your help.” After a moment Fluttershy smiled a simple smile with her eyes closed. She was going to go home and since Wander said he could, she believed him. She still had to make sure, she opened her eyes to stare seriously into Wander’s eyes and saw a whole universe staring back at her. “Can you do one thing for me while you’re still here? Pinkie Promise me that you’ll come visit when you get me home?”

“Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye! I think your friend Pinkie sounds like a hoot and a half, hope those cupcakes are good as you say they are. I wonder if she likes banjo music.” After a moment of staring into those sad yet happy eyes, Wander frowned slightly and then he pulled his hat from his head and held it out to Fluttershy. He wanted to make the pony happy and he already had what he needed to do just that given his powers for finding any place in the universe. What he wanted was for her to be even happier right now. “Reach into my hat and pull out something. It’ll give you what you need, but it won’t give you what you want. What you need right now, it will provide! You want a way home. I’m already going to take care of that with my abilities, though it may take a little time so please be a little patient miss. Star Nomads can actually get anywhere, but it’s not like we’re capable of instantaneous jumps across the universe.”

Pinkie sneezed and something strange went off in her brain, her earth pony magic drove her to make a batch of cupcakes and start setting them out on a large metal tray with cards with names she didn’t know written on them to set in front of the cupcakes. She followed this by placing a picture of all her friends on the tray with a cheesy message.

“Huh, why in the world did I do this? I’m sure it’ll come to me eventually.” Suddenly Pinkie’s body went through a series of really odd motions that a normal pony couldn’t have possibly survived; she couldn’t even describe or put into words exactly what she felt doing it and surviving the experience. “Whoa, that was a little weird even for me. It’s like the entire universe just said hello to me… um, hello back universe? Can you please give Fluttershy back to us? You know, in one piece. We really miss her!”

After that plea to the universe, Pinkie went back to trying to find a way to cheer up their most recent visitor that came from a distant world. This was keeping them all busy from reassuring Fluttershy that everything was okay… well mostly okay considering the visitor was kind of self destructive and a little violent. She was a top priority target for Pinkie to make happy before she caused any more trouble over any more ‘slight’ misunderstandings, the horribly depressed alien was not something Pinkie had any knowledge on how to make happy. At least Maud’s presence was highly comforting to her and Maud’s talent really helped in that regard; maybe the alien could be Maud’s special pony who wasn’t a pony.

“Oh this’ll be interesting. You see Fluttershy, Wander’s hat still to this day baffles me to this day how it works and trust me it does. Took me a while to figure out just to trust what he pulls out of it will be useful in context to the situation, it’s rather highly context sensitive in fact. Once took me pulling out a large metal ball with a chain to make me realize where Wander was when I had to rescue him from this worm monster on a mushroom planet.” Sylvia chuckled dryly at the memory of saving her best friend when she was getting mad at his magical hat for giving her exactly what she needed in that moment. “Hopefully you don’t pull out a sock. He dragged me across the universe at least twice to return one to its owner, so you can always trust Wander to come through for you.”

Fluttershy pensively looked at the hat and reached in with a hoof and grabbed something she felt along the edge of that something and found another edge, she reached in with both hooves and heaved out a tray with cupcakes on it and a photo of her and her friends. She blinked owlishly at the tray and continued pulling; it was one of Sugar Cube Corners trays and there were little cards with each individually specially wrapped cupcake and a quite a few spares to snack on.

There was nothing more flabbergasting than pulling an authentic Sugar Cube Corner baking tray out of a hat loaded with cupcakes and a message on a photo of her and her friends that said ‘friends forever’. Setting the tray down on the nearby counter the Rhizomian’s were working, Fluttershy felt tears welling up in her eyes and she hugged the photo to her chest for all the sentimental value it was worth.

One of the people from Rhizome picked up a cupcake because the card had his name on it, written in his language. Shrugging, he took the strange confection out of its packaging and took a nibble and hummed thoughtfully at how delicious it was.

“Sorry misses cake. I swear I didn’t swallow an entire tray this time; it just disappeared into thin air!” Pinkie noticed that Mrs. Cake was scrutinizing her belly for a large rectangular shape, she was remembering what happened the last time Pinkie had put a lot of iron in her diet.

“I’m inclined to believe you this time, just remember that tinfoil is not food dear.” Mrs. Cake worried about Pinkie Pie sometimes. As she turned away she didn’t notice a faint five pointed yellow star shaped glow appearing on Pinkie’s forehead. The marking flickered for a few seconds before disappearing completely as Pinkie idly rubbed at her forehead feeling a little strange.

“Thanks for sharing what you pulled from out of my hat. This is the first time I’ve ever tasted something like this and it even had my name on it!” Wander was now a very happy individual, as he managed to cheer up Fluttershy and turn her little frown right around. Even Sylvia thought the cupcake for her was nice, but it still wasn’t a jellyfish pie and she had been quietly nagging Wander about it. “Come on Sylvia, it’s time we set out to look for that planet. Smile a little more Fluttershy!”

With that Wander created a bubble around him and Sylvia after waving a small bubble wand around. After waving goodbye Wander sat on Sylvia as she started walking, which caused the bubble to take them up into the air and away from the Rhizome booth.

The Galactic Conjunction was still going on and Fluttershy felt a light skip in her steps as she went to go get a free packet of highlight photos of the race. The batch of wrapped cupcakes couldn’t have been made by none other than Pinkie Pie. She didn’t know how it happened or how Wander’s hat gave her exactly what she needed, but she couldn’t be happier unless she was with them right now after getting a small warm taste of home. Unfortunately Fluttershy still had things to do before she could return to Equus.

“I have to wonder who from the planet Heck would be stupid or moronic enough to actually pay off my bail! Don’t they know who I am and that I’m no good to any… one…” Bonnie’s ear wilted immediately as did her antenna. In front of her she could see a smiling Fluttershy who was standing with a blank faced centaur. Bonnie became suddenly very shy in the face of Fluttershy who reached into her saddlebags and pulled out a cupcake with a card that had her name on it. “Um… I…”

Silently and slowly Bonnie took the cupcake unwrapped it and slowly ate it; it was of course delicious like the one that Pinkie dropped off back on Tradeworld. After she was done she handed the wrapper back to Fluttershy who had her Rhizome suit in its backpack form.

“It’s okay Bonnie; I know I can be pretty dumb at times. I would like to think that helping out a friend even if it might get you killed is always worth it no matter the outcome.” Fluttershy brought a stuttering and completely flummoxed fuzzy green experiment into a calm gentle hug. “You need to calm down and breathe.”

“How is he? Is he…” Bonnie said softly nuzzled her face into Fluttershy’s comforting form while, her fur felt nice against her blushing cheeks and she inhaled the ponies scent deeply.

“See for yourself, is it supposed to be going faster?” Fluttershy backed away and pulled out Clyde to Bonnie with her feathered wing; a tenth of the entire sphere was solid grey now completely blotting out the number on it.

“That’s kind of slow; I thought at least three fourths of the sphere would have been consumed by this point. He shouldn’t even be lasting this long and there’s no way he’s being resilient in the state he’s in, especially not how he was before going into it. He looked like a corpse before I put him in this state Fluttershy.” The sphere was pressed into Bonnie’s hand and then her fingers were forcefully curled around it by two gentle hooves. She looked up at the pony that put her hooves over her hands enclosed around Clyde’s sphere.

“Bonnie, we’re going to Earth and we’re going to save your brother. Though we’ve never met, I’d think the last thing he would lose is the name of his big sister and how much she cared for him before he dies. If he dies, he’s going to hold on to that to his very last as you’re his ohana.” Fluttershy turned about and sauntered away. She turned her head back to Bonnie with a cheerful smile. “Now come on, let me help you go save your brother.”

Bonnie gave her friend smile and made a promise to herself as she followed Fluttershy out the door to a new future. She’d eventually tell Fluttershy that she was her ohana too and that meant a lot. She was now like her brother Stitch as she had found a place where she truly belonged, but she didn’t know if she could put a large square into a small hole that was round. She’d force it if she had to, no matter how much effort it took to change. She had changed a bit already since meeting this crazy dame.

As Fluttershy left with a slightly more upbeat Bonnie, a smiling Veritas slowly slid out of the shadows nibbling at a cupcake. She’d of course be back to her stoic self in no time, but for now she’d just enjoy the taste of a nice snack. She never did tell Fluttershy her theory as to what the princesses on her planet actually were, it wasn’t very important until they could meet face to face so that she could confirm it for herself.

Bonnie was amazed that Fluttershy would go through the trouble of trying to win the Galactic Conjunction just for her even if the odds weren’t in the ponies favor. It was nice to hear that she made fourth place and still somehow managed to pay her bail. Looking behind her she could see other rangers congratulating Betsy; said centaur had been rather blank looking and had continued to carry around a rather amused looking wheel monster for quite a while and didn’t seem bothered by it. She really wanted to ask Fluttershy what that was all about, but instead she wondered why they were in the middle of ranger central. She was kind of nervous about being on Star Command again.

“Oh… they’ve really changed the Head Hunter. It looks… nice.” Fluttershy was looking at what was once the Head Hunter and was now an altered pink and yellow ship. It had her real cutie mark emblazoned on it and it was not the twisted one that still marred her flank. The ship seemed to be sitting on four yellow hooves and it looked like the LGMs made it look more pony like if the ear like fins were anything to go by. In fact it almost looked to be modified to look more like Fluttershy’s head. “Bonnie this, regrettably, is my ship.”

Sighing the pony hoped that the real owner wasn’t upset that some overzealous LGMs heavily personalized the ship for her.

“Holy buck, I won!” Betina finally accepted her victory.

Author's Note

Fluttershy gets the Head Hunter back and instead of looking like Samus's helmet it now looks more like Fluttershy's head.

Fluttershy is assured a way home and things are looking up! Which is why gore and more dark parts are going to be used a bit more in the foreseeable future.

Longest chapter in the story this far, not counting author notes.

77

“I need help! You’re smart, tell me what to do!” Betsy picked up and started shaking the poor pony in a panic. As expected, the one eyed centaur was quite strong.

“You need help alright, calm down and slowly lower the pony to the ground or else I’ll shoot you where it’ll hurt for a while.” Bonnie didn’t care if she went back to jail for shooting an officer, she didn’t like the fact that she was shaking Fluttershy and possibly hurting her. At least the threat and pointing a blaster at her managed to get her to stop shaking her poor friend.

“Didn’t you say you used the last shot on that thing when you put a hole in Zurg’s arm?” Queried Fluttershy innocently, despite the fact that she was roughly being accosted by her friend; she was relatively okay if a little dizzy.

“Darn it Sweet Cheeks, couldn’t you have at least waited until she put you down to call my bluff for her?”Bonnie just placed her right on her hip and just held the blaster limply in her left; she really needed to get a rechargeable pack for it. Sure rechargers had less firepower a lot of the time, but they could be reloaded just about anywhere there’s energy. “If this is how things are going to be before we’ve even left Star Command, I can tell that my headaches aren’t over with at all since I’m going to be with miss walking disaster magnet here. Still though, I do need her so what can I really do?”

“Well, you could have still thrown the gun at her eye, but then that would have just made me upset with you. What do you need help with exactly Betsy?” Turning back to the centaur, Fluttershy waited for a response. She noticed a gathering of LGMs chatting next to the ship altered to look more pony in nature. It still looked somewhat familiar.

“It took almost all of the money we won to pay your bail Jookiba, so try to stay clean for at least for a little while longer please. On that note I gave half of what was left to the LGM and the other half is still mine, Fluttershy personally put all of her winnings to bailing you out you know. So please don’t waste what she did for you, she went through a lot of trouble and I’d be more than willing to use excessive force on you if you abuse her kindness.” Betsy treated Bonnie rather coolly, but then turned to Fluttershy in a more desperate tone. “I still have trip for four to a resort planet and I have no idea who to invite!”

“What about Booster and you’re team?” The centaur’s eye shrunk, she dropped the pony unceremoniously on the floor and galloped off, yelling something about needing a dress. It made Fluttershy immediately think of Rarity since she has made dresses for centaurs before.

“Okay, that was something. Can we go see what the little green boogers did with your ship, because you seem kind of looked shocked when you saw it.” The flat stare from the beautiful quadruped had Bonnie wondering what was wrong with what she said.

“But you’re mostly green too though.” Thinking it was quite an obvious thing to point out; Fluttershy started moving towards the remodeled stolen ship. Hopefully the controls were still intact and they hadn’t taken out anything important to the ship.

“True, but I’m still not a little green booger Sweet Cheeks.” Bonnie just followed after Fluttershy sedately; she wasn’t going to put up much more of a fuss while they were here. Well she wouldn’t do enough to go back to jail while she was in a place where stealing a wallet would get her quickly arrested.

“Um… hello… what exactly did you do to the ship… if it’s not too much of a bother to tell me?” It was something Fluttershy really needed to know if she was going to return the ship in amiable condition.

“Hello friend, we have been helpful in the time you have been busy. We have removed all devices we deemed unnecessary.” The same LGMs speaker that Fluttershy had previously met brought out a list. “We modified the outward appearance, it is mostly a cosmetic difference and the controls you know are still available and we have adjusted things to friendlier to the user. We removed twenty three tracking devices, fourteen inactive explosive devices and seventeen disabling devices found along the hull of the ship. The technology present included a hull bound signal jamming technology, you are lucky that nobody else got a remote signal through to the things on the hull of the ship. We left the ‘Chozo’ made tracking device on the ship should they wish to seek you out.”

“How lucky are we talking here snot rag?” If someone was trying to blow up her favorite pony, then they were going to need help because Bonnie was going to start making cement shoes.

“An explosion powerful enough to possibly destroy half a planet, it would have been pretty big. The numerous assassins that have attempted to attack this vessel have little to no idea how good technology of the ‘Chozo’ is or The Claw as we prefer to call them. We have restored its armor plating and added a few features; it is less easy to compromise now. We have also boosted the shields strength by twenty eight percent and its weapons needed to be altered a bit.” The LGM pointed out one of the LGMS and they came forward.

“We have improved the plasma cannons fire rate; we have altered the missile construction system more towards defensive and disabling measures and also reduced the resources needed to produce missiles. The ship can now be exited from the bottom as we have fixed the lower entrance and the shield extends around the entrances so you are no longer exposed coming out of the ship. The landing gear has been reworked to be positioned more like the legs of yours or other four legged species.” A lot of what the LGM was saying was certainly going over the pony’s head. “Oddly the new landing gear design is much more efficient and the ship can still land with at least three of the legs broken off, since we made them adjustable.”

“One last thing, we noticed a lack of security, we installed commands into a system that will only react to you and those you let have access to your ship. You can deny someone access by simply stating it, we have made sure your supplies were taken care of in the interim of rebuilding your vessel.” At this the LGM speaker took a step back and waved Fluttershy to check the ship out. “It is now ready to go.”

“Wait, are you telling me you installed an AI on?” Artificial intelligences were a tricky thing and Bonnie didn’t trust a ship with control of the ship or the weapons on it.

“AI was already present in the ships systems, it was only inactive. We have made sure it will only fire on command of its pilot, we also made sure it cannot fly into the nearest star or try to kill anyone onboard it. The authorization for anything can only come from you Fluttershy.” The LGMs had definitely pulled out all the stops for Fluttershy. “It is a rather basic AI and we have made perfectly sure that is safe, we also made sure it wasn’t anything like our Experimental Ranger and his character flaws or Forty Two who was born in a Valkyran attack on Team Lightyear.”

“I guess it’s time to say goodbye to all of you and you thank you for fixing the ship up. Can you please call Buzz, Mira, Booster and all the other people who want to say goodbye?” All Fluttershy had to do was ask. All the LGMs smiled at the same time and in the same manner as an answer before they all waddled off in different directions like a bunch of little penguins.

“Okay now that they are gone, who wants you dead so I can send them a gift package?” Bonnie was still not happy to hear about the explosive devices.

“No you’re not going after the people who were likely after the previous owner of this ship Bonnie. I hope she’s okay; I kind of did steal this ship from her and if all that stuff was on it before I stole it. They gave her a spare so they could fix this one as well as they could… I think I should be questioning why they didn’t remove any of those dangerous devices from the ship.” It might have actually been a good thing that the previous owner didn’t have this ship anymore, not that Fluttershy would ever tell the bounty hunter that to her face.

“I’m going to miss you Fluttershy.” Booster was hugging Fluttershy goodbye and also holding the only giant cupcake that had his name on it from the tray Fluttershy had been carting around.

“Yeah, we’re really going to… When did this get into my hand and when did I even start eating it?” Mira was looking down at the half eaten cupcake in her hand and began dragging around her tongue in her mouth.

“Hey big guy, you’re choking Fluttershy! You might want to let up on that or I might throw my gun at you to save a life.” It was thanks to Bonnie pointing it out that Booster blushed and released Fluttershy; nobody would book her for saving Fluttershy from asphyxiating. The pony gave her a thankful look as she took big gaping breaths once her ability to breath wasn’t being cut off by a hug.

“I don’t know Mira, but it tastes like justice!” Buzz didn’t mind the cupcake; it tasted generally good to the human like being.

“Okay enough of that, my brother isn’t going to last forever Fluttershy! So hurry it up and finish saying goodbye to everyone already.” Bonnie just waited patiently by the ship with Roller who was still quite tired after the race.

“Ship, please open the bottom entrance.” Fluttershy watched in amazement as a platform lowered from the bottom of the ship, she turned to start giving out more hugs.

Fluttershy sat at the controls as the ship rose away from Star Command; she looked to Bonnie and then the star map that would direct her to earth on the fringe of Galactic Alliance space. Taking on a determined look she set a the autopilot to fly to that planets system, she also had the ship set up to warn her of danger and to stay out of the way of being detected.

Walking away from the controls and letting the AI deal with the piloting automatically, Fluttershy sat down on the one bed in the ship and was glad she checked all of her stuff before leaving the space station. She had everything squared away including her free photos of the race she was in recently. She held the Memory Stone in her hooves and considered who to call on, she could connect with any pony that had a horn and was strong enough to keep the connection.

Rarity was apparently strong enough to hold on to a call from her, which meant that the memory stone wasn’t draining magically as it was mentally. Fluttershy had to consider carefully who she would try to call this time, she was getting really worried about Equus even though she knew Wander was looking for it and would eventually find it. All her friends seemed so busy with whatever was going on there, but she still wanted to hear from them.

“Calling your home again, huh?” Bonnie sat with Fluttershy watching as the pony concentrated on the little stone. She didn’t say much else as she watched Fluttershy closed her eyes.

Fluttershy kept her focus trying not to be distracted by Bonnie who was just trying to be nice, after a moment she had managed to get connected to someone.

“How are you Fluttershy? It is nice to hear from you again, still can’t connect to your friends on Equus? I’ll try my best to help you with that; oh and I’ve recently had such a wonderful evening with an old friend. His four arms were still as strong as they ever were, but enough of an old lady being promiscuous. Let’s see what I can do to help you!” After a moment the party line expanded to a third being.

“Huh who the… oh is this… Fluttershy is that you?” Twilight could be heard loud and clear.

“There you go, you have it from here.” Katrina cut her connection to the memory stone.

“Oh thank goodness I reached you! Twilight is everything okay back on Equus?” It had been a big worry of Fluttershy’s that because she wasn’t there something horrible was happening to her friends.

“Well… not really, we’ve met an alien from a planet called Earth. She’s not exactly unfriendly, but she is sad, weird and a bit suicidal which is understandable considering how tough she is. I think even Maud knows more about what she is than we do.” Twilight’s tone matched a certain level of concern that Fluttershy knew was downright bordering on obsession. “I want to know more about her and she’s been especially reclusive ever since she found out she wasn’t on Earth anymore. She spends so much time at the tree of harmony just staring at it; either that or she spends time around your house helping Angel. I’m really beginning to worry about her mental state. We’ve been able to use magic to bridge the language gap, but she isn’t very talkative and keeps mumbling something about a rose.”

“Are you there with her right now? I’m currently heading toward Earth and I have so much to tell you. I found a Star Nomad and he’s going to find Equus for me! If you see an orange hyperactive fuzzy male creature riding a large blue lizard alien being inside a magic bubble, then that would be them.” Fluttershy could hear Twilight giving off a loud cheer of excitement, before she returned to the task at hand.

“Wait, why are you going to Earth? Could it be the same earth that this alien is from? Why didn’t you go with the nomad to come straight home to Equus?” Twilight was now in a state of mind where she’d ask a million questions and Fluttershy cleared her throat loudly enough so that she’d stop.

“I’m doing something for a friend and saving someone’s life, so I actually have something really important to take care of.”Fluttershy was cut off from continuing her thoughts when she heard a scuffling from the end Twilight was on.

“Earth, someone you know is going to Earth! Please tell me, I want to give someone a very important message. How are you even getting capable of talking with someone out there, this planet is as backwater as you can get!” The voice sounded haggard and feminine, it was very sad to hear. “No offense meant, really.”

“Well yes, a friend of ours got lost out in space some time ago because of an accident involving me; we’re talking through my horn. She’s been lost in space for a long time and we’ve been in near constant contact with her for the last few months in a way that using triangulation to get back to us is impossible. Only now has she finally found someone that can get her home, but she didn’t go with them on their way here. Instead she’s going to straight to Earth to save someone’s life. I have no idea of the context of the situation she’s in, but it sounds rather urgent. I would have wished she went with the beings that are coming to find Equus and were bringing her home right now.” Twilight was being comforting to the alien being at the moment and Fluttershy didn’t want to interrupt them. “We said we understood how you feel, it’s because we’re missing someone too like you are. You know that house that you go to every once in a while with that rabbit who is taking care of the other animals… that’s her home.”

“Her ho… oh, well… I can see that I’m not the only one with problems.” The voice sounded to retreat into herself a bit.

“I’m already going to Earth anyway Twilight, if it’s the same Earth then I wouldn’t say no to letting her friends and family know she’s okay. She could always catch a ride home with the Star Nomad while I stay on Earth so he can find his way back to me to drop her off. She just has to be patient though.” It sounded like a good idea to Fluttershy, now she had more reasons to be on Earth then just going to meet the rest of Bonnie’s family. “So who does she want me to deliver a message to?”

“Well its good news for you, since Fluttershy has already found a way to get the both you and her home. It’s not exactly the same way you got here, so it will be a while before the method to get you home arrives here on Equus. The ones Fluttershy just told me about can take you to Earth with them when they go to pick up Fluttershy. Until then Fluttershy wonders who you want to give a message to since she’s already going that way.” Twilight paused for a moment then added. “Um, you do have a way of copying the message she wants you to deliver Fluttershy? She looks rather eager to tell me.”

“Yeah, I’ve got that handled.” Bonnie said holding a data pad she got from one of the LGMs and it wasn’t stolen at all because she had actually asked for it nicely.

“Tell her to go ahead Twilight, Bonnie will write down the message for me in case I forget.” Fluttershy was happy to help out another who was stuck in a similar situation to her.

“Okay go ahead, where is this message going to… you know, you still haven’t told us your name or what you are exactly. I think Maud is the only one that knows your name and has an idea as to what you are.” Twilight was interested to know who the stranger in their midst really was. “The fact that even Discord said he was sorry to you was something the rest of us would hardly get ever get from him after a prank.”

“Well I want a message to be delivered to Beach City on the east coast of America or as it is more commonly known as the Unite States. It’s a little house found under a large somewhat broken statue of a four armed woman embedded into the side of cliff at a beach somewhere along the Delmarva Peninsula. It’s hard to miss really, I swear the humans on that planet are always so good at blocking out the strangest things that happen around them at times.” After a moment the voice became a bit more sullen. “I want her to tell the ones who live there… Don’t worry about me, I’m okay and that I might be bringing home a souvenir from my… would you call this an unexpected vacation? Anyway, they are really important to me. Steven, Amethyst, Garnet and… even Greg and Connie. Tell them that… Pearl…. is going to be coming home eventually, that I love them all and I’m not gone forever. As for What I am, I’m a Crystal Gem.”

“Did you get all that Fluttershy?” Twilight waited while for an answer, Fluttershy heard a noise of confirmation from Bonnie.

“Yes we did, her name sounds nice. I’ll be sure to tell her friends and family that when we find out where to go once we get to Earth. So how did Maud become friends with her?” It was just Fluttershy being curious of how exactly Maud exactly opened up to someone or vice versa considering who she was.

“About that, you know how Maud’s special talent relates to rocks, the ground and other stuff that come from it? Well… your name is Pearl right? Well anyway, Maud’s special talent somehow translates into understanding Pearl, since she is essentially a living magical rock. Hey, don’t look at me like that Pearl, Maud is the one that said that’s basically what you are and she’s not exactly wrong!” After a moment of nervousness Twilight added in a whisper. “I think there’s a lot of awkwardness going on between Maud and Pearl.”

“Is there anything else I need to know?” After asking that Fluttershy heard a sharp inhale from Twilight making her feel something was wrong. “Twilight, is everything okay?”

“Yes, but I don’t think you have to worry about it where you are at the moment, good luck out there Fluttershy and call back in when you need to.” Twilight quieted down as her horn faintly snuffed out, she turned to the being who called herself ‘Pearl’ for a moment. She was tall white skinned humanoid with a large pearl embedded in her forehead which was her real body. “Still I have to know, what is it with you and the tree of harmony?”

“You have little idea what that tree represents to me, It’s a kindergarten that never managed to be finished all the way!” Pearl looked around wide eyed. “How did they not consume this world? I have to protect that spot to figure out what went wrong here!”

“You have little idea what that tree represents to me, it’s in an unfinished kindergarten!” Pearl looked around in a wide eyed panic. “Now that I think of it how did they not consume this world when they got here? I’ve been too busy trying to figure out what went wrong or what happened to me!”

“Kindergarten… as in a place where young foals go to learn things and what do you mean by ‘consume our world’?” Shaking her head Twilight tried to think of something to get Pearl’s mind off the tree of harmony. “I’m surprised you haven’t asked much about Equestria, you’ve only seen Ponyville or the Ever Free Forest and you don’t really know that much about us. Would it surprise you to know that there is a place called the Crystal Empire here?”

“What!” Pearl had a completely horrified look on her face.

Pearl finding out what Rarity does for a living would make things that much worse since some of the plentiful gems that Equestria produced might have been unborn Crystal Gems that were in the ground alongside the naturally occurring gems that grew in Equestria. It would have been hard to tell either way.

Out somewhere in space a day or two later, Fluttershy sighed and rubbed her head with both hooves. All she had to do now was survive until she could go home, back to her normal and somewhat less dangerous life. They were almost to earth and were passing right by Pluto at the moment, she went back to bed and snuggled up against Bonnie.

Author's Note

All Crossovers in the order they appear.

My Little Pony (No Duh) > Starfox > Bucky O' Hare > Super Metroid > Kirby's Dreamland > Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Technodrome related stuff only) > Wander Over Yonder (Janet Rhizome counts as the first real appearance) > Buzz Lightyear of Star Command > Toejam and Earl (Cameo) > Lilo and Stitch Series > Atomic Betty (small crossover) > Mr. Peabody and Sherman (cameo) > Steven Universe (This chapter and previously hinted at) > ????

The six elements of harmony 'FUSING' their powers together in the context of this story... let that sink in.

Crystal Ponies are hybrids of Earth Ponies and Crystal Gems only with their abilities more geared towards the ponies side of things genetically. You can definitely bet something went awry on Equus a long time ago, by all the lore Fluttershy has been gathering alongside the things she's experienced so far. Not to mention the bombshell I just dropped in the Authors Notes.

Next chapter Fluttershy get's to earth, however it's never as simple as just landing in Hawaii as many of you would have it be. Especially when the world has lot's of magic and technology to really screw things up.

July 13th was my birthday, it was nice...

78

High above the mostly blue marble Fluttershy sat staring at the planet looking rather pensive, every time she landed on a planet something bad happened. Even in space bad things had a tendency to go horribly wrong, there was also the fact that she still hadn’t told Bonnie that Star Command hadn’t absolved her of the pain inducing toxins she was injected with back on Planet Z. They likely didn’t know she was still feeling it considering she never spoke up about it. She was just really good at hiding the pain she was in and she hardly cringed anymore, she hadn’t been kidding when she told Bonnie her pain tolerance was quite a ways up there.

“So what’s going on in that head of yours Sweet Cheeks?” Walking up to the pony Bonnie could see something was wrong with her, but not what exactly.

“What’s going to happen to me this time? Every single time I go somewhere new, something bad always happens to me!” And if asked Fluttershy would point out every occurrence including starvation at the start of her whole friendly trot around space, she had a right to be frustrated.

“We won’t know until we try to go to Hawaii, but then again refresh my memory… what exactly happened to you on Bathyos or Tradeworld that was so bad?” In fact a lot of bad things happened to Bonnie on Tradeworld. The trip to Bathyos had been fairly tame as nothing truly horrible had happened to either of them despite there being a huge crime syndicate on the planet, but since they never went underwater they were completely fine.

“Well you were shot on Tradeworld and my hooves got slightly burnt, not to mention people died Bonnie! It was all because of me being there.” Fluttershy became slightly depressed, she was among friends at the time but it still hurt to know she was an indirect cause to people dying.

“It wasn’t your fault; I’m the one that dragged you to that world! So if it was anyone’s fault then it was mine and that psychopath Torque’s. You are blameless for blood on his four hands and I’m partly to blame for it happening!” After a moment of silence Fluttershy whimpered and Bonnie just had to hug the sad pony. “Look, not many people on Tradeworld can be considered innocent in any stretch of the imagination.”

“But he was after me though.” After a moment Fluttershy finally calmed down. “I guess Bathyos wasn’t so bad. Still Roller did bury me alive and it took a while for the DOKs to locate and dig me out.”

“There’s no accounting for everything Fluttershy, it happened like crap usually does. So please learn to move on, but never forget.” Bonnie held onto Clyde’s graying sphere, there was still plenty of time to get him to Hawaii so she wasn’t worried. She also knew that something could happen to make the situation that much different, but she wasn’t going worry if that happened. At least Clyde would always be in her heart as he is and as he will be; if he did actually die she would bury him in Hawaii near the Pelakai home in loving memory. “Forgetting is going to be a problem with me soon enough, since once we get to Hawaii I can only guess at what Clyde will remember or how he’ll be afterwards.”

Fluttershy just gently placed a hoof around Bonnie’s shoulder and gave her a squeeze as she looked down at the world. Moving over to the pilot’s seat she set up a flight path towards Hawaii, but she didn’t initiate the autopilot yet.

“Can I call dad to tell him that I’m coming in with a Death Knelled experiment? I think he really needs to know about this.” Bonnie received a questioning look. “Hey, it’s your ship and you stole it fair and square. Its better that I ask for permission since your heart is made of gold or something. We’re thick as friendly thieves’ right?”

“It’s okay to call him Bonnie; I don’t have a problem with it.” At least Fluttershy thought Bonnie understood it would have been okay with her.

Bonnie got into the seat with Fluttershy and started connecting them to Hawaii and hoped that someone was home to pick up the phone.

“Receiving a call from an unknown transmission in the upper atmosphere, will you take this call?” Jumba’s computer doubled as a phone and it was currently beeping loudly to let someone know there was a call being placed through.

“Hm… a call?” A pink alien with long antenna crawled up to the communications device and decided to receive it out of curiosity, mostly since they didn’t get many calls from space on this planet. There were only a few beings that would know how to call Jumba’s number.

On the screen appeared both a familiar face and one that was not as familiar wearing a pink, green and yellow suit.

“Well if it isn’t my youngest sister. Hey Angel, I guess it’s been a while. Can you get dad on the line real quick? I have a problem and it’s about Clyde.” Pulling out the Clyde’s pod and showing it to the other experiment, Bonnie had created a rightfully horrified reaction in the pink experiments visage. Angel then looked into Bonnie’s eyes and after a moment she nodded seriously, this was a real problem that needed to be seen to immediately.

“Oh no, must get Jumba, Death Knell!” Angel scampered away from the computer to alert anyone who could get Jumba if he wasn’t home. She recognized the problem as soon as Bonnie showed her why she was calling and obviously coming back. None of the ‘cousins’ hated Bonnie or her decision to go back into space. Clyde went with her and now he was in a very bad state.

“That was your youngest sister? She looked nice.” Fluttershy was beginning to think cute and cuddly was definitely the defining trait among everyone in Bonnie’s family.

“A reminder, her primary functions is to change you to good or evil depending on what she sings. Along with that she also has minimal mind control abilities. She has a really nice singing voice though; she even has an effect on Jumba using her powers which means she can obviously do more than what she was designed for.” At least Bonnie could always rely on her family to be unique with all their crazy abilities, the mention of a mind control aspect had made the pony rather quiet. “Heck, even Jumba doesn’t know the implications of what she’s entirely capable of if she sings the right thing. She’s in love with Stitch and I think it’s kind of awkward that incest is a huge likelihood in my family.”

“I don’t mind, didn’t you say that everyone in your family genetically dissimilar enough for that to not be a problem?” Receiving a nod Fluttershy smiled sweetly at Bonnie who was basically sitting in her lap.

“Yeah, but it’s still weird to me. I love Clyde in a platonic sense, mostly because the two of us are actually very genetically similar unlike the rest of our family.” Bonnie looked back at the slowly graying sphere in her hand. “Even though we were created to be together, as a big sister I still really haven’t done right by him often enough by listening to him when he had some input on every situation we got into. We were still quite the inseparable pair despite that.”

“Am I hearing this right, experiment one five zero is in Death Knell state? Six two four is to be keeping little girl or six two six from hearing of this. We do not need to exacerbate good moods with bad news.” Jumba came onto the screen and blinked all four of his eyes at the two looking back at him.

“Hey dad, Clyde got into a bad situation. He was tortured and to make a long story short, generally a lot of bad things that would result in this happening to him. I couldn’t even recover his prosthetic since it was stolen and used for something else.” Bonnie had a dire look on her face as she held up the grey sphere. Her father noticeably looked wide eyed at the state Clyde was in. “Can you please fix him? I don’t want to lose a part of my family.”

“Is possible as long as one five zero’s pod does not turn completely gray, but who is the one to be placing him into state in the first place?” Jumba actually looked angry, sad and regretful from Fluttershy’s perspective.

“Don’t worry; already shot the bastard… in the arm. I shot him in the arm after helping disable a big robot of doom and the guy had already tortured my beautiful friend here for a few hours. Look all that’s not really important at the moment and it’s too much of a headache to go into. The Grand Councilwoman assures me he won’t be causing us anymore trouble, likely because I traumatized him badly enough already by ripping his entire empire to shreds. Yes her majesty got off her ass and helped me out a bit, stop looking so shocked.” In her anger Bonnie had really wanted to blast Zurg’s head off, but Fluttershy convinced her to do otherwise. Scrunching up her face, Bonnie tried to focus on the reason she called. “Look I just wanted to say that me and some friends of mine are coming to Hawaii. This is Fluttershy and that is Roller back there, he’s an adaptive biological before you ask.”

“Hello Mr. Jookiba, it is so nice to finally meet you… well not in person… but on the screen at least.” Fluttershy smiled amiably at what was Bonnie’s father. He didn’t seem to be mean in person, but he definitely had the same spark of mischievousness that Discord had as he scrutinized her with his four eyes.

“Likewise as well, am being sure that we are having a meeting soon so I can talk to my experiment about you in depth.” There was quite a jovial sense of humor to his tone; then again Jumba noticed something was going on between one of his experiments and this strange creature he’s never seen before. He noted that she looks like a little adorable version of an Earth equine only with wings that were oddly mismatched. It looked like he would be dispensing some embarrassing fatherly wisdom to one of his experiments soon, most likely just after he finishes stopping one five zero’s imminent death.

Somewhere underground a little girl floated straight up away from a button that would have stopped the machine from doing something, she had no clue as to what her grumpy great uncle built it for but it was important to him. She was floating in front of a triangular object with a circular glowing field in it. She trusted her uncle to not be a bad man; she hoped in her heart that she was making the right decision here.

Above the place all this was happening, a huge burst of gravity exploded upwards and out of the planet’s atmosphere in the form of a blinding light beam that could be seen from space.

In fact it actually intersected with something in space.

Head Hunter was shielded against electromagnetic pulses and spiritual energy, the Chozo had perfected the technology against their own spiritual abilities long ago. What the ship wasn’t shielded against was gravity pulses, like the one headed straight for the ship in high orbit.

“Anyway will you be ready to receive Clyde when we get there? What in the… ah crap.” Whatever Bonnie had seen, she didn’t have time to talk about it before alarms went off in the ship after it shuddered violently and it woke up Roller who looked around revving in a panic.

“Bonnie, what is being the trouble?” Jumba showing fear for one of his children in this moment gave Fluttershy an even better opinion of him.

“Why do these things always happen to me?” Fluttershy lamented as she felt the Head Hunter tilt and felt a sudden increase in weight.

“Make that, why do things like this always happen to us Fluttershy. We were just hit by some kind of gravity pulse and it caused the engines on this ship to go down, it came from… Gravity Falls, Oregon? What an ironically named place for a gravity pulse that powerful to occur. Also our orbit is deteriorating into… dad, please call experiment two three four since we’re going to be in her neighborhood soon. Oh please don’t let my sister Shush ditz out on us… actually, better yet call Mr. Bubbles! He’s more competent; tell him that we’re going to need a cover up story and possibly a cleanup team. The projection we’re getting says that we’re going to come down in New York, right in the bay outside of Manhattan! At least it’s nighttime on that side of the planet so we should arrive there unseen. If we’re lucky we won’t hit anything coming down.”

“Is everything in the ship being the kaput? How is call even still going through then?” Jumba wondered out loud.

“Nope, only the engines are out, everything else is good and nothing seems broken. That would be our luck wouldn’t it? Whatever that burst of gravity did, it certainly messed something up, but we’re still getting all green throughout the ship.” Turning to the pony, Bonnie gave her a sad frown as she tried to get the engines back online. “Well, welcome to Earth, we can only hope everything from this point gets better Sweet Cheeks. Knowing us… yeah… not going to happen, best be prepared to think the worst of everyone we meet then. Possibly even the guys that are going to be performing the cover up for this debacle. I wouldn’t put it past them to try something funny as not all humans are as friendly as Lilo or most Hawaiians are.”

The ship didn’t break up in the atmosphere and slowly fell through it without catching on fire. It was silently coasting through the sky in a constantly downward sloping angle towards the city that never slept.

“Whoa, I’m sensing a new Shen Gong Wu guys and it’s coming from… way up there. It’s falling in… that direction!” Pointing towards the sky the little green Chinese dragon didn’t know what it was he was exactly sensing, but it did draw his senses towards it like any other Wu before it. The odd thing was that they already knew where all the flying related Shen Gong Wu happened to be at this moment.

“Brace for impact.” A completely monotone Bonnie said, who was strapped into the chair with Fluttershy to her right. On Fluttershy’s right was Roller who was whining, with a dull thud they hit the water and floated there for a second looking at the city’s splendor before the ship started sinking under the water.

Fluttershy sat there thinking for a moment and she looked to Roller then to Bonnie, she slowly worked the controls and the ship lifted up on its landing gear at the bottom of the bay. They couldn’t fly but the ship could move away from their landing site, Fluttershy directed it to start trotting along floor of the bay towards the nearest beach. Without the LGMs little modifications this wouldn’t have been possible.

“Hey now, there’s a good idea. We can’t fly, but we can still move to a better spot so nobody will find this ship. Park us under a large pier over that way.” Bonnie was taking a leadership role because she knew earth better than the pony did. She pointed in the direction Fluttershy should start walking the ship.

“It looks so much like Manehattan back home, only bigger.” Trying to gather her thoughts as she made Head Hunter scuttle across the sea floor like a crab, Fluttershy couldn’t believe the similarities between the city here and the one she’s been to back on her home planet. “This is going to be a big problem isn’t it?”

“Hey, don’t let it get to you, minor setbacks like this won’t… well it might kill Clyde. I even Pinkie Pie Promise that we will still be friends no matter the outcome of what happens to my brother, as for now we still need a way to get all the way out to Hawaii and our current mode of transportation just isn’t cutting it. It would take too long at the rate we’re traveling, unless we could fix what is wrong and frankly I’m not an engineer so that’s unlikely.” After making a rather honorable sounding promise Bonnie knew she could truly keep, she looked for a bright spot in all this. She really didn’t like the idea of risking human related hospitality anywhere but in Hawaii, unless they were humans she knew personally. “We’ll think of something Sweet Cheeks. Look at the bright side; we’re much closer to where that dame Pearl wanted us to be. All we need to do is head a little south and deliver her message; a little the detour is not going hurt in the long run. She’s clearly an alien, so she might have something we can borrow to get us to Hawaii in time.”

“You don’t seem to like your younger sister Shush.” It was better for Fluttershy to get her mind off the subject of their sudden crash landing that ended pretty well, considering it could have been much worse. A crash landing craft that can walk away from the crash itself was a good one and Bonnie’s Pinkie Promise was rather heartwarming if a bit saddening.

“Shush has the rather annoying specialty of eavesdropping on private conversations and letting everyone else in on it, plus she’s a ditz. She doesn’t live in Hawaii like most of my family does; instead she travels around with someone who keeps the CIA from causing trouble for friendly aliens like us. Do you know the reason so many aliens are interested in visiting this planet in particular? The answer is mosquitoes.” Anyone would get a strange stare at stating that, even Bonnie was expecting one from Fluttershy and she hadn’t been disappointed. “Yeah that and some aliens actually like to settle down on this planet in secret among the humans, the whole planet is declared a nature preserve for mosquitoes and the more disruptive aliens have to deal with this organization called ‘Men in Black’. It’s a good thing I know someone or else they might becomes really hostile to us about our landing here, they kind of patrol New York with a bit more force than any other place in America. There’s a whole boat load of kooky law enforcement agencies on this planet, but the MIB in particular are the best at handling hostile alien related problems in a competent manner. They won’t bother the places the Galactic Guardians have covered or places where aliens live in peace here, if the aliens can handle the problems that rise up on their own in a discreet manner then MIB won’t bother to interfere. If any situation involves aliens being caught up in the media, they will then start covering up what actually happened in numerous ways.”

“Why do these ‘Men in Black’ have to cover things up?” Fluttershy was going to defer everything to Bonnie since she was more of an expert on Earth. She missed the taste for corn cobs on a stick with her friends and the hot carrot dogs that came with ample amounts of condiments; she really had to go to Manehattan with her friends when she got back to Equus. All she’s recently had to eat was Rhizome food and those medical tomatoes that kept really well.

“This is what we would call a backwater planet. The native species are called humans and have a technology level that doesn’t get them very far into space and have only gotten to the moon so far. The ‘Men in Black’, many of which are natives to this planet, make sure that someone doesn’t get power hungry or does something incredibly stupid with advanced technology that they have absolutely no idea how to use. Imagine me giving a blaster to a child without telling them what it does first.” Seeing the pony cringe at the sudden mental image, another horrible thought just occurred to Bonnie and she realized that there are a lot of things that would upset Fluttershy on this planet. Bonnie was going to quit eating bacon; she was mostly a vegetarian anyway. “I see you get the point as to why the ‘Men in Black’ exist; the natives of this world would inevitably find imaginative ways annihilate themselves with some of the least lethal things imaginable. You’ve been thrust into all this and managed to not go insane, but can you honestly say your species as a whole are ready to be thrust into this as well?”

“No, I can honestly say that ponies aren’t ready for a lot of the things I’ve seen, do you think it’s a bad thing that they’ve seen the things I’ve been doing because of a friend of mine? I can even actually understand what you’re getting at and it scares me.” It was a little worrying to Fluttershy that those ponies might have seen too much because of Discord; hopefully she was at least becoming powerful precautionary tale to others who might want to ride a bubble away from Equus. “He actually has the power to see what I’m doing at all times and is even watching me right now.”

“Not unless he actually shows them how to build the things he’s seeing, otherwise it might only inspire the need to see the stars for themselves. Speaking of seeing things, better call dad and see if I can get him to tell my sister Shush and agent Bubbles where we are.” After a moment to ponder that course of action, Bonnie looked up at the shadow of the pier above them. “Hopefully we didn’t attract too much attention and can get them to come to us without a problem popping up.”

Author's Note

I know this chapter can be a bit... 'dry'. I do have to work all the crossovers a bit so they actually fit together.

Gravity Falls is not going to be a major crossover, it was just that one scene to establish why things went horribly wrong for Fluttershy. Mabel Pines could have prevented it all. It was simply a chain reaction to someone else doing something and all that. No Bill Cipher for Fluttershy, but he does exist in this universe.

Men in Black- protecting you from yourselves and aliens since forever. The cartoon series was different from the movies version in quite a few ways.

Cobra Bubbles is from the Men-In-Black organization and works for them as an operative in the CIA.

It should be obvious Agent K has met The Grand Councilwoman. He and Agent J are not appearing much or at all in this story, just thought it would be nice to let you know if you're reading this.

Fluttershy does have what amounts to a Shen Gong Wu really, if a certain dragon can sense it then so can someone else.

79

At a street corner where a fire hydrant is two dogs were having a meeting, which didn’t seem very unusual to an outside observer. Upon closer inspection you’d see that the Pug and the Shar Pei were actually speaking the human language with perfect precision.

“So what’s the skinny Frank, what’s going on in the world of aliens?” Fu always had meetings with his compatriot; he looked to be an average if overweight looking Shar Pei. What he really was is magically gifted dog that is slated to protect the earth as the guardian of a mystical being that watched over New York. “Any chance the MIB is going to interfere in my kids work? Not that he has to really do much after the dark dragon went down… but something strange is going on in the balance and it was just a tickle of something going pretty badly soon and I always trust my gut.”

“Well Fu, last night we got a new arrival from space. Apparently the MIB are aware of it and they have Agent CB on it with his partner, you know the one. I’m talking about the large pinkish red chinchilla thing with the dark red stripes. I’m surprised not many people stare at it or notice something’s out of place about it, she’s legally labeled a giant Sumatran chinchilla if you can believe it.” Frank the pug was an informant for MIB and Fu was an informant for any magical mishaps that went on around New York, their jobs aside from informants was to make sure nobody stepped on anyone else’s toes. MIB was particular about what they dealt with and what they had to cover up drastically, the magical dragons could fend for themselves easily enough against both aliens and mythical beings. “Apparently the situation they’re dealing with might have some dire implications, as there’s something magical involved there and whatever it is it has me on edge Fu. The MIB does not mix well with magic as you well know and they leave that stuff to the world of the dragons. Magical aliens are not something they see very often, sure there’s a lot of aliens with little neat biological tricks that makes it look like they’re doing magic but it’s not the same as an actual magical being from space mucking things up. Speaking of dragons we got incoming evil and it doesn’t smell good, not good at all. Whatever is magical was involved with the ship that went down last night.”

“Yeah, the low rank Heylin wannabes are on the move into our neighborhood. No clue why they are doing that though, I haven’t heard of another ‘Shen Gong Wu’ going active in this area. Though I know where a dormant one is, I’ve been making sure it wasn’t attracting trouble and it’s under our protection as it’s too powerful to fall into the wrong hands.” Sighing Fu shook his head and stood up on his hind legs while pulling out a phone. “I try to keep my boy well out of the way of other good versus evil fights that he’s not supposed to be a part of, but if we’re having magical visitors from space we’re going to need some massive cover up help soon from MIB. My gut feeling says we have a problem and Houston Texas isn’t a part of it. Some seriously weird stuff is about to go down Frank, if I can be you with you.”

After a moment of holding the phone to his head Fu waited as did Frank who wanted to hear what Fu was going to tell his boy to do.

“Hey Jake, I don’t care if it’s really early in the morning, we might have a situation here! Yes I know you haven’t had much to do since the dark dragon went down, but I got a gut feeling and you know how that usually turns out.” After a moment the voice on the other end started yelling as whenever Fu had a gut feeling things went really bad for him. “Yeah, I know. Look we got incoming hostiles from out of town and they might be after a mystical artifact which I happen to know the location of. I’m going to check it out to see if I can deal with the situation on my own. If I’m not at the shop within the next two hours when you’re obviously going to be more awake, then come looking for me. If the artifact went active while I wasn’t looking, then be prepared to get your dragon on kiddo as we might have major problem on our paws here. It’s another artifact that’s on the side of having world ending capabilities so take this seriously. Thanks for understanding, call up Sara and Kara before you go back to sleep and tell me if they got anything to say about this. See you around Jake-y.”

“So what is the magical artifact and how bad is it on a scale of one to ten in terms of alien related dangers?” Frank was used to the planet of Earth being threatened by all kinds of world ending apocalyptic scenarios; at this point it was already really old to him. The Earth had always been in danger at one point or another; both he and Fu were old friends and had seen a lot of crap together that they both shared with each other.

“If used correctly, it’s definitely beyond a ten with how powerful it is and it can change its appearance minimally depending on the user if it is active. It’s one of those old Chinese mystical weapons that all give you crazy powers or let’s you do strange things; they are called Shen Gong Wu. The things are really hard to destroy permanently, quite frankly the one I have under wraps is capable of wiping out all life on this planet on its own.” Fu Dog was a magical guardian and if he could handle this himself then he would, otherwise Jake would need to step up as a dragon once more.

“Then I better warn MIB that the magical side of things might be causing some issues soon. You should avoid that new Japanese restaurant that opened up recently, its run by aliens and they aren’t up to health code standards quite yet, so don’t eat there. Also MIB still has Global Justice buried in the sand so don’t worry about them finding out Jakes secret. It’s been nice talking with you Fu Dog.” With that said by Frank, both dogs nodded and separated from the hydrant trying to look incredibly nonchalant about their meeting.

They were sitting under the pier with the entrance to the Head Hunter just above the water and they had gone over what they had to work with. Food was getting a bit low, with three hungry mouths to feed that was understandable. Roller would eat just about anything as long as it wasn’t sharp and pointy, Bonnie was an average level omnivore compared to Roller and Fluttershy could only handle seafood and most forms of vegetation that even a normal native equine of this planet couldn’t eat safely. Fluttershy’s biology notably did not match that of pony from the planet Earth. They had an internet connection so Bonnie had Fluttershy busy herself with looking up horses, while she took stock.

They had a list of souvenirs Fluttershy had earned throughout her journey, a lot of which were useful including the spare translation device. The ship was a veritable treasure trove of memories for Fluttershy, most of them bad or downright scary. At least she had made friends during those times. Bonnie was currently off to the side checking the laser rifle at the moment.

“Serviceable, but I can’t use something like this while on Earth. It would draw way to much attention if I fired it in public, plus I can’t scavenge its power source for my empty blaster as it’s not compatible. The glass knife made of alien materials is something I can use however; you said it hasn’t dulled yet despite running it through solid metal?” They were finished taking stock of what they had and Bonnie new they didn’t have much. The medical tomatoes and one Maximum Tomato were completely useless in being able to help Clyde since he couldn’t eat or consume anything in his current state. Otherwise the last Maximum Tomato would have solved everything.

“Well it is a little weird that it can do that, it doesn’t even seem to be made of normal glass from melted sand. Still it has been very useful in collecting plants and it’s been the best utility knife I’ve ever had.” There were some materials like it on Equestria that could do the same thing as Fluttershy had seen Rarity use them before. If this knife made it back to Equus she was going to do so much cooking with it.

Bonnie was about ready to meet up with her sister Shush and Agent CB on the pier, but she wasn’t about to go unarmed and a knife was better than nothing as her one blaster was currently useless. She looked at the handle made out of Fluttershy’s hair and frowned slightly but slid it into her holster anyway. It was one of the things she was allowed to keep after being jailed, along with the strips of red cloth she took to wearing around her right arm. You never knew when some strips of cloth would be useful.

The area around the seldom used pier had been cleared easily enough, there wasn’t anybody around to really clear out. As they rose up to the top of the Head Hunter, they took in the new shielded exit. It was shield to prevent anyone from shooting them as they came out and it gave them an option to see how safe things were from the comfort of a shield that could easily handle small arms hitting it. They were looking at the bottom side of a pier with the Head Hunter close enough to a dinghy loading platform low enough to jump to.

Bonnie crawled on top of Fluttershy and pointed towards the platform and with a slightly skittish leap Fluttershy got onto the platform. Looking back, it wasn’t hard to see Head Hunter from this angle if you knew it was there, otherwise nobody would have a reason to check under this pier. Now that they were out from under the pier they could see the surrounding beachfront and there were plenty of busy cars and ships moving around in the distance.

“They’ll be here within the hour, so a few things to mention about my younger sister… she looks like a chinchilla. She’s got a lot more rodent genetics in her, but we still have some similarities. She’ll be with a tall well muscled mountain of a human with dark skin, he might be intimidating at first but he’s okay in my book given he’s taking care of one of my sisters.” Looking around Bonnie didn’t see any humans around, it was a good sign that Cobra Bubbles managed to get this area sealed off easily enough. “Hopefully he’s managed to train her to be less ditzy, but I doubt it. She’s easily distracted and mostly innocent, just don’t upset her in any way, shape or form."

“Why, she doesn’t sound scary or dangerous and you said her power was just eavesdropping right?” Even if Fluttershy knew Bonnie was going to scare her with more tales of how everyone in her entire family was practically a living weapon, she still wanted to hear it.

“Well I’ve explained the side effects of being designed by Jumba already, but I might as well tell you about this one as she has a very powerful defensive mechanism going for her in how her body works. My sister is impossible to deafen and is completely immune to shock waves, combine this with the ability to amplify and increase any sound made in her vicinity.” Seeing that her friend wasn’t entirely comprehending the danger of her sister, Bonnie continued on while looking around for a nondescript onyx colored car that the MIB organization tended to use. “The reason why this makes Shush dangerous is she can turn any sound into a weapon; quiet as a mouse doesn’t describe my sister when she feels threatened. In fact, I’d naturally be completely helpless against her in a fight if she were to actively attack me since she primarily uses shock wave based attacks. Even your normal level of talking could be dangerous around her if she’s scared and with your good sense of hearing, you’d definitely become deaf in a matter of seconds if she directed an attack at you.”

“Is there anyone in your family that isn’t dangerous?” This was just a good way to pass the time and at least Fluttershy would learn more about her friend. It seemed every time Bonnie’s family was brought up, it was followed with a bit of information about what they could do and how dangerous they were because of that ability. “Although I must admit that I like hearing you talk about them, it makes you seem more afraid of yourself around them than afraid of them being around you.”

“Actually you’d think there would be, but no. Jumba found out some disturbing things about his earlier experiments that proved they did have an application for evil that he had never even considered before. He also didn’t know of their hidden talents, like one of my oldest brothers Double Dip who is experiment number two. He was designed to double dip things, like licking candy and then placing it back where it came from. Now you must be asking yourself, how could he be dangerous if what he does is basically ruining an entire plate of nachos if you don’t watch him closely enough?” There was actually a clear bit of intrigue in the pony’s face and a bit of disgust to go along with it; Bonnie smiled since that’s the general reaction to Double Dip when he was around.

“I know what double dipping means, but how exactly is he dangerous aside from doing that while he’s sick?” Despite Fluttershy knowing it would lead to an answer she’d rather not hear, she knew that they didn’t have much else to do while they waited. Plus it would be interesting to hear about.

“It was a strange thing about him that was found out long after he came to Earth and found his one true place acting as a house cat for a little old lady. He has this strange ability to repeat any action or outcome that he is involved with. Take for instance if Double Dip was caught in a mild explosion, say the worst injury he gets from this explosion is a nick on his right leg. Now this is where it gets interesting, so stay with me here.” Making sure she had the pony’s full attention Bonnie knew this was going to sound really strange, but it was completely true. “Now imagine him getting caught in an explosion five times the size of that previous one, take a guess at how injured he’d get from it?”

“I’d rather not, but I think you’re going somewhere with this.” Fluttershy didn’t like the idea of anyone getting hurt much less her friend's family member.

“Oh I am, the bigger one would cause him to get a nick on his right leg in the same exact spot with exactly the same amount of damage as if he had been caught in the previous explosion. He’d only be able to do that once though, after that he would need to be caught in another explosion that does something similar to him to even repeat the effect. He can kind of ignore reality a bit and Jumba still isn’t certain how he missed that ability when he first made him or why it works the way it does.” Bonnie liked the comical look on Fluttershy’s face at the very idea that such a thing was possible. “Yeah, that surprised everyone else too since it actually happened. My brother Double Dip is dangerous because if he can do something once then he can do it again. So… oh look they’re here!”

Fluttershy didn’t even need Bonnie to finish what she was going to say, if he hurt anything he’d be able to do it again in the same manner. There was probably some little fact like he’d have to use the same kind of motions or what have you, but that kind of ability was still downright incredible. It was hard to think that Double Dip was just made to double dip food with that kind of ability; it got Fluttershy thinking that if he saved someone’s life, then could he do it again with someone else in the exact same manner?

Shaking her head the pony looked over at the road and saw a black vehicle drive up and slowly a large dark skinned human got out wearing a suit. They watched as he walked around the car and opened the door for a large mouse like being that was obviously Shush; she crawled out of the vehicle and looked around attentively while wagging her tail.

“It looks like she’s gotten better since I last saw her.” It was just an observation of Bonnie’s and Shush immediately perked up as the vibrations of her voice reached the eavesdropper experiment.

“It looks like she’s gotten better since I last saw her.” Shush’s ears noticeably vibrated and played the voice back much louder and her tail was pointing directly at Bonnie and she was smiling from ear to ear as she looked at where her tail was pointing. She started waving to Bonnie with a cheerful smile on her face. She then yelled into her own tail and was quite clearly heard by both Bonnie and Fluttershy. “Aloha cousin, been long time!”

“Come on Fluttershy and be prepared to keep my sister Shush from wandering off, it’s an annoying habit of hers.” Bonnie hopped off of Fluttershy’s back and climbed up the nearby ladder onto the pier.

“It’s should still be… what the, hm now that’s interesting. A magical, two unidentified aliens and a MIB operative, heh sounds like the start of a really bad joke.” Fu hid behind a trash can as he spotted the four people with Mr. MIB the center of attention given his size and muscle mass, it was hard to think he was human given his size and musculature. “So what’s going on here?”

Something was happening and it wasn’t about the Shen Gong Wu he had stashed right near where they were standing, he was thankful for that potion that made it impossible for him to activate the magical artifact by accident.

He watched as the green alien spoke with the MIB agent as some form of liaison. Meanwhile the pink and red chinchilla lost attention of the ensuing conversation and started playing with a nearby flock of seagulls and was joined by the magical who managed to get a seagull to come to her, she got the alien chinchilla to start petting the bird gently.

“See it’s not so hard to make friends with animals Shush, you just got to be more careful and take how they feel into consideration… what’s wrong? What’s making that noise?” Fluttershy had heard it a short moment after Shush had when she started to protectively clutch the live seagull to her chest. The seagull didn’t mind being hugged a little tightly, being in Fluttershy’s presence made things alright for the bird.

Fu ‘s ears twitched as he saw the one that looked like a Chinchilla suddenly shoot up into a standing position clutching the seagull protectively to her chest and her ears flexed as she pointed her head off into the distance. After a moment she started pointing frantically at something which she was seeing and the magical next to her was now also looking at.

Turning his head Fu groaned at the sight, it was one of the Heylin wannabes and he was carrying one of those artifacts. It had to be none other than Jack Spicer searching for the Sheng Gong Wu he had stashed at the pier; this situation was going to blow up fast because he knew this guy was never without an army of robots to fall back on.

Fluttershy could see the strange teenager with the helicopter backpack plus his army of robots hovering in the distance. The flying robots that reminded her of those cable throwers back on that place that had disappeared in a fluctuating chaos field. She started hyperventilating as they looked vaguely similar to the Roadkill Rodney’s that she had a very bad run in with.

“Be prepared to hand over your Shen Gong Wu, because boy genius Jack Spicer is here! Whoa, what are those things? I mean I’ve seen some pretty weird stuff before, but that’s new even for me.” Jack Spicer crossed his arms and hovered there for a moment taking in each of the three strange creatures he saw, plus the obvious CIA operative guy. “No matter, where are the Shen Gong Wu I’m detecting? I know they are here somewhere as I’m detecting two in… your immediate area!”

Fluttershy squeaked as she was pointed at and hit a loose wooden board in the pier with her rear leg that launched an object into the air. Reacting on instinct she caught the object and Jack Spicer flew forward to grab onto it as well. The object was glowing as they both held it and Fluttershy knew something odd was going to happen, given the magical glowing pendant.

“I challenge you to a Xiaolin Showdown! My Monkey Staff versus whatever it is you have for the… is this the Lunar Locket? Looks a bit off, how in the world did this end up here? You know what? Never mind that, name your game!” Jack Spicer had managed to spook Fluttershy further, but she couldn’t release her grip on the Shen Gong Wu that was a pendant that had no symbol on it.

“Um… what do you mean?” Fluttershy squeaked out, afraid of what was going on and that she couldn’t let go of the pendant.

“Oh this is just too great; I got a newbie and this should be an easy win for me! We both just grabbed a Shen Gong Wu, which is what we’re both holding. We both have Shen Gong Wu to fight over it with, so name your challenge or a game and then we’ll compete for it!” The evil smile on Jack’s face did not sit well with Fluttershy.

Author's Note

Now you may be asking, why the Lunar Locket? Well it'll become very interesting real fast to be sure.

Double Dip (Experiment 002) - Looks like a purple opossum and was Designed to double dip things, has the unusual ability to double dip reality itself. This was not discovered until after he came to earth.

80

Fluttershy found herself in an odd position of holding something magical and human told her she had to come up with a game or challenge. She didn’t know what would happen if she lost, but she assumed it was a bad idea to throw the match. So she had to think of a game that she was good at… oh right, she already knew the perfect game to take on this person with.

Bonnie didn’t know what was going on. One second she was asking Cobra Bubbles about options to move the Head Hunter out of the area, the next she noticed her sister hugging a seagull and some crazy guy wearing a black coat with a helicopter backpack was challenging a befuddled looking Fluttershy to something. The pendant they both held was giving of a rather ominous glow.

Shush liked seeing her big sister cousin, she also liked the friendly friend that made the floppy looking bird come play with her. The strange guy with the whirring bird backpack wasn’t very nice sounding, but he didn’t come off as violent or evil like some of the people Mr. Bubbles dealt with. He must be a very sad and angry person, so maybe he was a gray?

“My name is Fluttershy and um… we’ll play, ‘The Quiet Game’?” She was asking more than saying they would, but apparently it was enough and the entire world warped around Fluttershy and this human.

Slowly the pier torn asunder and lifted both Jack Spicer and Fluttershy on two separate pieces where they were staring at each other. Between them on her own piece was a rather curious Shush who wasn’t freaked out by the change in scenery.

Shush had apparently been chosen as a judge for this competition because her hearing was really good, some magical force had both her ears pointing towards Jack and Fluttershy and her tail pointing straight up.

Off to the side on a large section of pier in the void everyone was now in, Bonnie was looking left and right wondering what just happened to the rest of the world until she saw something out of place sitting with her and Cobra Bubbles.

“Okay who are you and what do you have to do with this situation? I’m tired of things going wrong for my friend over there and my sister just got dragged along into it. I’m guessing we’re apparently the peanut gallery for whatever ‘it’ is.” Bonnie already knew something was up with the Shar Pei the second she saw him. “The names Bonnie Jookiba and I’m a professional thief, don’t try the whole ‘I’m a normal dog’ act. It won’t work on me as one of my older sisters is a Shih Tzu who happens to live in Hawaii. I know for a fact that almost every dog on the planet can talk.”

The grey flabby looking dog gave her a flat stare for a moment before sighing and standing on his hinds legs. He looked at the MIB agent who wasn’t particularly surprised to see him standing on his hind legs, given the MIB was aware that dogs were more intelligent than they appeared, but then again so were cats and all other forms of animals on the planet that hid the truth quite well. MIB never bothered with the business of animal related crimes or low level criminals. They mostly dealt specifically with aliens as that was where their expertise was alongside human resource management.

“Nice accent you got there Bonnie, the names Fu Dog. I’m the magical animal guardian of New York. I was going to get the Shen Gong Wu before anything happened, but your magical friend over there found it by accident first. So don’t blame me, blame that plank for being too loose at the wrong moment. I was going to prevent something like this from happening by having the Lunar Locket on me at all times, at least until the evil wannabe over there and any of the others looking for it left town. It just became a moot point to do anything like that now.” Fu was a dog with a jersey accent that had it before Jersey was a real place, he quite liked Bonnie’s gangster accent. “Now we’ve got a Xiaolin Showdown going on here and I’m going to have a lot of problems if that pendant falls into the wrong hands. Did Frank get the word out to you MIB guys already?”

“… no, he hasn’t gotten any word out yet.” Cobra said and continued to stand there in a stoic manner staring at Fluttershy and Jack looking at each other. After a moment the tall human finally spoke again. “What is the word?”

“He was going to warn you that the dragon monks and a few world conquering wannabes were going to be gallivanting around New York again, after that whole Serpent’s Tail fiasco you’d think MIB would be more than tired of magical stuff happening in their neighborhood. At least you guys managed to keep that one under wraps without needing to neutralize anyone. As a magical guardian of New York, I would like to apologize for this mess and the inconvenience ahead of time.” Fu dog pulled out his phone punched in a number and then waited. “Hey Frank, I got a magical quadruped wearing leafy greens whose facing down a tall pasty faced human nerd backed by an army of robots that are in the middle of a competition of staying quiet, do you have any bets to place on who will win this one? So what if it’s a suckers bet, can’t you at least make this a little fun for me. We’re only betting biscuits and kibble here.”

“You know Cobra; one wonders where we are and how the hell he’s still getting phone service here. I didn’t think a signal could even get through all those folds of his.” Bonnie’s aside didn’t cause any chuckles on Cobra’s stoic face; instead he let a slight smirk show on his face.

“So, is that sister of yours available? If not, then what about you?” Fu Dog had to get in his flirting, no matter how often he failed. He was always eternally looking for love in all the wrong places. Didn’t matter the species or the type, he’d still try to make a pass at any female if he thought they were, looked and sounded mature enough.

“What are the rules of this game exactly before we start? Again, it’s Jack Spicer if you didn’t hear me the first time.” The pale boy said flippantly while tapping his foot in an impatient manner.

“We can’t hurt or attack each other in any way; we can’t make too many unavoidable noises such as the act of breathing or… passing gas. The one who stays quiet the longest wins. May I ask what happened to the world before we start Mr. Spicer?” Fluttershy preferred being polite in the middle of all this unfamiliar magic, it kind of reminded her of the things that went on in Discords realm of chaos where he had a nice home.

“Xiaolin Showdowns tend to warp the fabric of reality around the competitors and those who have a stake in the competition, like all those guys over there watching us. That strange Chinchilla thing is obviously going to take part in this which is why she is between us, after the competition is over things go back to normal and the winner will have the Wu in their possession. I’ve tried to study the phenomenon before, but I never been able to figure out how this works except that it’s tied to the planet itself somehow.” Jack had tried to figure out how to artificially start a showdown without a Shen Gong Wu, but that never panned out. “I figure there’s no point in trying to understand magic perfectly and I have seen a lot of freaky things happen in a showdown. That’s why I’m not surprised by your appearance whatever you are. We start the competition when we both state the words ‘Gong Yi Tanpai’, Got it? Good, cause I’m not going to lose this one!”

“Okay…” Fluttershy gulped as she was ready to be quiet as possible; there was some irony to an eavesdropping mouse in the middle of a ‘quiet’ competition. She inhaled and so did Jack across from her.

“Gong Yi Tanpai!” Both competitors stated in a loud tone and with a brilliant flash everything was so quiet you could literally hear a pin dropping through the air. They both slowly sat down on their ramshackle rickety portions of the pier made out of bits of wood that shouldn’t obviously go together, in fact after declaring the start of the match the towers they were on became even more rickety looking and would likely fall apart at the vaguest of sounds.

This was the start of a game of extreme patience and self reflection.

So there they were, the three beings were sitting quietly on their own towers. Of the three towers of wood, Shush had a more sturdily built one and it was kind of obvious what making a noise would do. One of the towers would fall if too much noise was made and Shush was being driven by some kind of mystical cosmic magic to reflect any sound made by the contestants back at either tower and a loud enough sound would inevitably collapse them.

Even if she didn’t want to hurt Fluttershy, Shush would have to if the pony made any noise. She quietly continued to hug the poor seagull that got dragged into this mess and it cooed slightly at Shush snuggling against her form.

Fluttershy smiled reassuringly at hearing that the Seagull liked Shush, she thought Shush was nice too and that was despite the fact that she seemed to have an attention span comparable to Rainbow Dash from little time they had spent together. Looking at Jack she tried to keep the smile on her face at his angry glare, as he sat with both his arms and his legs crossed and when had he grown a monkey’s tail? The tail was holding on to the staff with a monkey topper.

Jack was having a hard time looking at that innocent face, the cute smile and the large eyes, he heard of adorable creatures in ancient legends that would devour your soul and snuggle the life out of you in a most disturbingly friendly manner as possible. He didn’t think they were real, but seeing Fluttershy staring into his eyes. It was like she was looking straight through him to the little boy in him that was whiny and always crying about being a loser, combining that with the fact that he was overcompensating for something by trying to take over the world.

The quiet game was obviously very quiet and Fluttershy could attempt to keep up her cheery mood forever. Jack wasn’t as good about keeping himself in check and he wanted to wipe what he thought looked like a smug smile off of the pony’s stupidly adorable face.

If there was a professional at being quiet, then Fluttershy was that professional. She was so quiet it was hard to not think of her as dead. She would shift ever so slightly without making a sound and continued to think happy thoughts about suddenly being stuck in a void and on top of a rickety tower made of wood from the pier.

Fluttershy almost screamed in fear for her opponent’s life when she saw The Maw rise up behind Jack Spicer out of the darkness without a sound. She silently moved her bat wing out to feel around off the left edge of the platform she sat on. After a moment she visibly relaxed even as The Maw came down on Jack Spicer and then evaporated into nothing without harming the boy genius. It had been nothing more than an illusion and Fluttershy knew it couldn’t logically have been standing on air.

She saw several more illusions, trying to attack Jack Spicer or spook her into making a noise loud enough to make her lose the game. She held resolute, even when fake images of her friends started berating her about being so meek all the time and that she should speak out and be assertive more often, especially right this moment when she was playing a game about being quiet.

The game was really becoming interesting as the game itself was trying to manipulate them into making a sound for Shush to reflect into one of the wooden towers. With that knowledge Fluttershy tried not to pay attention to the outside distractions any longer and saw Jack Spicer was likely seeing and hearing similar things given look on his face.

“Come on Fluttershy, speak up if you want me to make you a personally crafted MMMM Cake for you when you finally come home! I know you really liked the bit of cake you got a taste of on the train before I devoured the rest of it in front of Celestia after mashing it together with all the other foods.” The illusionary Pinkie didn’t try to get touchy feely with Fluttershy, but she was trying to goad her into making a noise. “Oh I know what will make you smile... maybe I can even get a giggle out of you yet! So a pony walks into a bar, then I asked him if he was okay. He responded ‘I don’t know, let me hum my way into a few more and then we’ll see’.”

Biting her bottom lip, Fluttershy started sweating slightly; this competition was now sliding into downright mental torture territory. There was no way she was going to stay stoic, not through an accurately depicted illusionary Pinkie’s comedy routine without busting her gut. Wouldn’t the laughter be involuntary? Well she did say that they couldn’t make too many involuntary noises, so laughing at all was still going to make her lose.

Jack Spicer on his side of the things didn’t even see anything related to the illusion that supposedly engulfed him; instead he saw the four dragon monks float down from out of nowhere to land on nothing but the empty space around Fluttershy.

“Oh would you look at that, it is Jack Spicer. You are to be dropping your balls on this one!” The little yellow skinned bald monk kid said with a smile.

“Even in the form of an incredibly complicated illusion created by the showdown, you still bomb the idioms Omi. I hope that the way you phrased that wasn’t actually on purpose. It’s he’ll be dropping the ball on this one.” The only girl among the four illusionary monks said as she slapped her face, she had her hair up in pigtails. After a moment she smirked evilly at Jack. “He already knows he’s going to lose as it’s only a matter of time, then again dropping his balls would really help in the matter.”

“What she said.” The little illusionary monk said without realizing the full implications of his previous statement or even his current one, much less what the girl said.

Jack Spicer really wanted to defend himself against the very evil illusions that obviously only he was seeing, the two that spoke already actually did a pretty good depiction of the monk’s personalities. His eye twitched fiercely and he tried to keep his anger in check.

“Yeah, the big baby knows that no matter how hard he tries, he’s always at the bottom of the rung of our competitions. The monkey staff is the only real thing he has going for him and we’ve seen how well that works out. The Shen Gong Wu nobody really wants because it makes you hairy and smelly, like an old guy with an incredibly bad amount of back hair.” The Brazilian guy said with a cheeky grin. “He’s always whining about something, he’ll be crying for weeks and will be sadly blogging about how he botched this one forever.”

“I reckon he doesn’t need to hear what I think; he already knows I think he’s a snake.” After that the big bulky cowboy hat wearing human walked forward while tipping the hat to the pony. “That right there is a pretty lady if I ever did see one. So why don’t you be the gentleman here and lose to the little darling?”

On the third side of the showdown, Bonnie just watched as Fluttershy broke out into a cold sweat and the Jack guy was growing angrier by the second. After noting that their eyes weren’t entirely on each other, she guessed that something else was going on here.

“Hey Fu, you’re a magical being right? Can you give me an idea of what’s going on here?” Bonnie turned to the so called magical guardian with a hand print that was just her size imprinted on his face.

“No matter what the game or how simple the showdown appears to be, there’s always something interesting going on. I’m betting something illusionary to hurry this along and the one with the stronger will to stay silent longer wins.” The magical four legged being looked to be really having a hard time with whatever it is that was putting a grimacing smile on her face and her tail between her legs. He could vaguely see what both the contestants were seeing given his magical nature.

“Ouch, whatever Fluttershy is seeing must not be pretty for her to make a face like that.” Shaking her head, Bonnie was silently cheering for Fluttershy to win. “Whatever they are seeing must be making this a tough competition for the both of them.”

Fluttershy resisted with all her strength to not to start dancing around and singing along with the Pony Tones, though it was quite nice to hear. She kept herself in check and wanted to cry because she had to be quite and not make too much noise, being quiet had never been so trying like this.

“You will never be able to conquer the world being as weak willed as you are; it is the unmitigated truth.” The tall dark man with lizard eyes said to Jack with a condescending stare, he turned away and started walking. “I shouldn’t even have been an illusion for you to even waste my breath on. Someone as foolish and weak as you is entirely beneath my notice.”

Jack wanted to cry for entirely different reasons than why Fluttershy wanted to. The illusion of the best warrior of the Heylin almost broke him by just dismissing him. He wasn’t even physically here, the Heylin were all about dark magic and warriors involving such practices. Heck the illusion of him was rather spot on.

It had been ten minutes of constant mental battering for both Fluttershy and Jack. Fluttershy had never thought playing ‘The Quiet Game’ would be this ruthless. Even Jack thought this baby game would be boring and he was proven horrifically wrong.

“Idiot says what?” A large green illusionary dragon quickly stated as fast as he popped up, he was actually quite visible to both Fluttershy and Jack when he popped up.

Only Jack knew who the dragon was and his tongue was moving before his mouth could stop it. Fluttershy’s heart stopped beating for a moment at the sight of the dragon and was too scared to even breathe. Thus in comparison even if Jack whispered he was much louder than Fluttershy who had ceased making any sounds at all.

“What?” When Jack said this it was barely a whisper, but the sound of his voice and the lack of any sound coming from the pony scared stiff along with the falling of Shush’s tail towards his pillar made his eyes widen.

“WHAT!” Rang out the teen’s voice from Shush’s tail and the focused sonic attack destroyed the pillar Jack was on making him fall into the void screaming, he was lightly battered by chunks of wood as he fell into the darkness.

With a bright flash the quiet showdown was over, the pier was back to normal and Fluttershy was wearing the Lunar Locket which now had Luna’s cutie mark emblazoned in it. The pony was also holding the monkey staff and after a moment she let out a deafening screech and after finishing that she started breathing deeply. The dragon had scared her so horribly; she hadn’t noticed that the world had been changed back to normal.

“No, how could I lose to you like that… it was your first time … you don’t even know what a Shen Gong Wu is…” Jack fell to his knees with tears in his eyes, his tone turned dull and bland despite his sniffing and snuffling with tears running down his eyes. He was a whining nobody living in a world of small victories. “Why do I always keep losing? Why am I always the chew toy? Why can’t I be better? I knew taking over the world would be difficult, but I’m such a loser that I’ll never even achieve it. He was right and he wasn’t even here to say it himself!”

Fluttershy frowned at the poor broken human and her heart went out to him. Even if he was probably going to attack her with the robots after this, she could at least cheer him up some. She looked to the others and then made her way up to Jack to carefully wrap both her hooves around him and started patting his back gently. After a moment she started to gently rock him back and forth.

“There there, it’s okay. Everything will be alright, shhh…” Here was an upset being that needed her kindness to pull him out of his funk, which was something Fluttershy could definitely do. “Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to get some rest from your trying day. Hush now, quiet now, it’s time to get some good to come your way. All your troubles are far behind you and you need a little break. It’s better to try and move forward to overcome your tear filled lake. So listen to me you sad poor thing, just allow in the warmth and joy I will bring. Hush now quiet now and listen to me sing.”

Jack started snuggling into Fluttershy’s grasp and she continued to sing into his right ear, ponies were incredibly good at ad-libbing music. At this point even the ever stoic Cobra Bubbles was wiping his eyes slightly.

Author's Note

Fluttershy's first showdown broke Jack Spicer. Then again Jack Spicer is quite the whiny guy, but he always bounces back into being somewhat anti-heroic. He never stops trying no matter how often he gets defeated. That says something about his determination to never give up on his goals.

Now on to more violent things, also Fluttershy still fears dragons. That's not going to be a huge problem at all.

81

“Sweet Cheeks really has a great singing voice on par with Angels.” It choked Bonnie up slightly to hear her sing another variation of that song.

“Yeah, that voice is beautiful.” Fu didn’t think hitting on the four legged creature now would be a good idea on his part.

Shush was looking between Bonnie and Fluttershy curiously, she had let the seagull go so that it could go on its way; instead it had landed on her head making her happy that the bird decided to stick around for a while. She no longer felt any mystical compulsion telling her what to do, so was more interested in her cousin big sister was doing than just blindly wandering off at the moment. Her attention span was still not that great, but at the moment she could focus it somewhat.

“There now, feeling better?” Fluttershy nuzzled Jack’s face and had managed to calm him down.

“Yeah, I guess.” Jack grumbled while crossing his arms and moving into a more comfortable sitting position.

“So what do these Shen Gong Wu do? I’m not even sure what I had that counts as a Shen Gong Wu, all I know is that they are magical in nature.” Out of the things that have happened with the hour they exited the Head Hunter, this was one of the things Fluttershy was most curious about.

“Monkey Staff, primarily instantly gives you agility of a monkey and slowly grants you the attributes of one to go along with it the longer you wield and use its power. As a side effect it also apparently grants you an instinctive mastery of Tai Shing Pek Kwar otherwise known as Monkey Kung Fu and the ability to speak to and understand monkeys. It’s my favorite Sheng Gong Wu.” It was curious to Jack as to why the strange mystical creature before him wasn’t slowly turning into a monkey, but he wrote it off as her not actively using the Monkey Staff. “As for the Lunar Locket, it allows you to control the phases of the moon and move it around some. You can’t really do much with it without destroying the planet and I rather like living here. Probably could have used it to hold the world hostage or something.”

Fluttershy’s ears went straight down at hearing that she now was wearing something that gave her the ability to do the approximation of Luna’s job back home. This planet didn’t even need something like the Lunar Locket as the moon was in a natural orbit. Bonnie had gone over some things with her about the planet she would be visiting.

After a moment Fluttershy’s suit retreated into backpack form and she held it off to the side in her right hoof. The translation device around her neck under the Lunar Locket was now clearly visible, but Jack didn’t really say anything about it. She was looking at Jack because she had a sneaking suspicion as to what the Shen Gong Wu she had was.

“You can detect Shen Gong Wu right? Can you please tell me what your scanner says about this?” Asking nicely if what she thought to be true wasn’t hard, what was hard for Fluttershy was accepting the gift she got back on Rhizome might have drawn undue attention.

“Oh sure, hold on a second.” Looking at the watch on his wrist, Jack slowly scanned the third object that Fluttershy was holding out. “Yep, that has a signal similar to a real Shen Gong Wu, it’s not one but it is really pretty darn close. What does that suit do anyway?”

“Oh it wraps the user in a protective skin which can regenerate if damaged; it can fly and allow you to breathe underwater and in outer space. It slowly produces pods that create disabling vines that don’t do any permanent harm anyone; the pods can also be eaten. It’s really made around helping the wearer survive just about anything.” Having said that Fluttershy quickly put the suit back on and it wrapped around her body, but the helmet portion didn’t go up as she preferred some fresh air to the recycled clean air the suit provided. “I got it from Rhizome.”

“It may not be a Shen Gong Wu, but its close enough to count as one to start a showdown. You said it was from a place called Rhizome huh? Like the term for horizontal growing roots? Let’s call it ‘Rhizome Wrappings’ then if anyone asks what Wu it is, because of the multiple vines that wrap around the user of the suit.” Jack had been pretty proud of himself for coming up with a name for something that could pass as a Shen Gong Wu. He stood tall with his eyes closed with his arms crossed until he felt something pressing up against him, opening his eyes and looking down he saw that Fluttershy was poking him with the Monkey Staff. After getting his attention she held the Monkey Staff out to him and looking up at him innocently. “Huh? You’re just going to give this back to me?”

“Yes I would have given it back anyway, but if you don’t mind I would like to ask that you give me a ten second head start and to leave my friends alone.” It didn’t take Fluttershy long to notice a pattern in her life of space travel. After all she and her friends were still surrounded by an army of robots, ones obviously being used as tools by Jack in the usual violent manner that the pony has come to associate with the presence of robots. Fluttershy continued on shyly pawing at the wooden boards beneath her once more plant covered hooves. “Well if that is alright with you that I ask that small favor. I just wanted to give back what belongs with you as I don’t need it, it’s obviously very important to you.”

“Thanks, you have no idea how much that means to me… okay, get going! One Shen Gong Wu, Two Shen Gong Wu…” Jack was going to attack Fluttershy and her friends with his Jack Bots, even after she helped him with his emotional breakdown as he was supposed to be evil. After getting his favorite Shen Gong Wu back he hugged it to his chest happily as he counted down. This prompted Fluttershy to sprout wings from her suit and shoot off towards New York City where she would look for a place to hide, she did not want to be stuck out in the open in case they had energy weapons. “Ten Shen Gong Wu, Jack Bots attack her! Just don’t do her any permanent harm though okay?”

Jack had leapt into the air and went into a hover with his helicopter backpack while pointing at the green, yellow and pink streak in the distance. All his Jack Bots shot off after Fluttershy and he followed behind them about as fast as he could go.

“Aren’t you guys going to help her?” Fu asked to the three who just watched as Jack took to the skies after his speedier machines.

“Yeah, I think Fluttershy has a running gag going on with robots. She can take care of herself until help arrives. Cobra watch Shush until I get back with a friend of ours, pairing them together might help keep them from being ditzy or it might destroy the big apple. I hardly care at this point.” Bonnie went back down the pier and climbed down the ladder, she was going to let Roller out of the Head Hunter.

“Ih, cousin has Boojiboo!” Shush said childishly to Cobra while giggling, the seagull on her head had taken off to look for food as he was hungry. Shush frowned after the bird, but then smiled as she didn’t own the seagull so she shouldn’t try to keep it with her if he didn’t want to be with her. After a moment of actually thinking, Shush realized that something was wrong as Bonnie was never seen without a certain someone. “Where’s other cousin?”

Cobra didn’t have the heart to tell Shush about what was going on with Clyde; it was apparently a very depressing thing for experiments and Jumba had warned him not to say anything about it. He liked his partner despite her general problem of wandering off or being really silly. He didn’t want to depress Shush with the news unless she could handle it and he knew she certainly couldn’t. With her destructive powers, he decided it was best to stay silent on the matter.

“Yeah I can tell New York is already in for it, I’m calling my boy in to deal with this as my gut feeling is only getting worse.” Pulling out his Cell phone once more, Fu Dog decided that things were getting too out of paw and that it was time for Jake to get the lead out of his pants.

Fluttershy shot high into the air towards city on her fake wings and the help of biological jetpack pushing her through the skies of New York City. Looking behind her she could already see the robots giving chase and she flew lower towards the city when it was known that they too had energy weapons. Blue beams shot past Fluttershy as she rolled into a dive towards the late morning streets of the city, once again dealing with killer robots. At this point it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Fluttershy was highly frustrated with being attacked by robots again.

Shooting straight towards the streets, with a twirl she leveled out and started to juke between the commuting cars with blast of energy chasing her tail and striking the streets around her. The pony swerved into an alleyway and rolled so that her head and hooves were facing the narrow walls. She came out the other side of the alleyway hearing explosions behind her as three Jack Bots had crumpled themselves trying to chase her into the narrow passageway.

It was rather apparent that Fluttershy had a speed advantage as the jetpack she wore was made with the express purpose of keeping up with Star Commands finest. She was able to outmaneuver a pack of five Jack Bots by flying around the corner where she stopped, then threw a pod grenade where the five Jack Bots were going to be. It destroyed them in a tangle of destructive glowing vines. She hadn’t liked that they were hitting her surroundings where they might have hurt someone. She had to find a quieter place to run to or else someone was bound to get hurt.

On a rooftop a woman in black and green jumpsuit was tossing a computer chip up in the air, she still had it in her even after all this time. She still wasn’t sure what those guys were going to use it for, but she didn’t like the idea of it falling into their hands. It had been so easy too; there hadn’t a single complication at all.

Of course the minute she thought that a pink, green and yellow blob shot by taking the chip with it after she tossed it up in the air. The woman just stood there with a surprised look on her face. After her perfect daylight robbery went off without a hitch the chip just gets stolen from her, her of all people!

Leaping off the roof the pale skinned woman with the long black hair used her clawed gloves on the walls to slide down to her motorcycle, whoever that was wasn’t going to get away with stealing what she just stole!

“So you are who he is after, Wings of Tinabi!” The deep sounding voice was the only warning Fluttershy got after she finished stashing away the strange piece of metal she had found in her mouth after flying too close to a roof with more Jack Bots on her tail.

There was a sharp pain in Fluttershy’s left shoulder that sent her spiraling towards the streets and she saw her suits left fake wing falling through the air away from her. She hit the top of an eighteen wheeler and bounced once with a grunt, before coming to a stop when her suit clung to the truck the next time she landed sending a shock throughout her body as it attempted to bounce again. Rolling onto her hooves she gave of a yelp of pain while bringing up her right hoof up to her left shoulder, she saw a lot of blood when she pulled it back. She looked to her left shoulder and there was a huge gash in it.

Looking up from her shoulder and damaged suit Fluttershy saw a colorful rainbow swinging around and back towards her, for a second she thought it might have been Rainbow Dash. Hanging from this strange thing spewing rainbows was a large round human in dark ninja gear and he was wielding a sharp sword that was covered slightly in her blood.

Fluttershy felt the heat of a blast of energy striking just behind her and she looked over her shoulder at the Jack Bots and then back to what looked to the human being using a strange object to fly. She prepared herself for the incoming human who had a flying rainbow streak held in his left hand while he was wielding a sword in his right.

Once the flying human got close enough Fluttershy rolled to her left despite the agony it put on her shoulder, during her roll she kicked out a pod grenade from her right hind hoof as the trailers roof was being gouged out by the absurdly sharp weapon. Seconds after his passing the man was close enough to three Jack Bots that were currently shooting up the truck when the pod grenade that went into the folds between his belly and clothes finally went off entangling him and the Jack Bots.

The flying tubby masked ninja let out a howl of pain when the vines engulfing him erupted in a flash of red energy and caused the robots to explode hitting him with shrapnel. After a moment of faltering in the air he then started fly up after having narrowly avoided smashing directly into the ground.

Frowning as he was swerving around for another go at her having not been stopped by the pod grenade, Fluttershy willed the left wing of her suit to grow back faster. After a moment the end of her cut off fake wing started bubbling and out popped a newly grown wing, she immediately took to the air barely avoided getting slashed up again by the rather heavyset looking human. Looking back at him, she saw he was able to keep up with her unlike the Jack Bots, she also saw the large smear of red on the top of the vehicle she left behind.

The pony was looking around for a place to take cover, looking off to the side of a street she saw a forest and blinked. Why was there a forest in the middle of the city? Shooting higher into the air she saw a rectangle of woodlands and several bodies of water in the middle of the city, it reminded her of Manehattans Central Park. She swerved out of the way of getting cut in half by the tubby man and something went wrong as she heard a sputtering noised.

Looking over her left shoulder, which the suit grew over to staunch the bleeding, Fluttershy’s heart leapt into her throat as she saw a slash through the exhaust plant sprouting out of the back of her suit. She also noticed she was losing speed and altitude; she was stuck gliding for now until her suit could repair the damage. She performed sharp roll to the right putting her on a course straight towards the tree filled park, with the tubby man nicking both her back legs at the hock.

Fluttershy dove under another sword swing that might have taken off her head and straight for the tree’s, she lifted up and started flapping the fake wings to keep her height as she started flicking through the tree’s with the screaming bulgy ninja guy still on her tail. After a moment avoiding more of his swift sword attacks, the pudgy man got stuck between two trees and Fluttershy smiled as she dropped to the ground and started galloping along the pathway despite the stress it put on her three injured legs.

Several Jack Bots appeared and tried to grapple her with their arms that popped out of the nubs at the sides of their bodies, she rolled between two of them and kept running as fast as she could. She looked for tree’s to hide in as she galloped, only to find herself surrounded by twenty Jack Bots before she could find a good place to hide in. She had been cornered into a copse of trees with no way out.

“Hah got you now, be prepared to hoof over the Lunar Locket to me!” Jack said as he took a pose as he hovered in the air.

“Monkey ninjas attack!” A man in a tree was pointed a finger at Jack Spicer and he was caught flatfooted when a ton of masked monkeys swarmed out of the tree’s attacking his Jack Bots. He leapt out of the tree and started charging straight for Jack. “Hand over that staff boy!”

“What? You’re not getting your hands on my Monkey Staff!” Jack shouted and knocked away several monkeys with a swift twirl of his staff. “Jack Bots defend me!”

Fluttershy had no idea what was going on anymore, but she was generally okay with it since Jack and the man with what looked like monkey hands and feet were busy with each other. She tried to slink away from the fighting robots and monkeys, only for her to be grasped around the neck roughly and was promptly slammed bodily back first into a tree. It was as if things weren’t exacerbating her shoulder and leg wounds enough already.

“Okay, I’m only going to say this once and I’m being nice here. Hand over the chip!” Whoever this woman was, she was scary. Her right hand was threateningly glowing green with energy while she was choking Fluttershy with her left.

“Why is it always monkeys?!” A male scream came off from the side. Both Fluttershy and the woman with threatening countenance with looked towards Jack Spicer, the man with monkey attributes and now a blonde guy all fighting a vicious three way hand to hand battle. Only Jack Spicer had a small edge in the battle with his tail wielding the monkey staff.

“Just great, the buffoon is here. If he’s here then…” The woman trailed off before she dropped Fluttershy and rolled out of the way of a flying kick, leaving Fluttershy to catch her breath. “Then my cupcake isn’t too far behind.”

“Do I even want to ask what’s going on here Shego?” The red head that had just liberated Fluttershy took a battle stance. “I have to wonder if you’re the reason everything in New York has recently gone insane. Also there’s something about a stolen computer chip that I’d like to ask you about.”

“Look Pumpkin, I was kind of in the middle of something really important here.” The woman in the black and green jumpsuit held up her hands in a non threatening manner.

“Yes, very important because you were choking… whatever that poor adorable looking thing is! I can only guess that DN Amy is around too.” The so called Pumpkin pointed at Fluttershy and then sent a pointed stare to the one she called Shego while taking an aggressive stance.

“Um… I’ll just be going now… I’m sure everything will work itself out just fine without me around.” Fluttershy slowly started slinking away again until she felt something grab on to her tail.

“Oh no you don’t, you’re not getting away that easily!” The woman called Shego yanked Fluttershy into air and then pulled her into a full bodied hold, she held glowing clawed glove up to Fluttershy’s cheek. “Look as I was saying… wow, I’m not really building a case for myself here by taking a hostage am I. This little… what are you?”

“My name is Fluttershy and I’m a pony.” It was bad enough Fluttershy had to deal with her shoulder and leg wounds with the toxins still in her blood that enhances her sensitivity to pain from any injury. She knew that a normal pony would have been catatonic by this point from the trauma alone. “Please don’t hurt me.”

“It’s okay; I’m not going to hurt you any more than I need to. Just give me back the chip you took!” Shego received a dumb questioning look from the pony. “It’s the small thing made of plastic and metal. You should know what it is; you took it when you flew right by me.”

“Oh… that thing that flew into my mouth, of course I’ll give it to you. Can you please let me down now?” As soon as she was on the ground Fluttershy dug into her right hoof saddlebag and pulled out the chip and held it out to Shego. The green and black clad human grumpily snatched it out of Fluttershy’s hoof causing her to shy away from the frightening woman.

“Thank you. Now run along back whatever kind of sappy cutesy thing it is you…” Shego dove into Fluttershy rolling her out of the way of a sword that flashed by. Her jumpsuit took a small bit of damage and that really cheesed her off. She saw that Kim had also dove out of the way of flying fat guy with the sword and she looked to be surprised to see Shego save Fluttershy. Now the super powered woman hands were lit ablaze as she stood up and she was glaring at the hovering sumo ninja. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to a sumo ninja me old boss Drakken hired a long while ago would you? So who are you and what’s the big deal with trying to kill small, meek and pathetic here?”

“I am Tubbimura and she has Shen Gong Wu, I will slay her and take it as my own.” The large guy side as he dropped to the ground with a loud thud, creating a shockwave from all his blubber shaking as he landed.

“Now that’s where we’re going to have a big disagreement.” Shego growled and got ready to fight Tubbimura the sumo ninja. “Hey princess, make sure this pony gets to safety while I deal with fatso here.”

Seconds ago this Shego was treating her roughly, but now she’s protecting her? Fluttershy was highly confused, as if everything else going on wasn’t confusing enough already.

Author's Note

Might need some editing touch ups.

Otherwise we have the appearance of sumo ninja Tubbimura.

Not only did Xiaolin Showdown have a sumo ninja, but Kim Possible had one as well that Ron Stoppable gave a horrible wedgie to.

It was only a matter of time before Monkey Fist went after the Monkey Staff that Jack usually has on him at all times, wouldn't be hard to imagine this scenario happening.

Shego turning around from catching Fluttershy unaware to protecting her? I think she has always had a strange moral code, one notable thing is that she never kills anyone and is otherwise a rather violent person and a relatively loud thief.

Wings of Tinabi- One of many Shen Gong Wu that allows anything of any size to swiftly fly like an eagle, this one in particular also creates a rainbow vapor trail when in motion. The drawback of this Shen Gong Wu is that it must always occupy one hand to be used, it requires very little concentration to use otherwise.

82

Fluttershy felt her vision go blurry and she tottered a bit on her hooves from where Shego sat her down, she almost fell over until she was steadied by the red head who glared at Shego’s back as she faced down Tubbimura.

“Are you okay?” The red head sounded particularly concerned about this pony since she seemed to look unsteady. She saw the splatters of blood along the strange bit of vegetation this horse like animal with wings was wearing, her concern only grew from there.

“Oh I’m… a little dizzy from the blood loss, he sliced open my shoulder and hit both of my hind legs. My suit is covering the wounds so I should be fine.” In fact the suit she was wearing chose that moment to clamp down over three of her legs in those spots a bit more forcefully, it caused Fluttershy to wince.

“Excuse me princess, but get the noncombatant out of the way or I’ll make you get her out the way!” Shego threw several blasts of green fire from her hands which were sliced in half by Tubbimura’s sword as he charged. She rolled backwards and out of the way of the sumo ninja’s sword which cut a large furrow in the ground when he swung it. She ran forward and launched a punch into his belly over for her fist to bounce off and knock her stumbling backwards when Tubbimura flexed his belly at her. “I mean it, don’t make me turn around and start fighting you at the same time, because you know I will! I doubt that pony as she calls herself is going to get very far as she is with this guy on her butt.”

“You assume that you will be able to prevent me from getting to my goal.” With that the tubby blob of a ninja took a stance with his sword held up above his head for a sweeping slice. He surged forward faster than his general girth would make one think he could go; Shego barely had time to deflect his sword with a glowing hand as a scratch marred her left cheek. “You presume too much.”

“And you’re morbidly obese, but I think it’s a little rude for me to call you out on it!” Shego launched a right hook to his head and followed that stunning blow with a strong left kick sending him flying back and bouncing along the ground. The fact that the sword he wielded had held up to her plasma coated hand was a testament to how good that sword actually was.

The red haired lady shook her head and then hefted a dizzy Fluttershy up into her arms; the pony wasn’t very heavy but was cumbersome and at least didn’t fight suddenly being picked up. She had to avoid the three way fight going on with monkeys, robots and three men performing incredible feats of kung fu, they were quickly out of sight of the flying Sumo Ninja.

“What’s your name and are you really a princess? Well if it’s okay with me asking that is, you don’t really have to answer.” Sure her head was a little fuzzy, but it wasn’t as bad as it could be. She’s had worse cases of blood loss before this. The woman carrying her stopped and became a tad shocked.

“I’m Kim Possible and I can do anything… you’ve never actually heard of me before have you? I guess there’s always a first time for anything. Also no, I’m not a princess that’s just seems to be Shego’s way of teasing me. We don’t really like each other.” Kim looked around and carried Fluttershy to a tree near a fountain and laid her up against it. “Why was that guy attacking you?”

“It’s because of this thing called a Shen Gong Wu. It’s called the Lunar Locket and it apparently gives me the power to control the moon.” The pendant Fluttershy was wearing happened to be very odd. It gave off a magical feeling, but it didn’t do much more than that. The fact that it even had Luna’s cutie mark on it meant something very important, not that Fluttershy could tell what that was. “I don’t like the idea of anyone having that kind of power, even me.”

“And I really don’t like dealing with magical situations… Wade I’m sending you a scan of several things, what can you tell me?” Kim pushed at the large round object on her wrist. A wide beam of light swept from the bottom of Fluttershy’s form to the top of her head where her ears twitched. “Is this pony going to be okay?”

“This is amazing Kim, the suit is tapping into that equines biology and is highly symbiotic, it’s sealed off her wounds sufficiently. She’s stable at the moment and should be perfectly fine as long as she doesn’t take off the suit; the nasty one in her shoulder needs stitches. I don’t know anything about device around her neck that isn’t giving off a magical signature. The magical object is from a series of mystical objects called Shen Gong Wu. I think you’ve run into some more mystical stuff this time Kim and it’s actually not monkey related for once.” There were some clacking sounds coming from Kim’s wrist. “That Shen Gong Wu in particular is the Lunar Locket and controls the power of the moon. There’s a lot of these Shen Gong Wu. There’s even this one called the Monkey Staff in particular that seems like a good target for Monkey Fist, given it gives the wielder natural Monkey Kung Fu abilities. As for the being in the plant suit she’s definitely not one of DN Amy’s crazy creatures, her biology is more naturally advanced and she happens to be a magical being. Looks like a pegasus crossed with some non native chiropteran DNA, she doesn’t match any terrestrial species.”

“Um… yes that’s my species, I’m a pegasus pony. I had an unfortunate magical accident that led to my more bat related features.” She didn’t know who Kim was talking to, but Fluttershy decided to speak up anyway. She was amazed by all the communications technology of all the other worlds that she has seen, even though it usually seemed less than personal than meeting someone in person. “I’m also not from this planet; I heard humans don’t react well to aliens.”

“You’re really adorable for any alien I’ve ever met, so don’t worry about it. Well at least I know what the third guy fighting Ron and Monkey Fist is using. Thanks for the confirmation on some things Wade. Can you tell me if we’ve got any more problems inbound, I just saw a Sumo Ninja start a fight with Shego and I don’t think she’s actually going to come out of that anywhere near unscathed. She’ll likely give as well as she gets though.” Kim didn’t ignore Fluttershy and while she looked at her right wrist waiting for this Wade to respond, she sat down and started to use her left hand to rub the pony behind the ears. Fluttershy cooed softly and leaned into Kim’s soft comforting touch despite the moderate amount of pain she was in, she liked the friendly petting.

“Not good, I’m detecting signs of several WEE gunships heading for Central Park and from what I can see they’re not being intercepted by anyone.” A few more clacking sounds from Kim’s wrist sounded out. “I think they’re taking you and Ron seriously this time, they’re actually pulling out some military grade weaponry. Watch your back Kim; I think they might be gunning for you.”

“Well, this day just keeps getting better and better. Will you be okay here all by yourself Fluttershy?” After waiting a moment to think it over the pony nodded at Kim’s question. She stood up and started to leave. “Right, stay here or find a safer place to hide.”

Fluttershy was left alone at the base of the tree and in the distance she could hear fighting in the distance pick up even worse after several loud flying giant propeller vehicles flew overhead. Looking around she stood up and turned to the tree and started climbing up it using her suits ability to cling to surfaces. Until her suit repaired itself she was stuck using the fake wings for gliding, she could use them to fly but that would require a lot more concentration.

Getting to a rather large sturdy branch that looked to have been partially carved, she looked around and saw Jack Spicer flying away with an obvious look of panic on his face along with the Monkey Staff. He didn’t have any more than three Jack Bots with him as he retreated. Despite his haggard and beaten appearance Fluttershy was happy that he was okay and still had the Monkey Staff. It certainly looked like he lost almost all his robots though, so at least he wouldn’t be bothering her anymore.

Tensing her ears she heard several explosions in the distance, the flying objects were actively attacking the surrounding trees and she moved closer to the base of the branch she was on with worry. Several hundred rounds of ammunition ripped into the trees near her position and she looked up at the flying object that was spraying death everywhere. Oh she hoped all those poor monkeys were okay, not to mention all the other animals living in the area.

One of the explosive devices being fired by the flying machines hovering around in circles high above the ground hit near the tree the pony was in and a there was a loud shriek as the entire tree shook. Something fell from above straight onto Fluttershy’s face as she clamped down on her ears with her hooves. Taking her hooves off her ears she blinked several times as she saw a small pink and brown bat clamped onto the end of snout and shivering while her head darted about looking for the danger.

The little bat suddenly turned her head to Fluttershy when she inhaled some; they sat there for a moment with the little blue eyed bat just looking at her curiously and she was doing it right back.

“Um… hey there… can you tell me what’s going on, what’s causing all that noise?” The bat then meekly stood up on Fluttershy’s nose while dusting off her wings. “Oh I’m Foxglove by the way, I’m sorry for landing on you.”

“I’m Fluttershy; it’s very nice to meet you and it’s alright. Those gunship things are attacking some acquaintances of mine over that way.” The bat turned around on her nose and Fluttershy pointed out the problem to Foxglove as several green balls of burning energy shot up through the trees and sent one of the gunships spiraling towards the ground smoking.

“Oh dear, it’s one of those situations… a mad scientist or world conqueror must be after something again.” The little bat shook her head sadly. “Why did Nimnul have to go and start the age of mad science?”

“Are you magical?” Fluttershy felt something odd emanating from Foxglove; it was the same feeling of magic she got from when she landed on places like Aldebaran or Popstar. The planet Earth didn’t feel magical. There was something magical about it, only it was rather muted to background noise levels.

“Oh, yes, I am. Are you magical too?” A nod that almost knocked her off the pony’s face left Foxglove smiling brightly. “That’s wonderful news; I really haven’t talked to or really met many other magical beings.”

A few bullets ripped through the air through the tree they were in nearly hitting one of Fluttershy’s ears. They both gave off a scream as Fluttershy flopped backwards out of the tree onto her back with a scared little bat clutching to her nose and hyperventilating.

“Are you okay, did you get hit?” Foxglove checked over the pony’s body and didn’t see anything wrong or holes in the strange suit she was wearing.

“No, just a little shaken up and the fall hurt a bit. It’s not very safe around here is it, do you know of a safer place we could go to?” It made sense to Fluttershy to ask the local fauna for directions to a safe haven, she sounded friendly and was a cute little bat. She wanted no part in what was going on over where the explosions taking place; she didn’t want to be hit by something like a cannonball and she could already see some large craters in the ground from the large rod like shapes that launched from the loud flying machines. They were clearly firing things much deadlier than large round spheres of solid metal. “I don’t like the idea of getting shot or violence.”

“I don’t like violence or getting shot at that much either. I know of a safe place to go, follow me!” Foxglove took to the air and away from the battle, she watched as Fluttershy’s suit grew wings and she took off once it appeared the pony was following. She didn’t question things when it came to magical beings. “New York has generally been okay about stuff like this, but today it must be pretty bad if there’s heavy weapons involved. It’s sometimes best to leave stuff like that to someone else who won’t immediately die if they get hit. I almost permanently lost the use of one of my wings that way.”

The little bat lead Fluttershy to a nearby bridge and flew under it, Fluttershy dropped onto the stonework at the base of the bridge and trudged underneath it to see one of Foxglove’s wings glowing green slightly as she touched a brick. The bricks surrounding that particular one slid back and out the way creating an archway.

“This place is guaranteed to be a safe, a friend of mine keeps it beautiful year round and it’s his home. Though he’s kind of an oddball, he’s taught me some really neat things. Oh I hope he’s home, he makes some of the best cricket cookies ever... oh and I’m sure he’ll have something fit for you to eat as well.” Looking over her shoulder Foxglove could see that Fluttershy looked a little pensive, but still managed to motion the pony through the bricks. She fluttered up and landed on the pony’s nose. “Hope he’s in, he’ll fix all your woes after a having bad day. He’s also the one who helped me get my wing back in order.”

Fluttershy moved through the bricks and saw a staircase leading down to a beautiful garden with light shining from above. She carefully trotted down the stairway as the bricks closed up behind her causing her heart to jump up her throat slightly, she continued onward down the steps. At the bottom of the staircase she looked around and felt that the danger was worlds behind her, a calming peace swept over her body making her feel warm and fuzzy despite the injuries and the toxin still in her body from Planet Z. There was a little cottage at the edge of the well lit enclosed grove full of sunlight and… were those flowers alive? A mystified Fluttershy wandered forward gaping at the floral beauty around her, some of it actually alive and dancing.

Tubbimura flew up and swung his sword taking off the rotor of the gunship causing it to drop towards the ground. With a tap of his sword he sent the still spinning blades of the helicopter flying straight towards a tree like a giant shuriken. After one of the blades sunk straight through tree, there was a shrill scream of agony as a familiar green and black suited woman fell away from the tree clutching her right shoulder where blood could be seen seeping through her fingers.

“It seems I have lost track of my quarry because of you.” Tubbimura shot away from the scene on the wings of Tanabi laughing out loud. “No matter, you have been a great challenge of my skills. Even then I will still find her and retrieve the Wu, but for now I must leave as you have taken up to much of my time.”

Shego gritted her teeth as she lay bleeding out on the ground with three bullet wounds in her and having suddenly almost lost an arm to having a helicopter blade that just shattered her shoulder bone ramming its way through the tree. She wasn’t having a very good day at all; at least all the light nicks along her body weren’t the worst she was feeling.

“Shego is down, well mostly. We need to move in and secure the package!” A voice from the only gunship still in the air called out. “Hold on I’m getting word from the boss… he says to make sure Shego dies as she has crossed him for the last time. Didn’t he say that the last five times she escaped his wrath? No, I’m not questioning your orders Gemini Sir!”

“D-Damn it, shouldn’t have said anything about this being too easy.” Shego struggled to get standing; at least she didn’t let the pony hold on to the chip. These guys would have certainly murdered her for it and Shego didn’t want to be responsible for something like that. Her right arm was useless, her left leg had a bullet hole in it and she had two chunks of metal still deep in her torso. If she was going to go down, she’d do it swinging. If she somehow survived this, her super powers would see her healed back to full strength in no time. The last helicopter was a big issue; the guys with guns weren’t nearly as much. She must have really messed with Gemini’s cornflakes today if he wants her dead this badly.

Hiding in the nearby tree’s Kim Possible frowned at the scene as she watched the super powered thief struggling to stand up after having been perforated and slashed up. She had managed to help knock out Monkey Fist out of action and his monkey ninjas retreated with his body. She was going to fight Shego, only she saw her on the ground bleeding out. She also saw men from the Worldwide Evil Empire armed with rifles in the distance making their way towards Shego carefully. The helicopter was maneuvering into position to possibly finish her off.

“Ron, we have to help Shego!” Kim said to her blonde companion who was covered in monkey bites and scratches. She was busy trying to think of a way to do that against armed assailants with guns, ones who would not think twice about shooting her at all.

“I’ll be right there with you KP, I just need to catch my breath. Those monkeys are vicious and that new guy was pretty good.” Even if Ron didn’t like Shego, he didn’t want to see her die. She was easy on the eyes and pretty cool to talk too even when she was beating the stuffing out of you, he didn’t think he had any more monkey shines in him though. His little naked mole rat buddy Rufus was also tuckered out from watching his back.

A loud revving sound was heard and the last helicopter looked to have impacted with a solid wall, it had and it was made of pure sound. A strange wheel shaped thing with what appeared to be a red chinchilla on it shot by them running over a person who had just leveled a rifle at Ron thus earning his and Kim’s attention to the gunmen sneaking up on them as the two strange creatures quickly disappeared. They quickly dispatched those guys with some well timed use of grappling hooks.

A minute later a red dragon could be seen knocking out some other guys in the gray gear as well, the bullets just harmlessly bounced off of his skin. He wasn’t the only one that made the situation that much easier as four strangers in red robes jumped off of a big green flying Chinese dragon. The four humans started dancing around any bullets shot at them and began shooting blasts of elemental energy right back in retaliation.

Kim felt like she had entered the Twilight Zone by watching other people fighting the minions and wondered if that was what people saw when she did it. She quickly made her way over to Shego watching as several other people started fighting the armed men from the Worldwide Evil Empire. She knelt down and tried to figure out a way to help Shego who glared up at her defiantly even when she had fallen down and wasn’t apparently getting back up.

“Well don’t you… just stand there….” It hurt for Shego to talk even that much with such vehemence in her voice. “Save me…”

“Move out of the way, coming through. I got some medical tomatoes on me, we need a med kit over here!” Bonnie was a tad upset that Fluttershy caused more trouble than was thought possible. She was more importantly worried about where Fluttershy was, but she was sure Roller and Shush would find her. “I swear how does that pony attract this much trouble, I thought the worse that would come of this would be that Jack guy eventually giving up because she was so cute and cuddly. I hope she’s alright and doesn’t mind that I borrowed her saddlebags, I’m not letting her out of my sight after this.”

Kim stared at a strange green alien creature that reminded her of that one trip to Hawaii, there was definitely some relation to that cute fuzzy blue guy she had met there. She should probably ask her cousin Betty about what was going on in Hawaii. It was hard to think that one of her cousins did what she does, only on a much grander scale and its one of the reasons she was let in on the alien thing without repercussions. There was a good reason why Global Justice didn’t remember the Lowardian attack at all, Kim definitely agreed with the reasons why they shouldn’t remember.

“Oh, I have guests! It’s so nice to see you again Foxglove… well now who’s this. Now that doesn’t look good at all. Oh you poor dear sit down, sit down! I’ll put on some tea and I’ll see if I can fix that problem of yours.” A strange little humanoid guy with a cap that had a jingling bell on the end of it came out and scrutinized Fluttershy. After a moment he held out a four fingered hand with a green discolored thumb. “Don’t you worry about a thing; I’ll take care of that nasty dark magic for you. Hi, I’m Stanley by the way.”

Author's Note

Haven't been feeling too hot recently, which explains why I'm sleeping fifteen to sixteen hours a day when I lay down.

Anyway, guess what happens to Fluttershy next chapter? Well it's not the most expected thing in the world, but it'll definitely solve a long term problem the pony has been having with her bat features. No bets on it causing even more problems though, that would be a suckers bet.

Good thing Fluttershy left the area or the dragons would have really freaked her out.

Foxglove the Bat (AKA Foxy)- She once had to work for a vacuum riding witch, in the course of doing so she became infatuated with a chipmunk. After the witch was defeated she started 'hanging' around Central Park in New York. She has done some impossible things that until they are pointed out, they shouldn't have even been possible in the first place. It is because she didn't know she had magical powers until she met Stanley, she was capable of subconsciously tapping her magic as a pegasus might for flying.

Stanley the Troll- From 'A troll in central park', met Foxglove some time after his story concludes and started giving her magic lessons when she showed an aptitude for using magic. His magical powers have only 'grown' more powerful since his story.

Is it a stretch to say Atomic Betty is related to Kim Possible?

I will now attempt to cut back on all the convolution. Also yes while Shego is really quite tough, Tubbimura really knows how to throw his weight around.

83

“I’m affected by Dark Magic? I don’t feel bad or sickly aside from my recent injuries which I will need to see to if I want to remove my suit.” Fluttershy had finally decided to bring the subject up. She watched as Stanley the little troll of Central Park bumbled about his home getting things together in a rather spectacular manner. With a crash she cringed as the poor troll had somehow managed to injure himself again and yet managed to at the same time get his tea started. There were also two types of cookies baking in the nearby oven.

“Stanley is a really nice guy compared to all the other trolls I’ve seen and he’s a little clumsy, but if he says your afflicted then you must be. I haven’t exactly figured out how to detect magic yet.” Foxglove’s ears sagged as she twirled the tip of her wing around on the table as she sat on it. “Stanley tells me all magically talented creatures are capable of it in their own unique way.”

“Well have you tried using your echo-location to read if there is magic coming off of other beings or things?” Fluttershy wasn’t an expert on magic, but she did get involved in a lot things where magic happened. Personally she herself could do some magic with a cloud, that was about the maximum scope of her magical abilities that came naturally. The magical echo-sight thing that lets her see the things she can hear outside of her normal sight range was something that she thought Foxglove could do.

“No screeching in my house Foxglove, also no bringing brooms to life with magic as I can’t stress that one enough with you young lady. You can go outside if you want to give her suggestion a try.” Stanley the troll came over and sat down at the table with them looking at Fluttershy; he chuckled and smiled a lot because he was in general a jovial little guy. “I can feel magic, mostly through nature and you’re rife with natural magical energy. There’s a small bit of darkness, but it seems more rather benign than harmful. Might I even say playful? Not all dark magic is immediately evil or bad, but even small smatterings of it can be pretty nasty. That magic is twisting your form so that look like you do.”

“What kind of magic can you do Fluttershy?” Now Foxglove seemed a lot livelier as her ears perked up, she was interested in what Fluttershy could do as all magical creatures could do something naturally with their magic. It was like her personal ability of magically offsetting a lot of weight that a normal bat wouldn’t have been capable of lifting into the air.

“Is it alright if I ask for glass with a little bit of water in it for a demonstration? Not too much, just enough to that I can pour out onto the table. Don’t worry about the water; it will not be on the table for long. The trick really helps with cleaning up spills from carpets.” With a flick of his tail the troll sent a glass with a little bit of water hovering to the table where it settled in front of Fluttershy. She could have used her own water, but she was saving it for when she really needed it. “Thank you Stanley.”

Fluttershy lifted the cup and upended the water onto the table away from Foxglove who looked on intrigued. Fluttershy tapped a hoof into the puddle of water and it formed a cloud surprising Foxglove, the little bat gave off a delighted squeak in seeing magic other than what Stanley did on a usual basis.

“My, that is interesting. A force of nature unto yourself, can you make it rain? Obviously not in here you know, but how about out there?” It wasn’t often Stanley got to witness other forms of nature magic and here was a natural at it.

“I can even condense it back into water while squeezing out the impurities.” Moving the cloud over to the window she pushed it outside slightly and gave it a tap, it drizzled over the flowers outside the window who cheered in response. “Pegasus ponies have the ability to create and manipulate the weather; we don’t normally look like this. There are also earth ponies that are one with nature and are good at growing food and unicorns that have the ability to learn all kinds of magic; usually they specialize in doing one thing or another. Oh and I’m from another planet, the planet of Equus.”

“That’s not hard to believe, a close friend of mine has met with some aliens before and his friends confirmed it. I kind of thought you were odd for a pegasus and I’m not just talking about the strange twisted bat features you have.” Seeing a look of confusion she was receiving from the pony Foxglove held up her wings in a placating manner. Her head went to odd places when she started thinking of a rather hunky chipmunk, such as Fluttershy being vastly different from native magic horses. “I mean the pegasi and unicorns that come to Central Park every now and then look too much alike at times. They are all white fur, grey manes and their horns all come in the same general golden in color. They are also a lot bigger and have longer faces.”

“What other magical creatures exist on this world? All the ponies where I’m from come in all colors of the rainbow, my friend Rainbow Dash has being colorful as her most defining feature.” Before Fluttershy could continue get into a deep discussion about planetary similarities she winced slightly when she shifted. Stanley got a firm look on his face and stood up to walk around the table.

“I’m so sorry for being such a terrible host, let’s go outside and take care of your injuries and that little bit of dark magic right now. Foxglove, please be a dear and mind the tea and cookies while I deal with this will you? Remember to wait until they cool a little, I know you like cricket cookies but don’t hurt yourself like last time!” The bat nodded and turned to the stove to watch the tea and she could spare a little magic to retrieve the cookies from Stanley’s oven, while Stanley personally led Fluttershy out into his grove to help her with all her problems. “I like seeing all my friends healthy and able, I won’t sit here and watch you be in pain any longer. My magic isn’t good for hurting anyone, but it’s good at healing, growing and giving life to everything around me. Can you please remove that rather nice suit of yours? I must admit that I would like to figure out how to make one of my own eventually, but that’s for another time. I just don’t want it to interfere with my magic; I’ll even fix it for you after I’m done helping you out as it looks a little torn and it’s sad that it can’t fix itself.”

Fluttershy shyly nodded and was slightly confused that her suit even had emotions. She focused a bit and the Rhizome slowly retreated into backpack form which she quickly shucked and set off to the side. Her shoulder barely scabbing was bleeding freshly and her hind legs were slightly swollen.

“Oh this is going to take a lot, but for someone as nice as you… I would go to any length to help! Now hold still, this may tickle and I promise I’ll absolve you of every little woe your body is going through… yeah, I better put my thumb into this one.” With a flick of his right wrist Stanley’s thumb started glowing a vibrant green while slowly increasing in strength as he started focusing his magic to a fine point. He wasn’t the most powerful troll in the world physically, but magically he was the champion of a grand and powerful magic. The very gift of ‘life’ itself only meant for those pure of heart.

Fluttershy closed her eyes cringing as Stanley approached her and then she felt him gently rub her nose with his thumb and his fingers cupped her chin. That’s when she black out feeling an incredible power flow through her taking away the toxins, taken away all the pain and she even felt the many cracks in her mind slowly seal up. There was this odd feeling of vertigo for a few seconds which was followed by complete and total euphoria.

Roller sat at the top of the stairs watching as the troll performed his magic; he didn’t interfere because he didn’t see anything wrong with the magic in question and Shush had already wandered off and started frolicking and pouncing on the moving magical flowers that weren’t so easily harmed by her playful nature. When the troll caressed Fluttershy’s face there was a blindingly bright flash and it took a few minutes for his sight to come back, he could see that the troll looked rather tired but he still kept a broad smile on his face.

Unfortunately that smile turned into a concerned frown as there was an unexpected side effect to the magic that the troll hadn’t originally intended on.

Roller revved questioningly as he moved forward, the Troll startled a bit before he noted that Roller and Shush meant him no harm. He looked at the unintended side effect of the troll’s magic and nudged at it and jumped back at the reaction he had caused.

“Never seen quite an amazing magical creature like him before… oh look, she’s waking up… how do we break the news to her Foxglove? Do you think she’ll be upset with me? I don’t even know how it happened and I don’t know how she’ll react to it!” Stanley sounded rather panicked about something.

“Calm down Stanley, I’m sure she’ll take it well. Honestly I don’t think she’ll be angry. A little surprised maybe, but not angry.” Foxglove sounded neutral and slightly intrigued by whatever was going on. “I actually think it’s cute.”

A friendly revving noise was heard and it sounded like Roller was here, he sounded overly happy about something.

Fluttershy slowly opened her eyes when she heard a whistling noise, she felt like a million bits at the moment and everything was just heavenly. She also felt ticklish and giggled slightly, Stanley’s magic made her feel rather heady. It was as if all was right with the world, despite the fact that she wasn’t quite home yet. She had a blanket over her and she slowly sat up only to get a wheel to the chest, she chuckled slightly and hugged Roller to her chest and leaned her face down to nuzzled the friendly wheel monster.

The pony immediately stopped nuzzling the wheel when she noticed something blocking her vision. She blinked once and then twice, then several more times just to make sure it was real. She reached up with a hoof and gave a gentle tug; her smile couldn’t have gotten any wider after that. Her mane had been restored to its full glory; oh it felt so nice to be able to hide her face behind her mane again.

Stretching out her wings Fluttershy wanted to cheer loudly as possible, both her wings were back to being feathered and shifting to look at her rear end she could see three normal butterflies on it. She couldn’t feel any fangs in her mouth, and her ears were not unnaturally large anymore. She was finally completely back to normal, she didn’t feel any of that pain toxin in her body and her wounds were gone. She ignored everything else in the room and she flew straight for Stanley to give him a great big hug.

“I’m cured, you have no idea how long I’ve been stuck looking like that! Thank you so much Stanley… um what’s wrong?” Despite his halfway impish smile at her good cheer, he didn’t look as happy as Fluttershy was at the moment. She tilted her head so that her mane fell into her face and relished in the feel of her soft locks once more shifting across her face. It was not just a safety blanket just for her, it could do the same for others as well and it eased the tension in the room a bit as she shied away from the friendly troll slightly.

“Well gee, how do I explain this? I don’t know how it happened, but there might be a few positive side effects from what I did and I’m not sure how to say this. I think it best that I show you one of the end results of my having healed you.” Stanley hoped she took this well, he was still piecing together how it was possible. He was still factoring in how much magic he used and compared how much of Fluttershy’s own magic might have muddled things a bit. Shaking his head he went off to the side and came back with something. “Hold out your hooves and be careful.”

Fluttershy held up both her hooves and a bundle was carefully place into them and she held the bundle looking a bit confused. After unraveling it a bit she got a rather big shock, it had fluffy pink fur that was exactly the same color as her mane and its red mane was at the same length Fluttershy had her hair before Stanley fixed things. It didn’t take long for Fluttershy to register that she was holding a sleeping little filly.

“How…” It was hard to put into words what she was seeing but Fluttershy was pretty sure that was the main question to ask. She carefully unraveled the rest of the filly, her tail looked as luxuriant as Fluttershy’s did and it was only her red mane that looked chopped short as if by a knife. A moment later she finally noticed a defining feature of the little filly, she had large bat wings. Covering the shivering filly back up with the blanket brought Fluttershy’s attention to the two cute little fangs poking out of her upper lips.

“My magic did exactly as I said it would. I healed you, but I also created a child. Don’t honestly know how it happened though unless… well the dark magic was rather clingy.” Taking up a thinking pose Stanley watched as Foxglove flew around pouring tea for four, Roller had declined a cup for himself and Shush was thirsty. Shush could act rather ladylike in sipping her tea, despite the fact that she was constantly wandering away from the table and climbing up the walls and was in general distracting to poor Stanley who had a moment of insight. “I think I know what happened, all that clingy dark magic that twisted your form was rather hard to separate from you and it must have clung to the blood coming out of you when my healing magic went into you. Must have pushed the dark magic into the blood that my magic wasn’t going to heal, my magic caused the dark magic use itself up to create a new body somehow using my ability to bring things to life. Since it was your blood… can I say this was a happy accident at least? It took a lot out of me and I really do like children.”

Hanging in the air were the unsaid words that this little bat filly was Fluttershy’s magical child, at least the pony didn’t have to go through childbirth to have one of her very own. The little filly’s nose wrinkled and she yawned before opening her bright purple eyes; she stared up cutely at Fluttershy before she started screeching softly. Apparently she had gained Fluttershy’s disposition for not making loud noises and was softly crying out for food.

“Oh my, she’s hungry. Can I bother you for some fruit Stanley or something else to feed her with?” When she got home Fluttershy just might buy out Applejack’s orchard if this little vampire fruit pony was as apple happy as she had been.

“Oh sure I have fruit, anything in particular though or something that you don’t think she can eat?” Seeing two shakes of the sudden mothers head, Stanley went off and gathered a bowl fruit. He set it on the table and watched Fluttershy pick out a banana.

Holding the banana to the little filly’s mouth she opened wide and sunk both her tiny fangs into it and began suckling on it greedily.

“Now now not too fast, you were just born recently and I don’t want you to get a tummy ache.” The suckling slowed at Fluttershy’s hearing voice; the banana started rapidly turning brown and withered to almost nothing before it was pulled away. The little vampire fruit pony gave a soft screech that it was still hungry. “Oh you’re fur is so soft, just like your voice.”

This time Fluttershy held up an apple and nervously placed it in the path of those two fangs again, the filly didn’t treat the apple any differently than the banana. At least the apple lust that had gripped her previously wasn’t going to be a problem in this filly’s future… provided nothing else went wrong with the filly that was just born out of magic.

Fluttershy dropped the now shriveled husk of the apple and noted that the little filly giggled happily, after a moment the filly screeched again for more food and then she started feeding her grapes one at a time. After draining the juice from the grape the filly would swallow the remains with a smile on little her face.

“She is a hungry little thing isn’t she, so what are you going to call her?” Foxglove got the little filly to coo at her as she flew a circle in the air above her and performed several swoops. After one swoop she had a cricket cookie in her claws. She landed on the table and started nibbling away at it, before carefully lifting her cup of tea to take a sip.

“I think I’ll call her Soft Echo.” Fluttershy put the next fruit up to Soft’s lips and the filly became incredibly exuberant the second the bite landed. Soft had really liked the kiwi fruit which was a little odd. She started patting the little fluffy filly on the back; her fur was as silky as Fluttershy’s mane. “Is that okay my little Soft?”

The little filly gave off a gentle burp and snuggled into Fluttershy’s caressing hooves. Flicking an ear Fluttershy could hear Bonnie outside at the bridge and she turned her head and saw a magical outline of Bonnie and several other being. She still had the echo sight and enhanced hearing? Well Stanley did say there might be some side effects. She picked up a cup of tea while holding Soft in her other leg and took a sip, it tasted like it had honey in it. Life seemed more vibrant to her and things were looking up.

The dispatched WEE people that had attacked Shego and Tubbimura during their fight had been picked up by Global Justice. GJ was led to believe Kim took care of them with Ron and that they were after her personally, all the while everyone else had hidden out of sight. Kim hadn’t offered up Shego on a silver platter for a number of good reasons. Aside from that, Bonnie had acquired the interest of no less than three groups of heroes who were all there for their own personal reason.

“So let me get this straight, you are a woman who was hit by a magical alien comet which explains your powers of throwing plasma balls like one of my brothers. You two are the guardians of New York’s magical side, a half human hybrid and his dog. You two at least remember the problems you had with my youngest brother Stitch back in Hawaii… honestly don’t know how you could have possibly mistaken him for a messed up leprechaun. You three are world traveling average everyday people and mole rat who do ridiculously over the top heroic things all the time, not to mention the mole rat looks an awful lot like my brother Launch minus the spines and you have also seen my family in Hawaii. You four are the ‘Xiaolin Dragon Warriors’ along with their pet dragon who are fated to fight against dark forces that wish to harm the world, which explains the reason why you can toss all those elemental blasts around like candy. Am I missing anything aside from the fact that I’m an alien and Cobra is a top secret agent of the biggest alien cover-up operation across this whole freaking planet?” Bonnie actually gave them all a moment to let it sink in that this was by far the most bizarre convergence she has likely ever seen. “I swear this has got to be the oddest collection of people I’ve ever seen on this planet in one location.”

“I’m not a pet dragon, I’m an iguana!” After a moment the little soot spewing dragon known as Dojo slapped his face once he realized what he said and Bonnie smirked at his stupidity. “Right I’m not a pet or an iguana... though I didn’t know dragons took to hiding amongst humans. It’s probably why Chase Young can’t find them at all; he’s actually quite a danger to the magical world side of things. We’ll need to talk to you all about that Jake, it’s rather important that dragons don’t attract his attention as he might try to commit genocide for that evil soup of his.”

“Right, everyone who has wallets I’m sorry for stealing them from you, also here’s that computer chip thing I took from you minutes ago before we arrived at this bridge where Roller’s tracks come to a stop.” Bonnie turned to the people and started handing out wallets, Shego looked particularly stunned that someone managed to steal something from her without her noticing as she was the best thief born to this planet. Then again Shego was barely standing and had been recently patched up; her shoulder was still a mess. They were at the bridge and saw the small line that was obviously Roller’s path through the grass and a bit of dirt led to the underside of the bridge and then nothing. It was curious spot, so Bonnie was going to wait here for something to come up. “I’m still a galactic class thief after all; I have to keep myself sharp you know. Now where is my little trouble magnet?”

Author's Note

Soft Echo, basically a magical accidental clone who has a lot of Fluttershy's traits and some of her own.

This will definitely cause problems as Fluttershy has been shown to be a walking disaster magnet throughout this story. She now has to now look out for a filly which she will obviously take responsibility for. This just adds to the trouble of being on a highly volatile world of mad science and wild magic.

The crystal gems haven't even been brought into things yet and this is Fluttershy only halfway into her first day on the planet no less. She has barely spent more than two days on Popstar and it's madness.

At least she's cured right?

Just setting the tone for Stanley's place of dwelling.

84

There was a niggling at the back of Foxglove’s head that something was wrong, but she couldn’t tell what it was. The bat looked around and things sing relatively calm and quiet. Almost like that time she almost ate the psychic Cassandra, a gypsy moth with a predilection of completely accurate fortune telling. Things didn’t turn out so well for a first meeting but at least they became friends in the end… the rear end of a pig. It really muddied the issue when Cassandra made that prediction after meeting Foxglove.

“Well gee; I’m so glad you’re taking this so well Fluttershy.” Stanley let his fears melt away as he drink some soothing tea to restore his energy. “For a second there I thought you would have had a conniption from the revelation.”

Something Stanley said caused Foxglove’s ears to shoot straight up and she turned to the pony to start scrutinizing her overall demeanor. After a moment she gasped as she brought her wings over her mouth in sudden understanding of what was actually going on, Fluttershy hadn’t actually accepted the situation quite yet.

“Stanley, remember what happened after you found me after a bullet had torn a large jagged hole through my left wing? I was so upset that the guy I’m attracted to might not want a cripple like me that I ended up sitting under you bridge eating mosquitoes while crying? You know when you found me and healed my wing?” Foxglove was taking a long roundabout way of getting to a point, she decided to try and focus on what she really needed to say. “Something is wrong with Fluttershy and I think you’re magic made her incapable of feeling anything negative.”

“How can you tell?” Stanley just looked at Fluttershy sitting their comfortably sipping at her tea and eating a cookie or two while rocking the little filly in a calm manner. The filly was noticeably incapable of normal speech, but Fluttershy had understood Soft’s cries for food perfectly and so had Foxglove because the filly could naturally speak bat.

“Well I never told you this, but after you fixed my wing… well I might have caused a few issues for my friends with how loopy I was acting.” She moved over to Stanley by walking across the table while thinking about airing out a grievance she tried to overlook previously. “You should try to curb some of your unbridled happiness a little more Stanley…. it’s actually dangerously contagious. I mean look at her, she can’t feel a single negative thing at all and I’ll even show you what I’m talking about.”

Moving over to the pony, Foxglove bit her in the leg that wasn’t holding the little filly Soft and the pony just sat there staring at Foxglove with no reaction to the pain or even shock that Foxglove had sunk her small fangs into her leg. Pulling her fangs out, Foxglove turned to Stanley and gestured at Fluttershy with a wing. The pony still looked particularly happy and didn’t seem to have registered the pain or having been bitten at all.

“Did you need something Foxglove?” A chipper Fluttershy asked after a moment still feeling pretty good about everything, especially the little filly falling asleep in her hooves.

“Oh, I guess I might have overdone it just a teeny bit.” Stanley always had happy thoughts. He felt sheepish about it, so he put a rather positive spin on the situation. “At least she’s in a lucid state and that’s not a completely bad thing right?”

“Cousin’s Boojiboo has head deep in clouds.” Shush stated exuberantly in agreement as she shoved another delicious cookie into her mouth. She was one to talk because she had her head in the clouds near constantly, with nary a thing that could focus her except sweets and getting a pat on the head for a job well done as an eavesdropping specialist. Her tail waggled at the little bundle of joy with the red hair, it actually finally occurred to her what this new filly meant to her. “Ohana got bigger!”

“Okay, don’t all you have better things to do?” Bonnie was getting a bit grumpy that she had all these people waiting around her.

“I’m injured, so I’m staying here out of self preservation that all of these guys will have to save me since they’re heroes.” Shego didn’t think she’d survive on her own at the moment with one of her arms halfway falling off of her body.

“I’m here to protect the magical side of things, a lot of stuff happens in Central Park and I’m just here to make sure none of you hurt anyone or anything that’s under my jurisdiction.” Jake had matured well enough after what happened with the dark dragon, he had no pressing matters this day and was actually up for doing his dragon thing. Besides Central Park was relaxing and if Bonnie’s friend was magical as Fu said she was, then he would have to protect her as long as she was in New York.

“Me, Rufus and Ron are here to watch out for Shego. Hey don’t look so surprised, I exactly don’t hate you and you almost lost an arm today Shego! I kind of even wanted to apologize for the tower thing.” Kim seemed a bit sheepish, but she wanted to make full amends for something she did in the past and Bonnie didn’t seem to care that much about it. “I also want to know what all those WEE soldiers were doing here in New York.”

“Apology accepted princess, I shouldn’t have gotten careless. That flying tub of lard was really tough and throwing WEE gunships into the mix didn’t help any.” Shego was grumpy sounding, most likely because she was trying not to move her shoulder too much. It was currently splinted thanks to the medical kit Bonnie had procured from the CIA guy. “I have no other choice but to accept help from you, no matter how much it hurts my pride to say it.”

“Are you going to explain what that chip does or the WEE soldiers Shego?” Kim could see that Shego wasn’t very forthcoming and didn’t press it at the moment. Even Wade didn’t know what the chip was and the fact that the Worldwide Evil Empire was after meant something big was happening that definitely acquired her attention. She didn’t care how dangerous things were, lasers were effectively more dangerous than bullets and she still got by without getting seriously injured so far.

Bonnie saw Shego blushing faintly as she looked at Kim and connected the two dots together that Shego didn’t want Kim to be put into the direct path of danger. One sided love interest? It wasn’t her business to pry as she turned to the four dragon warriors and their little dragon.

“We’re here to make sure the Shen Gong Wu is taken care of.” Kimiko the only girl in the four warriors group offered up her voice as the spokesperson. “If you can protect it well enough, then we’ll leave you alone.”

“Yes Kimiko is right; any Shen Gong Wu can be very dangerous and is the condiment priority for us aside from fighting the forces of evil.” Omi the little monk of had no idea he was getting strange stares.

“He means it’s our top priority to deal with Shen Gong Wu and since there is a Wu around there will be a lot of people after it. We’ve already seen Tubbimura leaving the area and you told us Jack Spicer was here, so we’ve got our reasons to be here.” Raimundo crossed his arms on the bridges railing and stared at the placid water under the bridge.

“Yes, topping priority!” Omi added in after Raimundo with a smile. “It is exactly as I said.”

“Our little partner here is a few bricks shy of a full wall.” The big guy named Clay stated as an explanation for Omi’s habit of mincing words or phrases.

“Ugh, I’m surrounded by crazy people and it’s just par for the course.” Bonnie just held rubbed at her head with both her hands. “Where’s my sister and that wheel? We can’t be here all day.”

After a moment Bonnie noticed that her glass knife was missing and she immediately turned to Shego with a stern look. Shego raised an eyebrow and held up the knife in her good hand by the blade letting Bonnie take it back by the handle.

“When I finally recover from my injuries, you and I could have so much fun together.” Shego made it sound like a promise to Bonnie, they certainly had a lot in common and it takes an expert thief to know an expert thief. Bonnie had a good reaction time it only took her a few seconds to notice the odd knife was stolen.

“You, I like.” An amused Bonnie asserted after a moment. Shego was pretty darn good if she could get a theft by her, she’d really think about taking up the challenge to her skills.

A loud revving noise caught everyone’s attention; Roller rolled out from under the bridge and called out towards Bonnie. Bonnie got up and followed Roller under the bridge; Fu and Jake were the first ones to start following her.

“I know that when I came out of it after that week, I couldn’t look Dale in the face for a while.” All those positive emotions had really messed Foxglove up and now Fluttershy was going through the same experience, only she was much bigger so she had to guess at how long Fluttershy wasn’t going to react appropriately to anything aside from bliss. “Stanley being able to feel nothing but joy is not really a good thing, especially when it impairs your ability to think clearly.”

“Who’s Dale Foxglove? He sounds nice.” Fluttershy said brightly, she knew she shouldn’t feel this cheerful but it was okay with her to not feel bad about anything for a while.

“He’s this really cute and funny chipmunk I know. He’s part of this group called the Rescue Rangers. No case is too big or small for them, if anyone needs help they’ll gladly take on even the most ridiculous situations.” Foxglove at least knew Fluttershy would remember everything; she certainly did after she came out of it. “I think they’re down in Las Vegas currently, something about an old friend named Clarice being in danger?”

“What’s the most ridiculous thing they’ve dealt with, also what’s up with Sweet Cheeks?” Nobody had seen Bonnie enter the room and she was just sitting there at the table while Shush was chasing butterflies in the garden in the background.

“I don’t know whether it’s the tap dancing penguin’s escapade or the crazy puppet wielding alligator. I personally think it’s the one where they were trying to prevent a dam from being destroyed by this crazy fish that drove a reverse submarine onto land.” After a moment Foxglove tried to think of who Sweet Cheeks could be and she gave off a squeak and fell off the table when she saw that Shush was no longer sitting in the seat that was now occupied by someone else. “Um, who are you?”

“I’m Bonnie, so what happened to her and where in the world did she get a child from?” A noticeably upset green alien sat there sipping what was left of tea Shush was having and eating a cookie. The backwash wouldn’t hurt her at all and she turned to take in Fluttershy’s recent change in appearance, slowly a vibrant blush spread throughout her face as the pony looked absolutely beautiful. She would miss the cute fang Fluttershy had sported though; the ears looked better this way anyway and feathered wings were so angelic.

“Can you promise me that you won’t get mad?” Stanley gave off a frightened chuckle; she didn’t look like a happy camper.

“Oh that is definitely messed up.” Jake commented from right next to Bonnie having heard Stanley’s tale of how his magic is acting like a drug to Fluttershy.

“Oh my goodness, give a guy a heart attack will you? This is the most guests I’ve had in one day.” Stanley was surprised to see two new guests in his home aside from Bonnie. He quickly bowed to Jake. “Nice to meet you dragon guardian, Stan the sewer troll has told me a lot about you when he comes to visit me. You do a good job of being the protector of New York and it’s so nice to finally meet you.”

“Oh a dragon… I’d be more terrified of you if I could feel that way.” It was all Fluttershy had to say about Jake in his dragon form, where she normally would have been screaming her head off and running away while carrying Soft protectively in one of her wings. She really hoped the side effects ended soon so she could do just that.

“Why?” That was always a loaded question and Jake knew it.

“Dragons on my home planet are usually not very noble, in fact they are all greedy and are generally about five times the size you are now for an adult and can be highly destructive. I’ve had some very bad experiences with them.” Alien magical or not, the information Fluttershy had dropped made Jake do something that she thought was rather amazing. He did a trick where he transformed into a human. “Although I do know one dragon named Spike, he’s a baby sized dragon. He rapidly grew up to a large size because he got too greedy this one time and he caused a lot of property damage to the village I live next to. I haven’t exactly told my friends that I’m absolutely terrified of him every time he’s around me.”

“Is this better?” The human Jake said having transformed back to his birth state, being a hybrid magical creature was awesome at times.

“Thank you, though you really didn’t need to change on my account since I’m currently incapable of freaking out. Feeling any amount of unbridled joy constantly in your presence might have been psychologically scarring.” Fluttershy gave Jake a bright smile and her happy demeanor didn’t sag one bit as she nuzzled Soft the little fruit bat pony.

“Uh Sweet Cheeks, we really can’t stay here for the rest of our lives you know. We got places to go and things to do, like making sure my brother doesn’t perish for instance?” They really had to get to Hawaii and her brother only had about sixty percent of his sphere left, Bonnie was focusing on this fact knowing that Fluttershy was okay now. She turned and looked out the nearby window to see if Shush was listening in and she was busy snuggling those creepy living flowers. “He’s dying and we don’t exactly have time to be sitting around you know, we have to save him.”

“Maybe I can help. Where is your brother right now?” Stanley had recovered enough magic to perform some healing, when an almost halfway gray sphere was sat on the table he was a little confused at first. After studying the sphere for a moment his eyes widened, it had a damaged soul in it and it was getting worse, he quickly flicked his thumb at it and a white glow encompassed the sphere. He quickly explained himself to Bonnie who looked rather testy. “That’s a stasis spell. He won’t die now, but I can’t exactly help him in this state. The stasis spell will prevent him from getting any worse, but you can’t help him get any better either while it’s on him. You have to remove the stasis spell before he can get any better. I’m assuming you have a method for helping him out of this state?”

“Yeah my father can recover my brother as long as the sphere doesn’t turn entirely grey which means he’s completely dead, thanks for doing that by the way. I truly appreciate that my brother has all the time in the world now and so do we.” At least with the urgency of losing any more of her brother removed Bonnie was now at peace with the world. “Now all we have to do is make that trip to Hawaii and my brother is saved.”

“Well that’s good news, Foxglove?” Stanley turned to the bat who had folded up the blanket that had been used for Fluttershy’s little nap and used it as a pillow for the sleeping filly that was set on the table.

“Huh, what is it Stanley?” Foxglove was watching over a snoozing Soft which Fluttershy had set carefully on the table.

“You’ll need to go with them to remove the stasis spell when they get to where they need to be to save him; it’ll only require a little magic and shouldn’t be too difficult for a bat of your talents.” Stanley leaned back chuckling and sipped some of his tea; Foxglove opened her mouth to say something only to be cut off by Stanley. “You’re really talented Foxglove, so please don’t try and sell yourself short to me. You’re heart is where your magic truly comes from and you’ve got one bigger than your own body.”

“What about the Rescue Rangers? I’m kind of watching their tree for them.” Foxglove was a little nervous about making a sudden trip to a place that was really far away, she wasn’t nearly brave enough to start globetrotting around like the Rescue Rangers did. They tended to run headfirst into danger constantly. “Why can’t you go?”

“Don’t you know anybody that can cover for you and tell them what you’re doing? I can’t really be away from nature for too long and traveling is not something I’m relatively good at. Besides that the trolls of the magical realm never lifted my magically induced exile, so I’m ‘technically’ stuck at where they exiled me to.” Stanley waved his arms around the room. “I’m entirely not bound to Central Park, but I can’t really go too far away from it. I would go if I could but getting my exile lifted would take forever and I’m not really that great at politics. So I can’t constantly watch out for the headquarters of the Rescue Rangers for you Foxglove. Maybe every other day I can check in, but you’ll need someone a little less conspicuous then I am.”

“There is someone I know that wouldn’t mind watching out for the Ranger headquarters. She’s a little on the... well, she’s kind of like me with Dale except she has a crush on a different chipmunk. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind doing it for me once I explain it to her that my magic is required to help someone out.” Foxglove started to nervously wring her wings together and her ears fell down, she really did not like this idea. She inhaled and sighed slowly, she’d still do it as she an auxiliary Rescue Ranger.

“Well that’s good and everything, but how much magic do you have left in you?” Fu took in the knowledge that Stanley could heal and decided to help someone out. “Someone outside nearly had her arm chopped off by a helicopter blade, if she were completely human she would have definitely lost it or have it amputated.”

“I feel odd… for some reason I can’t be angry at the buffoon.” Shego was looking to Stanley who smiled sheepishly at her. She found out quickly that she couldn’t get angry. “What did you do to me?”

“Well it’s a side effect of healing your shoulder; you can’t feel anything negative for a while. It’ll eventually wear off.” Stanley watched as Shego stood up and walked off without an angry huff. “I’m tapped out on magic for the day, now I’m just going to rest and relax in my home.”

“Come on buffoon, you too Princess. If I have to be like this then you’re going to suffer with me! I need your help anyway pumpkin.” She was loud but with a happy go lucky attitude, Shego hated it but at least her body didn’t feel like hell on earth anymore. She stopped for a moment and handed something to Bonnie and then she made for her motorcycle waiting around the edge of Central Park. “See you around Bonnie, here’s my card. Call me if you’re in the neighborhood and have some free time to play. It might be a good idea for you to steal a cell phone to call me if mount blubber shows up again hunting your friend down, I want round two with him.”

Kim Possible giggled at Shego being incapable of getting angry and started to heavily tease her as they left. Ron got in on the action and even his little buddy Rufus was getting in on the action. Even then Shego took it all with a serene look on her face; then she slugged Ron in the face knocking him down.

“Just because I can’t get angry for a while doesn’t mean I can’t still hurt you, in fact it makes me feel really good right now so I might keep doing it if you annoy me.” After that abrupt change in atmosphere around the one time super villain, she started whistling a jaunty tune to herself as she continued on her way completely ignoring the fact that Kim was still sending jabs her way. It was a noticeable disparity that Kim didn’t seem to annoy Shego at all and she smiled more around her.

Everyone turned to Bonnie who was standing next to Shush who was put on a leash by Cobra to make sure she didn’t wander off. Fluttershy had a lazy smile on her face and she was wearing her Rhizome suit, in her left bag sat a sleeping filly with her head poking out of it.

“So what do the rest of you bozos want?” Bonnie already knew that Clay and Kimiko got some autographs from Kim Possible, she was famous enough even for the dragon monks to be fans of. If they still wanted to test her for her ability to protect the Lunar Locket Fluttershy was still sporting around her neck, then she was ready to show them her stuff. Jake was still here because had to watch out for Fluttershy considering she was being targeting by evil forces.

“Just to see if you can protect that Shen Gong Wu ma’am.” Clay tilted his hat to Bonnie. “Just know I won’t hit a lady.”

“It’s a good thing I’m no lady then huh?” A sarcastic Bonnie smirked.

Author's Note

Kim, Shego and Ron are off the field for now.

Bonnie really needs to discuss Soft with Fluttershy, like how are they going to take care of another mouth to feed, much less keep the filly safe when Fluttershy causes problems everywhere she goes.

Soft Echo has a problem in the inability to speak any language other than Vampire Fruit Bat. Given how she was born from Fluttershy and the 'fruit vampire pony' curse, it shouldn't come as a surprise that she is more 'Flutter bat' than 'pony'.

85

“Okay, I can easily do that for you Foxglove.” A little squirrel with red hair in a braid wearing purple shirt and some brown shorts answered to the little bat, most humans would ignore the fact that she was wearing clothing and or overlook the general signs of intelligence that most animals showed.

“Thank you Tammy, can you tell the rangers that I’m helping save someone’s life if they ask?” Foxglove didn’t have any luggage to take with her given she wasn’t big on material possessions; she didn’t have any place to put them if she was.

“So where are you heading off to?” The squirrel was rather inquisitive; she had wanted to travel around helping people too. Either that or she’d become a medic since the rangers got themselves roughed up so often. She just wanted to help as much as Foxglove did.

“Hawaii, don’t know what place in Hawaii exactly though. I’ll be traveling with someone who knows their way around so it shouldn’t be too bad a trip to get there.” At least Foxglove thought it would be a relatively simple trip; later on she would look back on this conversation and laugh about how naïve she had been.

“Well be careful since you might run into Gadget’s evil twin there, I believe her name was Lahwhinie? From what the case file says, she looks exactly like Gadget so if you see a mouse like her anywhere your going in that area, just leave her alone unless she’s in danger or something.” Shaking her head Tammy considered a few other things to ask as she flicked and flexed her tail muscles indiscriminately. “How do you even spell a name like that correctly? Her parents must not have liked her very much. Anyway, can I meet your traveling companions and be there to see you off when it’s time for you to go?”

“Sure, but isn’t your mother or little sister going to be concerned about where you are?” Seeing that she wasn’t about to get a response other than the squirrels crossed arms, Foxglove roller her eyes and then smiled. “Well you should at least let your family know that you’re going to be with me for a while before I go on an important business trip.”

It was minutes later that they came upon a strange scene with three humans facing down Bonnie, Foxglove led Tammy up to Fluttershy where they took a seat in the audience that was watching whatever it was that was about to start.

Tammy was a little weary of the large human with the sunglasses and general clothes a government spook would wear, she was skittish around any human and there were six of them here. She could already tell Bonnie wasn’t normal and she had already been introduced to Stanley the Troll, it was hard to believe that the Rescue Rangers hadn’t met him yet considering they’ve seen ghosts, leprechauns and a living mummy. Aside from that the weirder creatures were also something Tammy considered, including the one that looked like a wheel and was softly puttering as it sat there.

“What’s going on Fluttershy?” Foxglove took a position next to Fluttershy, where Roller, Shush and Fu were sitting.

“I’ll field this one; apparently the warrior monks over there issued a challenge to see whether or not the Lunar Locket Fluttershy is wearing will be well defended. It’s pretty dangerous object so we’re going to allow them test the ones who will be defending it while on our turf.” Fu was a magical guardian and he’d protect anyone who needed his help regardless of his feelings as long as they weren’t a world ending danger. “Depending on how well Bonnie handles them, they might leave outright. If they can beat her, Roller here is their next challenger and so on. The entire point is making sure that the locket won’t fall into the wrong appendages and in my line of work it happens even if you’re strong enough to do so.”

“I don’t think they’ll be able to touch her unless she lets them.” It was a blank observation and Fluttershy knew it was the truth. Bonnie had quick reflexes that allowed her to avoid harm and injury by moving at speeds that even robots would have problems with hitting her. “I will be upset with her later if she hurts them too much, as right now I can’t get upset. Being able to only feel positive things should be scary to me and I think I’ll have nightmares about this later. That is assuming the effects work even while I’m asleep, I wonder if this would necessarily mean I’m immune to nightmares? That is a pleasant thought with disturbing connotations.”

It had been one of the things Fluttershy saw on the after action report of what Bonnie managed to accomplish back on Planet Z. An angry Bonnie was something to truly fear, considering how many hyper hornets she had totaled and with little effort compared to how much trouble they should have been for her. They were definitely something you didn’t take down on foot with minimal weaponry like a blaster; Bonnie had definitely scared Grand Councilwoman Veritas when it was told just how many of those she had taken down by herself in a fit of complete rage doing just that.

If that was how much destruction she could cause as a berserker, then what was she like when she was doing the same thing only with cold calculating controlled fury? How dangerous was she actually in a normally clear headed and playful mood alone? Anyone would quickly learn to not underestimate the crafty little green alien who was only slightly bigger than the proclaimed ‘dragon of water’ named Omi.

At the moment Bonnie just looked rather playful as she danced from foot to foot and took up a faux boxer pose and threw a few quick jabs into air in a humorously unrealistic manner. It was obvious that she wasn’t taking the three warriors before her seriously. Kimiko, Omi and Raimundo didn’t seem to be taking her seriously either; they didn’t think Bonnie looked all too dangerous. Bonnie might not be as smart as she tries to make herself out to be, but she was still one of the smarter experiments in existence given she outsmarted Stitch who could think at super computer speeds.

Pulling out a strip of cleaned red cloth, after which Bonnie unstrapped her holster with the glass knife in it and moved over to pass it off to Shush. She gave her sister a hard look making sure that she understood that there would be consequences should she lose it. Holding the red cloth before her she slowly wrapped it around her forehead, after tying it off to leaving two tails streaming down to her shoulders she marched out to the three waiting fighters.

“I’m ready, so bring it on and let me show you what I can do. Oh and you better come at me all at once.” Taking on a haughty tone Bonnie looked at the three monks with a smirk. “Also just a fair warning, don’t blink.”

“Yeah, like I’m going to miss a minute of myself kicking your butt. Stand back guys I can handle this, ready to call it Clay?” Planning on wiping the smirk off of that insufferable face Raimundo cracked his knuckles and prepared to show Bonnie what he was made of. “You don’t look like much; do you have any formal training?”

“Nope, I don’t have any formal training at all. I’m not a master of any kind of combat whatsoever.” Bonnie answered simply as she stretched out, preparing herself for what she was about to do and it helped to be limber for it. What she was failing to mention to Raimundo was that she had quite a bit of eclectic learning. All of her six hundred and twenty five brothers and sisters were rather rowdy after all. When you have that many diverse opponents to roughhouse with you were definitely going to pick up a lot of dirty tricks for almost any situation.

“Right then, y’all get ready and…. start!” Neither opponent moved, Clay was surprised that Raimundo was actually scoping out his opponent instead of rushing in headfirst. Rushing in was more of an Omi kind of thing to do.

Raimundo was a pretty slim guy with dark hair from Brazil, he definitely had the advantage of reach over his opponent and he didn’t think he needed his wind elemental attacks. He was going to rush her, but he felt something was entirely disconcerting about her evil little smirk and that she was leaving herself wide open. There was something he was not obviously seeing here and it screamed like an alarm in his head.

Bonnie waited patiently for Rai to make the first move; she wondered if she had misjudged his character as being exactly like his element of the wind. She obviously thought it was a fact that he was obviously flighty and that he was a guy who was likely great at breaking a lot of wind. So far he was pretty intelligent about not immediately coming at her, but how long would his patience hold out with it nearly being lunchtime?

On his side of things Raimundo just stared blankly at Bonnie and he was trying to perceive just how dangerous she was in comparison to all the other foes they have faced. After a moment he could see a silhouette of a bean with two tentacles appear next to Bonnie and his eyes widened. He noted that Bonnie wasn’t that threat level if he tried to take back the Shen Gong Wu from her friend by force; she was that threat level if he touched her friend at all by the way she projected herself. She was clearly ready to start toying with him and he did something he’d thought he never would do in this situation.

“I would like to immediately concede the one on one thing and that she is powerful enough to protect the Lunar Locket from at least one of our enemies and possibly more by herself.” He had backed down; Raimundo Pedrosa had actually backed down from a fight after talking tough and sent up a large red flag to his friends who were now staring at him in shock. He knew now that Bonnie was prepared to punish anyone harshly if they so much as touched the innocent horse like creature wearing a suit made of vegetables.

“What’s wrong Rai, why are you backing down?” Kimiko was a little surprised to see him not immediately jump into the fight and even more so to declare that Bonnie would be the winner.

“Yes Raimundo, why are you being a cautious cat?” After a moment of waiting for someone to correct him, Omi the little slightly yellow skinned monk was surprised when no one corrected him. This meant that he had finally managed a saying accurately enough that nobody was going to say anything about it! He had to smile at this news.

“Omi, that’s actually a very accurate assessment of why I’m backing down as caution is definitely required here. After all the times of getting kicked around or spent kicking others around, I think my pride can actually handle a pass on this one while I still have it.” It was perhaps one of the more mature things Raimundo would ever state in his life. He could see the grey between good and evil, an example would be the wannabe evildoers like Jack Spicer himself. He could sense that Bonnie was grey in a way that she was by far the most dangerous being in the area if aggravated. “If you two want to try her go ahead, I’m just getting some really bad feelings from her and I’m not about to let her toy around with me. In fact I’m sitting off to the side now.”

“Well you’re no fun!” Bonnie stated blithely as Raimundo sat down, he noticeably did so far enough away from Fluttershy as to not earn her ire.

“I think it’s nice that no one is getting hurt.” Positive emotions were good and all but Fluttershy actually wanted to get tired of being only capable of getting happy all the time. Goodness knows Pinkie Pie tries to keep up the appearance of being in such a state while hiding her real feelings since she didn’t like upsetting others. Rarity hides her real feelings by overdramatizing things to hide other minor emotional cues. Applejack just didn’t show emotions that she didn’t want anyone seeing. Rainbow Dash and Twilight were rather upfront about how they felt emotionally. Thinking about this made Fluttershy miss the ability to be depressed, emotions like that lets others know that you needed a hug and some help.

“If you’re going to fight her, might I suggest you use the Wu that you have on you?” After he said that Raimundo saw the Orb of Tornami come rolling up to hit his foot, the crystal ball in question could spew a floods worth of water. He looked at Bonnie who smirked at him. He hadn’t seen her get within five feet of Omi and she had already disarmed him of his favored Wu, she had just affirmed that he made the right decision in not getting his ass handed to him.

In an eerie manner, Bonnie mouthed only two words to the human with the elemental powers of the wind sitting on the ground. Those words were, ‘he blinked’.

Fluttershy, Cobra and Shush were the only ones that hadn’t blinked or looked away from her for longer than half a second. To both Cobra and Shush, Bonnie’s two specialties of ‘theft’ and ‘evasion’ hadn’t seemed that scary until just now.

Omi immediately charged Bonnie only for her to flicker out of existence the moment his attack would have landed causing him to plant his face into the ground. He got angry to start looking all over the place as Bonnie reappeared right next to Kimiko.

“So who’s he looking for?” Bonnie asked snidely as if she didn’t know.

“He’s looking for…” Kimiko stopped and turned to Bonnie and jumped away while clutching protectively at her Wu, having seen Bonnie had somehow already managed to disarm Omi. She didn’t blink as she leapt away and kept a tight hold of the Star Hanabi, a Shen Gong Wu that shot blasts of fire. It made sense that she was the one that used it the most, as she was the dragon of fire. “Where in the world did you come from?”

“My father, space, multiple genetic donors and…” Bonnie blurred slightly as Omi launched what was called a Tsunami Strike at her side and completely whiffed entirely and slammed straight into a tree. A huge splash of water from that attack hit Kimiko and some of the audience, but Bonnie was completely dry by the time it had all settled down and standing in the exact same spot she had been when she was attacked. “The final thing was a mad scientist’s lab for creating crazy beings like me. I was born adorable by the way, so thank you asking.”

“You will not be able to evade me fo…!” Omi screamed and crawled up the tree he had just slammed into and was pointing in fear at the squirrel sitting next to Foxglove.

“You know, I almost forgot Omi was completely terrified of squirrels.” Kimiko knew that Omi has had bad experiences with the rodents once. Even if they had the Wu that allows the user to communicate with animals with them, they still wouldn’t have been able to convince Omi that the squirrel wasn’t out to get him.

The humans could already understand Foxglove because she had magic that allowed her the ability of speech; otherwise humans had problems understanding any animal mostly because either the animal wasn’t willing to speak a recognizable language or because they couldn’t do so without the aid of magic. Dogs and cats could speak human, but they tended to hide the ability except in extremely rare circumstances. It was how cartoons like a peculiar one called Scooby Doo got started on earth, someone thought they imagined a dog talking and ran with it. It was with a bit of irony that Rufus the naked mole rat learned his form of elocution from that cartoon.

“Wow, some warriors you’re turning out to be. Also why did he climb up into the tree, doesn’t he know that trees are where squirrels live?” After a moment Bonnie smirked viciously as Omi came flying out of the tree and latched on to a stoic head of the elemental dragon warrior of earth, all while screaming in fear that he was now afraid of trees as well.

“Do not let them have me, they are vicious demons!” Omi wailed into Clay’s hat that reminded Fluttershy of Applejack in a rather fond and upbeat manner.

Tammy just sat there with a completely flat look on her face; she turned to Foxglove who just shrugged blankly at her. Yeah, that little monk was just sad in some ways despite the impressive tornado of water he created seconds ago. Tammy had learned to accept that magic and aliens existed and were sparingly seen because they kept to themselves more often than not.

“Those two are idiots, but they’re my idiots.” Kimiko stated sadly to Bonnie when Omi realized he was much closer to the squirrel he had saw earlier and continued to freak out.

“I don’t know about that, that Raimundo guy actually has a good head on his shoulders.” It was an honest opinion since Bonnie knew that he knew what would happen if he had actually went through with an attack on her.

“Right back to fight as this isn’t over yet, Star Hanabi fire!” A large blast of fire shot out of the red gem on the star shaped magical object Kimiko had pointed at Bonnie.

For Bonnie time slowed down as she dodge out of the way of the fireball and looked to where it would end up, unfortunately for her she couldn’t evade back into the path of the fireball as it was heading straight for Fluttershy. While the other panicked and leapt away, Fluttershy didn’t show fear or react like everyone else did for being stuck in the path of a fireball. She did however blankly put herself more into the path of the fireball in an attempt to shield little Soft Echo by turning her body to take the brunt of the attack.

This led to a number of things that only Bonnie was privy to witnessing as it happened in slow motion to her. Her sister Shush was either stupid or didn’t want to hurt anyone so she didn’t bother using her sonic attack to blast the fireball out of existence, which explained her running. Omi was too frightened of the squirrel that was quickly darting away from the likely impact zone to conjure some water or pay attention to his surroundings. Clay was in mid motion to moving towards Fluttershy but wouldn’t reach in time. Raimundo was in the middle of a back flip taking him far out of what he might consider the blast range in his egress. Mr. Bubbles was also slowly going for Fluttershy. Foxglove had taken to the air at speeds a normal bat wouldn’t have been capable of moving at. As for why Roller didn’t do anything his tire spun out in the mud that Omi’s earlier water attack had created.

Even if she couldn’t feel fear Fluttershy was still trying to save the weird magical baby she had recently gotten. Sure the Rhizome suit didn’t easily catch fire, but in this case it might do so in a horrific manner. They, being Bonnie and her, really needed to have a talk about that little kink in their travel plans after the rest of the pony’s ability to fully feel things came back. Provided the fireball didn’t hurt Fluttershy too much or they were delayed from leaving New York when they finally figured out how they were going to do so to reach Beach City in the Delmarva Peninsula two hundred or so miles away.

The fireball struck Fluttershy’s side and coalesced against her form for a moment before the gathered rolling flames seem to just bounce off of her and started flying straight back towards Bonnie and Kimiko. The fireball was noticeably smaller than it had been, as it flew back the way it came at a much slower speed.

Of the only witness to seeing the Lunar Locket glow before the fireball struck Fluttershy, Bonnie wasn’t surprised to find herself dodging around the fireball as she considered what had just happened. Her second dodge put her directly in front of a relieved looking Fluttershy, she didn’t care much for anything else happening after that. She was more intrigued by what the Lunar Locket just did and she tried to clue in to the reason as to why it had.

Her mind quickly started running over the scenario and then it was compared to what she had learned about earth’s moon after the adventure her brother Launch had on it. Bonnie thought it made sense in context if the locket gave you the powers of the moon. Fluttershy had absorbed a little more than eighty percent of the energy from the attack and then some of the energy absorbed used itself up to launch the remaining energy back to sender. The overall effect of being immune to energy based attacks was worth more than the weaker reflection ability. That’s not even counting the implications that she suspected the locket gives you control over gravity, as how else would one move the moon using it? People must not have really used it often enough if they didn’t know what it could do that, judging entirely by the vague descriptions they continually received about what it could do.

“Well, give up yet?” Bonnie decided to play off the fact that she had seen something the others likely hadn’t in the confusion after Kimiko took her own fireball to the chest, it didn’t do a lot of damage given the large reduction in the power behind it. She decided to keep the abilities of the locket to herself.

“Okay, when you can start throwing my fireballs back at me, I think you can protect the locket.” The sheepish looking raven haired girl didn’t know how Bonnie had managed to deflect the fireball back at her; at this point Kimiko thought Raimundo had the right idea. “Sorry about nearly frying you guys, the Lunar Locket is officially safe in my book.”

“Is anybody open to the idea of lunch?” It was a good suggestion; at least Fluttershy could still feel her stomach and she was glad everything had turned out alright.

Author's Note

Kind of blind fired this chapter, if there is an error I'll fix it.

And now for a road trip... how ever will they reach the Crystal Gems? Fluttershy would certainly refuse a ride on big Dojo to Hawaii even if she doesn't currently have the wherewithal to fear him or Jake. She has a stigma against dragons considering the previous history she's had with them.

Lunar Locket- Controls the moon and grants immunity to energy based attacks via absorption and reflection. Suspected of granting gravity controlling powers outside of controlling the moon.

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Bonnie had demonstrated her skill by dodging the splash from Omi’s impact with the tree and she got away with making the Xiaolin Dragon Warriors thinking she could deflect fireballs. Overall Bonnie was bored that she didn’t have to go all out; her going all out was Planet Z and her mostly looking out for her hide was back on Trade World.

The dragon warriors had offered to transport Fluttershy and friends to Hawaii on Dojo, but the mare refused with several reasons. Surprisingly the reasons were not all about the fact that Dojo the dragon could grow to a large size.

The four dragon warriors of fire, earth, water and wing shrugged, said their goodbyes as they had other things to do and flew away on the wingless dragon. Foxglove was positively mystified that he could fly after growing to such a large size.

Since Beach City was much closer than Kokaua Town in Hawaii, Fluttershy pointed out it was better going there first to drop off the message while they were in the area. Bonnie and Fluttershy had to tell Foxglove that they were only going to take a slight detour to deliver a message and that it shouldn’t take them long once they found out who they were delivering it to.

Having said her goodbyes to Tammy, Foxglove and the others hopped into Cobra Bubbles car that had hidden alien technology built into it. Jake and Fu were along for the ride with them, they had directed Cobra to a nice place that served Chinese food made to go and the big man was paying.

Fluttershy got Steamed vegetables, with rice covered in a nice sauce and an egg roll that she obviously appreciated as her positive emotions shone through. Bonnie went for a nice vegetable lo mein, since noodles were kind of her thing when it came to food. Roller just got a greasy box full of beef and broccoli that he would eat at the pier.

Soft Echo had eventually woken up and screeched quietly, being attentive of the new little bugger Bonnie pulled a big juicy ‘medical tomato’ from the battered saddlebags that Fluttershy had left Equus with for the kid. The tomato survived for the next two minutes slowly filling up little Soft who rapidly sucked the juice out of it to the point that it eventually reduced to a size smaller than a raisin that went down her throat causing the little filly to burp. Tomatoes would officially become one of her favorite foods.

Cobra had always been partial to chicken chow mein. Knowing his partners tastes like he did, he ordered a large container of egg flower soup with her favorite things mixed into it. The big guy really tended to spoil Shush Jookiba as he had a large soft spot for the alien experiment. Both Fu and Jake went with a large box stuffed with assorted flavors of pot stickers that they shared between themselves.

“So, why did you stand your ground Fluttershy?” As Bonnie lifted some noodles to her mouth with a pair of chopsticks, she stared out to sea.

“For several logical reasons, without a fear response I wasn’t going to be able to get my adrenaline up. Moving would have left me unbalanced and I might have been knocked over and it would have hurt Soft. So I decided that digging in and taking it was the better option, with the surrounding mud I would have been fine. I did not expect it to bounce off me… logically speaking I know it was the Lunar Locket that did that.” Fluttershy smiled happily after her flat delivery of why she took the fireball, she tickled the little filly who squeaked and giggled at the bigger pony mothering her before she went back to the second tomato she was sucking on. “In the long run it was better that I got injured as I was more likely to survive it than she was, I do care about my existence as life is so wonderful. Just like this food tastes great.”

“Positive attitude you got there, then again it makes sense considering the problems you have with your emotions at the moment. So can you take some time to bring up the Head Hunter onto the beach? I and Cobra are still working on an idea of what to do, we obviously can’t walk it south, it’s too noticeable on land and the ocean floor is too dangerous.” The pony nodded and passed off the little filly to her sister with a seagull for a hat before she left her food temporarily unattended, Bonnie turned to Mr. Bubbles with a smile and he growled. “What is it Mr. Bubbles? I’m sure your little sister knows I wasn’t going to do anything; do you just hate smiles or something?”

“We’ll need a way to move your ship without it attracting too much attention.” Cobra Bubbles paid clear attention to Shush and kept her on a tight leash so that she doesn’t run off and cause trouble. Ever since a certain video game came out, he’s been the butt of multiple jokes around his name from his MIB coworkers for treating Shush like his little sister. “Also, now is not a time to be joking.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, although I was going to suggest you put on a big diving suit with a red light in the helmet and carry around a big drill that works underwater for a Halloween party. Are video games that leave earth still somewhat contraband? You’d be completely surprised at some of the things that get out there and past you MIB guys.” Bonnie got Shush to giggle with her words as the chinchilla continued to drink up her soup happily while trying not to get it all over Soft. “We spent a few hours in orbit looking up the state of things groundside. Not much have changed since I left Hawaii huh?”

“Actually a lot of people miss you Bonnie… they also miss ‘him’ and a few other ‘cousins’ that were allowed to wander around. Elastico still visits Lilo from time to time when he gets some vacation time from the circus.” Cobra was still trying to dodge around the issue of Clyde with Shush within earshot; she had an incredible range of being able to hear things within a radius of a few miles in front of her ears and provided they were focused a little it got a lot farther than that. “I’m serious, any real jokes about rapture and I will bring you in for questioning about how you found out about that game in the Galactic Alliance sector.”

Shush was always so easily distracted because she heard so many noises that were so far away it was hard to tell exactly if it was a grasshopper jumping or if it was some guy shouting about how his girlfriend cheating on him. She has heard a lot of things and didn’t repeat any of the meaner sounding stuff.

“Yeah, it’ll be good to see ‘little girl’ again, if this situation wasn’t so darn sad. It’s been what, at least more than a year since I’ve been on this planet?” It was obvious Bonnie had been away from the planet for a long time. “So you going with us as an escort down south to see these aliens we’re supposed to deliver a message to or are you sticking around New York?”

“I have pressing business and my next assignment is already lined up for me and my partner. I can make sure you get out of the city alright once I see what we have to work with, but after that you and you’re friends are on your own.” Cobra proceeded to eat his food in silence with Shush carefully watching out for Soft, Shush’s usual general ditzy personality had fled her when it came to helping take care of a child and she loved children.

“Yeah, I figured. Tell Jumba we’ve gotten a bit more time and that we’ll be heading his way soon enough, oh and don’t tell him about the fact that Fluttershy had a kid. I cannot stress this enough, I don’t need my father giving me the X, Y and Z chromosomes talk again!” It had horribly embarrassing the first time Bonnie had taken an interest in someone else, she never got into a relationship before and she sorely wanted to now. She was taking it slow with a certain four legged being she liked and would do just about anything for her. “Last time was so awkward after I figured out what he was going on about, it hurts my brain just thinking about it. I’ll think of something to tell him when I get there so he doesn’t do that again.”

It wasn’t long after that Foxglove came back from hunting bugs to feed herself with; she had to eat more if she wanted to keep her energy up. She silently watched as Head Hunter crawled out of the sea on its four telescoping legs. It kind of reminded her of Fluttershy’s head a bit; it crawled slowly up the beach on its four legs where it stopped. After a moment the front two retracted. The hind legs pushed it’s partially hovering form the rest of the way up the beach next to Cobra’s car where it finally settled down and a smiling Fluttershy appeared from the top hatch.

“The hover function still works! It still won’t be able to fly though.” One happy tone followed by a completely dull tone, Fluttershy wished she could have felt awkward about how her tone went bland when she wasn’t happy. She continued on with what she found out. “Another thing is that the hover function can’t be activated while it’s in water.”

“Hmm… I might just have an idea, but you’ll have to wait here until tomorrow. I’ll have some other MIB agents bring you some food this evening and I’ll get back to you tomorrow morning with my idea.” Cobra just looked at the alien ship just like he would any other alien ship; it was small enough that it could pass for something else. If his idea worked it would be rather brilliant cover. “Come on Shush! We have a few things to do to help out your older sister, you better watch out for them dragon.”

Shush finished off her mish mash of soup and then quickly cuddled up to Bonnie who still hadn’t finished her food and passed off a gurgling little filly that nuzzled her face happily. This left the group on the pier with Jake and Fu. A ringing phone was heard and Bonnie pulled out Fu’s phoned and answered.

“Hello… yeah I stole his phone and he’s here with me. Look he and the kid are on official business, he’s to protect us until we leave New York… no we’re not from the magical side, I’m an alien and my other two friends are both magical aliens. We’re going to be traveling with a bat that has a penchant for magic, she’s supposed to be useful but her size makes me a little edgy on her capabilities. Well it’s not like he was attentive enough around me, I am a galactic class nuisance of a thief after all. Hold on I’ll hand you over to him.” Bonnie held out her phone to Fu who swiped it back from her smiling form.

“Huh, look I’ve got something to ask you before you go into a tirade here old man. Do you know a dragon named Dojo Kanojo Cho? Yeah, he had a message for you; he said to watch out for this guy named Chase Young.” He covered the speaker on the phone and glared at everyone looking at him. “Do you mind, I’m on the phone here. Apparently he’s this crazy guy that is after dragons to stuff into an evil soup that renders him immortally young, if you don’t take it often enough you transform into a monster and drinking it once can likely turn you evil. Yeah, it’s pretty horrible… okay I’ll keep Jake away from him if we run into the guy, get the word out to the other dragons when you can get a meeting in. As for the aliens the MIB have a hand in this, they’ll help out so you have nothing to worry about old friend. Okay, I’ll give you over to Jake.”

“Hey grandpa… yes I know, I’m doing my job and taking it seriously. I’ve also found out that there’s more than magic going on in New York, when were you guys actually going to tell me about that? Oh great, now I have to learn all about aliens! It’s as if I don’t get enough problems from just dealing with magic all the time.” Jake wandered off with the phone held to his head; he and the others would spend most of the evening playing at the beach and trying to teach the filly how to walk.

Little Soft felt her mom nudge her butt and soon she was barely walking, falling in the soft sand didn’t hurt and she was enjoying everything around her with a sense of wonder. The sand was icky so she didn’t eat it, she liked all the people around her. She didn’t know who they were, she simply knew that they loved her or else they wouldn’t have fed her those tasty objects full of liquids. She enjoyed every little nuzzle and licks her mommy gave her. She was halfway between the cakes foals and the Cutie Mark Crusaders in age and she was intelligent enough to eat when presented with food, she just couldn’t speak the same words her mother spoke and it was quite confusing.

Soft wouldn’t worry about her inability to speak; her mother could understand her clearly when she wanted something. She didn’t know why they had left the place she was born and took her first breath of air, but she was just happy to be next to the one who warmed her heart when it got really cold that evening and those two strange two legged guys came by with more food. Something about a J and a K and her mother saying friendly things to them that she didn’t understand came up.

Soon she was brought into the big thing shaped like her mother’s head and it was strange and a little weird, but it was warmer than the cold air outside. She was pulled into bed by her mother and she snuggled into her mother’s warm loving embrace. Her mother was so happy at the simple things she could do, but she couldn’t help but feel something was off about it all. She knew mommy would protect her though.

Fluttershy already knew she was in a dream; soon she was joined by Bonnie and then Mr. Wheel. They were all sleeping together apparently and soon little Soft Echo appeared looking around a little confused and saw the hill with the little weeping willow, she galloped up to her mommy screeching happily and she was welcomed with open hooves.

“I swear, that Pearl is quite the strange one… her dreams are rather astoundingly silly and direly sad at the same time. She misses all her loved ones so much and she is so easy to upset. Fluttershy I have come to ask you why I have felt another pony so far from…” Luna paused and saw a shy little filly hiding behind a long haired Fluttershy’s leg; Fluttershy hid herself behind her mane more out of natural reflex than an emotional reaction at Luna’s quirked eye. Fluttershy’s blank face disturbed her for some reason. “I see much has happened since I have last visited; however, there hasn’t been enough time for you to be with foal or for it to be the age that it is. She is incredibly adorable none the less.”

“She also really is my child; we’ve had a bit of a problem landing on planet earth Luna. There’s a lot of violence here.” Fluttershy’s flat voice caused Luna to flinch and just stare at her. Her mood suddenly went from flat to happy which spooked Luna much further than the previous tone had. “I really do love her though.”

“Yeah, it still affects you even while you’re…” Before Bonnie could get any further Foxglove appeared and looked around honestly lost before she saw the majestic form of Luna before her. “We have a lot to discuss; to start with Fluttershy has no emotions other than positive ones. Hopefully the minor side effect wears off soon, it kind of bugs me really and I need to have a discussion with a clearly fully emotional Fluttershy. Little rag bat here can tell you more about the effects she’s under, since it happened to her at one point. By the way she’s cured of her affliction.”

Foxglove nervously twisted her wings together as she looked at the tall imposing form of Luna and was a little put off by her size. The thing that eased her fear slightly was that little Soft was cuddling Luna’s tail and purring happily, which caused her to smile and ease up in the presence of an unknown entity.

“Do not fear me little bat and tell me of what the deplorable cretin does speak of, for I am Princess Luna harbinger of the night and protector of dreams on my planet! I cannot hurt you as you are far away from where I reside, Fluttershy’s true home and one I’ve heard she will eventually return to soon.” Princess Luna proudly raised her hoof into the air and Soft burbled in little screeches as she did the same thing having climbed on to Luna’s back copying her movements. Despite being a deplorable cretin, Bonnie just smirked at Luna in response to the accusation.

Luna was told a lot of things that had happened from the last time Fluttershy had talked to her and now, such as legally freeing Bonnie from jail. Something Luna couldn’t help but be a little disapproving of. The most intriguing topic of discussion was the Lunar Locket which was still around Fluttershy’s neck.

“The beings of that world are mad; do they not know what powers they toy with?” Luna was horribly upset at hearing what the locket could do and what Bonnie had found out about it based on some knowledge of Earth’s moon.

“The moon normally travels around our world by itself; the locket definitely has the destructive powers to take out our world. The passive abilities it grants are also quite useful. I believe it would be safe if the magical object that can control our moon was far away from our planet as possible though, we only need one mad person with a plan to destroy the world to really do just that.” Foxglove was quite acquainted with many mad people that the Rescue Rangers had dealt with on a regular basis.

Nimnul was the one to start off the mad science business that spread to the rest of the world to other like minded individuals. Kim Possible dealt with them all the time and using the ranger’s computer Foxglove had seen the news of bug growing experiment. She might have been hungry when she looked up the incident that Professor Nimnul had caused, it was eventually repeated by a lab assistant named Chester Yapsby. The method that caused each incident was different, the Pill Bugs were grown with a growth ray and nobody has managed to copy that feat do to the invention of the square cube law and the roach incident was caused by a chemical that caused insects to grow much bigger than normal. The giant roach incident was one of the more famous things that Ron Stoppable had managed to solve, there were still giant roaches out there somewhere though. It was a thankful thing that nobody has tried something similar since then because it actually was possible to make giant insects.

“Why are you asleep? Are you not a nocturnal creature?” Luna saw Foxglove perk up at the mention of her status and she took on a proud tone.

“Normally I would be, but my magic makes me capable of switching to a diurnal schedule. There’s someone I really like that is usually awake during the day, I know he likes me back because he gave me a nickname.” Foxglove was all heart when it came to the chipmunk named Dale; her heart went into trying to figure out how to approach him about a relationship beyond just being close friends. She was a snuggly little bat and she knew what she liked; besides she and Dale were actually genetically compatible thanks to several small side effects of mad science experiments that Dale had been hit with. “Before you ask I saw something odd was going on when I noticed everyone on the ship was cuddling up to Fluttershy. When I got too close her wing snapped up and pulled me down into the warm embrace and I couldn’t get free so I decided to go to sleep.”

Fluttershy’s peaceful countenance made for a really good pillow, hopefully no one would ever ask what position Bonnie was in compared to all the others. She took to spooning Fluttershy’s back since Soft took up her front. Roller had fallen asleep on her heels like a real puppy would, in all the scene was odd but heartwarming to see so many different beings coexisting in one spot. At least Foxglove didn’t say anything about their awkward positioning.

“Is there much more you would like to discuss? That planet you are on sounds intriguing with so many creatures like the ones on ours, yet very different.” Luna felt several tugs on her mane and her tiara fell from her head as little Soft Echo curled up on top of her. The filly without a mark was still very much adorable in claiming the top of her head as a place to rest.

“Actually I would like to know what’s going on back in Equestria and that you should give Pearl the news that we’ve made it to earth and will soon be delivering her message for her.” As soon as Fluttershy said this, a surprised and strange looking pony with a large white spherical object embedded in her forehead appeared amongst them.

“I think you should give her the good news yourself, just remember that she is an easily panicked individual. Everyone this is Pearl, she has decidedly taken the form of a pony to fit in while she is on our planet until she can return home to earth.” Luna turned to the pony looking around wildly with her namesake adorning her forehead as if it were a unicorn horn.

Author's Note

Crystal Gems have the ability to shape shift. They have a base form they can set when they regenerate.

Reasons this chapter is late? I've caught a mild fever.

87

The pale furred abnormal pony looking pony looked around in fright; at least her short orange mane wasn’t the oddest thing about her appearance as much as her pointy nose was. She didn’t know where she was, but she saw one of the princesses who might explain the situation better.

“Where am I, what’s going on?” Oh Pearl was going to be so upset if they made her go to sleep again. She’s been getting a lot of sleep lately when technically a crystal gem doesn’t need sleep; neither do the princesses of Equestria apparently. Sleeping has admittedly been a pretty good coping mechanism for Pearl even if she won’t acknowledge it as doing her some good.

“You are in the realm of dreams Pearl.” While she said this Luna was busy trying to drag another pony into the dream to share with everyone.

“You… you put me to sleep again!” Pearl was rightfully angry; the ponies had once again barged right into her business and knocked her out.

“I did not, but a close friend worries you do not get enough rest and has asked us to assist in your mental health since you are physically fine. It is a happy coincidence that you are asleep at this time and that you can meet the one who will be delivering your message to the place called Beach City.” Luna waved out a hoof and pointed towards Fluttershy and the others. “All of those who are here are sleeping; we are all very much real but cannot be physically hurt in the realm of dreams. You can only be hurt emotionally by sour memories of a bitter past which you seem to experience a lot of.”

“Why am I not surprised that you’ve invaded my privacy as well!” Angrily the gem huffed and turned around to leave; only Pearl came face to face with a blank faced looking pony. Pearl blushed and backed away from the pony with the simplistically styled purple hair and grey fur with a cutie mark of a rock on her flank.

“So… what’s this about?” Maud was as unflappable as Fluttershy remembered her being. The only time Maud has shown any strong emotion was when a massive rock nearly crushed her sister Pinkie, she chewed through the solid mass with her bare hooves like a diamond dog tunnels through loose soil.

“I invited you here to calm Pearl down Maud. As to why Pearl is here, Fluttershy has made it to the planet of earth and will be heading towards Beach City soon. I thought it would cheer Pearl up to know that.” Luna knew she would upset Pearl by dragging her here, which is why she had asked for Maud’s presence as well in advance. She knew when any pony was asleep and she had recently learned to feel for Fluttershy going to sleep to join her in the realm of dreams, as to make sure her distant friend would not be without pony companionship. The new filly born from magic made that a bit of a moot point, but Luna wasn’t going to stop being in contact Fluttershy or this Soft Echo until they came home.

“Beach City is only about two hundred miles away from our current position. We’re sure to make good time once we figure out how the hell we’re going to get Head Hunter under way; it lost the ability to fly thanks to a gravity pulse.” Bonnie manipulated the world to show her sitting in the front of Fluttershy in the ship when the gravity pulse happened. Then she went on to present Pearl with everything they’ve told Luna from that point moving forward, only now she was showing the princess everything that had happened to from her perspective.

“Wait, are you telling me that crystal gems aren’t the only ones who have visited or have tried to invade that planet?” Pearl was shocked to hear Foxglove was a sentient and that there were aliens and other mystical creatures on this world aside from the ones that were involved with the crystal gems meddling. Much less she was highly upset at hearing Bonnie was a biological mishmash thrown together into a blender that became a living creature.

“Gee, where were you guys during the Little Diablo incident or when the Lorwardians attacked? Closest that crazy blue guy ever came to conquering the planet, wouldn’t have succeeded anyway given the world has a lot of heroes and villains that would rise to the challenge. I was defending Hawaii with my cousins while I was still on the planet.” A scene of the aftermath of what happened in Hawaii popped up showing that a ton of destroyed robots laid to waste all around what was once a still somewhat standing town. A lot of what were obviously roughed up brothers and sisters of Bonnie where strewn about the area in various states of injury. Clyde was there shouldering Bonnie from her perspective as she looked up into his vibrant smile, she raised her blaster high and joined all the injured ‘cousins’ cheering. “We gave all those robots hell for trying to take Kokaua Town, nobody got hurt worse than we did and we all lived through it alright enough. Those Diablo robots swarmed most parts of America. They were more heavily prevalent in places that had Bueno Nachos fast food restaurants so they might not have had as much coverage in Maryland. I wasn’t around when the Lorwardians invaded earth’s orbit, though I do know what the Galactic Guardians were doing afterwards. Heard those guys are completely terrified of red heads now, Atomic Betty really let them have it after she found out they invaded our home planet. The Men in Black organization helped clean and cover up the invasion as having actually happened, MIB has likely know of the existence of your race for quite a while Pearl. The reason why they haven’t made contact or have done anything about your group would be that it is more beneficial to earth that they don’t bother you at all. They deal with a lot of bad aliens and are into that cloak and dagger stuff.”

“I am most certainly thankful that I wasn’t here for any of that." Flutter stated and the relieved sounding tone in her voice was still within the realm of positive emotion. “So no one died in those incidents right?”

“Well… there were plenty of casualties, though they all weren’t exactly human casualties. I was awake for the Lorwardian invasion; it wasn’t a very pleasant day to be awake or a reserve Rescue Ranger. A lot of humans got heavily injured when those machines attacked, not only that but so did many intelligent animals like me. There were many fatalities to the surrounding animal population in New York at the time, all the magical animals just safely dropped to the magical side of the world for a safe haven.” Foxglove shifted the scene that showed the start of the attack and Pearl looked horribly surprised to see such advanced technology attacking and containing humans everywhere. The large robots were obviously preventing the humans from fighting back and they were sealing them within energy fields between their legs. “They hit mostly heavily populated areas right away; they ignored most of the smaller areas earlier on where humans easily went to ground. The drones destroyed a lot of animal homes searching Central Park, thankfully Stanley was there to restore the trees and plants after everything was said and done. Never saw any real aliens in person before though; the first real aliens I’ve met were Fluttershy and Bonnie. It’s a bit disconcerting to learn the inhabitants of earth have aliens living amongst us in peace, magical beings sure, but aliens? Sorry, I don’t mean any offense to you Pearl.”

“Oh none taken really, I find it a bit disconcerting myself.” Pearl said in a monotone voice as she watched a second worldwide incident. That was two things she and her friends had completely missed and they have fought in wars before. She never figured complacency was a problem for her or the other gems, at least she now knew Garnet couldn’t see everything and that had her worrying about the future. “When did all this happen exactly?”

Pearl was worried at what the response would be; hopefully it wouldn’t be after she ended up on Equus. Maud moved forward and started to slowly rub a hoof up and down Pearl’s spine while giving her a flat emotionless gaze. It was such a simple comforting gesture that led Pearl to tears. Despite Maud’s general personality being so seemingly flat, she was an understanding and caring individual whom was able to connect to Pearl on a scary level.

Foxglove flapped her way over to Pearl and made comment on the day and date it took place and even threw up a mental image of Kim Possible, Shego and Ron Stoppable, they end up having a large hand in breaking the invasion.

“This is… this is certainly news.” A slightly relieved Pearl was happy to hear it happened before she had left, but they had apparently missed the times the earth had been swarmed from one attack or another. She and the other Crystal Gems must have really lived under a ton of rocks to have missed all that happening. Now she was questioning whether or not humans were actually a real danger to them even with all their powers. She has never begrudged Steven for his humanity and hoped he was doing alright without her, maybe they could see each other in a dream? If only she could stop getting so angry with the ponies for worrying so much about her mental health, she was perfectly fine!

Pearl had never even heard of other alien races, only the planets that the Crystal Gems from the home world have already wrecked. The last few things she did back on earth was the jailbreak of that space ship that a mysterious gem named Peridot piloted, the entire horrific situation of a gem called Malachite and the problem with a warp pad that led to her being on Equus in the first place. Equestria was a bit of an eye opener for Pearl as something definitely went horribly wrong on Equus, something had to have stopped the crystal gems from taking over this planet and there were barely signs of even one Kindergarten on the entire planet. Having taken part in saving the Earth from other gems, Pearl knew that nothing normal could have stopped those crystal gems. It was a puzzle that she was still wracking her mind over, especially after she had simply tried to look down on the ponies like she had the humans and only now was she finding out everything was not exactly as she thought it was. She had once thought humans as being cute and not very bright or even worthwhile as they had short lives. Only now she knew there were plenty of beings who had short lives, but their actions affected the future with far more consequence than Pearl was comfortable with. She learned this after she had met two being with equally long lived lives like her who were quite powerful; she was currently standing in the middle of a dream with one of them as proof of their power. The other one reminded her entirely too much of her late and most beloved leader named Rose Quarts in her demeanor and beauteous appearance. And then there’s Maud.

“It is interesting to hear what has happened on other worlds yes, but I believe we have trailed far off topic. You already know Maud well enough, so let me formally introduce you to the others. This is Fluttershy; she is the one looking for Equus to return to her home and has been in a situation much like yours for much longer. Once the Star Nomad that Fluttershy found finally finds our world, we’ll have you go with him back to earth where Fluttershy will wait for him. He’ll return her to us in no time.” Luna didn’t think the pony shaped Pearl couldn’t look any happier at hearing the news that she had a way home already on the way. “I thought you would like to talk to her. If she were to meet your family and fall asleep with them she would be able to bring us into direct communication with them as we are doing now. The others are Foxglove who we’ve only just met, a magical bat native to earth. Mr. Roller Wheel, a strange but friendly native creature of the planet of good dreams Popstar. We have little Soft Echo here, who is born of the magic within the last twenty four hours that was befouling our dear friend Fluttershy throughout most of her journey. The last one is the detestable Bonnie Jookiba.”

“What, that’s all the fanfare I’m getting?” Goading the princess of the night was something Bonnie wanted to do. It has been a long time coming and quite frankly if she died on Planet Z then she would have died a hero of the pony race whether they knew it or not, but now it was time to out the princess about something. “I’m getting a sense of hostility from you toots.”

“You… you know what you did! You took it from me the last time we met.” Luna wanted to have a nice friendly chat, possible get Bonnie away from everyone else for a moment to get back what belonged to her personally. “I had wondered how it had escaped me; now I know that it was you!”

“What could I have possibly taken from you? The last time we met was also in a dream like this one.” Of the many things you don’t do around Bonnie, blinking was one of them and Princess Luna had been missing something important from the last time they met. At first Bonnie didn’t think it was possible for her to steal from the princess without notice, she had managed it easily enough. “I mean really, you’ve been angry at me since you arrived. Don’t you want to acknowledge something that you were hiding from everyone you know?”

“I would more prefer to find out how you took it in the first place!” Trying to keep calm Luna did not want anyone here to know what she was talking about, especially not with Maud and Pearl as witnesses since they might tell her sister Celestia what she was doing with it. “All anyone needs to know is that you stole something from me and that I want it back.”

“Bonnie did you really take something from Luna when we were seeing some of your history; I thought you were getting along pretty well with her.” If Fluttershy could feel disappointed she would be right now, but there was something about the way Bonnie looked at her with a sharp calculating gaze.

“I did not take anything from her that could be handed back to her in a physical nature. What I did take away from her was something that needed to be taken from her for her own good.” The princess had done Bonnie a favor by helping Fluttershy see the inner workings of her mind. She returned the favor and was helping the princess with her own problem that she likely wasn’t going to talk about with anyone. “In fact since the object in question is immaterial I wouldn’t know how to give it back.”

“You stole my magic!” The voice as used by Princess Luna was reverberating throughout the dream realm, her wings flared and her horn glowing even if she couldn’t hurt Bonnie. The alien just crossed her arms and looked unconcerned at the angry princess before her.

“Really, is that what ‘it’ truly is or are you trying to hide something given that Maud and Pearl are in a position to do something about it? I learned to let things go, after I shot a guy in the arm at least. I think you need to do the same.” At this point Bonnie marched forward and stared Luna hard in the eyes; she wasn’t backing down on this one. She was doing Luna a big favor here and she’s had to live with the heightened chance of nightmares every night because of it. “Well excuse me for making you incapable of hurting yourself princess. It wasn’t you’re magic I took, because I don’t think it works quite like that given you’re still able to connect others to this dream. What is it really? I’m really curious to know, you might as well tell me why it exists in the first place. I’ve got you blackmailed until you come clean and the only way to feel better is to get it off your chest while you have an audience full of broken people who know what it’s like.”

“Please don’t make me say it. How are you even sane holding onto it like you are?” The others were beginning to notice something was amiss in Luna’s suddenly cowed mood.

“Who said I was ever sane? I got the idea to steal it because it was insane enough to work at the time. You certainly didn’t need the baggage that came with it and I was about to do something horrible to Fluttershy to get what I wanted, so I think I deserved it more than you did.” Nobody would ever really blame Bonnie for stealing this thing anyway and it wasn’t truly alive so it wasn’t like she was kidnapping. “Given that you both looked at my memories, I decided to return the favor with the time we spent together. It’s surprising how well I can split my focus.”

“What did you steal from her exactly then?” It wasn’t often that Maud spoke up if at all, she was contemplative and quite most of the time. Maud sure was going to miss Pearl when she left, as she was the smartest rock that she had ever met, barring her pet Boulder of course. Her emotions barely showed on her face except in rare circumstances, in this case it was a barely perceivable frown. “Why would you deserve it more than Princess Luna and why does it sound like it’s really a bad thing.”

“What you did wasn’t noble; it was basically self mental mutilation by taking it!” This blurted out of Luna’s mouth, Fluttershy moved in front of her.

“Princess Luna…I would like to respectfully as you to talk, please.” It was a statement, that was all Fluttershy needed to say. She had heard just about enough and if it was bad enough for Bonnie to torture herself over with on Luna’s behalf.

Sighing the princess looked away and she became rather deflated; little Soft hopped off of Luna’s head and onto Fluttershy’s to start giving her big kitten eyes. She was already learning the deadly version of 'The Stare' in her youth. Upset Luna wasn’t as nice and comfortable as calm and happy Luna was.

“Don’t worry about it Fluttershy, even if I do know how my brother Clyde felt after Remmy got into his head at least.” Bonnie could easily give it back, but she wanted Luna to stop relying on it as a crutch. There were healthier ways to go about things then beating a ‘dead horse’ every night. “So going to continue being in denial Luna? It’s a long and big river on the planet of earth in a desert and it’s filled with bitter tears, but it gives life to those who wish to push forward. Those who live there learn to not wallow in their guilt like a pig, are you a pig Luna?”

“Fine, you win. I created something to remind me of what I had done as Nightmare Moon, every night it would force me to relive my greatest failure. I named it Tantabus.” The thief just had to take Luna’s punishment and punish herself with it.

“She stole a nightmare? That’s rather funny, because you introduced yourself as harbinger of the night and you’re a mare.” Seeing that she was the one with all the attention Foxglove decided to explain. “Tantibus in one of the human languages means ‘Nightmare’. Latin is often used in magical spells if needed to invoke something with an incantation.”

“How fitting it is… that I torture myself with a nightmare of my own making for my failures?” Looking away from everyone, Luna didn’t want to talk about it anymore.

“It’s not the same Nightmare as what caused Nightmare Moon is it?” Fluttershy wanted to feel horrified if the answer was what she thought it was. That Nightmare was possibly trying to currently take Bonnie over at this moment was something she didn’t like the idea of.

“Neigh, you and your friends cleansed me completely of Nightmare with the elements. This was something made from my own magic and not something else outside of it that entered and twisted my mind.” Looking to Bonnie, Luna so desperately wanted Tantabus back badly.

“She can’t have it back until she’s ready to accept that what happened is all in the past, if she can forgive herself and move on then I’ll gladly give it back. She has to mean it though.” It was the only reason Bonnie was able to suppress the so called ‘nightmare’, she could live with herself as she is without regret. Where it was currently in this dream? Bonnie was the only being there with a shadow after all.

“I… it’s hard.” Never had Luna been felled by an opponent who never struck her a blow.

“Then ask for help you dumb broad, do I have to tell you how to do everything? Are you or are you not a princess? The freaking dames I run into, I swear!” Bonnie was a tad disgusted with Luna’s sad sack woe is me routine, reaching down to her feet with a tug she pulled her shadow up off the ground and held the writhing mass out to Luna. “You can take it back, but I will have to ask that you seek out some help immediately. That thing is nasty to keep bottled up.”

Luna bit her bottom lip and nodded, then carefully grabbed what was rightfully hers and pulled it back into her body where it belonged.

Author's Note

Yes, there is a chance that Bonnie will steal anything if you don't pay enough attention to her. However it is noticeable that she's taken to stealing for a good reasons now as to satisfy her hard wired greedy urges. Yep, Bonnie may steal her little dark heart happy, but she'll try to use what she steals for good purposes now. Not exactly Robin Hood material, but she'll do her best.

Also nobody could have seen this coming. Of course it shouldn't be hard to imagine Bonnie being capable of stealing anything in a dream. I imagine Bonnie defeated her own shadow as if she were in a Persona game, I think the Tantabus was definitely beneath her.

Also more Lore welding, always with the lore welding.

Up next, how to get to Beach City... without being killed on your second day on earth.

You'll always remember that one fight with Fortune and Strength.

Find Fortune when you can and show Strength when you can't.

88

There was a lot discussed in the dream realm. Pearl needed to move forward and think of what she wanted for her future and she eagerly showed Fluttershy physical representations of what her family looked like along with her student Connie, so they knew who to look for upon arriving at Beach City. Luna promised she’d seek out help for her more masochistic tendencies and lastly there was more talk about Pearl’s alien species known as ‘Crystal Gems’.

The Crystal Gems that had arrived on Equus a long time ago had obviously perished, but the remnants of their abilities were seen in the Crystal Empire’s Crystal Ponies. Crystal ponies as far as Pearl understood it were more pony than crystal gem. It was startling to know crystal ponies were all part biological and part living rocks, they were recognizable to Pearl as being at least barely hybrids given they were ninety percent pony overall. The crystal heart found in the empire granted some the ability to temporarily become a crystal pony, but it couldn’t make the effect permanent and the effects of being a crystal pony were tougher bodies and a strange affinity for certain weapons.

Pearl had shown them all her ability to summon a spear which was her personal weapon, then made mention that the only hybrid she’s known of before this was Steven and that this planet had her mind reeling at what she had been presented with. At some point in the very distant past the crystal gems led to the birth of the empire, the tree of harmony and eventually the magically powerful elements the tree held. The elements weren’t crystal gems, but the energy of a multiple crystal gems could be felt coming off of the tree itself by Pearl. Her leading theory was that the crystal gems who had previously been on this Equus had been absorbed by the tree and that the planet had formed the strange tree as a defense mechanism to stop the kindergarten from doing what it was meant to.

Luna stepped forward to explain what Pearl had told Fluttershy’s friends about what a crystal gem kindergarten was, everyone with the exception of Fluttershy were rightfully horrified. It was explained that while crystal gems could be symbiotic with the plane instead they became highly parasitical with a taste for power and tended to drain the life energy and nutrients out of planets to give birth to more of their kind. Equus was one such planet rife with energy and it certainly made it a high value target to the ones that had been here previously.

Pearls theory of her people causing the planet to resort to some sort of natural defense mechanism to prevent its energy from being stolen by parasites wasn’t very far-fetched; it was the likeliest thing considering that the ponies had information on planets like Janet Rhizome existing thanks to Fluttershy. Earth hadn’t been so lucky in being capable of defending itself from alien intrusion; it was thanks to someone Pearl fondly referred to as Rose Quarts that the planet she called home could still support life.

The explanation for the crystal ponies existing was that the planet itself had repurposed the crystal gems, the unborn and the ones that it had absorbed into itself, into something much friendlier to its ecosystem. Thus the Crystal Empire was born and formed. Pearl had been fearful for her life ever since her visit to the Crystal Empire, even if the world seemed inviting and friendly to her. It took Maud a while to calm Pearl down as she had broken down in the middle of all the talk about it.

At least it now made some sense why the elements of harmony could turn things to stone so easily, it begged the question if the Chozo were involved with the Crystal Gems when they were on Equus or were they two completely separate examples of alien visitation?

Fluttershy yawned and opened her eyes, snuggled into her chest was Soft Echo who was still likely spending time with Princess Luna. Soft did have a big day yesterday after being born and she was still so young. She should feel horrified and disturbed by what Pearls race does to a planet, but she felt nothing and couldn’t even be sad about feeling nothing. Foxglove went through an entire week of this? Speaking of the bat she lifted her wing off of the bat and slowly nudge Foxglove awake, the little bat yawned and stretched her wings out before taking to the air for some exercise.

Lifting her head Fluttershy saw Bonnie snuggling her butt with her face, right on top of her cutie mark no less. At least she couldn’t feel embarrassment at the moment, which was a positive thing in her book. She could only hope today would be a little more pleasant then the last one was.

“Bonnie, it’s time to wake up.” Fluttershy poked at the small antenna on the alien beings head with her nose, Bonnie immediately woke up as her antennas were highly sensitive and she realized where her face currently was.

“Oh, uh… wow, yeah. I’ll just go find out if Cobra and Shush are back yet.” Leaping away from the single bed in the ship as if it had caught fire, there was a huge blush going throughout Bonnie’s head that was quite visible even through her fur.

Fluttershy just stared after Bonnie and shrugged, she couldn’t rightfully emotionally respond to that even if she did have all her emotions working. She was happy that Bonnie was comfortable enough to sleep next to her though.

Jake and Fu had camped out the night outside the Head Hunter and made sure nobody was going to bother it. Nothing happened and there was a talk of what to do for breakfast, Jake would fly out to get the food and he was taking requests.

“I’d like some fruit; I’m not entirely an insectivore and some of my best friends are insects.” Having a bit of a mixed heritage was quite nice for Foxglove; she could live off fruit or insects alone. She might even enjoy the occasional walnut.

“Fruit is good for Soft and I’m okay for eating anything, though I would like some eggs and biscuits with some cheese or jam.” Fluttershy wonder if they had something like a hay burger joint on this planet that had a breakfast menu spread.

“I can easily do that. Can you spot me some money Fu?” Jake got forty dollars from Fu and he transformed and was off to pick up breakfast.

It was a slow morning and the food wasn’t bad at all, little Soft Echo especially enjoying biting into all the sugary little jam packets that Jake had grabbed for her.

It was a few hours later when Cobra and Shush arrived, he had garnered their attention and got them to stop playing in the sand.

“Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. It’s going to be a little odd, but I managed to pull a few strings in the CIA to make this a legitimate thing. Now how far can the legs on Head Hunter stretch out and how well can they bend and rotate?” Cobra smiled slightly and Shush was also as cheerful as she ever was.

The situation that was Cobra submitted was exactly like Shush being labeled a giant red Sumatran chinchilla. It became apparent that it was simple and easy on resources, since all Cobra needed to do was pull out some thick rubber and inflate it. The rest would obviously take care of itself, since he already made the arrangements.

It was by far the most ridiculous idea Foxglove had ever heard, which is why she and everyone else knew it was going to work. The only problem was that the Head Hunter was obviously going to attract a lot of unwanted attention given what it was going to be labeled as.

The Head Hunter rolled down the road towards the bridge leading out of Manhattan; its four legs were bent outwards and had a larger than normal tire on each one. The plan was going so well at the moment.

Fluttershy was test driving a new ‘tank’ for the military and said ‘tank’ was built for speed and it was said to be made with the technologies previously used by some of the scientific maniacs from around the globe. This was all an excuse so the Head Hunter could be out in the open as it made its way out of New York towards an unknown destination where the so called ‘government’ would pick it up. The ‘hidden in plain sight’ angle was an ingenious way for Cobra Bubbles to get Head Hunter out of New York without anyone asking questions. They were testing how far it could go one full tank of gas and since Head Hunter didn’t run on gas they already had an answer waiting and ready for when Head Hunter made it to its destination.

To take things one step further Cobra was having MIB make a weak copy of the vehicle using only Earth made resources that would be produced by a fake manufacturing company that wanted to sell said vehicle to the United States military. All the proper channels were being used and there were only a few hang ups with plan, such as people wanting to be hired by the fake company. Said people were obviously corporate espionage attempts and were swiftly caught by the CIA as Cobra saw fit to use it as a trap to capture corporate espionage spies as well. In fact the plan was proving to be useful on many levels for the MIB and the CIA who didn’t know of MIB’s existence. It was win-win all around for Mr. Bubbles; his intelligence and quick thinking was why he was one of the greater MIB agents out there.

Shush and Bonnie had hugged and said their goodbyes before their ‘tank’ set off with a fresh load of supplies, Foxglove personally got a large case full of well kept mashed insect paste bars all to herself for the road.

The Head Hunter had to drive inland to so it could go south and the trip would be estimated around two hundred fifty miles at least, it was a good thing the four legs of Head Hunter could rotate at a really quick speed that got it going up to at least sixty miles per hour. It would go at least seventy and it would take approximately four hours to reach their destination barring any unforeseen circumstance.

It was a good thing the foreseen circumstances were no worse than the unforeseen ones. Given that the Head Hunter was an ‘experimental tank’ out on a test drive, it was not a hard guess that it would be attacked by all kinds of crazy nut-bars. The better the performance the ‘tank’ gave in defending itself, the likelier it is that the lie would be bought.

At least they made it out of New York alright and Jake in dragon form provided aerial escort for at least five miles after that. It wasn’t until about a hundred miles later that things became hectic

“Look alive, we’ve got incoming! Armed monster trucks by the looks of it on the long range scanners.” Bonnie was wondering why in the world they would be attacked by monster trucks, then two more things on the long distance scanners popped up. The Head Hunter had some really good long range scanners, mostly because Samus Aran never wanted to be figuratively caught with her pants down. “There’s a large armed group of overweight people riding motorcycles. Getting a satellite feed and… Sumo Ninja Bikers, I don’t know if I can actually take that seriously. Also lots of vehicles with a Hench Company logo painted on them. Looks like we have a four way party getting started up in here and we have definitely attracted unwanted attention! To think we almost made it through Philadelphia without any problems, so any pony related name you care to bring up Fluttershy?”

“Fillydelphia is a place back on Equus, it’s a little strange how there are so many places that are named like the ones from home. The two planets have vastly different geographies despite the weird similarities. New York was much bigger than ‘The Big Apple’ back home.” The reason why Fluttershy was letting Bonnie drive was because she was trained getaway driver and Fluttershy, while a decent pilot, wouldn’t be able to do as well in a combat situation. It now occurred to Fluttershy why exactly Cobra left out the fact that the Head Hunter was armed, just in case anyone got any bright idea’s they’d be horribly surprised. Even if she didn’t like it, she couldn’t feel bad about the ensuing mess they were going to cause. “Please don’t hurt anyone too badly Bonnie.”

“How you wound me Sweet Cheeks. That I would even dream of ever being the first to break the long held Jookiba tradition of never directly killing anyone. Despite having the capacity to and the really big and awesome weapons this thing is armed with making it highly tempting.” No one had to guess why Bonnie was smiling; she thought this was going to be really fun. “How’s the kid doing? The first of the inbounds will intercept us in… approximately seven and a half minutes.”

“Oh little Soft has been so wonderful and quiet, it’s almost like she’s a… well technically she is kind of a copy of me. I was like that when I was little.” Fluttershy being happy or having positive emotions was never a problem; it’s the ones she couldn’t feel that were worrying. She could mentally worry about Soft in the upcoming rigmarole, but she couldn’t do it emotionally. A thought occurred to her and in her current state it would work; she would be upset with herself for it later though. “When they get close I’ll head out and intercept them.”

“The monster trucks and maybe bikers sure, if you can safely slow them down or stop them. As for the Hench Company guys, I’m giving you a flat no go on that. As a reminder you’re not immune to the ballistic weaponry that they’ll definitely have on them.” Seeing that the pony was giving her a blank stare, Bonnie waved her off. She pulled out a cell phone, while she may have given Fu back his cell phone it was kind of funny that they never asked if she had taken Jake’s phone as well. “Go on, we’ll deal with them as they come. Let’s see if Shego can take care of one of the problems for us.”

Shego went through a lot yesterday, causing Ron pain and misery made her happy and hearing that Ron and Kim weren’t getting married or already were made her feel pleased. Of course she wasn’t interested in children and being bisexual wasn’t hard for her, she just had a slight leaning towards women since she wasn’t going to get pregnant that way even if she still could. Her super powers possibly made it impossible for her to have children. Why did her nemesis Kim have to be so beautiful and a goody two shoes at that? Hearing her phone ring Shego pulled it out and looked at the caller. It was Bonnie and she had somehow not only stolen a phone in the last twenty four hours, but she had also managed to personalize what her caller ID would read as and the message had Shego chuckling.

“Oh, she’s good... okay, what’s going on? Uh huh, sumo guys clan? Sumo Ninja Bikers… are you serious? At least I see we have similar tastes in the suspension of disbelief. Okay I’ll help you out, but Tubbimura’s mine as I got some payback to dish out to him.” Shego listened on for a few seconds. After having snorted at the biker thing, she sat up on the couch and checked her computer and noticed something strange before she answered Bonnie’s response. “I’m glad we have come to an agreement, now stop trying to hack my bank accounts through my phone you cheeky little green devil. By the way that side effect thing that the troll caused wore off, so I’m definitely pissed that you tried to get something by me again.”

“You can’t blame me for trying though; my pony is still sadly stuck in bliss town. Come on and join the party at your leisure then, oh and the other players are Hench Company and these guys in monsters trucks.” At least Bonnie was happy to know her attempt to hack the mercenaries bank accounts through her cell phone was caught and blocked. She and Shego were already the best of friends! “Okay Fluttershy get out there, the monster trucks are really obvious and if you can disable them then we won’t need to worry about them as much.”

“What part are their engines usually in?” Fluttershy didn’t want to hurt anyone while she was unable to feel bad about doing as such by hitting the wrong thing.

“Front part of the main body of the vehicle; fuel is in the rear end and is explosive.” At the moment Bonnie was turning up the shields and arming the weapons on Head Hunter, It’s been a while since she’s been involved in a car chase culminating in costing billions in property damage.

Turning around Fluttershy moved into the back where Foxglove was making sure Soft didn’t get into trouble, Soft Echo managed to get to her hooves and canter over to Fluttershy to nuzzle her. She easily returned the affection to her daughter and turned to Roller.

“Roller could you please be a dear and go get my suit? We’re about to come under attack.” The wheel revved at her and rolled off while Fluttershy sat down and started petting Soft before licking her forehead making her giggle. “Foxglove please watch her for me, I don’t want Soft leaving the Head Hunter. Bonnie will be sure to keep you two safe.”

“Right you can count on me Fluttershy.” Foxglove threw a silly salute as Roller came back with the Rhizome suit hanging off one of his four pipes.

The Rhizome made suit had been patched up and readjusted to fit Fluttershy’s real form and it was working at full capacity. She checked the saddlebags to make sure her water container was full and the same bag held two medical tomatoes, checking the other saddlebag pouch it had approximately thirty pod grenades in it.

“Roller, stay here and protect them. I’m sorry Soft, mommy has to go now, but I’ll be right back.” Fluttershy gave Soft a hug, then Foxglove and finally Roller before she stood on the pad that would raise her to the top of the ship.

“So like seriously, we need the stuff from that tank! We can get some serious stuff from it, seriously. I can’t wait to see what awesome tech went into it and steal it for my ride! I’m serious; it’ll be seriously serious dudes.” The mullet blonde macho man in the monster truck was the leader of his pack of parts raiders, they were always after rare parts and or experimental stuff and it didn’t matter whether or not it worked, they were after this tank because it was cool sounding. “So all of you guys form up on me and we’ll seriously take them down and strip it for my baby, seriously!”

“I Tubbimura of the Sumo Ninja Clan proclaim that my target will be dealt with today!” The other Sumo Ninja riding large motorcycles alongside Tubbimura all threw their fists into the air with a cheer. The Lunar Locket was a powerful Shen Gong Wu that could shroud the world in darkness whenever the user wanted it to do so, it would benefit the clan greatly to have that ability. “Be prepared my wily opponent, for you shall not escape me a second time. It doesn’t matter if you have armor of a tank surrounding you, may the Wings of Tinabi bring me victory!”

The artifact attached to the motorcycle activated spreading its wings, as soon as that had happened the motorcycle flew into the air leaving behind a rainbow trail and the other Sumo Ninja followed Tubbimura from the ground.

“Remember find out what technology is being use in that machine; I want it captured intact for study.” A short stocky man wasn’t happy to hear of this company using old invention ideas for new purposes like progressing humanity. He would not have it happen; any of his things being used for good purposes was definitely something that riled him. “They may have stopped my espionage attempts, but they will not stop my attempts at taking it while it’s vulnerable.”

“We’re already on it Dementor, the target is just ahead and we have a problem of a new contact in the field.” The henchmen Dementor hired were exorbitantly paid for; they were supposed to be the best from the Hench Company. Now they were waiting for an order and until then they’d keep the target in sight. “Motor Ed is quickly approaching the target, what should we do sir?”

“Hold back until they and any other interlopers are out of the way, if Motor Ed or anyone else get’s the tank then attack them for it. Until then stay back and observe for now.” Dementor narrowed his eyes at the still image of a bright yellow and pink machine that his henchmen managed to get. “Such garish colors, they are either fools to paint it like that or they are trying to lead us into a false sense of security. Let Drakken’s cousin batter himself on it, so we can see its capabilities for ourselves. When the time is right we will make our move.”

As Fluttershy rose up she slowly inhaled and exhaled with her eyes closed, she had no fear and she couldn’t worry herself close to death about all this. She was going to take the fight to those who would do her friends and family harm. Her suit was slightly different as it had a pink spine going down the back of her neck which held her hair out of her face.

Opening her eyes, Fluttershy knew she should be panicking about what she was going to do; instead she calmly took in her surroundings. She slowly opened her two feathered wings covered by her suit. It was time for Fluttershy to get really assertive!

With but a single jump from the top of Head Hunter, Fluttershy soared. No hopping or skipping required, as her rump was in gear.

Author's Note

News travels fast doesn't it? Also Fluttershy getting roughed up while being an angel of destruction.

Another in a long chain of living planet theory that Equus was able to feel what the parasites were going to do to it and reacted accordingly by eating the crystal gems.

Fluttershy without fear is something to be very afraid of, especially if she takes it Pinkie and Rarity upsetting levels.

89

“We’ve almost caught up with it, seriously! Like seriously dudes, ready the grapple guns!” The mullet man in the middle of a pack of what he considered awesome weapon carrying monster trucks was preparing to attack the Head Hunter.

As they closed in on the Head Hunter it continued forward at a set pace and didn’t veer off course from the road it was moving along and the encroaching pack of monster trucks started closing range.

They were about to fire, when something dropped from the sky going at an incredible speed and caused a sonic boom within their pack destroying all their windows. The sonic boom also caused all the monster trucks to temporarily stall. The bright pink and yellow circles that exploded outwards and spread throughout the pack sent them all into complete disarray.

Fluttershy veered back around after her sonic boom attack and came up on the rear three monster trucks and she angled her wings in front of her face and spiraled her way through the two left tires on the monster truck on the left. She completely destroyed them by sharpening the suit wrapped around her feathers and drilling straight on through. At the speeds she was going she had the advantage of momentum and that was quickly bled off by destroying the tires using sonic speed she was going at to her advantage.

Veering upwards and to the right the pony tossed down a pod grenade into the hood of the next car over that went off immediately on impact destroying the engine in a mass of vines. Then she dove into the windowless monster truck on the right and carried off the two humans that weren’t wearing their seat belts, she dropped them off on the ground as their monster truck crashed.

Seeing that she had fallen behind as the other trucks, Fluttershy started picking up speed by activating the thruster on her suit.

“Can’t let Fluttershy have all the fun and that was quite amazing. Wonder how she did that.” Bonnie looked up at the camera showing the monster trucks with shattered windows and they were slowly regaining their bearings from the surprise attack from above. Checking over her options she smiled at the one that said power bombs.

“Wow, Fluttershy was going so fast, I felt her release a huge pulse of magic when she did that. It felt really nice.” Foxglove had felt the shockwave and for some reason Soft Echo was giggling playfully when she felt the wave pass through the Head Hunter without incident. It was telling that magic was somehow involved in Fluttershy’s dive attack.

“Her species can fly at sonic speeds with magic huh? She’s beautiful and she’s got a lot horse power underneath those delicate feathered wings of hers, her thruster wasn’t even activated when she did that.” Bonnie flicked her finger forward and activated the power bomb feature on the Head Hunter; she also put in a call to MIB. “This is Bonnie, SOPHIA the Third is a go MIB. Don’t worry, we got this.”

The Head Hunter spewed hundreds of little glowing spheres out of the back of the ship in a random manner, the monster trucks only a few hundred feet behind it suddenly lost their tires in multiple highly damaging explosions went off under them. This wiped out another five monster trucks.

Roller revved lazily as he slowly rolled up to the pilots chair and laid down, he was bored so he might as well get some rest before he’s needed for something. He’d let Bonnie and Fluttershy have all the fun. Soft Echo toddled over to Roller and flopped on top of him and he didn’t react to her sudden weight on top of his body.

Bonnie found that the power bombs option was now grey, it needed to regenerate bomb mass and until then she had to rely on something else. Her eyes wandered over an option and she had an evil smile, the ship had an energy grapple installed, Oh there was a lot of fun to be had there!

Fluttershy toss four pod grenades into the road ahead of the monster trucks that were still gunning for Head Hunter and they had to avoid a mass of exploding vines ripping up chunks of the road.

“Hey guys shoot that annoying thing up there. Like seriously, it isn’t that hard!” Several of the monster trucks popped up large cannon like devices up from their rear ends and they started glowing, several beams converged and struck Fluttershy causing her to shift slightly in midair.

Fluttershy felt herself absorbing the energy from their energy cannons. She quickly figured out that she could redirect where that energy went, since she fired a smaller beam back at the monster trucks a tenth the strength that she was hit with. It was still powerful enough to cut four monster trucks in half, the front halves of those four trucks split from the rear halves when a small thin beam swept through all of them at Fluttershy’s careful behest. She didn’t want to hit anyone and seeing no blood meant she was successful in not hurting anyone.

“Aw seriously dudes, what is it going to take to take out that thing up there stopping us from jacking that sweet ride! We must totally start using missiles then, seriously!” Motor Ed was probably by far the most annoying gear head to ever exist, he took his mechanical prowess seriously and that being had seriously caused his baby some damage when she destroyed all the windows on it. Then there was the minor damage from the tentacles exploding up out of the road, he was a good driver and as such he had almost avoided everything but the sonic explosion created by Fluttershy thus far.

Now the beam cannons on the back of the truck started firing missiles up at Fluttershy who, while she couldn’t even panic, she was mentally concerned about her safety and took on evasive maneuvers. The missiles were thoroughly locked onto her. Urging herself to go faster she passed right by Head Hunter which angled upwards slightly and shot the missiles out of the air with several highly accurate plasma beams.

“Don’t be afraid to ask for help Sweet Cheeks! I’ve got you covered. Now watch this, I have a magic trick to show you.” Bonnie’s voice was heard coming from Fluttershy’s translation device that was still around her neck.

A feeling of joy leapt up through Fluttershy as she was highly relieved that the missiles chasing her hadn’t managed to hit her. She turned her head back towards the Head Hunter as it came to a sudden stop and reversed back towards the monster trucks.

The Head Hunter jumped into the air over several grappling claws fired from the monster trucks and fired a small beam of energy at one of the monster trucks while swerving to the right and returning to moving forward. It swerved around to left roughly slamming truck caught in the grappling beam into another one, following that Head Hunter quickly spun around and started rolling backwards at the exact same full speed it could go moving forwards.

As it passed by another monster truck the blue beam shot out for several seconds and then reeled back in with the front axle of a monster truck causing its front half to slam into the road and send up a wave of sparks. The axle was released into the path of the other monster trucks forcing them veer around the two wheels still attached to the detached axle. Bonnie smiled as she controlled the grapple beam to separate parts of the monster truck; the unfortunate problem was that it was limited to things in front of Head Hunter within a certain wedge of range.

“I’m taking theft to a whole new level!” Bonnie giggled as she stole a rear tire off of another monster truck. It took a moment for the beam to rotate it so it was held horizontally. Bonnie then sent it flying under the wheels of two different trucks toppling them onto their sides and rendering three more trucks out of the fight. She wasn’t about to fire the plasma beams, she might accidentally kill someone with that much raw firepower. She loaded up the power missiles option and saw that she currently had ten in stock. After a moment she aimed the combat cursor on the screen before her downwards slightly. “Fine tuning a grappling beam is good and all, but time to play with explosives!”

“You’re kind of scaring me.” Foxglove said after a moment from her perch on the back of the pilot’s chair, the Rescue Rangers had been on the wrong side of technology a whole slew of times. This time she was on the right side of the more technologically advanced and it was kind of scary how powerful it was.

“Don’t worry I’m not going to kill anyone.” As she said this Bonnie fired a missile into the road in front of two more monster trucks, the power electrical explosion flipped both the trucks away from the blast and they came back down missing tires and crackling with what they would assume to be electricity.

“Yeah, like that was real survivable.” Deadpanned a frightened Foxglove, there was a little noticeable anxiousness in her voice for the safety of the people who were in those trucks.

“To be honest with you I didn’t know how powerful those missiles were going to be, some little green snots said they altered them to be more defensive and disabling. This ship had a check up before it crashed into New York’s bay.” Then again now that Bonnie considered it outright, they might have meant more defensive and disabling against capital class ships. If so, that was kind of overkill in the extreme and the LGMs were awesome in that respect. She spun the Head Hunter back around. “Though I’m glad I fired that missile into the road instead of directly at the trucks.”

“Fluttershy look out!” Discords voice popped up into Fluttershy’s ears, she had her memory stone with her and as usual it in one of ears.

With the barest glint of light reflecting off of something in her peripheral vision, Fluttershy immediately dove downwards avoiding a sword that would have cleanly bisected her in half. Looking over her shoulders she saw Tubbimura riding what looked like a rainbow spewing machine, it didn’t take her long to notice the Wings of Tinabi attached to the bike.

“She has a good reaction time; I didn’t know humans could fly like that.” Pearl didn’t sound exactly chipper, but she didn’t sound as depressed as when the deaths of possibly hundreds of crystal gems happening on Equus was brought up.

“That my poor little dear Fluttershy does, it would have been faster if her emotions were in place to drive her.” A disgruntled Discord knew that if he ever met the happy troll, even though he had helped Fluttershy with a lot of things, he would do something relatively unpleasant but not permanently scarring. The troll did give Fluttershy a cute little child to dote on after all.

“Hah, it appears that I have found my prey!” Tubbimura gleefully shouted as he held his sword high in the air.

“I’ve also found mine!” A green and black jet shot by and a metal claw coming from below it roughly grabbing onto the sumo ninja and his motorcycle and dragged him out of the area. Shego was obviously the pilot of it and it left a blank faced Fluttershy in its wake. “This is round two you fat bastard, no helicopters to get in the way this time!”

Shrugging at the unusual sight going off into the distance, Fluttershy angled back for the Head Hunter and prepared to toss off some more pod grenades, she was steadily running out of them and there were very few monster trucks left due to her efforts. Now there was a pack of sumo ninjas on motorcycles moving alongside the six or seven monster trucks left, they were holding some kind of conversation with a blonde guy with a mullet. The blond mullet guy threw a suitcase to one of the fat ninja and he opened it and then nodded. All the sumo ninja’s raised their swords and shouted, while pointing themselves at the Head Hunter.

Shego’s emotional effects had already worn off and that fact wasn’t lost on Fluttershy; hopefully hers didn’t wear off until after this mess is over with. She wasn’t exactly ready to deal with remorse or regret in the middle of a pitched fight, though she knew she was going to feel bad about all this later. She had practically showered the guys in those trucks in glass and she could see quite a few of them were still bleeding.

The police had an idea of what was going on and was slowly picking up the mess left behind by the experimental tank. It was relatively public knowledge that the tank was being tested for distance traveling; it was brightly painted and noticeable for a reason. It was following the rules of the road up and to the point it was attacked where it started doing a bunch of weird crazy stuff.

The police were staying out of the way of the Hench Company men, but they were also picking up all of Motor Ed’s gang. There wasn’t a single one of the guys they picked up that wasn’t injured in some fantastical way; which is why they also had a few ambulances trailing along. They noted it had become something of a three ring circus at this point, so anything was plausibly deniable about the situation up to and including something like Cthulhu popping up out of the ground. At this point they wouldn’t put it past someone along the road to be performing some kind of dark ritual to summon the mythical beast only to get run over by all of this by accident.

The Philadelphia Police Force were going to stay calm and quiet about it all, they had cleared the roads ahead of time because they just knew something like this was going to happen. The highway was going to be pretty badly damaged by the time everything was over with; the collateral damage was an unavoidable problem and at least they were going to arrest a notorious gang leader by the time it was all said and done. They of course would leave the tank and the Hench Company people well alone; at least the Hench people until they tried something and so far they hadn’t done anything worthy of note yet except observe the carnage.

At least the civilians weren’t in the crossfire since they closed down the roads going south, the tank was heading somewhere in a southerly direction and they weren’t being paid to know where it was going. They were being paid to clean criminals up off the streets and that’s what they were quite literally doing at the moment.

Fluttershy flung five pod grenades at the road where they exploded and that slowed the monster trucks down, but the motorcycle riding sumo ninjas just cut small holes through the vines blocking their path.

Every sumo ninja started fling stars that were flying far faster than they should be capable of, each sumo ninja in question could throw a throwing star to the point that they might as well be moving at eighty miles per hour. The air was being filled with sharp pointy metal. Not only were they after the flying plant suited creature with the Lunar Locket, they were now also after Head Hunter as well and were being paid by a guy related to someone who had previously hired them to assist in a side job that had to do with their target.

Fluttershy was having problems dodging the curving arcs and random changes in trajectory as the flying pieces of metal did their best to knock her out of the sky.

“Come back in Fluttershy, it’s getting a little too hot out there for you.” Bonnie was right as Fluttershy was getting a lot of tears in her suit as it couldn’t handle the seemingly magical sumo ninja objects to well, despite the fact that it was doing its job in keeping her from being perforated.

Fluttershy flew for the top of Head Hunter and she saw droplets of blood fall past her, yeah she had been hit a few times and thanks to Stanley she couldn’t yelp or even show pain. She landed on the roof and the sharp knives and stars started deflecting away from Fluttershy as the roofs shielding was now protecting her. She lowered into Head Hunter while thinking of what to do next.

Bonnie had Head Hunter swerving left and right to avoid popping the tires, as bits of metal found their way to the ground after being thrown by some really agile large guys who were obviously as well muscled as they were wide.

“Any bright idea’s Fluttershy? I know you don’t want to kill anyone, but our options that are not lethal in any given manner are limited.” Bonnie didn’t even turn around and was watching two screens and the road in front of them when Fluttershy entered the pilot’s chamber. The screen on the left showed what was directly behind them, the screen on the right showed little red markers far behind the pack that was behind them meaning that the Hench Company still in play if they managed to deal with the problem behind them. “Okay, we have to lose all these guys like yesterday and we do not want to lead them straight to where we’re going.”

“Actually I do have one.” Taking her things out of the suit, Fluttershy turned it back into its backpack form and smiled as Soft Echo slowly made her way up to her wrapped one of her legs in a hug while whining slightly. Fluttershy had several small cuts along her body; ignoring the light injuries she didn’t feel she started nudging Roller to get his attention, would her idea even really work? “Roller, I have something very important for you to do.”

Roller immediately became determined to succeed at whatever Fluttershy requested, he revved questioningly as to what he could do for her.

Fluttershy slipped the plant pack over Roller’s four pipes and whispered some rather precise instructions and hoped Roller wouldn’t forget any of them. This was going to be an interesting trick for the wheel to pull off and if it worked they would be able to escape having to deal with everyone Bonnie saw as a threat on the scanners.

“What’s it doing now?” The Hench Company henchman watched as the Head Hunter rose itself up slightly and lowered some kind of cargo ramp which dropped out yellow, pink and green object much like the four legged flying one. Only this one was wheel shaped. They had seen plenty of strange things, the tank was definitely a monster to tangle with and he wouldn’t relish doing so. “Also what is that thing?”

It would be explained away as a little project into botany of someone named Dr. Drakken, being used as some kind of defensive apparatus for the strange tank.

Roller sped off the bottom exit of Head Hunter and continued moving quickly to catch up with the quick rolling machine; he sprouted the four wooden branch limbs. The very same limbs he used to free Fluttershy back on Planet Z and leapt up to latch onto the rear end of Head Hunter.

The Head Hunter leapt and started hovering without fully retracting it’s legs and was now floating forwards on its original momentum with Roller clinging to it as well as he could. The wheel narrowed his eyes and his four pipes went erect and it started using the plant suits jet, it didn’t add much speed to the floating Head Hunter.

“Okay Roller, please just do your best.” Fluttershy’s flat commanding tone made the wheel spark small magical stars out of his four tubes into the pollen jet stream from the plant suit.

What happened after that was the shrinking explosive pollen became super charged with Roller’s magical exhaust and an explosion erupted behind Roller in one big sustained burst. This maneuver put the Head Hunter out of sight of all its pursuers within seconds of it happening and the ship was now going way too fast to keep track of.

“I have to wonder if we’re going fast at all, it certainly doesn’t feel like it.” It was obvious Foxglove had never been inside an alien spaceship for very long.

“We’re on a Spaceship, remember? Be thankful the gravitational compensation unit isn’t offline or we would have definitely felt what Roller just did.” Laughing loudly Bonnie couldn’t believe how fast they were going and with the hover modules active, she steered the ship out over the water of a nearby river and then back onto land twenty miles later. “Speaking of, we need to slow down or we’ll overshoot our target. Hey, speed for brains, you can stop now!”

Fluttershy appeared on top of the ship calmly walked down to the back of it and pulled Roller up onto the Head Hunter and then carried him inside. All the while Bonnie was trying to slowly set down the rapidly moving air hockey puck that was Head Hunter.

“Good job Roller, I think we lost them.” Once again, Fluttershy was forced into only feeling a cheery disposition despite the fact that she was bleeding and had several cuts along her body.

The Head Hunter had managed to cease its momentum thanks in part to gravity and some rather tough tires wrapped around the legs of the ship. The tires managed to survive hitting the road at a hundred plus miles an hour as the hover feature was slowly turned off, though there would be skid marks for miles and the tires would be heavily worn down. It didn’t matter because they didn’t have very far to go to reach Beach City.

Author's Note

More mood music, from a game series I happen to like.

Any questions aside from when Fluttershy will get back home? Next time Beach City and all it's rather stoic and quiet glory.

91

“And that’s the news of the highway monster truck disaster near Philadelphia. Motor Ed is still at large and was last seen with his remaining monster trucks and what appear to be… seriously? Anyway he escaped with what appear to be several, can’t believe I’m saying this, sumo ninjas on motorcycles.” The reporter signed off most likely in disbelief and Foxglove gave a sigh that no one died in that mess. Some minor severe injuries, but they still very much alive after having their monster trucks totaled.

“Well that’s good news; I would have been upset if anybody had gotten badly hurt by us.” Looking on the positive side of things was Fluttershy, even if the ones who weren’t captured could attack her and her friends again at a later date.

“You caused all that?” Connie asked in disbelief.

“Yeah, you’d be surprised at what you can accomplish when under attack. By the way most of that was was Fluttershy’s doing, especially the sawing several monster trucks in half bit.” It didn’t bother Bonnie all that much; she enjoyed evading danger.

“I’m not very proud of doing all of that Bonnie; it was really nice of those policemen to have ambulance carriages on standby.” Fluttershy took her gaze off the television which was a quick news delivery source and she turned it to Connie. “When is Mr. Universe going to be here?”

Connie hadn’t exactly told Greg or Steven what the good news was yet, just that she needed to be picked up so that she could share it over some pizza. What she wasn’t telling them was that someone else was buying the pizza; Bonnie is footing the bill since she had the money.

“It’ll be a while, until then let’s talk about what kind of pizza we’ll be getting.” Connie had broken a small rule when it came to pizza, never give anyone else a chance to voice their own toppings or else you’ll be dragged into argument about what tasted best. At least an argument luckily didn’t break out this time. “I’m thinking of going with the classic pepperoni.”

“Pineapple on pizza is the way to go for me and I’m pretty sure the little squirt would love a fruit covered pizza.” At least Bonnie wasn’t thinking of only of herself, she did have a small soft spot for pizza as she remembered her first meal with her brother fondly and she’d always be capable of sharing the wealth she had recently come into. She had five mouths to feed after all and the freshly stolen money had an immediate use for good cause.

Roller had no idea what pizza was and suggested something incredibly bizarre to put on it that he considered edible. Fluttershy didn’t bother translating Roller’s extreme omnivore tendencies, it was better to just stay silent about what he had said.

“I like spinach, gorgonzola and walnuts personally.” This earned Foxglove a few odd stares. “I can eat other things than besides insects or fruit you know, magic helps me digest things that would normally be unsafe for me to eat. Just don’t bring up how weird it is when I’m eating the pizza and I won’t get indigestion thinking too much about it being impossible.”

“Spinach I can maybe understand if slightly, but walnuts?” Connie had never heard of such an odd combination.

“I’m friends with a rather handsome chipmunk and I like trying new things sometimes. I found that I really enjoy it.” It actually tasted good to her at least; sometimes Foxglove thought she was spoiling herself way to much when she spends time with the Rescue Rangers.

“That’s no weirder than having anchovies or sardines at a griffon pizzeria on my home planet, this planet has so many things in common with mine and I’m wondering if they are available.” Fluttershy received stares from Connie and Foxglove.

“So the ponies of your world are meat eaters?” Hey, Connie had to be sure and the question was awkward enough to ask of someone who wasn’t able to properly get upset that it was. “I kind of thought that your species would be mostly vegan in nature because eating meat would be un healthy for you.”

“No eating meat definitely makes ponies sick; with the exception that pegasi can digest and handle most forms of seafood. The pegasi as a race used to live by the sea before we took to living in the clouds and seafood was always edible to us as much as any pony with a bit of pegasus ancestry, but all ponies also tend to eat eggs and drink milk.” Eventually Fluttershy would have to make a pamphlet about ponies given how many times she’s had to explain her home planet to so many people. “So no, ponies on my planet aren’t true vegans, though we do eat a lot of vegetables and fruits as our main source of food.”

“To answer your question anchovies and sardines do exist on earth, I assure you it’s likely an acquired taste here as it is probably back home for you.” Because most animals where Foxglove lived were mostly vegetarian and there was very few times when meat eaters would cause problems. As long as humans were around the meat eating animals didn’t have to worry about finding food and she had tried other foods at least once a week.

The discussion went on from there while Soft Echo snuggled into Bonnie’s side to get her ears rubbed for being adorable. Connie was learning about all the magical animals Earth had from Foxglove, compared to all the whimsical animals Equus had from Fluttershy. She was mystified to learn of the different beings on each planet, with things like tooth fairy’s actually existing among many other fantastical creatures was a bit hard to swallow in its entirety. She even learned that unicorns were real, but unicorns on Earth sounded boring in comparison to the unicorn ponies from Equus.

“Timber Wolves are actually made out of wood on your world? That’s kind of silly from my perspective.” It had been a rather interesting discussion of planetary differences when a knock on the door was heard.

“Connie, it’s me Greg!” it sounded like an adult male and everyone followed Connie to the door, waiting a second for Fluttershy to get Soft Echo onto her back to carry her along.

“Guys stay out of sight for a bit, I don’t want to surprise him too hard until I introduce you to him.” Seeing that they did as she asked Connie opened the door and saw Steven’s old man standing at the door with his van sitting on the road in park. “Hello Mr. Universe, is Steven still moping?”

“Yeah, poor little guy is still very upset that Pearl is gone and just hasn’t been the same ever since then. I’ve been trying to do a lot of things to cheer him up, but he won’t stay happy for very long.” Greg Universe just sighed in defeat that he couldn’t help his son out, it was hurting him as a father that he couldn’t make his son happy by somehow magically clapping his hands and bringing Pearl back from whatever had happened to her.

“You know that good news I have to tell you and Steven? I was wondering if you have enough room in your van for a few friends of mine who have never been to Beach City before, this good news relates to their arrival.” Trying to ease him into this Connie kept herself from looking back to the living room where her new friends were out of sight. “This will really cheer up Steven to hear, I just know it will. It’s just that my friends are a little… odd.”

“Well if you think they can do something to help Steven then I’m okay with it.” Having seen the many things in his life Greg was prepared for some crystal gems to come out, instead Connie walked away and came back with the strangest menagerie of creatures he had ever seen.

“Hello.” At one time Foxglove might have been shy, after meeting Dale the shyness was thoroughly thrown clear out the nearest window or through a wall if a window wasn’t available in her mind at the time she threw the shyness out. She was offering herself up as the first to speak again voluntarily.

“Hello, I’m Greg Universe. Is this a crystal gem thing that I should be worried about Connie?” After a moment of silently looking over the group Greg didn’t see any gems among them, that didn’t mean they weren’t somehow related in some way if Connie’s unheard news was anything to go by. Because short of Pearl being alive and returning he didn’t think anything like this batch of weirdness would cheer Steven up, not that watching his favorite show Crying Breakfast Friends helped his moody disposition any.

“No Mr. U, they have important news though and I want them to tell Steven what they personally told me.” After that Connie pointed out each of them to Greg. “That’s Foxglove, Roller Wheel, Fluttershy; Bonnie who has a name almost like mine and the little one is Soft Echo.”

Soft Echo sat up and looked at the big man in the shirt and cut off shorts with her big purple eyes and she squeaked at him while flapping her wings somewhat. Greg looked to Fluttershy who nodded her assent and he picked her up and started to tickle the little darling creature with bat features that started giggling happily.

“Aw look at her, she’s really adorable. Is this your daughter ma’am?” Greg received a nod from the rather calm feminine creature; he had wondered why a mother would just let him pick up her child like this. Obviously Fluttershy wasn’t going to go mama bear on Greg because he didn’t come off as very threatening, that and her current emotional disposition.

“So to the van to get some pizza so they can finally deliver the news to you and Steven?” Receiving a suspicious look from the older man Connie smiled cheekily as she had yet to tell him what the news was.

“Alright, come on.” At this point Greg really didn’t care if they were crystal gem business or not, he liked them well enough and Connie obviously trusted them. Roller puttered right on by Greg who flinched slightly, he still wasn’t into overly magical things.

Greg had it explained to him what each being was, Foxglove was the one he was still unsure if she was a normal bat or not because she was as magically gifted like his son was with his mothers powers.

“So what brings all of you to Beach City?” He looked up in the review mirror and glanced at the various beings in the back of his van.

“Oh this is just a little detour for friends on the quest to restore my brother back to life.” Bonnie really wasn’t paying attention to the large balding bearded man with long hair hanging down his back. She was staring at the sphere that contained her brother, the death knells encroachment hadn’t moved once since Stanley put it in magical stasis and she was still rather worried it would wear off at any time.

“Why are we being so secretive about it?” The ever emotionless Fluttershy didn’t understand the reasoning behind keeping it all secret that they were here to deliver a message that Pearl was okay. That Pearl was likely watching them at the moment since she was hanging out with Discord earlier was something Fluttershy should probably get back into asking about. She wondered blankly if her friends had seen Soft Echo yet, the little pink furred pony seemed to be normal except for the fact that she spoke in a dialect of vampire fruit bat that would make her hard for ponies to understand her in the future. She’ll likely give Soft her translation device when they get to Equus and it was an almost guaranteed certainty that they would.

“It’s because I want it to be a big surprise for when we finally tell Steven about what you told me!” If there was one person Connie really liked it was Steven Universe, he was quirky, funny, friendly and obviously gifted in reading other people in an emotional manner. Steven was her biscuit and she liked to be his jam, they cad even share a body when they magically fused together. She knew how he felt about her and hadn’t brought it up once since it would embarrass him. If every pork chop were perfect then there wouldn’t be any hotdogs like Steven around, a short guy who is perfect by just being himself.

“Speaking of surprises, know of a place where we can stop for some dessert to go with our pizza?” Bonnie was asking because she wanted something of the sweet and sugary variety, she tended to have a sweet tooth and nothing was sweeter than being around Fluttershy when she was fully emotional.

“Yeah there’s a place near Fish Stew Pizza that Steven frequents all the time, Big Doughnut is one of his favorite places to go here in Beach City. We can pick up some stuff from there as Steven will actually have something to celebrate soon.” If there was excitement in the air then Connie had certainly spread it to Greg.

“Hey yeah, I guess we’re making a party of it then… no wait… how am I going to pay for all this?” Despite the fact that he was a decent musician once upon a time, Greg didn’t have a lot of money to his name since he became a car washer who did odd jobs on the side to keep himself afloat.

“Leave that and the pizza to me, I can pay for it all myself. What kind of doughnuts can you handle, if you have any allergies it’s a good idea to mention it now since I’m getting a lot of fruit filled ones for the filly.” Bonnie had a soft spot now the cute little tyke that was mewling as her stomach grumbled, she watched as Fluttershy quieted the kid by taking her into her hooves and rocking her gently. It was pretty awesome to see Fluttershy in action of being a mother despite lacking the emotional value behind it other than happiness. The little kid could really eat a lot, most likely because she was born with hollow leg and an empty stomach.

“Really how are you going to do that? I mean you’re a little noticeable.” Keeping his eyes on the road, Greg saw that they were almost at the car wash place where he worked. That’s where he was going to park to go get Steven while Connie showed the friendly, if strange, visitors around.

“I’m noticeable sure, but I’m also legally an American citizen.” The statement that Bonnie spoke noticeably caught the attention of Connie, Foxglove and Greg.

“How does that work?” He might not have known the green furred creature for long, but even Greg was a bit skeptical that she was an American citizen.

“Quite well obviously, since I was not human I didn’t normally fall under human laws so my stealing stuff in after little harmless crime spree in Hawaii. Legally, they couldn’t deport me to another country or hold me up to their laws. That’s where things got rather interesting.” It certainly was a crazy bit of law work, but the only way they could legally put her in jail under their laws was to make her a citizen of America which she had readily agreed to for various reasons. One being it made her entire family American citizens protected by law. “Since the first country I landed on when I came to earth was considered me being on American soil, it became my country of origin. They had to make me a citizen of America or else I would walk away scot free to plunder and pillage what was my little black heart out at the time without repercussion because I’m not native to any other country and they don’t have protocols for alien beings. My brother loved the jail time there when usually we hate jail, the jail in Hawaii was much nicer than being stuff into a small cubic room surrounded by force fields only being fed what passed for barely nutritional slop every day. It wasn’t all bad, except the fact they couldn’t legally put me down as female because I’m not human and thus I was in a prison for guys for a while. My brother made sure nobody would even dare touch me without my say so. Nobody tried to really and I did my time, I still wonder why nobody wanted me and it made me feel as if I were ugly. Anyway, I got out early for good behavior and because a bail was paid by my family. I’m not sure whether they’ll ever figure out my youngest brother Stitch hacked a bank account to pay my bail or not, but I’m not complaining.”

“So you’re an alien who’s also a criminal.” Greg didn’t sound particularly happy with knowing that he had a criminal in his van, he rubbed the side of his head in slight consternation that Connie trusted her so easily.

“I have no current arrest warrants out for me on Earth or in space. At least not to my knowledge at the moment anyway, Fluttershy quite legally paid my bail in space a while ago and I’ve been relatively clean ever since then.” Despite the fact that her fingers were stickier then someone wearing a glove covered in super glue, at least Bonnie was able to cut back on her urges by doing minor seemingly illegal things like breaking and entering without the breaking or stealing part.

“She’s also saved a lot of people from some horrible things and took down an evil empire almost entirely by herself. She’s not really evil, just misunderstood most of the time because she can’t help how she was made to be.” It was moments like this with Fluttershy speaking up for her, if still in a rather flat manner, that made Bonnie happy that she had decided kidnap the beautiful pony despite the headaches involved in doing so. It was easily the best theft she had ever committed and it never ceased to make her happy to have met Fluttershy, a friend unlike any other.

“Yeah, I guess I can understand that, if the crystal gems who live here in Beach City weren’t rebels against their own kind in the distant past then this planet wouldn’t likely be here today.” At least Greg wouldn’t get upset with Bonnie unless she did something he didn’t agree with under his watch and she seemed amiable enough to get along with. She reminded him of Amethyst in some ways. He pondered on the fact that she was promising to pay for pizza and baked goods. This brought up a thought to mind that he just had to voice. “Where did you get the money from?”

“I’ll be honest here; would you care if I stole it from criminals after they shot at me and my friends without provocation? They were human thieves that wouldn’t care that they actively hurt people to get what they want, I don’t try to hurt someone unless they’ve either thoroughly upset me in some way or if they’ve made me completely furious.” The resentment in her voice was halted when Bonnie felt Fluttershy slowly rub her back with a hoof displaying little emotion whatsoever; it still made her feel better. “While I haven’t made a lot of good decisions in my life, I think everything is going pretty well nowadays since I met Sweet Cheeks here.”

“You said something about restoring you’re brother to life… how’s that going.” Glancing in the mirror again, Greg could see Bonnie holding a small sphere that had a white glow around it. He didn’t say much more as he could see the grief etched into her face as she looked down at the little sphere that looked to be plastic, it looked like a gem but it wasn’t one obviously. “I’m sorry about bringing it up.”

“No, it’s okay big guy. My little brother will be better once I can get him back to dad, my dad can still restore him back to normal as long as this sphere doesn’t go entirely gray.” Bonnie held the sphere close to her chest and it was on her person every single moment. The only other person she would trust with it would be Fluttershy and she’s not emotionally up to the task at the moment. She didn’t want Foxglove around it because she might accidentally break the stasis on it early dooming her brother, Roller’s adaptive magic might be capable of an accident too and at least Fluttershy’s magic tended to be centered entirely around a specific concept so it was impossible for her which is why Foxglove came along for the ride.

“Well here we are. This is where I work; Connie will take you to the Big Doughnut to get the goods. I’ll meet you at Fish Stew Pizza with Steven.” Greg let the strange beings pile out of his van and he decided to walk to the home that was built underneath the statue on the beach. “Look, whatever news you have for him better be the greatest most fantastical thing he’ll ever hear, I just want to see my little man smiling and happy again.”

“Okay guys, come on and I’ll show you the place where Steven likes to hang out.” The odd menagerie set out with Connie in the lead taking them to a place with a large sign with Big Donut written on it.

The written language was not something Fluttershy understood. It was unlikely that Soft Echo toddling along beside her could either, but the symbolism of the doughnut on the roof of the place was definitely understandable. The place itself seemed kind of quaint in size and appearance compared to the big symbol on top of the building.

“Hey Sadie, you’re getting some strange customers today, I hope you don’t mind.” Strange being that Connie didn’t usually come in to snack on the delicious looking treats.

The blonde woman at the counter looked up from her magazine and smiled at Connie and then blinked a few times at what followed her in.

“Of course I don’t mind, welcome to the Big Doughnut! We have all kinds of stuff for sale so have a look around.” It didn’t matter what they looked like, customers were customers and she’d be happy to serve the green koala, an intelligent looking bat and the really odd self propelled motorized unicycle thing. When her eyes fell on the two little horse beings with wings, she felt her heart melt at the sight of Fluttershy cheerfully nuzzling Soft in a comforting gesture at being in a strange place. “At least it’s not a pink lion. Hey Lars, come get a look at this, they’re adorable!”

Author's Note

Well a few guesses as to what happens next, I could finish this story in five chapters. I'm going the long route because there is a specific crossover that will cause major problems in getting to Hawaii when an object comes into play.

92

Lars would never admit to having feelings for Sadie, nor would he ever admit that he squealed at the sight of the adorable ponies. He was a strange tall lanky teen with large earlobes that had equally large holes in them, a curly of brown hair with an orange tint to it all at the center at the top of his head. He would generally be rude, but the sight before him was a little hard to call dumb in his view. Fluttershy still had quite the positive effect on people even when she didn’t notice it herself to appreciate the fact.

Bonnie swaggered up to the counter and ordered a jelly filled doughnut just to see how Soft would react to it. It took a bit of doing and Fluttershy biting into a second one before Soft would actually bite into her doughnut after sniffing at the filling on Fluttershy’s face. The alien experiment had already paid for both so it was okay for them to eat.

It was entirely cute that Soft drained the doughnut entirely of its filling before she took to eating the doughnut normally as she saw Fluttershy doing. She liked the doughnut well enough after draining the filling out of it entirely with her fangs, it took a while because the jelly was more syrupy then Soft was used too. If she was a good bat pony thing, then Bonnie my buy a fruit flavored popsicle for her just to see what would happen when Soft tried to suck that up.

“So is she a vampire or something, she’s kind of cool.” Lars for once didn’t care if they looked girly; the thought of the pony being a vampire was rather wicked cool to him.

“She’s a fruit vampire and unlike stories about actual vampires, which actually do exist by the way, she’ll only suck the juice out fruits as far as we can tell.” Noticing she was being stared at Foxglove decide to cut them off before they asked the obvious. “Before you ask, no, I’m not a vampire bat nor do any of us drink blood. The closest would be Fluttershy being able to eat fish and obviously her daughter having that ability as well, they can’t eat any other kind of meat aside from seafood.”

“It’s a good thing we’re going to a place that specifically caters to seafood related pizza then, they make this weird fish pepperoni. We should be sure to tell the Pizza’s that you can’t handle most kinds of meat.” After a moment Connie had a thought and decided to voice it. “I wonder if the family legally had their last name as Pizza before they opened the restaurant or did they change it after they moved here?”

“We need two boxes of doughnuts one of them filled with the assorted berry filled kind and the other with a dozen tiger tails with cinnamon and apple chunks.” Bonnie turned to Fluttershy to see if she had an angry expression on her face, but sighed when Fluttershy just flatly stared at her. “They’re just twisted up doughnuts and in no way were tigers harmed in the making of them.”

Fluttershy watched as Sadie went about making a fresh batch of tiger tails and they did look like striped tails. She was eventually going to bring this nifty little pastry idea back to equestrian to see what Pinkie’s version would be like, obviously powdered sugar would be involved. Maybe she should get a bit of alien fashion for Rarity to look over, a book for Twilight, some flashy for Rainbow and apple seeds from an alien planet for Applejack since earth had apples. She wondered if her taste for apples was still going to be slightly above normal, she’d have to find out later by eating one of the tiger tails.

“Right, do you need anything else?” Sadie liked these customers; she didn’t know whether or not they’d be sticking around, she’d just enjoy them while they’re her. She was a short blond woman who was quite tough despite her size who found enjoyment in the simpler things in life.

“Yeah, do you have a small carrot cake? We’re going to cheer up Steven and the news we have to deliver will perk him right up, he hasn’t been eating much lately has he?” Looking into the older woman’s eyes Connie could see she also felt hurt over Steven’s current mood and looking to Lars he had a slight frown on his face. “Why don’t you two join us, you’re officially invited to the party we’ll be having.”

“If the doughnuts are really good, we’ll need some for the road so to speak when it comes time for us to leave. So how much is all this?” Bonnie asked this as soon as Sadie had the cake sitting on the counter, she had the wallet out and she was actually going to legally spend the money she had on this stuff. It didn’t really bother her nearly as much as she thought it would have. She paid the appropriate amount and she had plenty of money leftover since those gear heads back on the road were carrying at least several hundred dollars each. She made sure beforehand and definitely for certain that the money wasn’t counterfeit before paying with it.

“Well I guess we can close the store down to take a lunch break, Steven has spent enough time moping around and I think it’s high time we helped him out of his funk Lars.” Sadie turned to someone she wouldn’t mind asking her out on a date. She knew Lars was lazy, but he was also shy and rather sensitive which explains his rude behavior and Steven was right about him having a good heart in him somewhere. If only he didn’t have anxiety issues, then they’d be a lot closer to each other.

“Sure whatever; just give us some time to close up.” Lars acted nonchalant, about as nonchalant as one could act with all the strange beings that could speak their language in the room. Not to mention they paid for stuff in American currency. Lars thought of how Ronaldo, someone who was his old friend, would have had a field day with all these guys if he knew they were here. He wouldn’t tell Ronaldo about them. In particular, Lars didn’t feel like subjecting Fluttershy and her daughter to that nut even if they were magical or alien in nature.

In all it was business as usual in Beach City, where a lot of people ignored the obvious weirdness of the group Connie was leading over towards Fish Stew Pizza.

The people of Beach City were too used to strange things really to raise an alarm over a little visitation by strange creatures; even the people that moved to Beach City quickly learned to just ignore the overly mystical or magical things going on. Who would believe them anyway and why bother overreacting? They went with the flow easily enough and just let things be. They’d cross a bridge if they became personally involved the happenings around Beach City, which wasn’t often thanks to the crystal gems protecting them. It was a quiet city, with little to no crime whatsoever and the mayor really didn’t do much aside from keep things running smoothly.

Connie led the group to the front of the pizza restaurant and that was when Fluttershy and friends got their first glimpse of Steven. He was a chubby little kid wearing a red shirt with a yellow five point star on it that had Roller concerned for his life given what the usual symbolism of death for his species was. Steven also wore pants with rolled up legs and sandals to complete the outfit. He didn’t even acknowledge Connie’s approach until he noticed the strange band of beings with her.

“Hi Connie, so did you actually get into a magical school in Europe and now have to move away so you can learn magic?” The depressive mood Steven seemed to be in was kind of downer as they approached. He sounded much worse when he talked of Connie moving away and was still upset about Pearl being missing and not hearing a word from her in so long.

“No, I have some news that you’ll really want to hear and… hey, where’s Bonnie?” Connie noticed the green alien was missing and saw that she wwas already inside the restaurant talking to the Pizza’s. “Come on Steven, I swear by the time lunch ends you’ll be telling Garnet and Amethyst all about this.”

Connie turned back to Fluttershy who shrugged at her while holding two box loads of doughnuts under a wing in a bag that Soft Echo pawed at with a hoof. Soft obviously wanted more jelly filled doughnuts.

“No my little Soft, we’re about to eat lunch. You can have one after we’re done with our meal.” Fluttershy’s nuzzling affection made Soft purr slightly and she gave up on getting at the sack with the two doughnut boxes in it in a shy manner. It reminded Fluttershy of herself at that age and that was why she named her Soft Echo, because Soft was a magically created if slightly warped echo of her. Besides being fitting she felt really soft and acted in a manner befitting of a kind hearted nature in the future.

They went into the restaurant where led to a table for a party of eight that was already being set up.

Fluttershy logically understood that having some vampire fruit bat in her, Soft would need a relatively sugar heavy diet from all the fruits she would consume in the future. There was a mental note to never leave Soft Echo alone around Applejack’s orchard, especially when she was hungry. While Soft didn’t have hypoglycemia, it would be a fair bet that she would act like she did if she went too long without a piece of fruit given she had a vampire fruit bats diet which was likely added on top of a ponies natural dietary habits as well. It would explain why Soft was always so hungry and since she was recently born she needed a lot of nutrients to catch up with her body suddenly existing.

The medical tomatoes from Janet Rhizome really helped out in the endeavor of feeding Soft, but she had already eaten through a large amount of what Fluttershy had on Head Hunter all by herself. So Fluttershy would need a lot of jams and preservatives as part of Soft’s diet plan in the future, she blankly wondered if her friends knew about Soft Echo yet.

Bringing her attention back to the table they were all seated at, Fluttershy was introduced to the Pizza family. It was discussed what would be on the two large pizza’s Bonnie was paying for. It was nice of her to pay for lunch, even if she was using money she had recently stolen. She and Bonnie were going to have a large discussion when her emotions fully came back, which would be about another day or tomorrow morning at the earliest convenience.

The two pizza’s were decided on, a pizza with pineapple and fish toppings on it and a pizza with traditional meat and veggies that are more normally seen on regular pizza.

“So what is it that you have to tell me Connie and why are they here?” Steven just sat his chin on the table; his mood was still at an all time low.

“Okay Fluttershy, tell him the message you delivered to me!” Excitedly Connie turned to Fluttershy since she was the one that said she’d deliver the message and deliver she would.

“Dear, Garnet, Amethyst, Steven, Connie and Greg. Don’t worry about me, I’m still alive and I’m likely bringing home souvenirs from my vacation, love Pearl the crystal gem.” Of course Fluttershy was paraphrasing Pearls message, even with a blank tone it didn’t stop every human other than Connie from looking at her wide eyed. Steven just stared at Fluttershy for a moment before a cheerful wide smile made its way onto his face. Fluttershy smiled slightly as she was given a grateful hug, happiness was an emotion she didn’t mind at the moment. “P. S. I miss you too.”

“She’s alive? I think I can understand why you didn’t tell me now Connie, why that’s the best kind of news in the whole world!” That message had even made Greg’s day, but more importantly it made Stevens and brought him out of his bad funk. He stood up as someone who was introduced as Kiki Pizza brought their pizza to the table. “We should… oh, we already are celebrating. I’m sure you’ll tell Amethyst and Garnet all about how you got a message from Pearl. Where is she and where did she end up?”

“I’ll call a printing company to make the pamphlet for you Fluttershy.” Bonnie said wryly while shaking her head.

The explanation was shared over around of delicious pizza, Soft somehow managed to suck the tomato sauce entirely out of a pizza slice before eating it. It took her a bit to get at the chunks of pineapple, she eventually figured out with Fluttershy’s gentle coaxing that the easier way was to eat it was altogether.

Lunch was a time of happiness and merriment, Steven’s sudden good mood brightened the room up by five levels on his own. It was amazing to Steven that Pearl would be coming home from a pony planet somewhere in the universe and she’d be brought back by a mystical space being known as a star nomad.

That wasn’t the end of the good news, if they went to sleep next to each other sometime tonight they’d be able to communicate to Pearl in their dreams directly through Fluttershy’s lunar princess. Steven could hardly wait to talk to Pearl and he just knew that Amethyst and Garnet would want to too; he always wanted to meet a princess.

“So what caused her to end up on Equus, I don’t think it was an accident considering it was a planet once visited by the crystal gems.” The observation quieted everyone as they turned to Bonnie. “Pearl and Sweet Cheeks have a running theory that Sweet Cheeks planet did to protect itself from crystal gems that were invading it.”

“Well it involves this mean crystal gem who was with another mean crystal gem that’s currently being held at the bottom of the ocean… by a friend.” Started Steven slowly as he was too happy with Pearl still being alive to be upset at retelling the story of how she ended up missing. Connie reached over and grabbed his shoulder; he smiled at her and continued on. “Pearl had learned how to tracked Peridot, that’s the mean crystal gems name, Pearl was in the middle of using one of the warp pad things we use to go all over the place. It was destroyed by Peridot when Pearl was in the middle of activating it, when we didn’t hear from her after that we thought she was gone when we couldn’t find her after that.”

Steven obviously loved Pearl as if she were an aunt or a mother, she was always there for him when he needed her and she did a lot of the chores around the house. Without Pearl around it was up to the other two gems to pick up the slack with protecting the world from crystal gem related danger and doing all the household chores. The other two gems Garnet and Amethyst were spoken highly of by the humans at the table, even the tight lipped Lars had some nice things to say.

After finishing off the pizza, Soft Echo perked up when she noticed the doughnut boxes being brought out of the sack. She was still hungry and two doughnuts were placed before her, one tiger tail and the other a jelly filled doughnut. Curiously she went for the tiger tail first after sniffing it; she actually ate it normally instead of trying to suck the small bits of fruit out of it. She was learning already and the world around her might have been big and scary, but with her mommy nearby she knew she was safe.

Soft Echo rubbed at her head with a hoof as a small wad of information filtered throughout her head. There were no memories to put them to though, even as she now understood the world around her a little bit better. She now knew her mother’s name, what she had eaten and the general colors of the things she saw and numbers. At least Fluttershy wouldn’t have to teach her those things… mommy was smart, beautiful and loved by many. She wanted another jelly filled doughnut and nuzzled Fluttershy while telling her so in bat squeaks.

Soft Echo wouldn’t be having any nightmares about metal monsters or the other things Fluttershy has been through, but she would eventually have a lot of subconscious knowledge surrounding animal care.

Lars and Sadie were back off to work after a slice of cake, Greg had other things to do and this left Steven and his best friend among a group of strange beings alone outside the pizzeria after a great meal.

“Oh right, I have to tell Amethyst and Garnet about you guys!” Motioning for the visitors to follow, Steven would lead the travelers to his home which was at the bottom of the cliff of which a lighthouse sat upon. As they followed Steven onto the beach, they saw a large statue that looked like it had four arms, however closer inspection would show that there were two other arms that were acting as a foundation for the house sitting at the base of the statue. “That’s my home, welcome to the crystal gem temple!”

A pink lion ran up to them and looked at Steven. He then curiously sniffed Foxglove tickling her a bit, he immediately licked Fluttershy when he got close to her and just nuzzled Soft Echo affectionately next. When he got to Bonnie he just growled slightly. The large lion with the heart shaped nose didn’t do much more besides go back to lying down in the sand, but it sent a stare at Bonnie that was quite an obvious warning.

“I think that lion knows way too much.” It was obvious to anyone that something was odd about that animal aside from its pink fur and it’s obviously magical nature. The fact that it knew she was something to be wary around meant he was quite intelligent. “I might even say that he has something against me, even if I haven’t done anything yet.”

“What are you talking about? Lion’s just a big softie, if he thinks all of you are alright then you’ve got nothing to worry about.” At least Steven thought that, he was pretty sure Lion was a great judge of character. Though he didn’t know why he treated Bonnie different, she seemed nice enough to him.

“Amethyst, Garnet, you’ll never believe what I just heard!” Running into the house ahead of everyone, the joyful Steven attracted the attention of the two beings currently in resident.

One was a bewildered sturdy morose looking purple skinned humanoid lying on the couch; she was obviously one of the two crystal gems that lived there. To the left of the entrance a tall strong looking dark skinned lady wearing sunglasses stood up from her position of sitting on the steps and seemed a bit perplexed at seeing Steven being so happy.

“Steven... what has gotten you so…” The tall woman was about to ask what was making Steven so happy, when she grunted and held a hand to her afro covered head. She muttered under her breath. “Something is very wrong.”

“You’ll never guess what I heard, come on in guys and make yourself at home. That’s Amethyst and this is Garnet.” Into the home piled the strange beings that attracted the attention of the two named gems. “These guys appeared at Connie’s house and they say Pearl is coming back, though it’ll be a while. She ended up on another planet and she’s playing with magical ponies!”

“Hello Garnet, hello Amethyst I’m Fluttershy.” After introductions were had all around and a big of information from Fluttershy about Pearls continued exist, Garnet looked around at everyone oddly before standing up.

“Excuse me everyone, I need to go and clear my head. This is good news, I’m glad to know that Pearl is doing alright.” With that Garnet left the house and as she walked away she voiced a thought, one that only Lion heard and reacted to with fright. “Why can I no longer see the future?”

“Whoa, it’s so awesome that Pearl survived! So you say you’re here for the night so Steven can talk to Pearl while you sleep? I want in on that, I want to talk to Pearl too!” Amethyst felt like a weight had been lifted off of her since she saw a happy Steven come in and with the knowledge that Pearl didn’t perish to boot. She even felt like snacking again, one of the things crystal gems didn’t need to do and yet she got enjoyment and extra energy out of it.

They spent a lot of time telling stories after that. Amethyst learned that she had something in common with Bonnie in being made. They had all learned that Foxglove was quite musically inclined and had wonderful singing voice that could match Fluttershy in its angelic sounding tones and also had quite a few tales of the Rescue Rangers to share. Fluttershy’s journey was the most amazing story yet as she talked of all the alien races she had come across. That was followed by Bonnie’s tales of misadventure as a free spirit. Even Roller had his own stories about going fast and his life growing up that lasted well into the evening.

After a quick dinner, Steven pushed several mattresses together in the middle of the living room along with all the cushions in the house to make a makeshift bed they could all share together. It was so Fluttershy could comfortably act as a dream conduit. Everyone but Bonnie slowly snuggled together and went to sleep, Garnet had yet to return and Bonnie left the house to enjoy the beach in peace.

“It’s a thing of beauty, the horizon.” As always Bonnie looked to the horizon when she sat down in the sand, she was soon joined by Lion who sat down next to her without a word. They sat there looking at the stars together for a while. Eventually Lion left her as he came, in peace.

Sometime later that night Bonnie saw a red hat with a large yellow M on it come sloshing onto the shore. Curiously when she picked it up, she found that it was strangely dry despite having been floating in the sea. This was a mystery she would deal with later tomorrow, it was about time she joined the others and snuggled Fluttershy’s rump.

Author's Note

The next crossover connecting several other things together appears, this one is going to be quite a doozy.

Of course Bonnie would pick up an innocuous object that was her favorite color, one that had strange attributes that made no sense straight from the start.

Guess the crossover, because the hat is the only clue needed and it's from a dark cartoon show where deaths were shown to have happened. Said deaths occurred mostly off the screen and the monsters that show had were always awesome in a grotesque evil manner. A thing to note is that heroes can die whether you know they did or not, what's left behind is usually broken hearts.

These last few chapters might be slow or boring slogfest based around world building and welding, but it’ll pick up once more. Earth has many secrets and there have been many heroes who've died to keep a fragile balance, but what if that balance was suddenly completely upset by one flap of a butterflies wings?

I'm aiming for at least twenty to fifty more chapters, even though this story is quite long already.

93

“Where am I?” Steven Quartz Universe sat up and looked about himself; he was sitting underneath a tree on grassy hillside.

“Steven!” The voice was followed by a form pouncing on the boy and a pair of limbs entrapping him in big hug.

It took Steven a few moments to realize what was hugging him, after a moment he quickly returned the hug as he recognized that it was a teary eyed Pearl. She was adorable as a pony and he couldn’t help but chuckle as she nuzzled him as if she were a pony and not just shaping her form to look like one. Pearl had gone slightly native.

“Yes, distant kin of Pearl.” Luna caused Amethyst to yelp and jump straight on top of Pearl harmlessly knocking her to the ground as weight meant nothing in the realm of dreams. Connie was giggling slightly even as she stared on in awe at Luna’s beauty and size; she had been on the other side of the tree. “I am Princess Luna; Pearl has been eagerly looking forward to this. Enjoy the night and dream well for your time together is limited.”

Having looked away from Pearl, both Steven and Amethyst saw everyone that had snuggled up to Fluttershy and a different pony that they haven’t seen before aside from the princess that just introduced herself. Maud had a small smile on her face at seeing Pearl being happy to be with her family. That and in reality Maud was being tightly cuddled by Pearl since they were both snuggled together in bed after a nice stealth date Pinkie helped to set up, now if only she could ask Pearl out for a real date. She was a bit shy like Pearl was.

After an hour Bonnie joined in the dream and minutes after that two strange beings appeared in the dream, one was a calm blue skinned Cyclops lady in a dress and the other was a fiery red skinned hot tempered girl. The two of them looked rather confused about what was going on. Then Lion appeared looking vaguely puzzled, but had wanted to join in on pile of beings sleeping next to the beautiful soul that reminded him of Rose Quartz.

Ruby and Sapphire were explained as being Garnet when the two were fused together, the two crystal gems looked a bit iffy around Pearl but eventually they decided to come around and the crystal gems came together as one big family. The family would dream happily for the rest of the night and would profusely thank Luna for the opportunity to meet like this.

It was the third day on Earth and Fluttershy slowly came to, she was lying on her belly with her hooves splayed out flat across the makeshift bedding. Sleeping against the left side of her neck was Foxglove, snuggled into her left side was Soft Echo with a feathered wing draped around her and on her right was Steven. Bonnie once again was snuggled against her butt, Amethyst and Garnet had their heads resting against Fluttershy’s front hooves and her two rear hooves were taken up by Lion and Roller. Hugging her tail and having told her parents she was sleeping over at the Universe’s was a softly snoring Connie.

The pony race had learned new facets of the crystal gems in their ability to fuse together to become both bigger and stronger along with the ability to create new summon weapons as a result of the fusion. Garnet really took fusion seriously and it was rather sweet that Ruby and Sapphires love is what held their form together so well.

While she wasn’t uncomfortable with her current position as a pillow, Fluttershy wanted to get up and stretch out her incredibly stiff body. She didn’t have the heart to disturb anyone even in her still somewhat limited emotional state; after a moment she realized she was beginning to feel things again slowly. She was actually able to feel other things than content or happy.

It was only a short amount of time after that everyone else started waking up; Steven had taken to hugging Fluttershy in his sleep with a frown before he woke up. He must have been saying goodbye to Pearl; he was both happy and sad upon waking up and looking at everyone else.

It was time for the day to start with some fresh eggs for breakfast; the oranges were all sadly stolen by a hungry Soft. It led a distracted Fluttershy to notice that Bonnie was holding a hat.

“Bonnie, can you tell me where that came from?” Motioning to the red hat, Fluttershy was actually feeling curious at the moment which is a neutral emotion in the fact that it was neither good nor bad.

“It washed ashore from the sea late last night, don’t rightly know where it was before that but it was certainly strange that this thing was dry when I found it.” It was disconcerting to Bonnie; she started to check it over when she found a small piece of paper on the inside of the hat. There was no advanced mechanical technology in the hat that kept it dry as far as she could tell. “Hey, what’s this? Warning, beware of cliffs with this hat. Well that’s a little odd and highly ominous to hear.”

Amethyst came over and looked at the note Bonnie had read and shrugged before going back to her cheesy snack chips. Garnet was sitting on the couch looking stoic as ever and was mumbling to herself, most likely talking between her two personalities that made up her body.

“Can I check it and everyone? I think I’ve got my magic detecting ability down.” Foxglove had been practicing on the wild ride so that her echolocation screech could not only bounce back physical images but also magical signatures. She had been carefully practicing on Soft since she was made from magic.

Bonnie held out the hat and Foxglove inhaled filling her small lungs with as much air as she could and she let out a visible pulse when she released a loud screech. After a moment she started looking about the room and at all the magic that was in it.

“There’s a lot of magic here, Steven has magic, Amethyst does too at about the same strength, Garnet has a little more than double that, I can detect my own which feels really weird, Fluttershy has a decent amount, Roller is swamped with magic and Connie has a small amount of magic to herself as well.” Foxglove’s news was a little surprising to Connie; the bat looked around the room a bit more before her echolocation shriek wore off. “There are also a few magical objects in this room and the hat isn’t one of them. Oddly it doesn’t seem to have reacted to my echolocation at all and I can see you in my echolocation Bonnie, but I can’t see it despite the fact that my sound should be bouncing off of it.”

“That means there is something definitely up with this hat and that we should heed it’s warning, but it’s not immediately dangerous right?” Bonnie didn’t have a bad feeling about the hat, but it was rather unnerving for her to hold onto for some reason. She dropped it and Soft quickly took it in her mouth wiggling her red tail happily like a puppy.

Soft Echo liked the colors yellow and red; she trotted over to Fluttershy looking up at her with the hat hanging from her mouth. Against her better judgment Fluttershy took the hat from her mouth and set it upon the filly’s head causing the pony smile and squeak in joy at her new adornment that pressed her ears against her head making things quieter.

Still early in the morning Fluttershy led Soft up to the grassy hill leading to the lighthouse on the cliff above the temple. Fluttershy was going to teach Soft Echo how to fly, if things got too dangerous her little filly could fly away from it and hide. Fluttershy could actually see things’ getting more dangerous as time passed as this was turning out to be like Popstar all over again. It was getting to the point where every single day something violent would happen and she was actually beginning to feel vaguely worried about Soft’s safety.

“Soft look at me, do what mommy is doing.” Fluttershy spread her wings and flapped them once; she closed them up and then opened them again repeating the process. Soft looked at her questioningly and was confused until Fluttershy poked her wings causing them to unfold from her sides.

The poor little filly screeched in uncertainty when her wings flared out and one slapped her in the face, Fluttershy quickly calmed down the whimpering filly and gave a gentle kiss to where it hurt. The filly calmed down and started touching her velvety soft fur covered wings with a hoof. She explored them and her own body having not once opened her wings of her own volition before, it was like she hadn’t known they were there all along with their tiny little hooks and the fuzzy warmth they gave her when they were wrapping around her sides.

Now that she was aware of her wings and exploring them, Fluttershy started flapping her wings to earn the Soft Echo’s attention. She could see Fluttershy hovering in the air above her and unbalancing herself she fell onto her back and started giggling when Fluttershy dropped from above to start tickling and nuzzling her.

“You know this like watching mother birds teaching their babies how to fly, only less pushing them out of the nest and more on actually teaching them.” Connie and the other crystal gems were watching the spectacle as Fluttershy was trying to coax little Soft into getting airborne. While that was happening she consider what she could do with her magic now that she knew for certain she had her own magical powers as limited as they were from Foxglove’s description. She could only imagine the things she’d be able to do in the future, maybe things like throwing elemental blasts of energy with the swing of a sword? Her imagination was stoked despite her parent’s slightly stifling ways.

“Yeah Fluttershy is so sweet she causes cavities without really trying or meaning to.” Bonnie was already enamored with the idea of raising Soft alongside Fluttershy, in a time where she had broken her need to steal entirely. She didn’t mind the idea of living in obscurity if Fluttershy was there with her. She came out of her imaginings as Soft wiggling her cute little rump in the air before jumping up and trying to flap her wings, only to end up falling flat on her face in the grass because she didn’t synchronize them well enough.

Garnet stood nearby and watched, she still couldn’t see the future and wondered what could be blocking her powers. There was a lot of uncertainty about everything going on now and Ruby was having a heck of a time calming down her partner in their combined form. It had something to do with the visitors who gave them time to talk to Pearl about where she was and how she was doing. It was good to know that Pearl hadn’t been shattered even if she was on a world dangerous to Crystal Gems; apparently she slammed into a tree that had been responsible for the deaths of many crystal gems if the theory that the planet ate them was to be believed. Then again the crystal gems had really been asking for it by trying to parasite that planet and were in turn themselves eaten, the news and visuals Pearl gave her of the crystal ponies caused Garnet to be a little more than uneasy of that world.

There was one upside to all this, Garnet saw that Steven was back to his old self and it made her happy to see his spirit has been revitalized. Even if she couldn’t predict things, so far nothing was looking bad at the moment even if it could quickly change. She wasn’t one to ruin Steven’s good mood.

Everything from meeting Fluttershy to the highway chase had Foxglove thoroughly rattled, she knew Dale has had worse than this and was surprised she went through it all in over the last two days since she took up this mission. Bonnie had some decency even with her thieving behavior, she seemed attracted to Fluttershy like a moth to a flame. Fluttershy herself was sweet and friendly; over the last two days she saw the kind of havoc that followed the pony around which had Foxglove worried for her life. Then there was the strange Soft Echo who spoke only bat and performed like a vampire for fruit. Given Fluttershy’s world had Vampire Fruit Bats and her magical curse was caused by complete accident, it wasn’t hard to put two and two together to get four. Roller himself was an incredible fantastical animal.

Despite her magical prowess not being all too great to do big things, Foxglove was an observer of many strange things since she fell on Fluttershy’s muzzle that made Stanley look normal. Her current concerns were not over the sudden mother or her child, it was over the hat that didn’t her echolocation screech didn’t pick up. Her voice was a vibration so she should have been able to get a bounce back from the hat as her sound hit it. If she wasn’t seeing it with her own two eyes and she had pretty good eyesight compared to any other normal bat, she would have sworn the object in question didn’t exist. That it didn’t come off magical or even as being physical in her echolocation was disturbing, so she kept near Fluttershy and Soft hoping that she’d be capable of doing something in time if the hat was malevolent in nature.

At this point Foxglove was wondering what else would happen, so far since she had landed on this world Fluttershy’s life had been in danger no more than five to seven times in two days depending on one’s point of view. She was determined to help save Bonnie’s brother, but making sure nothing happens to Fluttershy so that she could go home was another objective that was long term that she wanted to see through to the end. Fluttershy seemed to need all the help she can get, so Foxglove offered her assistance with helping to teach Soft Echo how to fly as a method of keeping a close eye on that hat.

Steven sat on the hillside and made mention that this day would be perfect for a picnic, Connie agreed as things seemed to be okay for the most part. There were watching as little Soft Echo was learning how to fly simply because they had little better to do.

“It was nice to see Pearl, even if it was in my dreams.” The two kids watched as the little talking bat moved over to the mother and daughter pair and started helping out. “I also really liked Princess Luna.”

“I think Pearl is handling all of this so well, that and she looks really adorable as a pony.” Hearing her cell phone ring, Connie saw that it was her parents calling to make sure she was alright. She didn’t make any mention of aliens, monsters or magic; she didn’t want to freak out her parents even if they have met what amounts to Steven’s four magical alien aunts.

Soft Echo fluttered and flapped her wings awkwardly; mommy was trying to show her how to do what she was doing. Only her wings weren’t exactly the same so she was having issues with getting into the air. She was still trying to do her best, after a moment she made a mental wish that her ears weren’t being pressed down by the hat since she felt that had to do with what she was doing was wrong somehow. Unbeknownst to the little pony, a soft glow enveloped the hat and she felt her ears go straight up and with a bit of worry she reached up for her hat and felt that it was still there. Happy that she hadn’t lost it, she continued to try and fly now that her ears could feel the air.

“Fluttershy did you see that… there is definitely something wrong with that hat.” Not being the only one to have seen it Foxglove saw the hat open two holes for Soft Echo’s ears to stick out of it.

“Yeah, something is definitely up with that hat when it can change shape like that. Are you sure it’s not magical?” Bonnie had been relaxing on the hillside until the moment the hat shifted around on Soft’s head while glowing.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t magical, I just said that I don’t detect magic coming from it or anything at all really.” It was still puzzling Foxglove, a magical enchantment would be all too easy for her to detect now that she could detect magic and she still didn’t detect anything from the hat even after it shifted around to make ear holes for Soft.

“It doesn’t seem to be causing any problems and Soft really likes it.” Fluttershy continued to leap into the air and go into a hover before setting herself on the ground, she watched as Soft continued to try and do the same feat and had managed to hover for three seconds before flopping on her belly with squeak. “Oh my goodness, she flew!”

Fluttershy scooped up Soft Echo into her grasp and gave her hug. Soft enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment even if it was a small one and hugged her mother back squealing happily. After Fluttershy let go Soft immediately began practice her hovering, even the slightest breezes caused her to shift in the air and fall down.

“Kind of reminds me when I was born, she could use some more encouragement.” Amethyst decided to transform into an owl and join in on the flying animal parade that was started to build up around Soft Echo.

It had spooked Fluttershy slightly to see a purple owl, but she remembered that the crystal gems could change their forms as they pleased while having a base form to go back to. She was in fact glad that she could be spooked; it meant her emotions were coming back quickly even if they weren’t fully working quite yet. Scrutinizing Soft Echo’s form when she took to the air she realized something.

“She needs her ears uncovered to balance herself when she flies, that’s not really unusual for beginners in flight school.” It took a while for Fluttershy to recall flight school lessons with Rainbow Dash that were now rather instinctive to her, it was hard to compensate for having your ears covered and now Soft was only doing marginally better. She would continue to follow Soft’s progression and gently eased her into doing better.

The day was only getting started and they were at the top of the cliff above the temple and nothing seemed to be going wrong yet, thus far Foxglove was the only one to stay strictly focused and had not let down her guard once so far. She was making certain that Soft didn’t go anywhere near the cliffs edge, she didn’t have to worry about that as Fluttershy was doing the exact same thing. They were taking the warning found on the slip of paper seriously and instead went to explore the lighthouse that was once haunted by a crystal gem.

Bonnie, Amethyst, Garnet and Connie elected to stay outside around the base of the lighthouse while Steven led Fluttershy, Foxglove and Soft on the tour. At the top of the lighthouse, the view from up there was incredible. Soft halfway perched upon Fluttershy’s head was smiling at everything she could see and they could see the entirety of Beach City from here. Fluttershy was propped up against the railing taking in a nice view of the ocean.

Soft really wanted to be able to fly high like her mother one day, to see sights like this. Leaning too far forward on Fluttershy’s head she tumbled off and over the edge of the lighthouses railing. Without thinking twice Foxglove and Fluttershy dove over the edge after her.

Fluttershy had actually felt fear and worry and with the full effect of her emotions behind her she shot ahead of Foxglove by great push from her wings and she caught Soft before she could fall too far. She was about to flap her wings to ascend, but she noticed something that caused her to falter, as they were now passed the cliff and falling in front of the temple statues eyes.

The hat on Soft’s head started glowing brightly and beams of energy started shooting out below them as they fell, before Fluttershy could flap her wings they both fell into a swirling vortex which quickly closed behind them before Foxglove could reach it.

Foxglove had shrieked at the vortex and there was no magic behind it. Whatever the hat did to create it, without its presence the vortex quickly slammed shut before she could reach it.

“Did that just seriously happen?” Bonnie asked after a moment of disbelief she decided to reiterate to the stunned beings all watching the spot in the air where Fluttershy and Soft Echo had disappeared, her ire and anger was rising. “DID THAT JUST SERIOUSLY HAPPEN TO HER? WHAT NEXT, LIZARD MEN!”

Turning around at hearing something Bonnie quickly knocked over Connie and deflected the blow from a sword held by a feminine looking lizard, a lizard woman was not exactly what she asked for. She immediately stabbed out with the glass knife planting it home in the lizard’s chest where it went up in a puff of smoke turning into a crystal. Steven arrived and quickly grabbed the crystal and encased it in a pink bubble.

“Wow, lizard people do exist. Only they’re crystal gem related… that’s going to really upset Ronaldo.” Steven said in slight wonder before he gained a startled look at the twenty or so lizard women charging up the hill towards the lighthouse all wielding various sharp looking instruments. Amethyst pulled out her whip and Garnet immediately formed her gauntlets. By the end of the fighting Foxglove would quickly learn how to perform a bubbling spell.

Author's Note

Fluttershy's emotions are coming back, unfortunately she ended up getting involved in something ancient and very powerful.

In the next chapter, we see that the Crystal Gems aren't the only ancient beings on the planet.

Cosmic Cap, AKA the Cosmic Crown- A hat with the power to open 'ONE-WAY' portals through space and dimension, on rare occasions through time itself. The cap itself isn't dangerous, but the portals that it can open are. Should you be unlucky enough to not have a guide who knows where the portals lead you'll likely end up in the middle of a volcano or at the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

In a rather ironic manner a lot of the portals the hat can open are usually found by jumping off of cliffs, making the use of this cosmically powered cap not for the faint of heart. It is completely indestructible and it can change form to fit the wearer more comfortably.

As for what dark and violent cartoon series the hat comes from well...

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Not only did Mighty Max deal with magical crap, but he also fought aliens multiple times and technological human villains as well. All that while journeying around the planet through the one way portals that his hat opened in specific places. He turned one portal into a weapon by dumping a bunch of indestructible magical zombies into the the bottom of the Marianas Trench, he kept the portal open but never went through it personally as that would have killed him. If not by drowning, then from the pressure alone at suddenly being at the bottom of the ocean imploding his body. The hat was indestructible, Max himself was only human who could manipulate the cosmic power after having used the hat so many times as to have eventually gained an innate knowledge of the portal system encompassing the Earth.

Max's two companions were Virgil an immortal bird man of great intellect and Norman the greatest human warrior ('not a magically powered one mind you') of Earth. Norman was also immortal in an ageless sense by always fighting a being known as 'The Conqueror' who extends his life span should he win and survive a day long continuous fight with said being. A normal human being would normally die at least two hours into said fight, that is if they spent most of it running and haven't already died the first ten minutes in.

94

The battle with the corrupted lizard women gem monsters was short, brutal and painful to watch. It was clear to anyone who looked at them that Bonnie and Roller had a vicious streak going as they had brought down a little more than half the lizard women themselves before the crystal gems Amethyst and Garnet could bring down the rest. Angry wasn’t beginning to describe how Roller and Bonnie felt, but they got better once they let out their frustration all over those poor corrupted crystal gems. It was not like they had a plan for getting Head Hunter to Hawaii anyway. Jumba didn’t have a working ship at the moment and would take weeks on doing repairs on what he did have that might be able to make it all the way to Beach City.

“So what are we going to do now?” Foxglove was barely carrying three bubbled crystals, one in each wing and one barely balanced upon her head which Garnet gather up one at a time and made disappear relieving her of her burden.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting Head Hunter and I’m going to scan that spot with everything it has available to scan it with!” Of the things they’ve been through, Bonnie wasn’t about to abandon Fluttershy to some horrible fate. She was going to take down anyone who tried to make her do so, Roller definitely agreed with her and she could vaguely see Foxglove nodding off to the side.

Garnet still couldn’t see the future, but she was getting snippets of lots of strange things occurring. The one obvious thing is that Pearl wouldn’t be coming back unless Bonnie stayed safe from what little she could gleam. Sapphire’s reasoning for the future being so unclear was because there were too many chaotic variables around, Fluttershy or Soft Echo might have been part of those variables and one was definitely Bonnie Jookiba. The future was almost impossible to divine except for the one certain thing, Bonnie was somehow important to Pearl coming back home safe and happy. Ruby swore that she would do what she could to make sure Bonnie fulfilled the small bit of future that she could glimpse using her strength.

Fluttershy’s mind went through a series of emotions, fear, anger, unease, worry, doubt and every little tingling of emotion that she had been missing for the most part of the last day and a half up until now. Even then she clutched to Soft Echo like a life preserver, the poor little filly was shrieking and looking around at the strange tunnel of energy they were being forced down. She was upset that she now had a daughter, but also very happy because she never thought she would ever want to be with a stallion since she had quite an aversion to them since childhood. The only stallions she has ever really liked were her father, her brother or her friend’s family members who were friendly and male. She would have eventually asked Big Mac if he could donate some sperm for artificial insemination so she could have a child, she definitely wasn’t about to get between him and Cheerilee either way if she was denied that. That plan was all but thrown out the window with Soft Echo’s existence; she silently mourned the fact that Soft had almost entirely skipped the foal phase of her life, but silently thanked whatever made her come out already potty trained.

Her head needed time to cope with the emotions and she barely had time to react when they were spat out of the strange void towards a river like a cannon. Fluttershy reoriented their two bodies so that she would hit the water first and would be using her spine to take the blow, they were moving way too fast to slow down. So she did the best she could by opening her wings wide to alleviate hitting the river at full terminal velocity and struck the cold harsh water first for Soft. She covered the little filly’s mouth and nose after forcing her to inhale air before they struck the water. She quickly swam back to the surface her mane wet and slapping her in the face, holding onto a scared Soft as she tried to swim for shore. It was late at night wherever they ended up and once she finally crawled onto shore with Soft she tapped her daughter to take all the cold water off of her in the form of a cloud to make sure she didn’t get sick.

Soft squeaked and looked around in fear, everything was a lot darker than it should have been. Her mommy was breathing hard and looked to be hurt; she nuzzled into her mother closely and looked around in fright as her mother covered her shivering body. It was cold, dark and everything was hard to see; it was really scary for the bat filly and even her mother’s warmth barely calmed her down.

“It’s okay Soft, I’m here.” She was there if only slightly, her back hurt, her wings were sore, she just took a very cold dip in a river and despite having made the excess water leap off of her body turning it immediately into a cloud, she was still freezing and using her remaining body temperature to make sure Soft was okay. “Everything will be okay… I think.”

Now wasn’t a good time for Fluttershy to be unsure of herself as Soft was looking to her with those bright glowing purple eyes and was whining about the sudden change in environment. She took off the hat and ran her hoof over her daughters red mane several times and Soft started whimpering into her chest. Snuggling her until she pulled back, she put Soft’s hat back on her head.

Looking around they had ended up in some kind of foggy grassland area, which was bad if Fluttershy couldn’t fly. It wasn’t all bad though as Fluttershy could still gather fog and use it for a safety blanket against predators. Flapping her wings to test them Fluttershy cringed at the soreness she felt shooting down to her slightly battered spine. What was worse was when an earsplitting howl sounded out nearby, Fluttershy stiffened and Soft didn’t make a noise as she pressed as deeply into Fluttershy’s chest as she could.

Grabbing and combining the clouds she made from her and Soft’s dip in the river, Fluttershy put Soft on the resulting cloud and climbed aboard herself before painfully flapping her wings several times, they were about twenty five feet in the air in the fog. They should be safe enough from wolves now, though she had never heard of wolves that sounded like that, there was something very off about the vocalization of the wolf that had made that howl. Having expended herself swimming to shore Fluttershy took a moment to rest and Soft draped Fluttershy’s mane over herself using it as a blanket.

What sounded like a snarl and a pounce was heard below them, looking over the edge of the cloud she could vaguely see the shape of several wolves looking around in confusion. This was a common thing that happened with pegasi when sitting on low hanging clouds, it confused predators thoroughly when they smelt prey and just couldn’t find them.

There was a tendency among predators to chase a pegasus for miles despite them never landing once on the ground; some predators were rather persistent in getting a taste of flying avian mammal. These wolves didn’t seem dumb, they in fact looked rather intelligent as they looked up towards the sky and sniffed the air itself.

Soft looked over the edge of the cloud and saw a bunch of angry sounding doggies looking around; they didn’t very happy or nice. Mother pulled her from the edge of the cloud and held a hoof up to her mouth and shook her head no, she pointed a hoof at her eyes repeating the process while pointing over the side of the cloud. Not exactly understanding what her mother was getting at, she just cuddled cutely up to her mother in an affectionate manner, her mane and fur keeping her warm.

Fluttershy hoped the dip in the river had made their scents unnoticeable, she hasn’t exactly been so lucky previously despite handling a bizarre amount of dangerous situations that would see her dead. The wolves suddenly did something interesting they began changing their shapes to more humanoid looking wolves that interacted and pointed upwards towards her and Soft’s cloud. The human wolves were entirely too curious about the low hanging cloud that was now drifting away from them to the west as far as Fluttershy tell, the fact their eyes held an upper level intelligence behind them was worrying.

Compared to the fog, the cloud Fluttershy and Soft were on stood out pretty well above the fog. The humanoid wolves barked at one another about this oddity and started to slowly follow the cloud while hunting and eating smaller prey off to the side. The two ponies weren’t about to come out of that cloud anytime soon that was attracting the attention of a pack of smart werewolves.

Fluttershy studied the very much intelligent beings; they weren’t animals and that was for certain given how smart they were and had the ability to tell something was up with the cloud. She could see a roadway underneath them temporarily and she still had no idea where she was at all, just that dangerous beings were nearby and quite hungry. She wasn’t about to tell them not to go about eating small animals as that was just nature at work, if she were back home then she would say no and stare them down as her house was an animal sanctuary. She just rested and slowly regained her strength, taking a blow for Soft hadn’t exactly been pleasant, but she would do it as many times as she needs to without regret.

Despite Soft Echo and her staying so incredibly quiet, they kept following the cloud in a still rather unbridled curious manner. They weren’t looking nearly as hungry an hour later, but they were still watching the low hanging cloud like a hawk. Soft hadn’t made a single squeak the entire time as she shivered against Fluttershy; her daughter was going to be a ‘Quiet Game’ champion in the future. Eventually Fluttershy heard a voice that earned her attention.

“We are nearing the ancient ones place, yet this quarry is still oddly enticing as if an old memory is playing upon my senses. All I see is but a cloud, it is still enticing all the same.” The voice was definitively masculine and sounded to come out in a growl.

It was moments later that Fluttershy realized that her translator recognized their barking and growling as a language and had deciphered it quickly since it was a rather simplistic guttural language. It actually kind of made sense now why she couldn’t understand them previously, they weren’t exactly bestial enough for her to automatically understand what they were saying like she could do with most animals.

“Do we continue to follow my mate?” A feminine looked human wolf with long fur hanging down her back spoke. They surprisingly had Scolttish accents, which confused Fluttershy a bit as that meant Earth had something like the Scolttish here. Well if she was even still on earth that was, at this point she wouldn’t be surprised to be on an entirely different planet after the magical send away from the world of the Aldebaran’s.

“There is something in the air that smells of great familiarity to me, I still want to look into it more. The rest of the pack can hunt elsewhere while we continue to follow it.” The male human wolf seemed to turn back to the cloud and spoke to the rest of his pack with his back turned. “Remember you are free to roam, but do not attack the humans as that will lead to our quick destruction! Heed my warnings and lessons well, since it has almost happened three times since the mighty one saved our pack from destruction long ago.”

Obviously the beings lived alongside the humans and they knew better than to attack them what with things like those gunships being capable of ripping them to shreds. Whatever these beings were, they were obviously keeping hidden and the knowledge of their existence secret like the changelings had once upon a time. It was rather understandable that they didn’t want to bother anyone and wanted to just live a peaceful life, well as peaceful as carnivorous wolf beings could be when it came to not harming other intelligent beings.

Fluttershy wasn’t about to make a noise and Soft Echo wasn’t going to fall asleep in such an incredibly tense situation. They continued drifting until Fluttershy saw a problem, she couldn’t move the cloud without being spotted, it was about to become a moot point when they came upon large stones place in a vaguely circular manner. This was a major problem as cloud was losing altitude to what looked like a megalith, something Maud would definitely have had a field day with.

Having a panic attack was not something Fluttershy would do at this moment; she would protect her child and do it with everything she had if it became obvious that these beings couldn’t be negotiated with. They sounded reasonable enough already, hopefully they’d prefer to talk instead of fill their bellies with an intelligent being.

“The cloud is not lifting higher; it proves that there is something odd about it.” Yep the two wolf humans were intelligent and curious as ever. “We are practically at the ancient ones home, is this a sign of his demise? He has lived a long time in this area and has yet perished despite the prophecy stating he would do so there. I hope it is not an ill omen for a old friend.”

That was the second time an ancient being was mentioned and Fluttershy didn’t think it was Luna or Celestia that was going to be here. When the cloud came down to about twelve feet above the ground and within reach of the tall wolves, she carefully beckoned Soft Echo onto her back and leapt then leapt from the cloud before it hit one of the massive stone pillars.

Her leap had startled the two wolf humans and she landed facing them and she wasn’t afraid to use ‘The Stare’ in this instance as she backed away from them towards the center of the tall standing blocks of stones. She had been cured of her previous affliction and her stare wasn’t about to cause her problems now, she was being brave for Soft.

“D-don’t come any closer.” Fluttershy was glad that her words were translated much to the shock of the two wolf humans, what was a further shock was that her wings were spread in a defensive manner and she was clearly wearing a locket with the moon on it. Aside from the translation device the locket was the only thing she had on her aside from Soft and the hat that brought them here, the locket had a particular symbol that these particular werewolves tended to worship.

“Aye, we will not be bother ye’ very much lass. This is what we have been following Cameron? She looks rather determined to protect the cold looking wee one on her back.” The female wolf human seemed to ease her aggressive stance immediately upon seeing Fluttershy after she jumped from the cloud. “They are strangers and I’ve never seen beings quite stranger than them and we’re werewolves.”

“Werewolves, what are werewolves?” Despite their less than aggressive attitude Fluttershy wasn’t about to drop her wings in front of them. Soft poked her head out over one of the wings and whimpered slightly.

“There is more to it than that; they bear the cap of the mighty one that saved our clan before that evil doctor could kill any of them.” The male werewolf turned to Fluttershy with a sharp look; he was impressed that she hadn’t even flinched at his sudden movement. “We be the immortal werewolves of Dunneglen, a werewolf is a being of mystical power to switch between all states wolf and human. Now what are you and where did ye get that cap from lass?”

Fluttershy lowered her guard slightly and sighed in relief that they didn’t seem violent and or immediately dangerous, they were actually willing to just talk. She told them her name and that she was a pegasus pony, her filly she referred to as her daughter was a vampire fruit bat pony. She clearly stressed the fruit part of Soft Echo’s vampirism.

“As for the hat… a friend of mine found it washed up on a beach at night. She gave it to my daughter and then we kind of didn’t heed the warning and fell past a cliff while were being given a tour of a lighthouse by a friendly little colt. Then this portal opened up and we splashed into the river, are we in this Dunneglen place?” As she was talking to the male werewolf, Fluttershy hadn’t noticed that Soft had taken to the female werewolf and was getting rather playful with her. She watched to make sure that she wasn’t going to do anything untoward Soft.

“No, we are a fair bit further south than that, in fact an old friend lives in this here area and here he has been since the fall of the mighty one.” Cameron and the pony watched as Lillian gave Soft a pony back ride in wolf form and the filly was all giggles about getting a ride from the big doggy. “He is quite a sorry fellah with a story I tell you, I’m Cameron and that there is my mate Lillian playing with your wee pup.”

“So where are we? What can you tell me about that hat that brought us here?” This meeting had turned from possibly being scary and violent to being friendly and understanding, Fluttershy was quite surprised.

“Let me go get a fire started and then we’ll talk. The ancient one will be drawn to the flames and he will see fit to tell you about the hat himself as he and the thing have a long history.” Upon hearing the little ones tummy rumbling Cameron smiled and patted Soft on the head making her smile. “As for where we are, welcome to Stonehenge. Lillian here will see to it the little pup gets some food, fruit most likely from your description of her vampire nature and we don’t mind that she was born like that. In fact we’d be hypocrites if we did mind. Anything you need and my pack will be happy to provide, within reason of course.”

“Fish or any aquatic life form will be okay for us to eat, fruits are definitely good too mostly for her and maybe a vegetable or two for me? Any other kind of meat is bad for us though and will make us sick.” They looked scary like the big baboon thing Fluttershy had met long ago, but they were really nice once you got past their violent tendencies to rip little animals to shreds. She wasn’t about to begrudge them for being wolves, as it was in their nature despite being more intelligent than normal wolves.

“That there is a bit surprising, flying, talking ponies that eat fish. It’s amazing the things that you can find when you travel.” Cameron stalked off to get a decent supply of wood and call the rest of the pack for a meeting at Stonehenge. They might even see the ancient one, he knew the old one wasn’t dead yet his smell was still fresh within the general area.

Out in deep space a pockmarked purple ship that had recently survived numerous assassination attempts on it flew towards earth. It stopped in the atmosphere and was avoiding detection for the moment. Inside the ship a strangely suited figure tapped out various things on the keyboard, behind this figure were three alien monkeys and two large green quick footed birds. The figures suit looked like a living shifting mass in some way.

“I’m detecting the Chozo beacon of Head Hunter Samus, this planet in particular has many alien visitors and they are regulated from mingling with the native populace who is barely into their space exploration age. The beacons location is in a place called Beach City, grand galactic thief Bonnie Jookiba was last seen in the presence of Head Hunter coming back to this world. It is known that her father was seen in the Galactic Federation at some time and she is the likely culprit that has stolen your ship.” The computer on the Head Hunter Mark Two had a mental AI of a former person that Samus knew and while the ship couldn’t pilot itself or work the weapons, it could work the scanners and offer advice freely. “So what do you think lady?”

Samus just typed out a response not bothering to speak up, she had been through so much since her rescue by the GFS Valhalla flight teams. She almost came off as mute, when she was really just being silent and her genetics were now even further removed from being that of a natural born Terran. She was a mutated being of incredible awe inspiring power that blew up planets and scared entire governments into trying to have her put down. At this point finding this Bonnie and asking her rather roughly why she stole her ship would be just another adventure in the reality that Samus had to live with. She knew she could never go back to the Galactic Federation; even so it would be rather nice to see what remained of her old ship after it’s been through the Galactic Alliance that was as far removed from Federation space as she could safely get.

The big green bird crooned sadly at the broken woman sitting in the chair preparing some landing coordinates to begin another hunt and this time her target wasn’t going to give her any guff. The Etecoons didn’t seem particularly happy that Samus had lost her heart somewhere and the Dachoras were also equally upset.

Samus lifted her arm cannon and made a shooing gesture to get the animals to leave her alone, this Bonnie had gotten a hold of her old ship and she was obviously a dangerous criminal. She figured it might be just best to go in guns blazing first instead of giving the planet a chance to start self destructing just because she arrived on it; because at this point she was rather jaded about everything.

Author's Note

Fluttershy met a friendly pack of werewolves from the Mighty Max series and at the moment Bonnie is in far more danger than she is.

The Return of Samus, yep the Earth isn't looking so hot anymore. Especially not with the arrival of Miss I-Blow-Everything-Up.

95

Stonehenge was the place where werewolves and ponies met in peace, while eating fish, fruits and vegetables. It was likely that they didn’t understand the connotations of power the place held.

“I’m am curious, what are the two objects around your neck?” A curious Cameron was told about the translation device made by space faring beings and learned that Fluttershy had two of them, one of which she was currently wearing.

“The other is called the Lunar Locket; it gives the wearer the powers of and over the moon and I’m making sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hooves… or hands if you prefer. Why do you ask?” What followed the question was Fluttershy learning the history of the immortal werewolf clan and how the moon was a symbol of the night that they worshiped with howls to the sky. They tended to do that on high mountainous areas despite not really needing to, by now it was a force of habit for the Dunneglen wolf clan to howl at the moon.

“We thank you for making sure that no one can do harm with the moon or those who would wish to abuse its powers to do so Fluttershy.” Even when he didn’t have to Cameron wanted to thank Fluttershy anyway and bowed to the pony with the respect she deserved.

Had the werewolves been on Equus a thousand years ago, Luna wouldn’t have had a problem with finding people who actually worshiped beautiful nights. Now that Fluttershy thought of it, the stars in the sky above Equus most likely weren’t stars, but were magical representations and illusions at best. Looking to the sky here, Fluttershy didn’t see the fake stars that Luna painted the sky with and they twinkled just as or if not more vibrantly than when Luna put the moon of Equus in the sky over their portion of the world. If there was one thing Fluttershy would never bring up with Luna, it was that her painting the night sky seemed to be an entirely frivolous activity after having seen so many alien skies personally. Dreamland’s sky was still causing Fluttershy’s headaches to even think about, especially the ocean where it was constantly evening no matter whether the sun or the moon were up in the sky at the time.

They spent a lot of time together in silence afterwards just eating until Fluttershy had to voice a concern.

“It was morning when I fell through the portal; did I end up on the other side of the planet?” Fluttershy had been thinking about this for quite a while. “I was close to the east coast of America if it helps any, is Stonehenge really far from that?”

“Not really lass, it is just across the ocean to the west. It would be closer to noon or after lunch since the portals the cap opens up are usually instantaneous and where we are is approximately five hours ahead by time zone.” Cameron looked to the little filly that was nibbling tentatively at the fish and petting a wolf from his pack that actually accepted being treated like a dog; he thought it was cute that the little filly was so accepting of their presence. Usually beings of intelligence would freak out about meeting werewolves; this was a nice change of pace.

“Then why was it later in the evening when I arrived? If the cap causes instantaneous travel portals then shouldn’t I have arrived at some time around one to three in the afternoon?” Trying to wrap her head around the sudden problem, a new being voiced an answer as he stepped forward out of the shadows and his voice sounded rather wise if a bit dead inside.

“I believe I can answer that if you will, where exactly did you open a portal open?” The being was short and looked like a humanoid bird; he didn’t seem particularly worried about all the werewolves and approached without fear. He was wearing tattered red robes and small spectacles on his beak; he had large thick eyebrows and long whiskers hanging off the side of his face.

“At a place called Beach City, my daughter that took a liking to the hat that was found last night by a friend after it washed ashore on the beach.” Oh how Fluttershy sorely wanted to ask if this newcomer was a Chozo because of his appearance, she truly felt right in calling Soft Echo her daughter and said pony squeaked at her. “My friend also found a note in the cap that said not to go near cliffs with it, we fell in past the cliff after falling off the lighthouse in front of a large six armed statue and that’s when the portal opened.”

“The area where the gem temple is located I surmise, those magical aliens were a trifle problematic thousands of years ago until they started fighting among themselves. Could have destroyed the planet, but they didn’t. Quite powerful those crystal gems are, also I’m afraid that your friend couldn’t have possibly found that cap last night.” The bird man saw the incredulous look on Fluttershy’s face, so he decided to continue while staring at Soft Echo who looked back at him curiously. “The truth of the matter is that she actually found it ‘this’ very night. You’ve gone back in time exactly twelve hours twenty two minutes and seven seconds where you found yourself falling into a river east of this location, the portal you went through most likely brought you back to several hours before your friend found the hat. You’re in a predicament where you can’t warn yourself or you’ll never end up here to have this conversation in the first place.”

“I’m Fluttershy and I’m a pegasus, who are you sir?” He sounded like the scholarly sort and Fluttershy knew what that sounded like from being around Twilight for more than a year. Also he sounded like he knew what he was talking, being sent back in time wasn’t impossible after the stable time loop Twilight caused after finding the spell from going through a horrible week. Twilight altered time minutely because of what happened the first time didn’t exactly happen the same way after her future self came back to warn her about something. The first time around Twilight didn’t get the warning and things must have been a slightly worse.

“I’m an old fool is what I am, but my name is Virgil and I’m a Lemurian. I don’t suppose you’re here to kill me are you?” Seeing the horrified look in the pony’s eyes Virgil sighed sadly and shook his head, his voice was rather despondent. “I didn’t think so; the werewolves are reluctant to perform the act of mercy killing as well. I’ve caused nothing but tragedy and when I’m fated to perish I continue on living with nothing but pain my heart. Never aging or dying of natural causes, I don’t even know why I continue to live.”

Fluttershy and Soft Echo had the same expressions on their faces as they looked towards Virgil; they were both pitying and sad expressions. The werewolves were a bit mystified at how similar Soft and Fluttershy looked when they were looking upon the immortal bird. Soft gave the remaining piece of fish in her hooves to a nearby werewolf and stood up and moved over to Virgil as did Fluttershy.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Asked Fluttershy and Soft echoed her sentiments in soft squeals that meant the exact same thing she just said. Soft Echo was truly echoing Fluttershy’s kind nature in being able to feel for the emotionally distraught being before them.

“I may as well tell you my tale of woe; campfires are usually good for things like this anyway.” As Virgil sat among the many Werewolves he noted that Fluttershy and Soft mirrored each others movements when they cuddled together and looked to him expectant. “It all started many years ago… I was young and rather foolish when I made one of the gravest mistakes that I will never be able take back. I’m well over ten thousand years in age; this was back when the world was still one and during an age of swords and sorcery that ran rampant upon this world. It was a time where the magical side of things wasn’t as separated from the mundane, long before the good dragons became the watchers that protect what became of the magical side of this planet. An inversely connected yet tragically separated world.”

The werewolves settled in and looked to be listening attentively, the old wise one told stories that had great morals and lessons as to not make history repeat itself. In fact the Lemurians were once known for mathematical prowess, especially when it came to predicting the future using said prowess since history tends to repeat itself so often unless something chaotic was thrown into things to keep life from going stale. They had easily predicted their downfall quite accurately, knowledge was truly powerful and they tried to preserve it the best they could.

“I mentored a person who would destroy my people in his lust for power, a warrior and sorcerer who would end up killing everyone who was ever close to me. His real name lost to his mad lust for power, he became simply called Skull Master. He was a vile, powerful and cunning monster in the end.” Taking a shuddering breath Virgil let his heart waver at the feeling of guilt that filled him, but he continued on. “With the power I helped him achieve he destroyed my race down to the last single remaining Lemurian. I’m the last of my kind because of what I did. Not only did he destroy my kind, but also made those known as the Atlanteans go extinct. The people of Atlantis once fought alongside the aliens known as the Crystal Gems as their allies during the wars to preserve this world from destruction, the people of Atlantis were an advanced society until Skull Master destroyed everything before he was sealed away. I was there to see civilizations crumble before my very eyes, by my two wings I had brought down my home and that of our close allies. The crystal gems continued to fight their bitter civil war afterwards. I know who won that encounter, but victory was bittersweet as many of those gems became corrupted and scattered across the planet and I know not whether Rose Quartz still continues to live as it has been so long since that particular war quieted down.”

Virgil continued on through history and of the prophecy of ‘The Mighty One’ who would become the bearer of the Cosmic Crown and would be the ultimate end of the monster he had made. A boy named Max was earth’s only hope for a chance at having a future. The humanoid bird got choked up as his weary heart filled with an even worse pain when he got to the time when said Mighty One received the powerful artifact that opened the portals to other places, it was this moment that Fluttershy interrupted for clarification.

“Is the hat magical in any way?” It was a little concerning to Fluttershy that Foxglove couldn’t get a read on the hat despite figuring out how to sense magic with her echolocation shrieks. In fact the Cosmic Crown sounded a bit like the elements of harmony. “I’m just asking since I was traveling with a magical being that recently figured out a method for detecting magic. She could detect the latent magic around her including me and my daughter, but she couldn’t detect anything coming from the Cosmic Crown.”

“Whoever that person was they naturally wouldn’t be able to; the Cosmic Crown is beyond magic in its power and it is truly an indestructible object. No power will be able to destroy it short of a gods and it will still be around even if the universe were to be destroyed. It is an object with an unknown maker and may possibly be even closely related to divinity or a higher power. Aside from the obvious power of opening a system of portals all around this world, it will grant some minor protections to the wearer or current wielder so long as no one else puts it on. To explain how I know this, it is time for me to go into the next part of my story. The sad tale of the mutual destruction of Skull Master and the Mighty One along with the sacrifice of a long time friend that made the victory possible.” Closing his eyes Virgil tried not to remember the face of a kid that seemed far more serious than Virgil thought he could be, he gathered allies at an incredible pace the second time around. Most of the people that were killed the first time survived the second round. “The tale I’m about to tell involves a time loop where everything went better the second time around, but it still ends in quite a tragic manner. I’m one of the many survivors of the second loop who died the first time before the Mighty One went back in time and set things right.”

Virgil told the tale of how Skull Master had rose to power sooner than he was expected to and the Mighty One hadn’t been ready the first time around, in fact the Skull Master had almost completely won by the end of it. When the Mighty One went back in time he was certainly ready for everything the second time around. A gathering of strong allies from around the world started up, including the very pack of rather benign werewolves they currently sat with who would never truly hurt an intelligent being. The final grand battle was fierce and in the end only a few deaths occurred the second time around, they were completely unavoidable losses.

The Mighty One had saved millions of lives and the planet itself, but in the end the man named Norman and the Mighty One known as Max both died ultimately defeating Skull Master and the being behind him. The Mighty One wielded the cosmic power of the hat and various magical items to end both his own life and that of what was once Virgil’s apprentice. It left behind a broken and woeful bird who was supposed to perish at Stonehenge, which is where they happened to be at the moment. Virgil even pointed out the discolored bit of Stonehenge where Max had bled to death after he had finished off Skull Master; his blood was still staining a large chunk of stone and it showed his last act of great courage. Virgil had taken the life of far more than just a young teenage kid who would have had many years ahead of him, Max’s mother grieved the loss of her son after Virgil told her what Max’s last words were and that they were meant for her to hear. It was Virgil’s fault that so many had died, all because of the knowledge he held, he had to watch the life drain from the Mighty Ones eyes while holding his hand in his final hour.

“They met their destinies head on, but I’m still curious as to why my fated death never happened. It is the only thing I ponder nowadays, the question as to why I haven’t perished has been on my mind for these last few years.” The brown feathered humanoid with some of his feathers pulled back into a ponytail sat amongst the others and took a bite out of some fruit he suddenly found himself holding in his wing. Curious about who passed the fruit to him, Virgil looked at the little filly looking up at him sadly wearing the Cosmic Crown on her head. His grim countenance was upsetting her because it also upset Fluttershy, fruit is what made Soft happy and in a juvenile sense she thought it would make him happy to.

Of a more adult mindset, Fluttershy sat off to the side pondering all the lives that Celestia might have doomed in her existence and how she must be living with it if Virgil was like this after ten thousand years. It was quite obvious that this poor gentleman had seen many things in his long life and that he was a match for Celestia in the age department, she too took a position of staring into his eyes with Soft Echo. After the loss of so many friends and causing so much death by doing nothing more than giving knowledge to the wrong person, Virgil looked like he needed a big hug.

“You said you were fated to perish, I think that’s already happened. Judging by the wording Norman was meant to die at that moment by the eight arms. Max would have either survived or died, but he would succeed either way in the end. As for you the word ‘perish’, it could mean you would be reduced to a state of poverty or ruin.” It was something that Fluttershy could clearly see already. He was definitely in a state of poverty and he lived in ruins that he thought would be the death of him. Prophecy wasn’t always accurate, but she could see the light in the birds eyes grow slightly brighter before dimming again.

“Well it seems that the truth is laid bare before all, I have met my fate and I accept it for what it is. The person I was perished a long time ago in seeing someone so young snuffed out before his time. I’m no longer foolish, but I will never be able to forgive myself for the atrocities I let happen.” Virgil took another bite out of his fruit and felt something rubbing up against him; he looked down again at the cap wearing pony nuzzling and trying to be cuddly. Sighing he lifted his other wing had to rub her behind the ear affectionately.

“She wants you to get better, I know because that’s how I feel right now. I would now like to ask you for help and to tell you something else that you truly need to know.” After the statement Fluttershy walked up to Virgil and wrapped her wings and hooves around the poor ancient fowl scholar in a hug. Soon the werewolves and Soft Echo joined in as well. Sure she was a little concerned that she was still in the past parallel to her other self meant that she or Soft wouldn’t be getting any sleep this night or day as it were. Virgil’s storytelling lasted until two in the morning, still a good seven or eight hours before Fluttershy and Soft fell into the portal in America. “You are no longer perishing, you are prosperous!”

“We shall see if this is true or not.” Virgil said a little uneasy about the affection directed at him, he wasn’t evil and he wasn’t a bad guy. He was just a broken soul that made some really big mistakes and needed some kindness after his special talent for knowledge caused so much heartbreak. “I will try providing my assistance as best I can once more, but I can’t promise you your safety as I have led too many to their deaths to believe that I will not do so again.”

“I’m okay with that.” Honestly Fluttershy was plenty okay with being led to her death as the scenario she went through with Bonnie showed, she was good at surviving ridiculous odds even if not without injuries both physical and psychological. Virgil seemed to need all the help he can get to be pulled out of his grief and little Soft agreed with that sentiment. “I’m going to need some help to get to back to my friends that I was traveling with and those portals sound really dangerous without a guide.”

Immortals that were friendly and humble like the werewolves and the Lemurian were a rare find indeed.

Fluttershy was still trying to wrap her head around the time travel involved not to mention how time zones factored into everything revolving around the portal she fell into hours ago. She looked over to Soft Echo to see her rolling around in the grass and saw that she was taking care of herself well enough under the watchful eye of a werewolf babysitter. She arrived late in the evening exiting the portal at a time where she would be exactly twelve hours twenty two minutes and seven seconds in the past in a completely different location based on the time she entered the portal in a completely different time zone.

Time travel was both vexing and confusing to Fluttershy as it would have actually meant she traveled seventeen hours into the past, but twelve if she had been in the same location she left from. Virgil was quite insistent that it was twelve hours in rather a convoluted sense and that the portal was only capable of being opened on a Wednesday; she was currently in two places at once after all and had been in that area twelve hours prior.

Fluttershy couldn’t go to sleep for a while without causing Luna a bit of confusion which meant she and Soft Echo had to wait for her other self to wake up. The rule of thumb or pony frog in this case was not to think about it too hard.

Sighing Fluttershy pulled out the memory stone, which was now in two places at… okay, now there were two memory stones in her hoof. This was going to get awkward really fast as she couldn’t tell which one was the past stone nor had she noticed it missing before she fell into the portal. Virgil just raised an eye in curiosity towards the two magical stones she now held in her hoof, she was going to call Katrina of Aldebaran so that she could vent her frustrations to the nice cat lady and now had a question to ask her first.

“Mmmyesssss… Katrina speaking, what is it this time and how may I help one of my sexy little minxes?” The purring Katrina sounded as humorously amorous as ever.

“Hello Katrina, does anything bad happen if you time travel into the past slightly and end up with two memory stones?” Fluttershy was going to completely ignore the come on from Katrina, even if she was elegant and beautiful like Celestia in an old lady manner. A blush dusted the pony’s cheeks after that thought, Aldebarans did look rather flexi… Fluttershy decided to immediately cease all thought at that moment.

“Fluttershy, what the… wait… did you just say time travel? You only had the one stone so when you went back in time… oh dear.” Katrina suddenly sounded horrified either because she had unintentionally made a pass at Fluttershy or because something was horribly wrong. Fluttershy figured it was the latter given the exceedingly long pause. “What planet are you on? You’re going to need an Aldebaran’s help really soon Fluttershy.”

Author's Note

You won't believe where Fluttershy ends up next chapter, obviously urgency forces her to do a lot of involuntary detouring with help from someone who eventually gets everyone important to him killed in some horrible manner. Yes, Virgil really is that bad.

Things are just going to either get worse or weirder from there and obviously Samus is in play nowhere near where Fluttershy is so the pony can’t convince the animals she once befriended to make Samus leave Bonnie alone.

This is heading into convoluted plot headaches territory and that's not forgetting that Motor Ed, the Sumo Ninja Clan and Dementor probably still want Head Hunter for it's technology.

While Virgil isn't a fighter, knowledge itself is in fact his power and one that he should have been more careful with. The crystal of souls from the Mighty Max series is partially related to the Crystal Gems and possibly ties back into the tree of harmony if you want it to, it won't be appearing because Max already destroyed it in his second go around with Skull Master.

Also 'Fluttershy the closet pervert' rears her shy little head thanks to Katrina.

96

“I’m on a planet called Earth, Katrina.” Waiting for a response Fluttershy felt like she was going through another long pause before the ancient cat lady of magical humanoid cats would answer. “Katrina, are you still there?”

“Did you say Earth, as in where humans come from?” There was a certainly lilt of insanity in Katrina’s voice. “Okay now that’s even worse, our race has a friend on Earth who has helped us out once or twice, he too has a memory stone and he lives in place called San Francisco. He has a portal connecting to a ship in the Aniverse Systems. Thanks to you we now know that he’s not coming from an alternate dimension but the same one we live in. This is actually both good and bad news; the good news is if you can reach San Francisco quickly I can send an Aldebaran to meet up with you and she will help you out with your problem. She can track you down through the memory stones now in your possession.”

“What’s the bad news, what will happen if I can’t find get there in time?” Sure Fluttershy would kick herself for this later, but she still wanted to know what was at stake.

“I was afraid you would ask that. How soon do you think you can make it there? Just know that the consequences are quite dire if we don’t fix this immediately.” Katrina could be heard shifting around; she was dodging the issue of what exactly would happen if the problem wasn’t solved. “Also never time travel backwards in time again, at least not until you’ve managed to fix the problem first. There are dire consequences involved and that’s all you need to know. Time travel is so rare to us that this problem doesn’t come up very often and when it does, it causes huge disasters. Why the last time something like this happened… well you already know what happened to all of our males and the story of the massive demon, but what you don’t know is that one of the causes of that happening was time travel.”

“If you don’t mind me asking Virgil, how long would it take us to get to a place called San Francisco?” He was Fluttershy’s only chance for getting there safely as he has said that the many pathways that the hat opened could be deadly at times. She had asked the question with a sense of urgency as she didn’t want to doom the Earth to a giant demon attack or some equally horrifically devastating disaster.

“I believe it would only take two portals my dear lady, approximately thirty minutes if we’re not side tracked for too long.” Looking over a scroll he pulled from his robes, Virgil wasn’t about to ask why she needed to go to San Francisco. All he needed to know was that she did and that it was important. He wasn’t about to lead the pony around unless she asked to be led. Since there was no prophecy surrounding the hat, it had been just uselessly drifting around the world constantly. It might even actually be good for Virgil to get off his duff and do some good to make up for his failures instead of sitting around waiting to die.

“We can be in San Francisco in about thirty minutes to an hour or two with complications.” Fluttershy was aware how often complications happened in her universal travels, so she decided to add that to her suggested time of arrival.

“Good that will be plenty of time for me to convince an Aldebaran to go on a mission of dangerous importance. I will also need a little time to call captain Bucky and to ask Willy Duwitt for the use of his portal. With luck, the Righteous Indignation is near Aldebaran at the moment, I’m sure I can get someone to you in time. Now if you’ll excuse me Fluttershy.” Katrina started concentrating and calling upon the third stone she felt off in that direction that wasn’t close together. The white furred woman mad a connection and called out for the human. “Willy Duwitt the people of Aldebaran need you, we are also of need for Bucky O’ Hare to come to Aldebaran as it is rather urgent and Jenny will be trying to convince him to come as well. Your planet is in grave danger and I fear it is our fault that this has come to pass.”

“What, Queen Katrina?” A blond a teenaged kid said from the connection on his own memory stone. “I’ll go right away, but I want to know why my planet is in danger.”

“You’ll learn more when you arrive, just hurry Willy. I assure you this matter is dire.” Now Katrina had to choose an Aldebaran to send to San Francisco to meet up with Fluttershy, who in the world did she have available that wasn’t involved in a matter of great importance to Aldebaran at the moment? After a moment Katrina smacked her face with a clawed hand, her granddaughter Felicia. She could only hope that her granddaughter didn’t mess this up. She called up her mentor Jenny to ask for permission to do this. “Jenny, a matter of great importance has come up and it will involve Felicia, our magic and time travel might be involved.”

Jenny wasn’t a happy camper as she knew what the words ‘time travel’ meant and it was something Aldebaran’s swore off looking into, except for in the direst of circumstances. History just shouldn’t be messed with; it tends to cause major calamities.

Virgil was a little wary to begin traveling again, but he didn’t die the moment he left Stonehenge and felt that it was a good sign that he had truly met his prophesized fate. He, Fluttershy and Soft had said their goodbyes to the werewolves of Dunneglen who were vacationing in the London area and went south. Poor little Soft Echo wanted a doggie to come with them, but it wasn’t going to happen even if the werewolves did like her.

They were walking straight south from Stonehenge when Virgil pulled out his scroll and looked it over for a bit. He turned to the left slightly and pointed at the air before him.

“Right there, just get the cap close enough to that general area. Then we’ll need to find the next portal and we’ll be in San Francisco. This portal causes no time shift, however we will shift time zones. So be prepared for it to slowly become night again.” Virgil calculated that it was currently around four A.M. where they were, that meant that it would be eleven P.M. On the east coast of America and where they would be going is currently is six P.M. in the afternoon.

Approaching the spot with Soft on her back, a portal formed like it did the last time with the hat firing arcs of strange energy to create a swirling portal. Virgil jumped through first, Fluttershy and Soft followed with the portal quickly closing up after them.

Coming out of the portal, Fluttershy landed on her hooves and she helped Virgil off of his back from the ground. They were on a strange dirt trail surrounded by wilderness and it was still light out and currently in the evening.

“Where are we?” It was nice looking and quite picturesque for a location, at least Fluttershy really liked it.

“We are currently on the Ali’i Trail which is in Hawaii, this place is home of the Night Marchers. They are beings who have the ability to switch between the sides of the magical or mundane world at will.” Virgil was busy adjusting his spectacles and didn’t notice the highly disturbed twitch in Fluttershy’s right eye.

“Hawaii… we’re in Hawaii…” Fluttershy’s eyes kept twitching as she tried to come to terms with this fact, were she a lesser pony she would have been incredible angry at this point. Instead she slowly inhaled, then exhaled and decided to just keep going along with everything.

“Why yes, we are. This way to the portal that will get us to San Francisco then.” Rolling up his scroll with scribbles which the two ponies couldn’t possibly understand; Virgil started leading them down the trail.

A shrill high pitched scream of someone dying sounded out, it sent Fluttershy straight up to the lowest branch in the nearest tree where she hung upside down by her hind legs holding onto Soft Echo with her front two legs. Soft actually enjoyed the experience of being upside down, but she didn’t like that frightening scream very much. Virgil clucked like a chicken and dove into the nearest bush.

What walked out was a blue being with a pitchfork shaped head and a tail like that of a lions, she was giggling vibrantly at them. It didn’t take long for Fluttershy to figure out that this was one of Bonnie’s many sisters and she had quite the large bite radius on her. She slowly came down from the tree flapping her wings; once she was on the ground she turned to address the creature which made the hauntingly scary shrieking noise again. Soft whimpered slightly in pain while covering her ears, it was only then that Fluttershy used ‘The Stare’ causing the blue creature to stiffen in fright. While Fluttershy wasn’t about to use her stare as much around anything magical anymore, anything else was free game.

“Please don’t do that again. The first time I can understand since it seems to be a joke you like to play on others, but the second time was both rude and mean. It hurt my daughter’s ears, now apologize to her.” The creature immediately looked apologetic as Fluttershy sat Soft before her. She moved forward and shook Soft’s hoof while patting her gently on the neck and looked to Fluttershy. “You can’t talk can you? Bonnie said that some of you couldn’t communicate verbally, is it because of your abilities?”

The creature shook her head to the first and then nodded at the second, she recognized the name of ‘one four nine’ and smiled. Fluttershy definitely smelled like a friend of the Jookiba Ohana.

Virgil came out of the bushes looking on in curiosity at a creature he has never seen before; it was obvious to him that it couldn’t have possibly occurred naturally in nature so it had to be created.

“We must be on our way then, if your situation is as urgent as it sounds to be.” As Virgil led them away they came across more strange creatures. He hasn’t traveled in a few years, but he didn’t remember all the cuddly looking crazy creatures around Hawaii before or the strange blue one that was still following them.

They had garnered quite a bit of attention for being strangers from the multiple different odd looking creatures. As they came upon the house Virgil was leading them up to, the blue creature quickly ran past them and started knocking on the door.

“Hello, oh it’s you Belle! I was beginning to get worried that you wouldn’t make it home for… Jumba we have visitors and they are obviously here for you! Come on in, would you like something to eat or drink? We were about to sit down for dinner.” The raven haired woman picked up the blue creature and gave her a hug causing her to giggle happily. “You were haunting the trail again weren’t you, who’s my favorite little alarm clock? You are and you need to find a better hobby than haunting the trail, someone might hurt you if you keep that up.”

“Whoa cool, hey Stitch come at look at this. They look like the brain snatchers from Quadropon and a giant chicken.” And that was how Lilo introduced herself to Fluttershy upon them entering the living room.

“Young lady, I’m a fowl.” With his ability to cluck Virgil had to wonder sometimes whether or not he was a giant chicken. He decided to grumble out a bit more. “I am not a chicken.”

“It is intriguing though, a descendant species from the Chozo and one four nine’s friend, along with a little surprise. Is nice to finally be meeting you in person Fluttershy, I am Jumba.” The guy was quite huge in person and he gave off a friendly smile that reached his four eyes. “Now where is one four nine?”

“I kind of fell into a vortex and time traveled a bit, she’s still on the east coast.” Despite not having a reason to, Fluttershy still felt sheepish about meeting Jumba in person. She turned to the woman. “Also I’m not hungry or thirsty since we’ve recently had a meal, but can you get some fruit for my daughter? She’s rather insatiable.”

“Yeah, time travel is not as fun as it sounds, I would know.” After Lilo spoke up, Stitch and Angel crawled out from wherever they were and they both took to smelling the air around Fluttershy.

Soft Echo trotted up to Lilo for an ear rub from the girl. She made cute mewling sounds as she found another hand to rub her behind the ears.

“Is Ohana, Bonnie chosen a Boojiboo?” Stitch gave a small cackle before getting smacked in the face by Angel, after that he just snuggled up with her. They weren’t made for each other, but they were going to darn well try to be. Stitch had just won a bet about Bonnie’s orientation and the species being four legged.

“The reason we are here is that lady Fluttershy here needs to get to San Francisco in a timely manner and you have a portal located approximately two feet from the roof of this domicile that will take us right there instantaneously with the exception of changing time zones.” After Virgil told them the reason why they were here Jumba took on a look of understanding. He realized that Jumba had mentioned something he found odd. “Wait, how did you know I was descended from the Chozo?”

“Ah, this is explaining strange energy signature beyond even my understanding above roof. Is reason why we don’t build bigger house, would personally like to see this portal in action. I might even find useful data if portals aren’t divinity based in origin.” Of the many things Jumba had seen, divine power was one of them and he had his suspicions about the area around the roof after many scans on all kinds of frequencies when looking into the strange spatial distortions. “I am knowing that you are of descending from ‘The Claw’ because I did a study into their genetics, their ability to commune with life is incredible and reason why I am a genetic scientist in first place. To clarify for little girl, I became evil genius much later. If I am being right, you are a Lemurian, chicken based features are a sure sign of that.”

“Well that answers my question, Bonnie said not to talk about the Chozo unless I was with someone I could trust.” This home was quaint and well built; it looked to have been made by many hands, six hundred of them at least.

“She is being smart to be telling you that, many would capture you for any information on ancient architects and even if that information was useless they’d still go to no ends.” Jumba, Stitch and Angel all looked to the orange being with a large head sitting on the couch with a large arrow pointing towards his face. “Thirty two is being rather quiet. Haven’t lied much this week, at least nothing important is happening.”

The orange being’s arrow lit up and he let out a ridiculously loud gurgling noise.

“Oh, I’m Lilo, that’s Fibber, Stitch and Angel.” It was about time Lilo introduced herself and some of her family to these beings.

“What’s Fibber’s special talent?” After seeing the strangely silent orange being on the couch react to something, Fluttershy became curious as to what caused him to gurgle like that.

“Is being designed as perfect lie detector, no matter the language or species he can always tell if anyone is lying. Go on, be testing him.” Jumba leaned in closely to Fluttershy to whisper in a conspiratorial manner. “Also to be distracting from fact that one five zero is death knelled, would not want to upset family. Six two four has been quite anxious hearing about this, is making her slightly more aggressive knowing family member is in trouble and is having trouble not telling chosen life partner.”

“Hello my name is Fluttershy.” The orange being gargled slightly, much to Fluttershy’s consternation until she remembered something. “My full name is Flutter Felicity Shy, but my friends call me Fluttershy and it’s what I’ve been called since I was small. I also think you’re positively adorable.”

This time Fibber stayed quiet and looked to Fluttershy with a smile, there wasn’t a lie to be found with what she just said.

“Hah, be very wary of what you are saying within his earshot, lest you be misunderstood even using white lies. Otherwise he is not so dangerous.” This time Jumba got a gargle and he gave Fibber a look. “You are not being so dangerous.”

Again fibber gargled and quite loudly making Jumba blink in surprise, he wasn’t the only one surprised by this as his own family and Lilo were staring at him.

“Now I am to be saying a statement, you have not gained any extra powers aside from being a detector of lies.” A gargle and Jumba just proved the least dangerous of his experiments could gain dangerous traits; he was still trying to figure out how experiment number two double dipped reality and just how dangerous that could be.

“I have a question, what happens if you say something paradoxical?” Nobody in the room said anything and just stared at Fluttershy, the woman from before walked into the room and held out a fresh piece of fruit to Soft who took it and bit into it with her fangs. No one said anything about it being odd, they have seen too much already to make a fuss about a fruit vampire.

“Is never trying before, never found both lie and truth at the same time.” It was one of the things Jumba never tested Fibber on since it was hard to come up with a statement that was paradoxically a lie and the truth at the same time. “My curiosity is raised, go ahead.”

“I’m currently in this room.” Fluttershy having stated that caused Fibber to screech and clutched at his head in pain. “Oh no, I’m so sorry Fibber.”

This time Fibber didn’t gurgle, but just raised a thumb to show that he was okay even if his head hurt and that he accepted the apology.

“It appears real paradoxical statements are incredibly painful to experiment thirty two, judging by statement I am guessing time travel has you in two places at once.” Jumba walked over to Fibber and picked him gently. “It is being okay zero three two. Hm… this statement is fault.”

Fibber just shrugged and cuddled into his father’s rather safe embrace.

“Can I try a few more statements? None of them are paradoxical; I swear I didn’t mean to hurt him!” Fluttershy didn’t have to swear as Fibber didn’t gurgle.

What followed was Fluttershy asking numerous questions by making numerous statements that Fibber shouldn’t possibly know if they were lies or not. Celestia wasn’t evil, she loved her sister, she was just trying her best and she was quite aware of her sister’s plight before she became infected with Nightmare and didn’t try to help her until it was way too late to do so. Before Fluttershy could ask any more questions, the woman walked back into the room.

“Guys, Pleakley and I have worked hard on making dinner, it’s time to eat.” The woman waited for Lilo and the others to get a move on.

“You have a nice family ma’am and your daughter is quite kind.” At least Fluttershy assumed Lilo was the woman’s daughter.

“My name is Nani and Lilo is not my daughter.” Nani set off Fibber causing a few stares. “She’s not my daughter by birth and I’m her older sister.”

Lilo got up and wrapped her arms tightly around Nani’s waist before going to the table.

“Okay, after several scans… I can’t really tell what we’re looking at here but it’s definitely something incredible.” Bonnie sat in the pilot’s seat of Head Hunter as it sat on the beach and looked up at the scans she was getting from both the temple and the spot where Fluttershy and Soft had disappeared at. The Temple itself was swamped in magic, which didn’t compare to the spot in front of the statues eyes looking to the ocean.

“Well that doesn’t help very much.” Foxglove said flatly from her position on the back of the seat.

“Right, I’m calling my dad!” She was pretty sure the Head Hunter could get into contact with him, the moment Jumba appeared on screen he was chuckling. “Dad I need you to…”

“Hold it experiment one four nine, I am the knowing as to why it is you are calling. Close to heart little pony friend is disappearing through swirling vortex yes?” Jumba smiled when he saw the confused looks from Foxglove and Bonnie. “I met with her hours ago, to be exact. Little pony says portal caused a time travel incident; she’s currently in San Francisco at the moment to be stopping some kind of world ending disaster. I am meeting tiny being named Soft Echo, she is being dangerously adorable like little girl. I have been quite assured one four nine needs lessons in X, Y and Z Chromosomes again.”

Bonnie paled, though she was certainly happy to hear that Fluttershy was generally okay and in the middle of another problem entirely. Things would be fine and nothing else could possibly go… Samus appeared on the screen in a frame next to Jumba glaring down at her. Samus’s genetic profile also came up on the screen and it showed she had Chozo genetics and a Chozo made battle suit. It was partially thanks to her new Metroid genetics that Samus couldn’t remotely wrest control of the ship from Bonnie, that along with the various alterations the ship went through under Fluttershy’s ownership.

Oh great, now Bonnie was both going to be lectured by her father and subsequently killed by the bounty hunter who Fluttershy stole from! Why did she have to jinx things by thinking they couldn’t get worse? The scanners picked up a Valkyrian ship entering orbit near the moon and Bonnie smacked her own face with both hands while groaning.

Author's Note

To put it into the right frame.

Fluttershy went back in time approximately twelve hours, then she was moved into London's time zone based on that and in this chapter she goes to Hawaii's time zone which is ten hours in time zone travel.

This means that Fluttershy has at least been back to Tuesday three times in one week. Wednesday is still only just getting started for the time zone and present that Bonnie is still in. Fluttershy has only time traveled backwards once in all this, she has also traveled laterally through time by time zone travel.

It's all as confusing as it sounds so I'm going to stop worrying about ever doing a time travel thing again, because it is ridiculous to keep up with and still write chapters accurate to the reality of what is happening.

San Francisco is at least two hours ahead of Hawaii.

97

“So magic exists and it’s not always related to aliens?” Nani was a little confused, because just about anything weird that happened in Hawaii was usually Jumba’s fault. It was a fact Hawaii has never stopped being weird since then. This was the first time she was hearing of actual magic and having watched Fluttershy create a cloud out of a puddle of water, she believed it because she’s seen a lot of things. Even Soft Echo ripped off a piece of cloud and squeezed some water into her mouth like Fluttershy tended to do.

“Of course it does and Earth has its own magic. Um… could you please excuse me one moment? I have to make a call.” Magically summoning the two memory stones into her hoof, Fluttershy put in a call to Katrina. “Queen Katrina is the person that is supposed to meet us in San Francisco already there?”

“Not yet Fluttershy, You remember my granddaughter Felicia? She is the one I am tasking with this problem. I can only hope she has enough training to solve it.” The pony could almost hear an exasperated Katrina shaking her head. “She will be in San Francisco within the hour as soon as the ship Righteous Indignation reaches Aldebaran. How about you, how soon can you be there?”

“I can get to San Francisco within minutes from where I am, I’m sitting with some friends at the moment and there’s a portal that will immediately get me there.” Hearing a gasp of panic, Fluttershy quickly added to her statement. “Don’t worry it doesn’t go through time except for time zones.”

“Oh my goodness, I just about had a heart attack there.” Katrina could be heard visible sighing in half relief. “I’ll contact you when Felicia arrives in San Francisco. She has been warned that humans do not take well to aliens and will be wearing a cloak to hide her appearance, if that fails she has been told to state that she’s wearing a really good costume. If Felicia knows what’s good for her she will not wander astray or end up being captured by someone who would harm her. She is rather excited about seeing Earth and I need you to quickly meet up with her to prevent any serious trouble. How long is it until your past self goes into the past?”

“Seven to six hours from now, there wasn’t a clock around to look at as I fell into the time portal; do you measure time the same way humans do? I mean it’s kind of odd that we ponies measure time in exactly the same way they do, so you should know how long that is right?” Fluttershy had wondered how many other beings measured time and it seemed the concept of seconds, minutes, hours and days was something that was partially universal.

“I know enough to grasp that we have enough time to get to you to solve the issue before your past self can disrupt the time stream even further when she enters the portal.” Katrina sounded rather calm now as if she hadn’t had a panic attack a few seconds ago. “Since you have both memory stones, if she enters the portal and Felicia hasn’t solved the problem by then… well the end results of that will be rather unpleasant and will cause even further complications than what is already going to happen because you time traveled. It is best you be prepared for anything if you can’t reach Felicia in time. I wish you well Fluttershy, it seems my people owe you a greater debt for causing you so much trouble. Goodbye and may luck flock to you so nothing will go horribly wrong within the next few hours.”

“Its okay; you or your people don’t owe me anything Katrina, goodbye.” With that Fluttershy cut the connection and turned back to the conversation at the table.

“I still say Cookie Cat was one of the most awesome things ever! Except for the fact that he’s evil, who in the world would leave their Ohana behind like that? I mean sure there was an interstellar war, but couldn’t he have taken them with him? Aside from the commercial the ice cream cookies are actually really good.” Lilo was leading a completely whimsical life since she met Stitch and she just rolled with it and everything had gotten much better given she now had a huge family all over Hawaii. Seeing that Fluttershy was looking at her she just had to ask. “Have you met anything strange since you got to Earth? You know, as in the flesh rending monsters variety?”

“Well we’ve met some friendly beings called werewolves who were a little odd and I met two different kinds of dragons and one of them was named Jake. I’m absolutely terrified of dragons, but he sounded nice enough while I was stuck with an odd affliction.” To Fluttershy Earth had a lot in common with Equus, except for all the pollution in the cities. Equus didn’t have pollution; Pegasi had a monopoly on air quality control and all ponies can honestly say they didn’t like causing pollution of any kind.

“You met Jake! How is he doing? Is he still protecting magical creatures? His Grandpa and Mrs. Hasagawa the fruit vendor know each other; they even went on a date. Oh and Mrs. Hasagawa also watches out for a lot of Stitches cousins, she’s really good at it too.” Lilo took a moment to notice her older sister Nani was staring at her. “Yes, I knew about magic before Fluttershy told you and I’m sorry for not telling you about the fact that things like unicorns exist, you didn’t believe me before when I told you about strange things like Pudge the fish so I didn’t think you were interested in hearing any more weird things. So, do vampires exist?”

“Jake was doing fine when I last saw him and yes he’s still doing that. I would have to think vampires exist after everything I’ve seen from killer robots to strange biological creatures beyond imaging. Then there was meeting Bonnie Jookiba or one four nine if you prefer Jumba. I haven’t personally met any vampires that drink blood, I really wouldn’t want to anyway. My home planet has changelings and they eat emotions, they aren’t really friendly about it though.” Once again Fluttershy got affectionate with Soft Echo causing her to squeak happily. “The closest thing I’ve met is a cute little filly that drinks fruits dry and she’s my precious little daughter, yes she is.”

“She really is precious isn’t she, when did you have her?” The one who spoke was Mr. Wendy Pleakley. He was a three legged, two tongued, one eyed noodle of an alien wearing a long brown wig. He was also a highly effeminate male of his species who was usually the responsible adult for Lilo when Nani couldn’t be around, his cross-dressing tendencies were easy to overlook. He was a kind individual who was willing to overlook many awful things about someone else; he was friends with Jumba after all. Interestingly enough, he is considered very handsome for his species despite his obvious quirks. He was still considered handsome despite dressing as a female from a human perspective, which added further questions about his bizarre species.

“A little over two and a half days ago… she was accidentally conceived through some twisted magic and my wounds while I was in the midst of being healed of all that ailed me Mr. Pleakley.” Fluttershy snuggled Soft to her chest, the filly just liked being treated like a plush toy and didn’t complain about the overly affectionate gestures. “Before you ask, I don’t regret her existence at all and I love her very much.”

“Well congratulations on having a beautiful little filly then, no matter how she came about. I’ve been expecting something like that to happen to someone with Jumba around, but it hasn’t exactly occurred yet.” After Pleakley spoke, Fluttershy just received a bunch of warm smiles and happy words about her being a nice mother so far.

“I am having six hundred children, why do I need more than that? I am finding that I am not able to create perfectly unstoppable evil being that can last forever, I can’t make an experiment without free will to choose to be what they want to be.” Oh how Jumba had tried. Leroy was the one possible exception; it was a good thing Fibber wasn’t around when he told ‘Little Girl’ they were having dance party on the prison asteroid. The hamster was alive, but the Leroy’s most certainly weren’t and Jumba was hoping ‘Little Girl’ would eventually forget that they had existed.

Sure Leroy was evil, but he didn’t make the choice to be that way and his genetic encoding made it impossible for him to have true free will. Jumba always liked his experiments to at least have something resembling a heart. Due to the evil hamster being responsible for his genetic programming, Leroy would have nothing to do with being good. By Jumba’s calculations Leroy and his clones would continue making nothing but bad choices and would have eventually ended up committing suicide by accident or on purpose out of spite for their own existences. On all accounts Jumba just cut out the middleman on that situation and saved Leroy and his clones a lot of time and effort by euthanizing them all. As a side effect it also saved a lot of innocent lives who would have died by their increasingly volatile suicidal tendencies. Jumba couldn’t create a perfectly evil being; because ‘good’ itself had to be in part of the equation as otherwise the being in question would eventually self destruct. Evil could not exist without good in that sense, because evil was a choice and he understood that now thanks to ‘Little Girl’.

“So when are you going Fluttershy?” Though she wouldn’t ask it right now, Lilo eventually wanted to ride Fluttershy.

“Oh in the next ten or twenty minutes whether or not our contact is in San Francisco.” Fluttershy could see Virgil conversing easily with Jumba, Nani and Pleakley. He had a way with words and was easy to talk to as he was quite intelligent if chronically depressed sounding. “Will you continue to be our guide Virgil?”

“Of course I will, I am quite intrigued by the fact that I’ve once again crossed paths with a wielder of the Cosmic Crown.” Virgil wasn’t ever going to trust himself to lead anyone unless someone else trusted him completely to make a good decision on a moments notice as he has made a lot of bad ones in his life. He really couldn’t trust himself very much, even if he did have the intellect of the Chozo Architects in his blood. Every person who became a bearer of the Cosmic Crown and had his help with it had always died horribly in some way. “I am still rather worried what meeting me could possibly mean for the two of you.”

“It’s about time for us to be leaving anyway; we’ll be back later with that thing we discussed about bringing to you earlier Jumba. It’s completely fine at the moment and in stasis. I would like to make a few more statements around Fibber, which is if he doesn’t mind. I can’t promise that I won’t accidentally make another paradox statement, I’m still very much sorry about that Fibber.” Looking to the orange experiment Fluttershy could see Fibber and Belle making gestures to each other to communicate. They couldn’t talk because their abilities made it impossible for them to, they looked to be making up for that by being able to communicate silently and were working together with an open book sitting between their plates as the whole family ate at the table together. Fibber turned to her and gave her the go ahead with a thumb. “All my friends back on my home planet don’t miss me at all and have already forgotten about me.”

Fibber gave off an extremely loud gargle; it shook the whole house down to its alien built foundations. Belle clapped at his incredible display, she was clearly impressed with how loud he managed to get that as she was a connoisseur of loud noises herself.

“Whoa. That was certainly a statement.” Giggling at how she caused the pony to blush, Lilo turned to Fibber. “Her friends must miss her a lot.”

This time Fibber gurgled once again causing a bit of confusion, Pleakley cleared his throat drawing everyone’s attention to him. He and Fibber were good friends, in fact Fibber was part of his weekly group get together of multiple Jookiba Experiments to talk about things and hug. The group was called E. A. R. W. A. X. He was the one who came up with sign language or interpretive dance as a way for some experiments to communicate because they couldn’t talk at all. Interpretive dance was for the experiments that couldn’t verbalize and didn’t have fingers for sign language, not all experiments had appendages to write things with either. Lilo’s hula lessons became a popular thing among the six hundred or so experiments living in Hawaii as anyone could dance as long as they could move their bodies.

“They don’t just miss her a lot; they miss her more than anything else and have been trying to live day to day by moving forward even with her on their minds. They likely have really important jobs to do and they know Fluttershy wouldn’t want them to pine away with worry or to sit around moping. As such what you said Lilo was a complete understatement of how they currently feel about it.” The fact that Pleakley didn’t get a reaction from Fibber said a lot. He smiled and then said a statement he hoped would set off Fibber. “Everything about my previous statement wasn’t true.”

That statement earned a loud gurgle from Fibber; it wasn’t hard to guess why everyone was always so tense around Fibber. The spirit of what they say could be correct, but the statement itself would be incorrect. Pleakley was good friends with Fibber and he had the little orange guy help air out grievances between many of the experiments by making statements around Fibber all the time, he understood the living lie detector very well and could work with his ability to help the experiments he met with psychologically. Fibber was a caring individual despite his powers for lie detection and recently acquired telekinetic abilities which he used to ease tensions between his other family members if they started fighting.

For the next five minutes Fluttershy made statements to Fibber, the one in particular that she wanted to know was whether or not her friends would love to meet Soft Echo and she double checked by making an opposing statement like Pleakley did. She had stated things that could be related to possible future disasters, but Fibber didn’t respond to any of it at all. After failing to get anything related to the future, Fluttershy at least confirmed that Discord was still watching her even now.

“Okay, we’re going to the roof. Would you please see us off? If you don’t mind that is.” They didn’t get very far when Fluttershy heard Soft Echo squeaking that she had to go potty, so they all went to the bathroom before they went to the roof. Soft needed her mother’s help to use the toilet as she didn’t entirely understand the knowledge that was now in her head about it, but the knowledge she did understand was that it was rude to go all over the floor. One quick jump through a one way swirling vortex later, Fluttershy, Soft Echo and Virgil were immediately in an alleyway in San Francisco that looked like it was a bar. It was currently filled with dogs of all kinds and they all started growling at the sudden intruders.

“Of course I’m always watching Fluttershy, why the nerve to imply that I would ever stop watching someone who attracts that much chaos to the point that’s it’s truly quite dangerous with worry for their safety.” Discord mumbled as he read a book on lip reading with one eye. His free floating eye continued to stare at the ground through the entire planet, five asteroid fields, three other planets, a nebula and a sun just coming into existence. Thankfully Discord couldn’t go blind by staring at things too hard. “Why the time travel thing alone almost threw even me off for a moment.”

Reading over his shoulder were a curious Pearl and Maud, the title of the book was quite misleading and not exactly what it suggested the book was talking about. Maud idly licked her lips a bit as she looked into the book and Pearl’s face turned from white to straight full out red. Discord was secretly shipping Pearl and Maud together.

Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Spike, Fluttershy’s brother and many other ponies were now relying on Discord to tell them if anything went wrong with Fluttershy and they never stopped worrying about her safety. They did have to acknowledge that Fluttershy was surprisingly the best out of all of them at taking care of herself despite the situations she got into; she had lived next to the Ever Free Forest for a quite a few years after all. The only reason Discord hadn’t told them about Fluttershy suddenly having a daughter is because he wanted it to be a surprise when Fluttershy returned and that would cause a humorous if friendly amount of chaos. Hey, he had to get his kicks in when he could!

“I think we’re getting close Sylvia.” Wander hadn’t gotten lost, he was still looking for Fluttershy’s home planet, he was however getting horribly sidetracked by hundreds of smaller problems and helping people who immediately needed it. Fluttershy could wait a few weeks longer right?

“Really how can you tell?” If she were honest with herself, Sylvia didn’t know how Wander worked and only accepted that he did. She had recently learned that every part of Wander was important and had seen the small patch of helplessness inside of him. She was a little startled to learn that she was Wanders home, he said as much when she picked up his helpless aspect. Seeing Wander shed a tear over it lit a protective fire in Sylvia’s chest, she also didn’t mind the aspect of Wander that loved her a lot while hugging onto her tail.

“Because we’re nearing a mighty beautiful planet Sylvia and it has a sun and moon circling it!” After traveling almost nonstop Wander had finally successfully found the planet of Equus, after stopping to help four hundred and ninety three people on the way. Wander was going to need a lot of sleep when they landed. “I’ve even got a good feeling about this one Sylvia! I mean, who knew we could run into so many geocentric planets without finding the one with the adorable and fluffy ponies on it? The eviscerating giant mantis-horse-dog people were really quite nice to give us directions.”

“I still feel sorry for that Jenbun Spahging character though, it can’t be easy for the girl to have an unrepentant meat eating female predator like that fall hopelessly in love with you when you’re a prey species and an herbivore at that.” Sylvia wasn’t about to complain about weird beings, Jenbun apparently knew where Equus was at least as she had apparently had a crush on a male terrestrial rabbit named ‘Angel’ from that planet. It wasn’t quite a love triangle, but it was still quite horrible to think about.

Wander and Sylvia made their way for the planet which was the forty second geocentric one that they’ve come across. As they disappeared into the atmosphere a large skull shaped ship, which was bigger on the inside, appeared coming out of nowhere heading towards the planet on the same vector.

“I hope this is at least far enough away that Wander won’t interfere with our conquering of this planet.” Lord Hater wasn’t nearly that lucky. “What’s an evil guy got to do around here to be able to conquer one measly little planet without being stopped by a crazy orange goofball?”

It was approaching eleven by time zone standards in San Francisco, meaning it was almost two AM at the crystal gems house. Fluttershy had a fun time sitting in at a dinner she wasn’t eating; now she was surrounded by a gaggle of growling grungy dogs and to think she would be eating breakfast in about four hours and then she would be teaching Soft Echo how to fly. She might have spent a bit too much time making statements to Fibber. Oh right, Fluttershy couldn’t let herself be distracted, they were surrounded by a bunch of angry dogs. They had after all entered this place uninvited all of the suddenly and without asking for permission first.

“Um excuse us for barging in on your homes, if you do in fact live here. It makes me feel kind of sad that you don’t have a warmer place to sleep. Anyway, we are terribly sorry about this and the inconvenience, I hope you can find it in your heart to be forgiving about our sudden intrusion.” The dogs sat there for a moment they were still growling but less aggressive at Fluttershy’s words. “Can we at least please talk this out with the current alpha here?”

Soft Echo squeaked her sentiments that the doggies all looked rather grumpy; they were much scarier than the fluffy big changing doggies. A golden furred female Irish setter moved forward taking in the strangers and the little tyke cowering against her mother’s larger framed, she took in their appearances with something akin to bored amusement.

“Okay, what was with the portal thing? Aside from that welcome to the Flea Bite Café and Tavern, my name is Sasha and I’m the proprietor of this establishment and no one is going to hurt anyone here while I’m around. So cut it out with the growling boys and ladies.” All the other dogs quit growling and went back to their bones with scraps of meat and or drinks, a few continued to eye Virgil because he looked like a giant chicken. Sasha turned back to the three after making sure they wouldn’t be disturbed. “Welcome to my establishment, I’m pretty sure you’re going to attract a lot of attention soon. Goodness knows with the demons we have running rampant around here recently, that’s the truth of the matter. It’s really hard for me to get a date in edgewise with my soul mate because of his job. I ask that you please don’t cause any trouble, because judging by how you appeared here you are definitely trouble with a capital T, even if you aren’t looking for it.”

Author's Note

Yep, a crossover with a series that has many, MANY continuity errors including but not limited to a character existing for six decades despite the fact that he should be dead.

I will attempt to fix a few of the continuity errors, add a few of my own ideas to how it all works and all the while throwing in how demons are going to get involved in this mess that Fluttershy is starting to build up to a crescendo.

Aldebaran's are a pretty good authority that time travel plus magic equals bad things.

Wonder what happens if Fluttershy doesn't fix the memory stone problem in time? Her past self won't have it and who knows what a paradox will do to fix things if Felicia and her don't meet in time.

98

“When you said demons were running around…” Fluttershy started only to receive a paw on her muzzle from Sasha.

“Come over to the bar so we can chat.” Sasha sashayed her way behind the bar. “So need anything? Aside from that what side are you on, Demon or Angel? I ask because the little one looks demonic and you look like an angel. Don’t know what the humanoid chicken is all about, but I’m sure I’m about to learn.”

“Madam we’re neutral parties, I am Virgil the last of my kind from the fall of Atlantis and have been alive for ten thousand years. She is a magical alien and her daughter was recently born of magic. I must ask, when did you exactly learn to speak as a human does Ms. Sasha?” Virgil was quite curious about this mysterious dog; one would think the dogs in San Francisco would be panicking. They arrived by unusual means and all they got was a bunch of angry growls.

“Oh we dogs have always been capable, but I can tell you it started to become more common when humans started becoming industrialized. Since you asked, let me tell you my story. It starts more than sixty years in the past; it was a time when a human named Anne Marie was given the power to talk with animals and my boyfriend Charlie was causing headaches back then as he does even now. The guys not perfect, but hey he’s close enough to heaven for it to count. That was back when I used to be a Collie named Flo; I did a lot of good work in my previous life before my reincarnation. I was even a member of the Pound Puppies, an organization that was devoted to helping give dog’s good homes and I was a go to for lost or abandoned puppy care. It’s something I’m still helping out with from time to time on the side.” Shaking her head the pretty doggy that was Sasha tickled Soft Echo’s chin causing her to coo out in an adorable manner. “Anyway, I wasn’t supposed to remember my past life, but then I had to run into my soul mate Charlie again. Only this time he was working as an angel dog at the time and on a mission to prevent the gates of the underworld from becoming wide open and allowing demons to run rampant on Earth, which was on top of a demons plan to capture all the active regional angel dogs in the offshore prison of Alcatraz. It all centered on this horn that can open and close anything, long story short, Charlie managed to seal the demon responsible back into the underworld using the power of the horn to open and close the pathway on the demon that was causing trouble at the time. During that stretch of time Charlie kissed me to give me the ability to talk to the human I was watching out for at the time. Being the idiot that he was, Charlie did more than remind me I could talk to humans by using something termed as ‘a miracle’ on me. My memories didn’t come back immediately, but when they did… oh boy let me tell you that was weird. Things haven’t been normal for me ever since then; you're the first alien I’ve ever met. I expected someone more tall and grey.”

“I’ve seen an alien like that; she was rather nice even if she seemed cold and aloof.” Well at least Fluttershy was intrigued by where all this was going; it wasn’t as weird as Bonnie’s family in Hawaii. Well at least it wasn’t that weird yet, she was going to give it some time to get weird or bad.

“I would like the strongest drink you can provide since you’re offering. Also I want to know more about these demons running around, maybe a bit more clarification on your history. I might be able to give you some knowledge and help with my expertise in matters mystical, spiritual and the like. Just be warned that I’m the last survivor of Atlantis for a reason.” Virgil would never let himself forget any of the tragedies he led to, but he would try to move on again. Sasha immediately got to work on said drink and gave the bird man a pitying look as she got some of the top shelf strongest alcoholic stuff together. “It sounds like you have ties to the spirit realm; I’ve seen the spirit realm quite a few times myself. It is stuck directly between the mundane and the magical sides of Earth. The spirit realm isn’t easy to travel to and it’s as its name suggests, it is for the spirits of the dead. The Mighty… someone I personally knew has been there several times, it is hard to get in or out of there alive. My friend managed to do so by being the bearer of a powerful object. He went there one last time to hopefully become something greater than he was before. As for angels and demons, they are always at odds with one another but neither side is truly good or evil. They are just sides of opposing philosophy in the spiritual realm.”

“What do you mean by that? All demons seem pretty evil to me. There’s even this one demon that’s quite literally a…” Sasha stopped as she pawed Virgil his drink, she saw the dog she was about to mention walk into her place of business which should have been impossible. “Well speak of the devil and she will appear. If it isn’t the boogey dog and it’s approaching twelve o’ clock, seems like a time she’d be skulking about with all the other little demons running around here lately.”

The three sitting at the counter looked back to see who Sasha was talking about, the purple furred whippet just made her way to the counter grumbling under her breath about something. She took a seat to Fluttershy’s left and looked to Sasha for a second with a blank face before turning it to the counter. She was wearing a black vest and nothing else.

Between Fluttershy and Virgil sitting on the stool patiently waiting while the grownups talked was Soft Echo, she looked at the doggy with something akin to wonderment. Something about this dog was making Soft Echo feel really weird and happy, the doggie was purple and pretty. Soft Echo was getting images of a pony with stars on her flank in her head, but that wasn’t the reason why her eyes were attracted to this doggie.

“Give me the strongest thing you’ve got, I’m actually here as a paying customer this time.” The dog didn’t say much else and sat there staring at the counter.

“Belladonna, I’d ask you what you were up to, but it should be impossible for you to be up to anything. There’s a barrier in place preventing demons with ill intent in any given manner from coming into my bar.” Since she already had the alcoholic fixings down, Sasha started making a drink for the demon dog that just walked in. She was eyeing Belladonna warily even as she made the drink in question.

“I’m just here for a drink… nothing else.” The dog now named Belladonna even got the right amount of money to pay Sasha with, which was a bit of a surprise for the proprietor since she expected to be cheated out of receiving recompense for it. Sasha passed her a drink with something akin to great curiosity.

“A demon just walked into my bar with only the intention of imbibing? You have to admit with all the other things you’ve pulled, I have my reasons for being suspicious.” This was one of the most dangerous beings Sasha had ever met and here she was sipping at the alcohol with what appears to be an incredibly somber mood.

“Hmmm… this stuff is actually pretty decent.” The melancholic looking Belladonna let out a belch and blue ball of flame lit up the air slightly. While she didn’t apologize for belching, she did let it out away from everyone in a safely contained manner which was quite unlike her. It also caused Soft Echo to clap cheerily at the performance mildly earning Belladonna’s attention. “Huh, strange, they are not demonic or angelic. You’re entertaining some really weird guests here Flo, then again both sides of the divide have been acting up lately.”

“Are you going to tell me why you look like something ran you over… multiple times in fact?” This was a side to the demon dog that Sasha had never seen; usually she was flamboyant, cunning and downright malicious almost all the time. She wasn’t going to bother asking why Belladonna called her Flo or how she even knew that name, the dog had obviously been around for a while.

“Oh how you would love for someone to do that to me. Pour me a free drink and I’ll tell you why you’re boy toy will no longer have to deal with little old me.” Proceeding to drain the entire glass of its fluids, Belladonna looked to Sasha expectantly.

Sasha looked to Virgil who was still sipping his drink and he raised a brow at her, this could be seen as an example of a demon that wasn’t doing anything evil. Fluttershy for her part didn’t see anything out of place with Belladonna; then again she didn’t know her that well yet.

“If you plan on being here a while, you need to show your true nature.” With a continuing sense of wariness Sasha placed down another drink for Belladonna without asking for any pay.

“Fine, it’s your bar and your rules.” Holding up her right paw and snapping the nubs, this caused two large draconic wings to appear nestled against Belladonna’s back. She eyed the drink as if she were taking something into consideration, with a sigh she picked it up and took a sip. Her ears in the form of a bound ponytail flicked back and forth a bit. “Okay, what you think you know about me isn’t entirely the truth. I know I’m a complete and utter bitch, but I’m not evil. Take a look at what’s not around my neck at the moment, that’s your answer.”

“Answer to what? Oh… um excuse me for asking out of turn, but can you please hoof me my daughter back… she seems to like you.” Receiving and odd look from the demon dog, Fluttershy pointed to her back where she saw Soft Echo cuddling into the spot between her wings.

“Your kid is not very bright is she?” Belladonna carefully managed to get a paw around to her back where she picked up Soft by the scruff of her neck and gave her back to Fluttershy without any ill intent. “Any other demon would have likely torn her itty bitty soul to shreds for invading their personal space, as for me I’m not feeling up to it.”

“What does not having a collar have to do with the way you’re acting?” Not in a million years did Sasha think that Belladonna would be gentle, she was a demon for crying out loud. She had a clear opportunity to hurt the child and was within her rights to do so. Her personal space was just violated and she didn’t react to it at all.

“It has a lot to do with everything really. Annabelle I know you’re here… come on out and explain it to her while I pay for the bottles to make more rounds for myself.” After that statement Belladonna slowly sipped her drink and continued to belch a small blue flame every now and then.

Out of a nearby mirror stepped a pink whippet with white feathered wings and a similar ponytail style compared to Belladonna’s only the ponytail went in a different direction. She took one look at the drinking demon and then smiled brightly.

“You’re always welcome to a job in heaven you know.” After that statement from Annabelle the angelic dog who has spent way too much time with her head in the clouds to remember what being a real dog is like, Sasha immediately poured herself a drink and took a quick swig of it.

Sasha realized what that kind of offer meant. Belladonna no longer had a job and that everything she did before was actually a part of said job. That was scary thought, given how far Belladonna could or was willing to go.

“Blow it out you’re prissy little backside Annie, I’m choosing to not work for either side at the moment and my future prospects are going to be my decision and mine alone. There’s not much going on there that would hold my interest anyway.” Belladonna went to take a drink and Annabelle smiled slightly.

“So you don’t want to be closer to me so we can have more sex? I would like it if you were to shack with me as they say; at least you will have a place you can be and you really like that thing I can do with my wings after all.” Annabelle smiled deviously while spreading her wings as a spray of dark flames left the demons mouth and she started coughing and sputtering. It was the second thing Annabelle said that Belladonna reacted to and most surprising was that she said it in front of Sasha no less. Belladonna’s wings spread out and became horrendously stiff, plus she was clearly blushing.

“Whoa, whoa, hold on a minute. Annabelle you and her, but… Belladonna can I impinge on you again, the all too seemingly pure angel just dropped a huge bombshell on my world view.” The demon nodded her assent; Sasha poured more alcohol for herself and drank another large swig.

“Are you serious Annie? I know you like to play the holier than thou card all the time, so why are you dropping the act now?” Belladonna didn’t look happy with the angel dog.

“Sasha I know this might be a bit surprise for you, please don’t tell Charlie that I’m bisexual or that me and Belladonna have a continuing… ‘History’, if you will. You can tell him that I have been keeping things from him though. I like to tell people we’re cousins, but we’re not related by blood by at least four hundred and thirty nine generations. The family resemblance is always strong though.” Annabelle felt a bit sorry for Sasha La Fleur who was also known as Flo in a past life, nobody was perfect and she herself in particular was secretly a deviant. Charlie had never bothered to ask if she was sexually active and that put him among the rather nice one percent who didn’t constantly think about sex the minute they got into the more angelic side of the spirit realm. The only difference between her and Belladonna was the likeliest direction their moral compasses would swing in certain situations. “As for you Belladonna, both heaven and the underworld have been in an uproar since last week as something completely chaotic has broken the scales. Not tipped mind you, but completely broken. You’re the likeliest to know what’s going on, Charles and Itchy are being run ragged by running interference and they are currently stopping the worst of the spirits that got out. Can you at least tell me that much?”

“Yeah, I can tell you something. Someone really screwed the pooch and I mean it quite literally. You’d think I’d have job security for ferreting out so many who are completely wicked; personally punishing them is really just a side benefit really and helping you train angels isn’t that bad a gig. Your karma Houdini level angel is still fucking hilarious to the guys in accounting downstairs though, as no matter what I do I can’t nail his ass to the wall and he gets away with so much crap that I think Chuck is the soul of Coyote having his jollies with me.” Oh Belladonna wouldn’t be surprised if Charlie B. Barkin was Coyote in disguise and had altered his personality to play the fool. “Someone caused a universally large paradox and it involves foreign magic that didn’t come from the magical side of Earth. Puck's hands are bound up in New York by some rich guy so it’s definitely not him. Investigations are being done by the dragons, but they are coming up with nothing as to what is causing it. A history changing paradox is going to happen in a few hours from now and when it does… well the term ‘all hell breaks loose’ comes to mind. So far, what you’re seeing are the early escapees from the underworld who are actively trying to prevent anyone from solving the paradox even if they don’t know the cause of it personally. Word of warning, fix it fast. I’m ready to skip town to the magical side if this isn’t fixed in time. Oh and Red has escaped, he really wants it to happen too. Good luck with putting that complete bastard back where he belongs.”

“Punishing the wicked?” Fluttershy queried slightly upset. She believed in the Elysium of Equestria as being a place where the souls of mostly good ponies go when they die, Tartarus was physically existing underworld so Elysium had to exist. Twilight made mention of the place where she became an alicorn and it had to be closely related to Elysium in some way. If both places like that were to intermingle then that would cause untold destruction. Things were beginning to sound a lot worse than Katrina implied they were. She pulled out the two memory stones and sent her a short message. “Katrina, I’m in San Francisco. Please hurry, I’ve just heard that there are a lot of demons around and that they are going to try and stop Felicia from fixing this mess.”

“It is the job of demons to make sure those who are cruel and twisted are punished for the truly horrible actions they do in life. Not all demons do their jobs correctly for the spiritual realm, sometimes angels are too lazy to pick up their slack and neither side is perfectly correct in their philosophy.” It was a good idea to Virgil that you place your trust after you get to know someone intrinsically. “There is a lot of grey area and personal vendettas are usually involved. Even angels can be cruel if they try. Why I personally know that an angel was actually the reason why a demon named Talon exists.”

“The skull guy, yeah I know of him. He’s still on the loose eating souls in purgatory between heaven and the underworld in the spirit realm.” Slamming back her drink Belladonna started to wobble in her seat slightly, Annabelle took a seat next to her and got Sasha to give her a glass as well. Sasha notably became completely frazzled that Annabelle poured herself a drink. “I’m surprised that nobody has bothered to deal with him yet.”

Feeling something on her back again, Belladonna glared at Soft Echo and she just smiled up at the miffed demon dog. Soft Echo squeaked happily at her and nuzzled against her face, Belladonna grunted and planted the little pony firmly on Annabelle’s back.

Within seconds of exploring Annabelle’s back, Soft Echo squeaked then fluttered her way awkwardly back onto Belladonna’s back where she began cuddling the dog again. At that time it was almost exactly midnight in San Francisco and there was barely more than five hours left before the world fell into chaos. Even with that terrible thought on her mind, Annabelle thought it was rather cute that Belladonna had made a little friend.

“Felicia, are you ready for this?” Katrina had received Fluttershy’s message and Righteous Indignation had arrived in a timely manner. Captain Bucky might not know what was so urgent, but he was definitely informed that Willy’s planet was in danger and in the same dimension that they were in.

“Well I guess I have to be right?” Felicia had been a part of putting a giant demon that was carelessly woken up back to sleep and she had channeled a massive amount of magic through her body. She wanted to help Fluttershy as she felt sorry for what happened to her when they were forced to send her away. It was a little surprising to hear that the pony was doing okay, even if she still hadn’t found her home yet. “I’m sure I can handle it.”

“Demons are prowling about there, be prepared to defend yourself at all times no matter who can see you using your powers out in the open. The situation is dire enough that secrecy is not warranted or safe.” Katrina could see that Felicia was taking this situation seriously and then the cat took a step towards a wooden doorway in an orange spaceship that led all the way to Earth. She just stepped straight into a young teenager’s bedroom no less, Katrina was smiling humorously at the thought.

“Hmmm… I can’t see who is causing the problem, but I can see who will fix it. She is quite the delicious looking kitten.” A large red demonic looking humanoid cat cackled as he looked into his crystal ball, he would take his revenge on Charlie and he had to ensure this problem couldn’t be fixed. The Crystal Ball showed a humanoid cat with long blue hair and grey fur wearing a brown cloak. “To me my imps, I have a task for you!”

A bunch of tiny red creatures known as imps appeared with equally tiny pitchforks and were waiting for their orders. They would swarm the target continually to wear her down and when she was weak, Red would take her for his own amusement.

In the present, Bonnie was preparing for the fight of her life. She was wearing the Rhizome suit and the armoring was a tad thick on her since it covered a smaller surface area. She didn’t know if the slightly thicker armor would do any good from the history on Samus that she got from the computer of Head Hunter. Samus was a living nightmare to watch in action in those recordings, they showed just what she was capable of.

The mutated Terran in Chozo armor has survived the complete and utter destruction of several planets, space stations and large ships. Even if the crystal gems helped, Bonnie didn’t think anyone would survive the encounter. Then there were the space raiders, the Hench Company guys and that Motor Ed guy with the Sumo Ninjas to think of, they were likely still looking for Head Hunter. There was a possibility of them being attracted and drawn into what was looking to be an oncoming rather one-sided if highly protracted fight.

Author's Note

The only time Annabelle ever personally acts against Belladonna is when she gets completely out of line, otherwise Belladonna was just doing her job. She eventually had to have gotten a hold of both Carface and Killer's souls as Red had Carface as an end result of the second movie.

Killer appears out of nowhere in 'All Dogs Christmas Carol', so Belladonna must have gotten a hold of his soul sometime between the second movie and that one. No normal mortal dog normally exists for sixty years, which is kind of the same thing that happens with Itchy in the second movie because Charlie spent a long time waiting for him to get into heaven.

Belladonna's entire routine is based in 'tests of character'. Which she always seems to be doing to anyone and if you look at it the right way, she actually forced Charlie and his friends to redeem Carface during Christmas. Carface was the guy who originally killed Charlie in the first movie of the 'All Dogs' series.

It is not a stretch that Charlie's love interest Sasha in the second movie turning out to be the reincarnation of Flo from the first movie.

The red imps appear in both the first and third movie, the second movie had a more spiritual version of the imps that dragged Carface down.

The continuity of 'All Dogs' is messed up, but I think this works. Also things are worse than Fluttershy imagined they would.

To explain it, if the paradox happens it would be as if the past version of Fluttershy had never gotten the memory stones at all. All the talks she had with Katrina would disappear from history and she be less connected with her friends and would be less mentally stable as a result.

99

“Keep a look out for demons Willy; I have been warned there are many about tonight. I just need to focus to find who I’m looking for.” Felicia closed her eyes and concentrated, Willy the human teenager just watched out for anything out the window.

Aldebaran magic wasn’t very effective against living things; things like a machine and flesh fused together wouldn’t fall apart if it would kill the life. What Aldebaran magic was good at was creating advanced technology or mystical objects like memory stones, it also tore apart said technology in the form of any kind of machinery without a soul attached. Their magic was also highly effective against demons; in particular Aldebarans were capable of stopping average sized demons alone if powerful enough. The number of Aldebarans needed to stop larger demons would increase proportionately to how powerful the demon was.

What Felicia the Aldebaran princess was doing was sensing for two things, demons and Fluttershy. What she felt was disconcerting in the extreme, there were a lot of demons between her and her target. Even if the distance wasn’t large, the number of demons alone would cause a major delay.

“Is there anything I can do to help Felicia?” Turning to Willy with a frown, the cat girl didn’t want to put him in danger as he was a friend of their species.

“The best you can do is stay here and safe. If I stay here for too long I might attract the demons to your home and I wouldn’t want your family getting hurt on my conscience. Make sure the doors and windows are sealed when I leave Willy.” Felicia was given a go ahead to use her powers whenever and this situation was serious, she wouldn’t fail her mentor Jenny or Aldebaran. Willy led her to the front door of his house, peaking out of the door for a moment Felicia looked back to him and nodded once before dashing out of the home.

Ducking into a nearby alleyway the cloak covered Felicia placed a mental call to Fluttershy, someone she hadn’t seen since the incident where she had been horrifically twisted into a monster by a quark demon. Poking her head out the other end of the alleyway she saw little red creatures hiding in the shadows of humans walking about, the humans most likely wouldn’t see them or even detect them. There were other demons prowling the alleyway across the street, it would be best that she stayed out of sight and avoided places that were too dark. She could do this, this was important and everything was resting on her shoulders.

“Fluttershy are you in a safe place? It’s me Felicia; the streets are definitely swarming with demons. If you are safe stay where you are and I’ll come to meet you. If you are not, try to give me a sign as to where you are if you’re in danger.” Felicia slowly made her way onto the street with her eyes darting around everywhere, there were some demons on the roofs nearby, many were in the shadow of alleys in her way to the shortest path to Fluttershy. There were a few that she could feel were on the lookout for something, most likely her and that was a disturbing thought.

“I’m sure I’m in a safe place, I can stay here as long as needed as there is some kind of barrier preventing demons with any amount of ill intent from entering this area.” Fluttershy kind of felt sorry for Belladonna as Soft Echo was playfully batting at her ears held back in a ponytail. The dog’s ire was noticeably raised, but she had yet to hurt Soft or even to attempt to foist her off on someone else again. The last three attempts failed, Soft liked Sasha well enough, Virgil was a little awkward around Soft and Soft just snuggled Fluttershy with unconditional love for her mother before going back to Belladonna.

“Your brat is so lucky Annabelle is here to make sure I don’t do something you’re all going to regret.” Alcohol didn’t seem to change Belladonna’s mood one bit; it only made her tipsy as demons obviously had a high tolerance for inebriation.

“That leads me to a question, how can you go between heaven and the underworld at will? Why can you still get into heaven?” It had bothered Sasha for the longest time that Belladonna could enter heaven in the spirit realm at will without repercussion or anyone saying much about her being there.

“I have a counter question for you, how in the hell did Carface get into heaven in the first place? That guy has got a laundry list a mile long, mind you his early history shouldn’t earn him any sympathy points.” Belladonna cleared her throat and pulled out a piece of parchment from nowhere and looked it over. “He’s a piece of work and responsible for the following before he died for the first time: drug trafficking, child abuse, child trafficking, drugged child abuse and trafficking, gambling, was involved killing your boyfriend in cold blood twice, multiple accounts of seriously injuring humans with a machine gun mounted on another dogs back, stealing, fixing races, cheating all the time, lying also all the time, helping me build a doomsday device, responsible for the deaths of seventy eight dogs before he killed Charlie and twenty five afterwards before he was swallowed by a big lipped alligator. He’s killed a hundred and twenty one innocent humans through engineered accidents in the era of Anne Marie, forty percent of them were children, twenty nine percent were teenagers and the rest were adults. Of the humans that weren’t innocent that he killed, there were seven and I can honestly say they really deserved what happened to them as one of them was a serial killer and another was a rapist who managed to reach thirty victims before he was struck with a piano. We in the underworld call those happy accidents and this isn’t even a fourth of the things he’s done. There was also puppy trafficking, but a dog named Flo saved them for the Pound Puppy organization. She was reincarnated to be as beautiful as her soul is, so… how do you feel about being hit on by a demon, you hot dog you?”

“Yeah, I’m a little confused about that as… wait, I did that?” Was Sasha’s response to the puppies she saved in the past, she shivered at the salacious look Belladonna sent her. “Also, I’m now afraid of you for entirely different reasons than just because you’re a demon.”

“She’s just attracted to good guys and will only do things you allow her to. She’s in the closet about it all the time.” It took Annabelle a while to convince Belladonna into doing some things she wanted to do and Annabelle herself was into tying her partner up. Who knew a demon could be so chaste about things?

“Who is this Carface you’re talking about? He doesn’t sound very nice.” Fluttershy could only hope that nothing bad would happen to Felicia on her way to Sasha’s café and tavern. Maybe she should mention that her friend, who was a humanoid cat, was coming here to a place full of dogs. Why is it now that she could suddenly see all the bad things that will happen when she does arrive? It would be far worse if she doesn’t arrive, she can at least stop the dogs from being a problem with a stare.

“Oh he’s not nice at all, but he’s been working on it recently. All dogs go straight to heaven you see, no matter how they live. Some dogs can opt for underworld duty; Belladonna here did so because she was a lot tougher than most and could handle it. Mr. Caruthers was a pretty bad dog all around, but we still let him in even if he should have gone immediately to the underworld for everything he did.” Annabelle had watched for several minutes as Belladonna tried to rid herself of the little filly, the demon failed horribly each time. The one know as Virgil handled the filly awkwardly, the filly cuddled her mother with unconditional love and she liked Sasha well enough, but it seemed Soft Echo had her heart set on cuddling up to Belladonna. “That was when he stole the horn of openings which led to an incident with Red.”

“Yep and I’m a well adjusted member of society compared to him.” Belladonna saying it with a completely straight face did not diminish Sasha’s horror one bit when she smiled at her. The little bloodsucker was still attached to her back between her wings and she was falling asleep there, why was she so interesting to the darn thing? Thinking on it, the little filly did remind Belladonna of a really cute horse version of a succubus. All she wanted to do was get a drink, why was it so hard to get one without things getting in the way? “Can someone relieve me of this little tick on my back?”

“She really seems to like you though and she looks too peaceful to disturb.” The demon just stared Fluttershy in the eyes and she didn’t back down at the stare. This earned her some respect from the dark looking canine with the overly pointy teeth; turning to the proprietor she just had to ask. “Sasha is there a bathroom here? I’m sorry for asking this, but I really need to go.”

“We have hydrants and regular toilets for number 2, that door over there. Wash your legs before you leave though. I run a mostly clean establishment here; even if I did establish it in an alleyway.” Seeing the slightly green look on the pony’s face Sasha decided to add. “Yes, dogs do drink from those toilets so it’s a good idea to flush. They are cleaned out each week so don’t worry about it too much, just don’t go near the fire hydrants and don’t even ask how we got them installed in there.”

After having gone to the bathroom that was half meant for dogs, Fluttershy had made sure to clean her hooves thoroughly before leaving. She came back to see Belladonna trying to ignore the sleeping filly snuggly wrapped around her left wing, she sighed at the adorable sight before sitting back down.

“And that’s why I rarely, if ever, do windows.” Annabelle had a captive and ill looking audience.

“To think people call demons unsanitary.” It was Belladonna’s response to whatever it was Fluttershy just missed hearing about, she didn’t seem to be trying to rid herself of Soft Echo anymore.

“Things seem to be going well here.” Fluttershy closed her eyes and focused, the two memory stones appeared in her hoof again. “Are you doing okay Felicia?”

“Not really, I’m kind of in the middle of something here Fluttershy.” What Felicia was busy with were tons of little red demons with pitchforks and she was blasting them back with the energy she flung from her hands in a rapid manner. She was on the run and as she passed through an alleyway a bunch of lanky looking shadows attacked her; she fended them off with large blast of energy from both her hands slapping against the ground creating a shockwave that shredded every demon within twenty feet of her.

The Aldebaran was wearing the average style of Aldebaran armor, a tiara with a memory stone and two focusing stones in the gauntlets that helped to channel magic through her hands. Her master Jenny had the ability to use three focusing stones at once and then there were the highest level of Aldebaran’s who can focus their magic without the aid like her grandmother Katrina.

Princess Felecia was an average level magic user in Aldebaran terms of control, but she did have a lot of capacity to make up for it. Even then she was tiring as she didn’t have the endurance to use her full magical might all in one go unless she had other Aldebaran’s giving her their strength.

Running out of the alleyway with the cloak swirling around her and her hands glowing slightly, Felicia looked left and right around the street. It was way too quiet and she didn’t see any humans around.

“Fluttershy… I might need you to come to me. I’m being hunted and I’ve been constantly fighting off demons minutes into arriving in San Francisco.” Usually it was the other way around with the Aldebaran’s being the hunters, Felicia recognized the quiet street for what it was and that she was likely surrounded on all sides. Looking up to the roofs of the buildings confirmed her theory. “And I think I just might have just run straight into a trap, there is a really powerful demon behind this and I think it’s trying to wear me down.”

There were a lot of the little red demons and the shadows themselves were attacking her, there were also a few other kinds that started climbing down the walls. They were angling towards Felicia as she slowly moved backwards into the middle of the intersection.

“I’m going to need some help…” Felicia lit her hands up brighter, she hadn’t had this much trouble since the robot that had a twisted toads flesh fused into its metal construction woke up the giant demon. The street started to grow dark around her as the shadows started to creep closer to her.

“I must be cursed.” Again Belladonna was complaining about the fruit bat filly now snuggled upside down under her left wing snoring softly, the little tyke was driving her batty and she couldn’t do a thing single thing to stop the filly from cuddling up to her. Well she could take another shot of alcohol; it was one of things keeping her calm aside from Annabelle’s watchful eyes filled with humor about her situation. “What did I do to deserve this kind of punishment?”

“I’m sorry to ask this of you, but it’s an emergency. Could either of you please watch out for my daughter for me? I have something really important that I must do and quickly.” Fluttershy hadn’t left Soft Echo alone by herself for a long time as she was rather clingy, but the filly looked safe in the wing of the friendly demon. “Soft Echo really likes fruit and she should be asleep for a short while, if anything happens to me will all of you take care of her?”

“Of course we will.” As usual Annabelle didn’t see a problem with volunteering herself and someone else to do something nice, such as looking out for a little child. As an angel dog Annabelle loved children, whereas she knew Belladonna disliked them with a passion even if she was doing a pretty good job of keeping Soft Echo comfortable.

“I hate you so much right now.” Muttered a rather irate Belladonna who direly wanted the filly to stop snuggling her, she was nobodies cuddle toy!

“I’ll try to be back as quickly as I can, but if I’m not back within an hour can you please come looking for me?” Receiving a nod from the angelic dog, Fluttershy flared her wings and took to the air and flew above the rooftops surrounding the alleyway place for dogs. “Now which way do I go though? Oh…”

San Francisco was brightly lit in many places except for one spot where the clouds were swirling with darkness and the area didn’t seem to let any light out of it. It was quite obvious to Fluttershy where Felicia had gotten stuck, it was pretty close too. Sighing to herself, Fluttershy flew off for that spot and hovered above the area. Landing in this area would have been a one way ticket to pain, as she saw Felicia holding off swarms of what had to be demons given their grotesque or evil appearances.

Felicia’s cloak was in tatters, the armor beneath it was impeccably clean and unblemished despite the damage her cloak had taken. She was in the middle of ripping a little red mouse sized demon off of her shoulder and she blasted it straight into the crowd surrounding her where it exploded taking a few other demons with it. They held a large circle around her, but no more approached. She was watching the shadows just as carefully as she was her surroundings.

Fluttershy stayed well above the mass of writhing violent creatures and wondered why they had stopped attacking Felicia.

“It’s obvious to me now that my minions are useless against you. Why send a pack of pathetic demons like these to do a real demons job after all?” It was a tall cat shaped figure, heavily muscular and covered in thick, coarse, blood red fur. Its yellow eyes stared devilishly at Felicia as it stalked through the path made by the other demons under his thrall. “It seems I’ve found both the cause and the fix for the paradox in one place, I’m not about to let you fix this.”

“Who are you?” Felicia didn’t like the sound of an intelligent demon, intelligent demons were rare on Aldebaran and ones that were intelligent were not to be trifled with. The fact that he looked like an oversized male humanoid cat of her species made Felicia quite wary of him immediately.

Red just chuckled to himself and with a quick leap he slapped Felicia towards the nearest wall back first. Instead of slumping to the ground, she was still standing if shakily on both her feet as she blasted away the demons attempting to take her down while she was slightly dazed. Her thick mass of soft blue hair had cushioned her impact with the wall quite well.

Fluttershy didn’t have any idea what to do, she was too afraid to fly too close to the ground. Her options were taken from her when a claw gripped her tail and pulled her from the air. She slapped against the red demons chest, getting hurt in the process as it felt like she just slammed into a brick wall. The large red demon had jumped high enough to pluck her out of the air and his hand was now wrapped tightly around her throat.

“No you don’t!” Felicia quickly tore through an entire wave of demons and attacked Red directly, the demon actually winced and stumbled back a bit as Felicia struck him across the chest with her claws. She was trying to get him to drop Fluttershy.

The pony was still in Red’s grip and her vision was slowly blurring, as his gripped tightened and he sent a claw at the Aldebaran who blocked it and threw a magic filled right hook across the demons face staggering him.

Fluttershy tried desperately to slap at the arm holding her with her hooves, but she soon blacked out and her last sight before falling unconscious was a battered groaning Felicia being lifted up by her hair in the other hand of the demon.

Red disappeared with flash of energy holding up his two prisoners as trophies while laughing in victory.

“Did you see that Itch? That was Red! We’ve got to go after him!” Said the bigger of the two dogs watching as Red disappeared with two beings that were obviously just taken captive.

“No Charlie, who or what were those two that Red grabbed? They looked weird and one of them was fighting against Red. We should really tell Annabelle about this immediately!”The shorter dog with equally short legs wore a green shirt and had a red hat whose name was Itchy looked at Charlie hoping that he would listen to reason this time.

“Right, but who knows where she is at this time? With Red is on the loose then we’d better call on Annabelle at the Flea Bite. Come on, the barrier around that place should be demon proof. It sounds like we need a miracle right about now with him running around.” Charlie had become used to being a wild rogue among good dogs of all kinds, his best friend Itchy would always at as his conscience and this time he would let his friend be his guide.

The two dogs ran into the Flea Bite and were about to call Annabelle when they saw that Annabelle was already there and so was someone else who was sitting at the counter next to her drinking alcohol.

“Belladonna what are you doing here?” Itchy felt he had a right to be cross with the demon dog after all she’s done.

“She’s honestly just getting a drink; don’t worry about her she is absolutely up to nothing at the moment. Why do you two look so panicked?” It was only now that the two dogs noticed Annabelle was sitting right next to Belladonna. “Before you ask yes the barrier is still up Charles and it is functioning properly, of that I am certain.”

“So what’s gotten dumb and dumber in a bind this time? I can only wonder.” Picking up a bottle Belladonna upended half the fluids down her throat in one go.

“Look, we just saw Red and he said he’s found the cause of the problem and the one who could fix it.” Charlie started off trying to ignore the demon dog sitting at the counter.

“Yeah and he grabbed this human cat thing that was fighting off the demons and pulled this yellow four legged horse thing out of the air that looked like an angel!” Itchy was quite worried as a demon grabbing anyone was never a good thing.

“Oh for the love, please tell me I’m not going to be the one stuck with this little thing clinging to me forever!” Belladonna’s raised voice didn’t even cause the upside down bat filly to stir one bit.

Luna watched a little confused as the two fillies frolicked with one another; she shrugged as the child was probably just dreaming of having friends that looked like her. It didn’t register to her that the two fillies might both be real. The dream had a strange yet happy purple dog come up to them to drop a ball on the ground wagging her tail. It was a cute and simple little dream of fillies playing fetch with a dog, so she just let Soft Echo be and went back to the crystal gems, Fluttershy and the others.

“Of course not Belladonna, I would not leave you alone to raise a child. Why that would just turn into a complete disaster.” Shaking her head while laughing, Annabelle soon took on a thoughtful look and then became serious. “Look Belladonna, if you don’t want to be saddled with the responsibility for the adorable little dear that obviously likes you for the rest of your immortal life, then you might as well give us an idea as to where Red could have gone. He's not dumb enough to base himself in Alcatraz again.”

Author's Note

My computer is really messed up, but the problem will hopefully fix itself soon.

Also Rarity opens a Boutique in Canterlot, the episode. Hopefully something about it will be entertaining aside from Rarity working herself into the ground.

Fluttershy being choked by a demon is added to the list of horrible things that has happened to the poor pony.

Belladonna seems to protest too much about Soft Echo.

Plus an appearance by Charlie and Itchy, the dynamic dog duo.

100

Waking up in a small room in an uncomfortable position was not a thing a pony wanted to do, especially not when a demon was around and you were on your back with your hind legs spread out on a table in the middle of said room. She hadn’t seen Luna because she hadn’t actually fallen asleep; she had been choked into unconsciousness.

Fluttershy had only been captured twice in her long journey, once by Bonnie with a meticulously well planned move and the other was on that vessel with the strange purple clad metallic beings. While she hadn’t escaped Bonnie, she had escaped the other problem and now she was the prisoner of a demon. That would explain why her legs were chained down the way they were and she was incapable of moving, surprisingly she didn’t feel like she had been violated while she had been out cold. She had heard that demons did lots of nasty things to those who deal with them and Fluttershy obviously wasn’t going to make a deal with this one.

The door to the room slammed open and the red demon ducked his way into the room while giving her a look that left her frightful.

“Ah, you’re awake. It is so nice of you to rejoin us in the world before the paradox sets off. The only reason why you are alive and untouched is because without you the paradox wouldn’t be possible and should anything happen to you it might never happen.” The large red cat like demon stepped up and curled his fingers around Fluttershy’s chin to force her to look up at him. There were nasty looking markings across his chest and face from where Felicia hit him. His eyes were quite horrific to stare into. “The reason why I haven’t defiled you yet is because I need you in good health, since in a little more than an hour from now you’ll cause the world to become destroyed. Your friend who gave me these scars won’t be able to fix it then and I will see everything fall into glorious despair, I’ll enjoy your delicious little form as well my morsel and I play with my food. I’m just saving you for the event and after that... well, you know.”

“What happened to her?” Upon hearing her question a shivering Fluttershy noted that the demon looked like he swallowed a bitter pill as he released her chin allowing her to look away.

“She still lives and is untouched; while she is unable to break free she is using her magic to protect herself from me. I can’t let her exist or she will inevitably fix what caused the paradox. The only thing keeping your friend safe from my powers is her armor and magic; it is somehow preventing me from taking her. Even then it is almost too late for her to stop me; since as long as you live and the problem isn’t fixed, the paradox will happen.” The cat demon smiled at Fluttershy. “Now don’t go anywhere, I wouldn’t want you to get hurt now. I’m sure you’re my front row seat to the destruction of this world. If you wish to know your captors name, just call me Red. I can’t wait to spill your blood; it’s one of my favorite things in the world to do and I’m sure we’ll get to know each other better real soon. Just know that I will rise to power with this event.”

Red stood up tall and turned to leave the room, he sent back one last glance between Fluttershy’s rear legs and licked his lips. He slammed the door and stalked off cackling, it left Fluttershy a quivering wreck. She didn’t need to be a genius to know that he intended to rape her. The fact that he hadn’t done so already to Felicia was a good thing to hear at least. Aldebarans were of a highly demon resistant magical people and it was a good trait to have when it came to keeping one from being horribly brutalized by someone like Red and it was unfortunate that she herself didn’t have that trait. It made her lucky she was the cause of the paradox at least and that he wouldn’t harm her for fear of making the paradox fail to happen.

Taking a glance around Fluttershy took in the metal walls covered in blood; Red hadn’t done much to her aside from psychologically scarring her again. At this point the pony would rather kill herself than let the world fall to destruction, but she still had a chance if she could reach Felicia as those were her two options. Figure out how to die when chained tightly to a cold metal table or meet up with Felicia, she pretty much preferred the second option.

She tried to move and didn’t feel even a bit of looseness in the chains; surprisingly despite having her neck chained down she felt she still had the translation device and the Lunar Locket around her neck. She didn’t see how either of those would help in this situation, there was a ventilation shaft into the room, but it was so small that only a rat could get through it. The only other option Fluttershy could really work was summoning the memory stones, both the one from the past and the one from her present.

Concentrating the memory stones appeared on top of her left hoof, she immediately called out to Felicia.

“Felicia can you hear me?” The response was almost immediate and Fluttershy could hear the relief coming from the other end.

“Oh thank goodness! Fluttershy are you okay? He didn’t hurt you did he? Once I get free I’m going to send him back to where he came from, I promise!” Felicia didn’t sound scared at all, only really angry and pissed off.

“I’m okay Felicia, he hasn’t hurt me. He said he needs me alive and in good condition for the paradox to go off.” Gulping a bit, Fluttershy decided to bite the cannonball on this one. “I really don’t like it, but if we can’t meet up in time and if you don’t fix the problem… I might have to kill myself. I really don’t want to doom this world to destruction.”

“Don’t worry Fluttershy; he’s barely keeping me down and is using a lot of power to hold me here. So don’t do anything crazy, I’m trying my hardest to break free here and I wouldn’t like my efforts in saving the both of us to go to waste.” The pony could almost see Felicia the grey furred Aldebaran glowing with power as a mental image of what she was doing at the moment. “The people of Aldebaran won’t fail you a second time! I’ve already called for help as this place wherever we are is swamped in demons, likely being controlled by that Red guy.”

“Oh, I’m not going anywhere. He has me chained down quite thoroughly so I can’t even hurt myself even if I tried to. The way he has me chained down is rather disconcerting though.” Fluttershy could still move her wings and could grab the chains with them, but they weren’t strong enough to break the metal pinning her in place. “To think this is the same morning I was teaching my daughter to fly, at least my little Soft Echo is safe.”

“That’s just another reason for me to break out and for you to continue existing.” Felicia sounded rather strained, as if she was fighting to break free of her own confinement.

“Do not worry; we are coming to help you two soon. Hold on a little bit longer, we will be able to stop the paradox before it destroys everything.” The third voice sounded rather calm and composed, yet there was an undermining feeling of worry to it.

“Master Jenny!” The joy in Felicia’s voice was heard, after which it sounded like she doubled in her efforts in escape. “We only have a little more than hour before it happens. The demon known as Red said that sun will rise upon devastation. I’m already trying to break free, but with your assistance we’re assured victory. Please hurry.”

“You are surrounded by quite a number of demons, if you can break free and reach Fluttershy by the time we can reach you it will be all for the better.” Jenny’s voice was rather reassuring to Fluttershy as much as Felicia’s great upturn in emotional strength. “Concentrate on freeing yourself Felicia; you’ve come a long way in your powers. Even though I believe I will have little left to teach you, I know that we will always be great friends. Though you will still have a lot to learn personally about yourself and who you are, you’re still a growing kitten after all. We are preparing to storm you’re location on foot, you have made many an ally on this world Fluttershy and I hope they will be helpful in the coming battle. Show your claws Felicia and bare your fangs, send this demon and his army running in my direction in fear.”

The affectionate tone was rather nice on the ears, but Fluttershy couldn’t help but feel sorry about causing all of this trouble in the first place. She had to wonder what Jenny meant by allies, Bonnie certainly didn’t come to the west coast at this time and it was still before she, Soft and the memory stone fell into the portal. She flexed her wings several times; they weren’t as strong as Rainbow’s and they weren’t going to be useful in her getting free even if they weren’t chained down.

Still feeling rather anxious about her position Fluttershy didn’t like chains nearly as much as she liked ropes, the rusted metal chains would have chafed if they were wrapped around her and the manacles on her hooves weren’t much better. An idea occurred to her that she had never thought of before. Being a pegasus, Fluttershy had just thought of a way to free herself. It was gross, but she bet Rainbow would certainly get a laugh out of this later.

Inhaling, the pony had to do this just right and she hoped that she’d be able to do something with her idea. This was going to be an interesting idea in winged pony physics nonetheless even if it didn’t work; it would be an interesting to at least know whether or not it could be achieved. Being the academic pony she was, Fluttershy was going to put her little idea to the test and if it worked she would have to eventually tell her friends about what she had to do to get out of being shackled down.

“What do you think she’s doing?” Pearl had no idea what she was looking at, but after time became frozen Discord was busy watching Fluttershy in the past and would restart time when she made it back to the present.

“Something intelligent I believe, that is so like her to think outside the box. While she is causing a wonderful amount of chaos, I don’t like the company she is keeping in that large red fellow.” Discord didn’t have to watch past Fluttershy to know what the present Fluttershy was doing; time travel was an iffy thing that Discord wouldn’t touch for the fear of causing a disaster just like the one Fluttershy was on the brink of. The last time a pony time traveled was when Tirek got free of Tartarus, freezing time everywhere wasn’t nearly as problematic. He was watching Fluttershy in real time as she went back into the past; it had almost thrown him when she disappeared for a moment. “Aside from stopping time, if my powers worked outside of this planet I would happily torture that demon in the most ironic of manners for treating Fluttershy so horridly. How can he capture her without giving her popcorn after she wakes up? Also she prefers ropes!”

“So, about that Star Nomad who is about to reach Equus?” Pearl was actually finding the chaotic being to remind her somewhat of a little child. Discord stopping time throughout the universe was a little improbable to her, but Steven destroyed a time travel related artifact to fix a time travel problem once. It wasn’t entirely impossible, seeing it personally made it completely possible if you were powerful enough. Until Fluttershy met up with them present time, Discord wasn’t going to let time continue forward.

“I think he is more powerful than even I am and he’s friends with Fluttershy, I don’t have any personal issues with him. Though he is taking his sweet time with getting here, he seems like the guy to stop and do good deeds no matter how much of a distraction it is to him or his goals of bringing Fluttershy back to us. At least he’s bringing his chaos with him, that will be interesting.” When Discord froze time he had incidentally caught two ponies in time with him the other was still watching the screen quietly, he didn’t know what to think of Maud and he couldn’t read her emotions as well as he could instantly read anyone else. It was hard for him to think of her as Pinkie’s sister, she seemed rather dull even if she was in love with what amounted to a living rock, which was in itself interesting.

“Now that you mention it, I would like some popcorn.” Maud said dully even as she cuddled against Pearl’s side making the somewhat fake pony blush in a green tint resembling the color of moss.

“Huh, an insane asylum. Classy, but at a guess everyone inside is already dead except for fluffy butt the paradox monger and your kitten.” For the life of her Belladonna couldn’t understand why she was getting constantly stared at by Chuck and Scratchy, it was like they haven’t heard of demons wiping out all life in a building before. Oh wait, maybe they haven’t because Annabelle kept sending them on kiddy little ‘good boy’ missions. No high end combat training whatsoever, Annabelle was too soft and all the more sexy for it in her opinion. A squeaking sound came from her back. “You’re mother isn’t dead you little tick. Doubt we’re getting in without a fight cat lady, look at the entrance.”

“Yes, there seems to be a lot of demons in the way. You really shouldn’t be here Willy. I know you want to help, but demons are a different matter than dealing with atmosphere converters or toad machinery which is about as good as Earth mechanical engineering as far as I can tell. It is a surprise that your race is not better traveled in space and that all the infighting is preventing their spread to other habitable planets.” Jenny calmly stated and she looked back at Willy who smiled impishly at her. The blond kid in the glasses was a genius level human of his species and he was altruistic in the extreme, good traits to have even if it kept putting him in the line of fire. She noticed he had a holstered maser pistol and frowned. “Where did you get that weapon Willy?”

“Dead Eye gave me one of his fifty nine spare guns and taught me how to take care of it. I have to wonder if maser weaponry is effective against mystical beings.” Willy looked at Belladonna with something akin to worry, he had no idea that hell hounds actually existed or that this particular one was considered a boogeyman among dog kind. Now he was beginning to see that Earth itself had magical things, his portal to the Righteous Indignation might as well be a miracle itself since the device wasn’t exactly made to do what it does.

“Don’t worry I won’t bite, I haven’t hurt the little tick yet and she’s been clinging to me since I walked into the bar her mother was taking a break at before she got grabbed. Does that thing generate light? If it does, it should be effective against shadow demons at the very least.” Turning back to the entrance where there were a ton of demons standing guard, Belladonna snorted softly at the meager numbers Red managed to rally to the cause. “The only reason I’m here is so that I can get this over with and to finally get this annoying nuisance off my back!”

“Oh come on Belladonna, why are you really doing this? If you wanted to you could have easily dropped her on the ground and flown away at any time. She doesn’t seem to have much flying experience with those wings of hers.” Annabelle had Charlie and Itchy trailing behind her the entire time with them sending Belladonna suspicious looks; it always shocked them when she pointed out things about Belladonna’s character such as she never personally kills anyone and always tries to get someone else to do so. Sure she gets a little aggressive every now and then, but it wasn’t like Belladonna was truly down to her core evil. She was only mildly evil and Annabelle thought that was an endearing fact given that she was a submissive in bed, especially when it came to foreplay. Charlie was of good character, though he could have probably lived without knowing the nightmare of the sinking wooden boat covered in demons was Belladonna’s doing all those years ago. “Of course the boogey dog wants to boogie, so I can’t stop her if she wants to shred through the horde of demons guarding the gates. Why such a rather horrific display of power would be something I have no control over whatsoever.”

“You always did know how to talk my language Annie. It’s about time to get this little tick off of my back by scaring her and to finally show Chuck what I’ve been holding back.” Stalking forward and kneeling down, Belladonna let out a howl while her body lit alive with red energy and her eye turned a golden color. “Burning my soul, I bring alive the power of the beast. Unleash the power of truth, Psycho Burgundy!”

Instead of being scared of her ride suddenly engulfing herself in a powerful aura made up of her own soul being lit aflame, Soft Echo wrapped her hooves round Belladonna wing. She nuzzled the doggy’s neck with happy little squeaks as the warmth caressed her without hurting her at all.

“Oh Belladonna is always like this, always so melodramatic and over the top. Would you believe she’s into anime, video games and cartoons?” Annabelle smiled slightly while shaking her head as she knew what Belladonna was about to do. Surprisingly enough, anime, video game and cartoons could actually teach a magically or mystically powered individual to actually do the moves from said forms of media. “I would suggest everyone move back, she’s about to do something called ‘the very lonely one wave’. It’s one of the few things she’s actually managed to replicate using extremely compressed demon fire. Got her banned from heaven for a week the first time she managed to do it too.”

Everyone heeded the warning except for Soft Echo who watched as Belladonna gathered her paws together and simply stared at the glowing blue orb that grew into existence between her paws in amazement.

“Ka… me… ha… me… HA!” Everyone watched as a magnificently wide beam of burning energy cut a swath through hundreds of demons in seconds; surprisingly the building was still standing even if the front of it now had burnt stones all the way across it along with melted windows and it had caused such a loud thunderous noise in destroying the entrance. Looking at her back, Belladonna got a kiss on her nose which made her growl at the offending little pipsqueak that had the gall to just smile up at her as if she hadn’t just done something incredibly destructive, heck she could have taken the building down with her mother still inside of it! The little thing doesn’t seem to be learning that she was scary at all! She was still glowing red with power and her eyes were still solid gold at the moment and Soft Echo seemed to still be accepting everything she did! “Yeah, well. Hold on tight, I’ve got some more demons to wipe out and if you fall off I’m not picking you back up you stupid little tick.”

Soft Echo put her hooves around Belladonna’s neck to hold on tight and the scowl on the dogs face softened slightly, before it went back to full force as she blurred out of sight. She left those goggling at the power she had just unleashed behind in her dust. Moving forward they looked at all the burning demon bodies she left in her wake as she leaps through the smoldering entrance that had only melted door hinges left.

“That was… far more powerful than I would have expected from her.” Jenny did not want to fight that demon, there was so much power in that one attack and she could honestly tell that none of it went to waste. Hopefully that demon would stay on their side; the only other notable thing was that Virgil was remaining quiet throughout all of this.

“See, she’s like that all the time. I’m surprised she actually used the kid gloves with you like I told her to.” That earned Annabelle a flat stare from both Itchy and Charlie; they were more surprised at hearing Annabelle tell them that than the fact that Belladonna was truly far more dangerous than she first appeared to be.

“You mean, all the times we’ve face her before and she could have just done that…” Itchy motioned to all the smoldering demon bodies that weren’t about to get up. “She could have done this to us at anytime?”

“Oh good heavens no, she just can’t do that at any given time! There are limits to how much power she can actually use. Of course since she got fired from her job last week she’s allowed to use all of what she has now, but is far weaker than she was when she still had her job.” The gawking would continue as Annabelle pranced past everyone wagging her tail and flared her wings slightly, hopefully to knock them out of their stupors. “Come along then, Red couldn’t have possibly missed that. If it makes you feel any better I know how to do something called ‘final flash’, which is just as impressive since it uses holy light. It takes forever for me to charge it up though.”

Fluttershy had managed to destroy the manacles that were now bits of frozen metal and stood up; she moved over to the door and slowly cracked it open slightly to look out into the poorly lit hallway. She could see a few demons meandering about when she felt the entire building shake from some kind of explosive force.

Author's Note

Might have jumped a shark a bit there. A tiny bit... maybe.

Belladonna is not going to have much energy for fighting Red after doing all that though.

Annabelle seems a tad lazy at times, but she still has her job and is far more powerful than Belladonna at the moment. She is however limited to the laws that govern both heaven and underworld realms.

Whereas Belladonna has nothing to stop her from blowing through all that power
a little too fast and she does have a maximum limit to how much she can take in injuries and how much energy she actually has. Since she literally lit her soul on fire to even do a Kamehameha wave, she's going to burn out rather quickly.

Having a job gives the demon or angel a lot of power that will be taken away as soon as they lose their jobs. Belladonna earned the power she still has on her own time, so she isn't anywhere near as helpless as she would be had she relied entirely on the power that was given to her.

101

Charlie was an intelligent dog and had a bit of a wild streak in him, but this situation was beyond him and his best friend. He even checked his own brown fur to make sure that he was the right color, because when he stepped into the insane asylums entrance two minutes after the sounds of horror stopped, he saw horrors that he wasn’t likely to ever discuss with his best friend Itchy in depth. It was best that he forgot all about this once it was over with.

Itchy was a wiener dog and had often complained about having short legs and he barely spent any time in heaven before his best friend dragged him into hell, he barely got the chance to enjoy flying around. He didn’t mind as he’d always be Charlie’s friend, even if it was dangerous to continue being so. He had to watch Charlie’s back as he needed all the help he could get. The time Itchy didn’t watch Charlie’s back, he was murdered by Carface and this situation seemed far worse than anything he has ever dealt with before. Even then he followed Charlie into this place assured that hopefully Annabelle would protect them.

Annabelle was looking around at the décor, she had them wait outside for a minute or two for the sounds of fighting to die down, upon entering Jenny and Virgil were the only ones with the stronger stomachs. Before them in the entrance to the asylum was a rather macabre scene, though Annabelle had to admit that the gore chandelier that Belladonna had made was a nice touch and she had apparently quite liberally painted the walls in demon guts.

In the middle of the room Belladonna was laying on her side with Soft Echo petting the side of head. Belladonna was uninjured, but obviously quite tuckered out. Everything within a five foot radius the dog and filly pair was particularly spotless and clean, the walls and surroundings were covered in dead or dying pulped demons of various kinds.

Padding up to the two Annabelle looked up at the chandelier made from the twisted… no, those demons were still alive up there. It was about as interesting as watching paint dry for Annabelle, to see the still living demons with their internal organs and bones twisted and fashioned into a chandelier that had a pool of blood beneath it. It seems Belladonna had a flare for causing endless agony today, until those demons stopped clinging to life they would only know pain as a horribly physically conjoined mass of flesh.

“So… did you’re tick finally leave or is she still sucking all the evil out of you?” Annabelle ignored Charlie, Willy and Itchy losing their lunches behind her as she had seen stuff like this before and it wasn’t the first time the boogey dog was sadistic in her ways. Honestly frightening little angel puppies with stories of Belladonna wasn’t all that hard, because belladonna was quite good at coming up with obscenely horrific sights. She could only wonder what would happen should a demon be brave enough to hurt Soft Echo in front of Belladonna.

“I loathe your existence.” A huffing and puffing Belladonna had directed that statement at the filly who was still petting her in a fond manner and she squeaked happily at the once again purple hound. “Also shut up Annie, I’m still plenty evil!”

“Yes, turning at least seven different kinds of demons into a living chandelier, quite evil of you to perform such a grotesque act against other demons. All while protecting a sweet little child who has been nothing but entirely affectionate to you.” Quite frankly at this point Annabelle thought it had to be obvious that Belladonna was protesting the affection way too much. “Oh and you’ve sent every demon that killed the humans to the underworld already, Red is certainly playing to his strengths. He must have left humans to die of their wounds or had most of his weaker minions kill them.”

Soft Echo knew the pretty purple dog would protect her and she really liked cuddling up to the warm dog that did so many neat things that normal doggies don’t do, then again she didn’t know what a normal doggy looked like. It was hard to be scared of all the strange things around you when you had what amounted to a big teddy bear with you. She had been quite distracted by Belladonna’s presence as she hadn’t noticed her mother had been gone for a while.

Virgil sighed as he finished his last mental calculation as to what was exactly happening here, it was obvious to him that this was quite an obvious grab for power. He decided to voice his concern as Annabelle set up a glowing white pillar of light in the room using her angelic powers to create what was obviously a small safe zone, in the same cleared out area that was covered in demon gore.

“Excuse me, but I think it would be a good idea to listen to what I have to say. While I know we do not have much time, I have to ask a question. Depending on the answer, it will tell us just how dire things are.” Once they were all within the circle of light and Virgil was given the go ahead, he decided to expunge his mental calculations as to what future events may occur. “Yes well, tell me, when the paradox sets off how much energy will be released from the magic and spirit realm suddenly flooding the mundane realm? Of course the real question is this, can this demon known as Red absorb said energies once they are released?”

Jenny had a horrified look in her eyes, which was the answer Virgil needed to know as to what his answer was. Even Annabelle became a tad stiff as her eyes widened at the implications.

“I have predicted the three likeliest courses to the future based around our future actions. The first one is where we successfully create a stable time loop thereby preventing the paradox’s existence and saving the world from falling into calamity, however Red will try to slaughter us all even if it would end badly for him. Two my most recent friend Fluttershy kills herself in order to prevent the paradox from happening and Reds rise to power, he will still come at us to kill us all. Three, Red succeeds in gaining enough power to start an apocalypse to shape the world to how he wishes it to be, he can then rule over us as a malevolent god. There is a fourth future where we succeed and survive the process of doing so, but I’m used to horrific things happening around me so I’m a tad biased and this one may be just as possible as the other options. The combined laws of heaven and underworld don’t entirely apply to beings born outside the influence of Earth; it means he can kill anyone alien to this world without repercussion from Annabelle.” Sometimes Virgil really didn’t calculating the odds of all of them surviving; they only had three fully capable demon fighting people with them. Also he knew the rules of the spirit realm, especially about how demons can’t outright attack mortals of Earth or go overboard in certain ways. “We have approximately an hour to reach Fluttershy and fix this paradox from the moment I say… now.”

Virgil already calculated that Annabelle would likely be held up from performing any action by the obstructive bureaucracy of heaven until it was too late. As long as Red doesn’t personally break a rule that will allow Annabelle to act against him without repercussion, Annabelle couldn’t actually touch him. Fluttershy and Felicia were alien enough to not count as breaking a rule when he kidnapped them or knocked them into unconsciousness. Belladonna tired herself out and would waste time in getting back up, but would be very useful as she wasn’t as obstructed as Annabelle was. What Belladonna had done to herself, while it had given them an entrance, had weakened her greatly. Then there was Jenny the thickly pink haired beauty with the pearl white fur, she was an alien being of magic that worked extremely well against demons and was likely their best hope in this situation.

Of course those calculations were only for the group in the entrance to the large insane asylum; Virgil got some really strange calculations when he tried to put Fluttershy and Felicia into it. He didn’t know what Felicia was capable of, but it did change the odds in their favor at least.

“Hey cat lady, can you relay some information to this tick’s mother? Watch the shadows and listen to the ceiling, there are Skitter Scythes around.” There was a moment of silence as they stared at Belladonna. “Let her know that the demons won’t kill her since Red needs her alive and in good health, however Felicia is not under the same rule. So she better fight with everything she’s got, because I don’t see him entertaining the thought of making her a plaything if she becomes too much trouble for him.”

Jenny closed her eyes and put her hands up to her memory stone where she started mumbling.

“Fluttershy has managed to break free of her confinement, Felicia is slowly forcing herself free and Red is expending his energy to pin her in place. We don’t have much time; I will free Felicia and double our chances of solving the paradox with good results.” The green eyed Jenny looked to Willy with a bit of worry, sure she may have been shorter than an adult human, but she was far more powerful than him in a fight and she could traverse this building safely. “We have no idea how well maser weapons would affect demons, so it is best that you stay with Annabelle. I’ll find out how well masers will work for you in this situation and I will relay the information back to you so you’ll know if running is a better option Willy. You can keep him safe right?”

“Of course I can, if demons attack him I at least have the right to protect him. It is so unfortunate that I couldn’t have saved the humans that died here though, bless their poor souls. We’re going to be staying here to hold up the angelic field, it will be safer for him that way. Go free Felicia; we will seek out Fluttershy together if she can’t find her way to us. Red wouldn’t want Fluttershy to fall under my protection, so we’ll split his focus as much as we can.” Seeing the looks from her two angel dogs, Annabelle decided to make sure they understood the truth. “Belladonna might not have said it outright, but this wasn’t an abandoned insane asylum. A few hours ago all the misunderstood or truly insane souls in the building perished. Not all the blood on the walls here is from the demons Belladonna just mauled.”

Less than an hour to save the world, then again it almost seemed like every world was almost always an hour away from destruction. Fluttershy had in fact been on a planet before it exploded. Sure she wasn’t the cause, but she still couldn’t help but feel bad for not being able to stop it from happening. She wasn’t exactly in the best state of mind to prevent its destruction at the time and had obviously been there for a while. This was something she could actually prevent and she would do so or quite literally kill herself trying.

Nudging her nose out of the door she flicked her ears and listened carefully, still having the echo sight ability was exceptionally useful at the moment. Stanley had only taken away all the negative problems her body had; it didn’t take away the positives to having vampire fruit bat abilities fused into her very being. She pulled back from the crack in the door slightly and looked through the crack in the door as she heard the thud of something stomping its way down the hallway.

The pony stuffed her hooves in her mouth to prevent herself from screaming. A giant mound of humanoid flesh covered in sores, slowly oozing wounds and multiple mouths and eyes stomped right by the door while dragging what looked to be a corpse stripped of its skin that left a bloody smear on the ground in its wake. She had never seen a creature so horrifying; Ever Free Forest monsters didn’t look nearly as horrible compared to what had just passed right by the door.

Flicking her ears she made sure it was out of visual sight and used the soft sound of its elephant sized legs stomping on the floor to map out the surroundings, Fluttershy slowly opened the door which creaked slightly and she slipped out and slowly closed it behind her. There were a lot of dimly lit padded rooms in this corridor… well at least she knew what kind of building she was in.

The irony was not lost on Fluttershy that she was in an insane asylum and she was truly thinking that she belonged in one at this point; her life was insane enough for her to be committed to one. If she were a more fatalistic pony, she would have definitely given up on life by now.

She stayed low to the floor and was moving almost with a crawling motion, she did not want to attract the attention of everything she could hear moving in the walls. She didn’t even know which way she was going and she had to duck into a room to watch a monster with tentacles slowly slithered by, she didn’t like the smell that came off it. It was like the smell of rabbits in heat and she’d rather not know what that demon truly looked liked under all those tentacles.

All Fluttershy had to do was meet with either Jenny or Felicia. That was all she needs to do right now. She didn’t know which way to go and the corridors smelled horrible and were swarming with demons like the strange spiders that had sharp blades for legs. Flying wasn’t about to happen, as she didn’t want to be immediately caught. Things were poorly lit and she was relying on her good sense of hearing to get herself around the demons that were slowly degrading the building around her just by being themselves.

The shy pony stopped when she saw an intersection where a lot of overturned gurneys were, someone obviously tried to wall off areas from each other and had failed judging by the blood shaped outlines of humans marring the walls.

Some time into her journey of trying to find the correct path to take to find her way out, Fluttershy had gone up two flights of stairs and had seen a sign that said basement level nine at the first flight of stairs she came across. She had passed by an operating center where eyeless humanoid monsters were cutting up raw recently deceased flesh and then promptly feasting on it. She was sick to her stomach about all of this, having seen one of them eat the brains out of the skull of a dead human.

It was two flights of stairs later that the demons started getting much more active in looking for her. She shivered as what looked to be a cute little red bipedal horned creature with a pitchfork searched a nearby spot that she could have used to hide before moving on. She was quiet as a mouse and just as stealthy, for a walking cardboard box.

Fluttershy had found a cardboard box on the previous floor and thankfully demons weren’t too bright about checking the moving box. Demons, while seemingly powerful, weren’t very bright on the intellect scale except in some rare cases like Red and Belladonna. She was being swift and making good time it had only been twenty minutes and she had yet to run into the more horrific beings she kept seeing in her echo sight. As a pony who avoided conflict, Fluttershy definitely wanted to avoid conflict in this situation.

Turning into another corridor and walking down the middle of it, Fluttershy really wondered why the demons were ignoring a moving cardboard box with handhold holes that could be seen out of. The only thing that would give away the fact that she wasn’t a cardboard box was her tail, she held her tail hair clutched in her right wing like a safety blanket as she carefully shuffled forward out in the open.

Much to Fluttershy’s surprise she discovered why the demons left her alone when another cardboard box turned the corner she was coming up to and approached her. She could see a pair of malignant red eyes in the other cardboard box and the shadowy legs propelling it forward. When they came face to face, Fluttershy shuffled two steps to the right and surprisingly the demon in the box shuffled to the right two spaces as well. Having given each other enough clearance to pass without touching, they both continued on their ways at the same time with Fluttershy getting really tense until she reached the next set of stairs and decided to rest for a minute.

For some reason all the demons she met avoided the stairs like the plague, it was like they had a serious form of bathmophobia and the stairwells were always safe to relax in. She had to circumnavigate hallways with holes in the floor because the demons didn’t use the stairs or even go near where the stairs were located. They’d rather jump or crawl up the walls to the holes between floors than use the stairs. Another five minutes and two more staircases passed by without Fluttershy being caught. She was lucky enough to have found an empty cardboard box that wasn’t a demon in disguise or had a demon in it like the one she saw in the corridor, it was beginning to make her paranoid about her surroundings the further up she went.

The demons were everywhere, the most disturbing demon the pony had seen so far was the one disguised as a filly version of her that skipped happily while singing songs about spilling blood of many innocent animals in an overly cheerful manner. The song had lyrics about the dead animals rising back to life and raping people who would die from it and then rise up to do the same to others. Nightmares were certainly going to be had about that.

She was two floors down from the main floor and hadn’t run into a snag yet, apparently a cardboard box was safe enough to hide in from demons. It was kind of like the hiding under the covers from the monster under the bed scenario, as long as they don’t see you they can’t get you. Given the fantastically awful things Fluttershy had seen in the past seven floors, she was very close to becoming a basket case.

The smells the demons could put off were terrible, among the things she could recognize were brimstone, ash, blood, rotten eggs, the smell of a skunk that just sprayed, a durian that’s been cut open and strangely enough parsnips. The sights were always gruesome, what she could hear wasn’t any better and the only sense that Fluttershy had that wasn’t traumatized at the moment was her sense of taste. Having to wade through freshly spilled blood or around mounds of demon fecal matter that quickly spawned flesh eating maggots out of nowhere didn’t help much in that regard.

The building shuddered as something exploded above her, there was a loud roar of anger that sounded like Red had just met someone who was likely going to be in for a fight of their lives. She redoubled her efforts to carefully guide her way through the next floor and found a staircase that wasn’t partially destroyed that went up to the main floor. Whoever designed the architecture of this building had keeping crazy people from escaping in mind, especially as its main theme. That was why it made for such a devilish fortress to escape from.

Despite reaching the main floor, Fluttershy didn’t immediately drop her cardboard box. She stayed at the top of the stairs flexing her ears in the pattern of left, right and then both of them upwards at the same time. Things were too quite except for the rumbling of battle some floors above; the building had nineteen floors in total with nine going up and nine going down. She couldn’t detect any demons near her, but she didn’t trust her echo sight entirely as these monsters were quite good at stealth, with her only being more experienced than them in staying completely out of sight.

Meandering down the corridor and passing by a clock, Fluttershy added three hours to the clock mentally and figure she had about more than twenty minutes left. Turning and continuing to be a cardboard box that moved, she came into the vast lobby area that had the most horrific chandelier she had ever seen. The other thing she saw was a pillar of white light and several figures sitting inside of it staring at the ceiling. Sighing with relief Fluttershy slowly made her way forward, only slightly wary of the figures sitting in the pillar of light. Even if one of them did look like Annabelle she wasn’t about to trust what she was entirely seeing yet.

She made it into the light and that was when the three dogs, the human and slightly sad Soft Echo noticed the strange cardboard box that moved on its own. Once Fluttershy was absolutely sure it was safe, she lifted the box off and got immediately tackled by a squeaking little filly.

“Um… hello, where are Felicia and Jenny? Also if you don’t mind me asking, why is Soft Echo so sad?” The filly was nuzzling Fluttershy like no tomorrow and squeaking something about her doggy leaving her here.

“Belladonna went to aid Felicia and Jenny; they’ve apparently run afoul of Red and are fighting him at this moment. I, Charles and Itchy are maintaining this repelling barrier. Willy there has shot a few demons that have tried to bring the barrier down and it would be best that you call our friends and tell them you’ve made it to the entrance.” A concerned look crossed Annabelle’s face as she took in Fluttershy’s thousand yard stare; apparently the pony had been highly traumatized even if she was unharmed. “We still have about fifteen minutes left to solve this, let us hope they can get back here in time.”

Author's Note

Fluttershy didn't know Belladonna came to the insane asylum explaining her comment about where Felicia and Jenny are.

As to the reasoning behind why demons are afraid of stairs? Stairways lead to heaven, roads to hell which are sometimes paved with good intentions. The most interesting roads are those that are less traveled.

Bathmophobia is the fear of stairs and slopes, there's a different phobia entirely just for going up or down said stairs or slopes.

102

Fluttershy got the call out and both Felicia and Jenny were swiftly on their way, while fighting through Red’s gathering demons.

It was a minute later that Jenny came charging into the lobby’s upper area from the left and leapt onto the banister to slide her way down to the main floor, Fluttershy watched as she launched off the end of the staircase with a flip and turned to face Red who had completely forgone or avoided the stairs entirely. He nearly struck Jenny with the full weight of his body from his leap. Jenny ducked out of the way and Red had seen Fluttershy in the angelic barrier and came to sliding skid to put him between Jenny and the barrier.

He was not about to let Jenny or Felicia solve the paradox, lifting up to his full twenty foot height he roared and demons started flooding towards his call as he faced down Jenny who lit up a hand with magic while pulling out her personal maser pistol she had on her. She looked wary of all the demons starting to position themselves around the holy barrier.

Coming from the right in the upper lobby at the top of the staircase was Felicia who started down the stairs and the large bulking body of flesh Fluttershy had seen earlier had been chasing her, it stopped at the stairs and jumped over the nearby side railing to come crashing to the floor and it hadn’t missed Felicia’s notice as Red and Jenny started fighting. Red was not only swift, but he was big as well and Jenny was trying to stay away from him.

The hulking pile of flesh tried to grab at Felicia while she had been distracted after reaching the bottom of the stairs. She rolled away from the hulking monsters attempts at grabbing her and slung a blast of energy into its face sending it staggering backwards. That was when an army of smaller demons started to bar both Felicia and Jenny’s path to reaching Fluttershy, mostly a lot of spiders with scythe blades for legs that skittered to and fro along with an ample supply of red and shadow imps.

“You think your power can stop me forever?” Red had managed to grab onto Jenny and lifted her up from the floor and she using her magic to burn at his claws wrapped around her. “You’re power pales in comparison to my own.”

“Pick on someone more like you, Hellfire Hammer!” Holding a big blue sphere of raw boiling demonic energy in her paws above her head, Belladonna came slamming down on top of Red’s back causing him to reflexively fling Jenny off to the side from the blow.

Jenny bounced along the ground twice before coming to a stop on her face, she looked pretty tired as she slowly stood up and readied her maser pistol.

Red grunting as he went down to his knees as a huge circular scorch mark burnt itself into his back; he swung clumsily at Belladonna who had backed off from Red.

Fluttershy could tell that the true fight had begun with Belladonna calling out her attack to distract Red from killing Jenny.

Jenny grunted as demons started to surround her, Felicia was dealing some damage to that monstrous wall of humanoid flesh that kept yelling ‘Stars’. As if that creature knew they weren’t from this planet. It wasn’t fast, but it was powerful and stopping it once it got a momentum going wasn’t easy. It was a good thing Felicia was quite light on her feet to avoid another ramming attack and then followed that up by blasting away a Skitter Scythe that nearly took her head off.

Jenny nearly got hit by a Skitter Scythe herself by not paying attention to all the demons surging into the room to stand guard around the holy barrier that kept them from getting at Fluttershy. The demented giant bladed spider suddenly lost its face due to a maser bolt from Willy, the demons couldn’t get him to retaliate because he was within the barrier as he started to blindly fire into the crowd of smaller demons.

Willy took some shots at the hulking mass of flesh harassing it into missing Felicia whom it had cornered a second ago. Willy was always the best at being in a support role and Virgil was giving him instruction and pointing in several directions as to where he should be shooting.

Charlie was horrified by the number of demons present and that some of them looked like zombies or humans twisted into the form of ghouls. He and Itchy stayed near the middle of the barrier with Willy whereas Annabelle sat at the edge of the barrier in a meditative position with her paws clapped together in a prayer position and her eyes closed; she was still as a statue.

Belladonna flared her right wing shredding through several imps and then she pierced the end of that wing through a Skitter Scythe and hurled it at Red as she charged him. Red batted the dead demon aside and charged Belladonna with equal amount of fury.

The battle between Red and Belladonna was brutality at its best as they were bloodying each other quite horribly. Belladonna was not actually trying to match Red in his muscle, she was hitting him with hit and run tactics and used the fact that she had ranged attacks to her advantage. She began spitting demonic fireballs at him from her mouth at his face before ramming him to the floor and started to slash at his face with her own claws.

Red blocked one of her hits and slapped her hard enough to cause her to yelp as his strength had bodily flung her aside, where she reoriented herself in mid-air by spreading her wings. She came down with all four of her legs impacting a solid wall of flesh and she kicked off in a blast of blue fire, scorching the fleshy humanoid demon as she shot off back toward Red.

The demon that Belladonna had bounced off of was the one that Felicia and Jenny were both fighting to bring down, which was along with all the other smaller demons that kept pushing them away from the safety of the barrier that was protecting everyone but the three who were viciously fighting the demons.

Belladonna’s attack had an effect of staggering and damaging the demon long enough for Jenny to blast of one of its arms off while Felicia aimed at what looked to be its large beating heart on the outside of its body. The demon lost an arm and survived the direct damage to its torso from the blasts of magic much better, its hulking form was quite resilient and it had been taking near constant maser blasts from Jenny who was cauterizing every wound to slow down its healing speed. This included the stump where the demons arm used to be.

Fluttershy held on tight to Soft Echo as she tried to go to what she believed was her doggy that was getting roughed up by the physically stronger Red and was still actually giving better than she received. Looking to see why Willy had stopped firing, she could his maser pistol was cooling down judging from the heat it was giving off. She looked to Virgil who was constantly making calculations about everything in the room, his eyes were darting about near constantly as if her were trying to record everything that was taking place in this battle. The three angel dogs sat still and were doing their jobs in keeping the barrier strong. It all made Fluttershy feel so useless that she couldn’t do anything to help.

The pony still needed the rest and was a bit dehydrated from climbing out of the basement levels of this place. Her only job right now was to make sure little Soft Echo didn’t put herself in the path of danger by going outside the holy barrier, which had to this point evaporated several dumb demons that had tried to get at them.

There was a scream of pain, turning to look at Belladonna, Fluttershy watched as Red reached down with his right hand and gripped Belladonna’s right wing. His left foot was planted squarely on Belladonna’s back as he ripped her wing off and tossed it aside. Instead of crying about it the dog gritted her teeth and then she screamed, but it wasn’t a scream of pain.

“Unleash the beast, Psycho Burgundy!” Belladonna blew Red off her back with a burst of crimson energy as she turned on him in her red furred, golden eyed transformed state and unleashed a furious attack on him with her aura flaring powerfully. She rammed him into the wall and pinned him there by stabbing her wing straight through his lower abdomen where one of his kidneys would be. Then Belladonna started smashing him down with her paws and biting him. She ripped off large amounts of flesh and muscle with each bite and claw wearing down his massive physical advantage by going at his arms and legs while she had him pinned and stunned.

With each attack Red was losing a copious amounts of blood, he knew he had to bide his time as the wounds from her lost wing and her aura itself were going to eventually affect her horribly. He waited until the right moment and lashed out elongating his tail to wrap it around her throat and quickly flung her away into a wall which cratered with the impact of her body.

Red gave himself some time to recover from her devastating assault and Belladonna’s aura had worn off, she still got up and charged through several demons while whipping her left wing around and scything through multiple demons with its sharp edge and leapt at him, he was quite surprised to find that Belladonna still had this much of a fight in her.

Turning away from the fight where the obviously weakened Belladonna was still going at Red with all she had, Fluttershy saw that Felicia and Jenny were still surrounded. Only the giant pile of flesh that kept saying ‘Stars’ was now certainly dead and its legs were missing the upper half of its body, which was currently a smoldering pile of burnt flesh on the floor. They were looking pretty ragged as their Aldebaran armor had dents and scratches and both their cloaks were full of holes. Surprisingly their long flowing manes looked completely untouched despite all the battling going on.

Jenny blasted a few imps and shot one of the ghoulish looking zombie demons through the head which exploded from the beam of energy and it immediately dropped to the floor unmoving. Behind her Felicia was gathering a huge orb of light above them while holding her hands to the sides of her face, when her eyes opened the orb darted about the room and started to suck in any demon that got near it and they perished instantly upon contact with the powerful magical white hole that had been created by Felicia.

While Felicia was stuck in that spot Jenny protected her still and exposed form as she controlled the dangerous magical attack and swept it around the room devastating every demon it hit, after a moment the orb dissipated and Felicia started gasping for breath and after having used so much power at once.

Turning back to Belladonna Fluttershy had to watch as another body part got ripped off the dog, it was her left hind leg and she was on her back this time. Red lifted the torn off limb and bit into with a smile on his face as he swallowed her flesh.

“Hmm… the taste of a weak little whore; I have no need of weakness.” He kicked Belladonna in the chest and sent her skidded a few feet towards the holy barrier, he started to stomp forward. “It’s about time someone put you in your place. Your soul will be utterly useless, but I may feed you to the imps once I’ve conquered the world.”

Soft Echo managed to squirm her way out of Fluttershy’s grasp and Fluttershy immediately gave chase as the little filly exited the barrier. She ran to stand in front of Belladonna’s beaten form and glared at Red using Fluttershy’s ‘stare’ ability.

The stare he was getting from the filly only caused Red to falter for a second, he grinned and leaned down. He moved his left hand forward and harshly flicked Soft Echo back into the holy barrier where the snapping sound of her left wing striking the ground was heard. Her sudden crying and sniffling was music to his ears, he cherished every moment of her pain and suffering. What did the little thing think it was going to do with a wimpy power like that?

Fluttershy was immediately by Soft Echo’s crying side as she was screaming for her mother. She tried to calm the filly down; it wasn’t going over so well with her left wing being completely shattered. The filly even looked up to see the demon lifting Belladonna into the air by the neck about to snap it, she was also crying out for her doggy.

“Is there any last words, boogey dog?” Spitting out those two words he received a small bit of flaming spit to the eye. It caused Red to reel back clutching at his right eye with his hand, he decided that Belladonna’s defiance had gone on too long, he started to tighten his grip on her neck in his right hand. “You’ll pay for that!”

“Homicidal Hyacinth!” A voice rang out.

Before Red could make good on his promise, the fighting had all but stopped in that moment. All the demons in the room turned to the sudden change in atmosphere and were staring at what was happening. While they were busy doing that both Jenny and Felicia took the opportunity to make a break for the barrier, they weren’t as distracted by the event. Jenny holstered her highly abused maser pistol and sat down and Felicia sat with her once they made it safely.

Slowly Red dropped Belladonna to the floor and looked at what had caused his blood to splatter away from his chest and evaporate all over the holy barrier. There was a sharp tip of something poking out of his chest, slowly he stiffly turned his head and saw a rather horrific sight.

There was a giant Annabelle who had an aura that was purplish blue, all of her fur was icy blue and her eyes were glowing white with power. Her left paw was dug into his back and there was crystalline spear of ice leading from her leg straight through him.

“You broke a law Red. You hurt a being of Earth and within my presence no less, her name is Soft Echo born approximately three days ago. Do you deny these charges?” Annabelle was applying the fact that Soft Echo had been involved in time travel when she stated this, her voice was cold and the room started to slowly freeze over and all the demons were shivering from the sudden change in ambiance.

While demons had free reign to attack foreign beings to the Earth, any being born on Earth attacked by a demon while in the presence of angel would receive quite a harsh punishment and only if they were caught in the act. Red had been clearly been caught in the act, in the presence of three angels no less. He had no possibly way of defending himself from what Annabelle was about to do to him.

“I find you in breach of your job. I am within my rights to destroy your soul, but before that... Bloom and bring unto misery!” The ice spear Annabelle had growing out of her left leg flowered quite literally into a large flower made of ice that started filling with Red’s blood. Red’s body faded as if it were being sucked into the ice. A tortured scream could be heard inside the blood in the flower; soon Red’s soul could be seen screaming in agony within the flower that had taken his physical form. Slowly a white light began to encompass Annabelle and she whispered some words as her pink fur started to come back and her aura died away as she held the large pristine looking giant flower high above her head. “The law is clear, the complete destruction of the soul to be reborn anew. Hopefully this time it won’t be something so vile as to hurt such an innocent little baby.”

A blinding light flooded the room and the building. All the demons throughout the entire building were suddenly paralyzed and couldn’t move. Fluttershy took the time to drag Belladonna into the protective circle still being held up by a shocked Charlie and Itchy; she did so at Soft Echo’s whimpered crying for her doggy as she already had her mommy’s soft spoken words that it would be alright. The circle didn’t burn Belladonna who didn’t look so good covered in claw marks and having two amputated limbs, she was bleeding profusely from all her wounds.

“Fluttershy we need to hurry and fix the problem, we have three minutes. Summon the memory stones!” Felicia’s urgent tone brought Fluttershy attention away from Belladonna.

Fluttershy did so once she saw Belladonna lift her head slightly and started to run her paw through Soft Echo’s red mane further calming down the injured filly as she snuggled into what looked like Belladonna’s dying form. Once the world was safe, she could see to her daughter and the dog that she liked. With the two stones in her hoof she held them out to the tired and battered pair of Aldebarans.

“Which one is the one from your past self?” Felicia asked in honest worry as she was still busy catching her breath and regaining her strength, sharing her power with Jenny’s had been euphoric and now she was coming down off of that high feeling every single hit she took.

“Does it really matter? It’s the same stone through and through, we just need one to create a stable time loop, one of which will likely end in that demons demise for eternity.” Jenny picked one stone at random not caring as she was too tired to complain, her long pink hair hair was slightly matted with sweat and she needed to cleanse herself soon after this. She had been covered in demon gore and so had Felicia until they entered the barrier, but their sweat and tired bodies along with their long hair was not a good combination. They were a little confused at Belladonna’s continued survival as she was a demon after Fluttershy had dragged her into the barrier of light. “I may need your strength Felicia, I’m too tired to do this alone my friend and you have grown so strong young kitten.”

“I will aid you as always. You will always be a master to me Jenny, even when you have little left to teach.” After Princess Felicia’s words both Aldebarans started to glow. The stone levitated between them as they concentrated their magic in conjunction. Joining their powers the little red stone that had caused so much trouble disappeared in a flash and they both gasped in ragged breaths afterwards.

The stone landed behind the past Fluttershy as she was looking out over the ocean and the stone clung to her as it had been detached from her future self. Then Soft Echo fell over the side followed by an emotionally powered Fluttershy who got far enough away from the stone to cause it to teleport just above the portal and fall in before it closed.

The time loop had been created and the world was saved from utter collapse that would have been caused by Fluttershy and a demon that made a mad grab for power due to incidentally summoning her past self’s stone.

During all this they all ignored the portal to the underworld opening in Annabelle’s presence and the fact that it started sucking all the demons that had been unleashed on the Earth back down to where they truly belong. It was all happening under Annabelle’s watchful eyes and she wouldn’t miss even a single shadow demon in making sure they were all being drawn back through the portal to the spirit realm.

Afterwards a worried Annabelle walked up to a badly injured Belladonna who was coughing up blood all over the floor, what worried her was that it wasn’t demons blood that the other dog was unleashing.

“Belladonna are you… going to be okay?” A tentative Annabelle had changed what she was going to ask, she couldn’t have stopped Belladonna from fighting Red even if she wanted to.

“Not in the slightest, I’m looking pretty bad for a bad girl huh Annabelle? Bet this gets you all hot and bothered my little snuggly do-gooder. I’m all fucked up seven ways to Sunday here and I’m not about to sugar coat this, you know very well what is currently happening to me here.” Belladonna couldn’t believe she was being affectionate with the tick; then again she was dying so she let her bout of insanity slide. “I’m getting the entire light at the end of the tunnel treatment, cute… so much for playing with Chuck and Scratchy anymore.”

“May you move on to a better and happier life, I wish you well as you move on. I have to say I’m a little stunned to see you bleeding the blood of mortals. For whom does the bell tone? It tones for her golden heart right down to the core.” Annabelle intoned softly over Belladonna as she lay back on the ground after coughing a bit more.

“Oh fuck you Annie! And none of you better even dare to even cry over me! Especially you, you stupid little tick! I’m not… worth it...” Giving off a soft cackle as her last outburst had drained her of any of the strength the dog had left, her eyes closed.

Belladonna died a hero, one with a rather vulgar way of going out without a single whimper and there with a rather amused toothy grin on her face as her caressing paw fell slack.

Everyone did cry over her anyway, never had there been a demon as noble as the one they saw. Soft Echo had known it all along and had been attracted to the standoffish pooch because she wanted a doggy of her own, she cried into the breathless chest of Belladonna as Annabelle lifted her broken wing with a glowing white paw.

The legend of the boogey dog, the one who had scared so many into being good with her malicious nature, was at its end. To never be forgotten as tomorrow came for San Francisco with the sun rising on the horizon.

Author's Note

I'm such a jerk for using this song for this chapters inspiration.

Any thoughts on what just happened anyone? Spent the last seven hours working on this chapter, while waiting for the next episode of the Rarity series. I really don't care much for Rarity, but Rainbow being accused of something should prove to be interesting.

I'm a lover of cartoons and always will be.

104

“Okay I have to ask just what are you?” Lucky couldn’t have met three stranger beings; then again there was something off with the pink whippet that had ‘rescued’ the crazy puppy and the purple puppy did smell like her a bit.

Fluttershy went into a long winded explanation which needed its own pamphlet by this point; it took ten minutes to explain her, her daughter and what they were currently doing. Also a demonstration in cloud shaping was had when Fluttershy created a cloud out of sea water and then shaped it as if it were a balloon into a dog shape.

“Hey, I always said magic was real, but none of you guys believed me!” Niblet also knew aliens were real; it was just that the alien dog they befriended looked like a normal dog wearing fake antenna and his family also looked normal until that van took off to the sky.

“Okay, there has to be some logical reason behind your precipitation controlling ability.” Strudel was a little put off by Fluttershy’s magical ability to create and manipulate water, she was a dog of science and this was definitely messing with her head.

“Well at least you’re the most accepting of your group about this.” The tiny Belladonna huffed sadly despite Soft Echo still cuddling against her; she had a lot in common with the magically born pony. “Don’t we have somewhere to be right now? I probably won’t be seeing you again for a long time mom; it’s been nice knowing you though since you ‘saved’ me from the roof. Now can you get her to stop so I can get in the boat?”

Annabelle looked slightly put off to be called mom, it was a bit strange and she was about to ask what Belladonna meant when Fluttershy spoke up first.

“Oh, right… so you’re coming with us Belladonna?” If she was going to be responsible for another mouth, Fluttershy was going to have to probably get dog food.

“I’m not Belladonna, the names Donnabelle and don’t you forget it!” The Belladonna pup now named ‘Donnablle’ tried to look haughty, only to end up looking cute with Soft Echo clinging to her back.

“Why did you call me mom?” It was a bit of an odd thing to Annabelle that a reincarnated Belladonna would already have a different name.

“Well my other mother isn’t currently alive and she’s moved on to greater pastures.” Gathering the ponies, lemurian and her mother together, Donnabelle started speaking in a softer tone so as to not be overheard by the five dogs talking amongst themselves. “Look, these Pound Puppy guys don’t need to know about angels and demons. Magic is alright because they aren’t likely to run into it. Also you’re my mom because apparently Belladonna accidentally absorbed a fuck ton of holy energy from you, mostly from those times you and her got incredibly intimate. It explains why I have these dumb feathered wings compared to my mommies really bitching demonic wings. I’m a cross between a demon and an angel and while I do have a part of Belladonna’s soul, I’m not her. All that excess holy energy she didn’t know about before she died kind of led to my existence, you can say a ‘miracle’ happened. Sniff me… I am your daughter even if I am kind of Belladonna by quasi reincarnation mother. I don’t entirely have mommy’s soul, but I do have her memories and she was freaking awesome.”

Taking a sniff of Donnabelle and then making her eyes glow for a second Annabelle blinked back some shock. Donnabelle did have some of Belladonna in her, but she was definitely something completely new. She started to nuzzle Donnabelle and the puppy started eating up the affection with some soft if rather demented sounding cackling.

“Yes I can see the truth, but I’m afraid I don’t understand why you’re going with them after telling me something like this.” Annabelle was pretty upset that Belladonna would drop something like this on her; she had always wanted children and likely wouldn’t have been able to conceive any being an angelic spirit. She knew Belladonna didn’t like children, so the shock of suddenly having a child left behind by her was a bit sad, scary and heartwarming all at the same time. Even from the grave Belladonna was causing trouble.

“Blame the tick; she formed a familiar bond with me when she plowed right into me. Mommy was able to stop that bond from connecting to her because she was strong; I however wasn’t since I’m not nearly as strong. How cruel my mommy was to leave me to a fate worse than death, the fate of being the familiar to this annoying tick.” After a moment of dramatic sighing and lifting the back of her paw to her forehead, Donnabelle smiled a bit. “Yep, she’s definitely batting a thousand as a mother wherever the rest of her soul ended up. I’m not going to complain about my lot in life though, but at least we’ll hopefully get some bonding time in later... also I would respectfully like to ask for a hug.”

Annabelle drew Donnabelle into a light hug and snuggled the puppy that yipped slightly at the embrace and then Soft Echo wiggled her way into Annabelle’s affection as well to snuggle against Donnabelle. Belladonna would never ask for a hug even if she really wanted them, so that was one thing that was already different about Donnabelle.

“I’m never going to be rid of her am I?” Donnabelle had a long treacherous future of snuggling and cuddling ahead of her.

“It’s rather nice of you to be my daughters puppy, I’ll be sure to take good care of you and so will Soft when she’s old enough to be responsible for you and I’m sure you’ll also be capable of taking care of yourself anyway.” There was adorability in the air and it was making Fluttershy happy to see Soft Echo so cheered up. “I have a familiar named Angel and he’s waiting back home for me and I’m sure you and he will get along quite nicely.”

“What’s a familiar?” The Pound Puppies from shelter seventeen had obviously finished their chat and it was Squirt the Chihuahua spoke up.

“Oh, sorry… we were almost ready to leave and I guess I should explain why Donnabelle is going to be my daughter’s puppy. A familiar is anything that forms a mystical bond of friendship with another being, the bond can come in many forms and it gives many benefits. One such benefit that usually comes up is an extended lifespan for both individuals.” Fluttershy knew why her little Angel Bunny was always cranky; you would be too if you were going to lose a lot of mates to time and or other incidents. Her rabbit would live as long as a regular pony could, that lifespan sadly didn’t translate to other rabbits though. “The usual rule of a familiar bond involves two individuals; at least one of which has to have magic. The two beings can come together by chance or because one summoned the other on purpose. My daughter Soft Echo has formed such a bond with Donnabelle here; why they are just perfect for each other!”

“Perfect is a bit of long stretch.” Muttered a slightly irate and well loved Donnabelle, she was even starting to enjoy the massive amount of affection she was receiving and wouldn’t admit it to anyone.

“Anyway, the personalities of the two bonded are well meshed in some ways and in others they are vastly different. It’s a bond of two equals in an odd sort of way.” Familiars were a thing Fluttershy knew of quite well. She always tried to pair ponies who were adopting pets with the right animal for a reason; Tank had been a really odd one for Rainbow. As an afterthought she considered the fact that Twilight literally had enough magic to broadcast her presence to her perfect ideal familiar. It would explain why that particularly bright owl ended up finding her and why he was capable of being awake during the daylight hours. “Say your goodbyes Donna, we really need to be going now. I can’t spend another day away from my friends; I’m kind of worried about them.”

Shaking her head Donnabelle hopped into the boat and was followed by an enthusiastically squeaking Soft Echo; Fluttershy was helped into the boat by a quiet and contemplative Virgil who was being quite a gentleman about it.

“There’s a pup for every person and a person for every pup, even if that person happens to be a magical pony from somewhere else.” After a moment Lucky shook his head. “Our lives are just plain weird.”

“Yeah, but you have to admit that it hasn’t gotten boring yet!” Cookie loved her job and her home both at the pound and with her people; this was just another successful mission with a twisted turnout. At least they now knew the puppy’s name and that she would be well cared for or at least they could hope for that end result. The puppy had caused them a lot of trouble and it was a good peace of mind for them to pawn Donnabelle off on someone else.

“Goodbye Fluttershy, I’ll tell the boys you said so long. I really need to get some sleep.” Yawning, Sasha slunk away from the docks looking tired from her run to the docks to stop Fluttershy from leaving without Donnabelle.

“It has been very interesting to meet you Miss Fluttershy, but I must be off. I’ve got some jobs to hand out to my associates today and I’ve already spent too much time off already.” Annabelle turned to leave and stopped. “I will hopefully get to see you again Donnabelle, I’m a very busy dog after all. You’re exactly what I would have expected had she and I had a puppy together.”

“I’ll just take that as a compliment it was meant to be Annie.” Donna sardonically replied as the pink dog left and disappeared into thin air behind the Pound Puppies still looking their way.

“So where are you heading off to?” Turning back to Lucky they could see he was a little interested in why they were all getting into a small boat.

“We’re going to the east coast; we will end up in New York upon activation of the portal under the golden gate bridge.” Virgil could hear Fluttershy audibly sighing in aggravation and wondered what it was that he had exactly said to cause such a reaction.

“Say, since you’re going to New York, can you give a message to a dog named Dodger? It shouldn’t be too far out of your way and he’s always running around Fifth Avenue there on the lookout for lost or abandoned pups.” If they did somehow miraculously end up in New York, Lucky would be sure to hear about it. So magic existed? Well it wasn’t like it was a problem for him to solve; he’s seen plenty of strange things before meeting the ponies and the large humanoid chicken.

It was Thursday and things were actually looking good for Bonnie, she had managed to double back with Roller and evade Samus. The question would be, for how long would that last? The lady was damn relentless and powerful with that Chozo battle armor of hers and the ability to decimate anything within fifty feet of her was not to be taken lightly.

Bonnie was still having problems with Valkyrians, but the Hench Company people had quickly fled the area saying something about needing pay raises and bigger armaments. She had barely gotten any sleep last night, but now she could rest for a while as Roller had brought her back into Beach City while on the lookout for the incredibly scary hunter.

Samus was wearing local clothing and was still on the lookout for Bonnie, while she was doing that she was buying some food for her animal friends. Bonnie would have to eventually activate the Head Hunter to leave the area, the incredibly swift thief was sticking close to Beach City and Samus wanted to know why. Aside from that she was going to pick up a few bounties on those Valkyrians, which were wanted alive.

Bringing in targets alive was something Samus had rare acquaintance with; her Metroid genetics along with her Chozo blood was making her have a higher caloric intake than usual. She was looking forward to eating something really fattening too.

A mild thought brought her back to the strange geode people who were helping Bonnie and fighting on her side, they could obviously pass as natives and she’d investigate into them a bit as well.

It was a pleasant day in New York, Central Park was a quiet out of the way place where one could go to relax for a spell. Two chipmunks were roughhousing near the fountain; two humans and one almost human were having a picnic on the grassy knoll. Things were just quite peaceful, until a torrent of saltwater slammed down on the fountain and the three having a picnic in a large wave. Four waterlogged bodies that just got finished getting sucked through a portal, started sitting up.

Fluttershy tapped herself with a hoof and a cloud puffed off of her body leaving her fur clean and dry, she was going to do the same for Soft Echo only she did it herself. She was proud that her little filly was learning to do it herself so she wouldn’t have to.

Soft Echo sent the cloud after her mothers and then tapped Donnabelle before she could shake the water off and another cloud went following after the smaller one. She watched the clouds go off into the sky with a smile while her mother got Uncle Virgil all cleaned up. She was a good filly and her doggy was all dry now and oh so fluffy!

“That is a most useful ability.” It was quite good after all the times Virgil got stuck having to dry off his feathers or his red robe, not to mention his magical parchment that showed many various things and acted as a worldwide map to the portals that permeated around Earth.

“Someone please tell this tick she’s going overboard with the love here… though I didn’t mind the assist.” She would continue to gripe, but Donnabelle would be mostly ignored.

“Hey it’s Fluttershy, guys this is the magical alien I was talking about. What are you doing back in New York?” One explanation to Jake and his two friends later, he sighed and shook his head. “Yeah, it happens. I know how it feels to be stuck going around in circles at times.”

“You’re daughter is very sweet ma’am, she’s quite the little cutie and her strange winged puppy is none too bad either.” Trixie the dark skinned girl was having a good time rubbing Soft Echo’s belly and Donnabelle was getting in on that action as well.

“Just don’t get too attached.” There were a lot of nice humans or at least Fluttershy was meeting a lot of them. Then there were the not so nice ones like the mullet man or the sumo ninja clan. “Sorry about your picnic.”

“Hey, it’s okay. This is probably one of the coolest things about being your friend Jake.” Spud the tall lanky guy seemed overly laid back. He lazily rubbed Fluttershy behind one of her ears as she kept her attention on Jake. “All this magical stuff and now aliens too, you have to admit it’s all pretty sweet even if some of its dangerous. Maybe we can even get some laser guns that go ‘pew’ while we’re at it; it would put a whole new meaning on laser tag. Though it did kind of ruin our picnic, at least the potato salad had the lid on it before we were hit with that tidal wave from California. I think most of the food is still good if a bit soggy.”

“I’m sure they’re very sorry, so do you guys need some help? I’m sure I can get in contact with the MIB through Fu Dog, they can give you a ride down south.” Pulling out his new cell phone, since his last one was stolen by Bonnie, Jake called up Fu who got him in contact with Cobra Bubbles. “Hey Agent CB, we got a bit of an emergency. It seems Fluttershy got into an accident and ended up back in New York due to some magical portals and recently got tangled up with some demons. She’s doing fine; she just needs a ride back to her friends who are likely still in Beach City. Okay, yeah I’ll tell her, thanks for listening and I’ll keep a promise to only call you in a true emergency that I can’t handle on my own. You’re in luck Fluttershy, Agent CB is being sent south to deal with the recent dangerous alien activity going on around there. He’ll be by to pick up you and you’re friends soon and then he’ll drive you there.”

While they waited Soft Echo chased Donnabelle over to the fountain where the two chipmunks were drying off.

“I swear Chip, it all just fell out of the air. It also tastes kind of salty. You think maybe Fat Cat or that crazy fish are trying to do something related to the sea again?” The red nosed chipmunk in a red Hawaiian shirt was talking to a black nosed chipmunk in bomber jacket and fancy looking tiny fedora.

Soft Echo stopped chasing her doggy to look in on the two chipmunks; she squeaked slightly and put her little hooves under her chin to watch the two.

“How would Fat Cat even get that much ocean water out here to dump on top of us Dale? Use your brain, something strange is going on… here?” Chip looked and noticed the fanged filly looking him over with an expression of curiosity, he blinked up at her and she blinked right back.

“Uh yeah, I’d say that that is pretty strange Chip.” Now Dale too was staring at the filly just watching them. She gave off a soft squeak of hello, but didn’t do much more than just watch them watching her.

“Oh hello there, who are your little friends Soft?” Fluttershy came up upon the two chipmunks and Donnabelle followed close behind.

“Well at least she stopped…” Donnabelle couldn’t say much more, because in an instant Soft Echo was a squeaking missile that rammed into her chest knocking her onto her back. She was once again being snuggled against her will. She had to lament the fact that she had gotten too close to Soft Echo. “I walked right into that one; in hindsight I should have seen that coming. You are without a doubt the most annoying tick I’ve ever had to deal with, but this does feel kind of nice.”

“Ma’am I’m Chip and this is Dale, and we’re the Rescue Rangers!” With a sweep of his hat Chip bowed to Fluttershy before slapping it back on his head.

“Oh you’re Foxglove’s friends. She said you were busy in… Las Vegas was it? Anyway she is currently helping us with a problem, she should still be in Beach City and I’m going to go meet up with her and my other friends later today once my ride gets here.” The two chipmunks looked nice and Fluttershy could immediately tell which one was Dale just because Foxglove wouldn’t stop talking about him. “You must be Dale, Foxglove talks about you a lot.”

Dale just blushed and rubbed the back of his head, Foxglove could always make him feel sheepish even when she wasn’t currently present.

“Yeah, things in Vegas went pretty well for us, though we could have done without nearly dying of heat exhaustion and having to disarm a live bomb. Thankfully it all worked out in the end. If you need our help for a case we’re still resting from our last one, I hope you don’t have any problem that’s immediately concerning ma’am.” Looking over the horse like being for a moment, Chip just had to ask. “By the way, what are you?”

Again Fluttershy could have benefited from having a pamphlet. She was a magical alien pony and that was said along with a quick rundown of how she got into her current predicament, which was already being taken care of by Foxglove. Virgil was the last of his kind and apparently immortal, her daughter was not a vampire and life was just peachy at the moment.

“Well gee, that sounds kind of bad. Are you sure you and your friends don’t need any more help than Foxglove?” Truth be told, Dale was a bit worried about the overly friendly bat that would call herself his girlfriend. When they got home Tammy told them about Foxglove going on a mission that required her magical expertise and that it involved in saving someone’s life.

“We’re good thank you; it sounds like you really need a break. We’re sorry about dropping all that ocean water from San Francisco on your heads, but the portal to get here was underwater. Oh there is something you can do for me if you don’t mind me asking; do you know a dog named Dodger?” Both the chipmunks looked at each other before looking back to Fluttershy. “I need a message delivered to him, if it’s alright that I ask you to do that for me.”

“Yeah, he’s a bit of a thief with his gang, but he’s actually quite friendly. He once helped a little kitten find a good home, so he’s not entirely reprehensible. So what’s this message you needed delivered, our friend Monterey can probably deliver it when he goes on his cheese run and he likely knows how to find Dodger’s gang.” At least Fluttershy wouldn’t need to go traipsing about New York, who knew what trouble would happen if she did. So she delegated the issue to Foxglove’s friends after she made sure they wrote it down.

After that was done, Fluttershy and Soft Echo would spend some quality time playing fetch with a stick. Now if only they could only get Donnabelle to actually go after it, then Soft Echo wouldn’t feel so put off that her puppy wouldn’t play the game.

The soonest Wander touched foot down on the ground with a broad smile, he yawned and then passed out before Pinkie popped up spooking Sylvia. Pinkie was the welcoming committee for Sylvia and her sleeping rider, for they had arrived on the planet of Equus and they would bring Fluttershy home.

Author's Note

Say hello to Donnabelle, Soft Echo's familiar and doggy. I wonder where the rest of Belladonna's soul ended up? Not important, as we already have one small incarnation of her.

The story is now actually quite sadly winding down, but it won't do so before Fluttershy meets Samus Aran and until Wander picks up Fluttershy along with all the baggage and souvenirs she has from her universal trip.

So she's not completely out of danger to run into or away from quite yet.

Dodger is of course from Fagin's gang of the cartoon movie 'Oliver and Company'.

105

Virgil sat on the right in the back seat of the car, to his left was Soft Echo hugging an annoyed looking Donnabelle, to their left was Fluttershy and in the front seats were MIB agent Cobra Bubbles with Shush Jookiba riding shotgun.

Shush looked happy to see Fluttershy again so soon, it had been about two days and it was nice to see someone she’d happily call Ohana again. She liked the puppy, even if she was a little strange when it came to someone being affectionate with her.

“Thank you again for giving us a ride and also stopping for lunch Mr. Bubbles.” It was rather nice of the rather busy man to pick them up and then went through a drive through at a fast food restaurant that specialized in fried seafood. Soft had been a bit sad she couldn’t get any more lemon wedges than what came with Fluttershy’s iced tea. They were actually making good time in getting to Beach City.

“You were going my way anyway, if what we’ve been hearing is correct Bonnie is in danger down in Beach City. The bounty hunter known as Samus Aran is quite powerful from what little data we managed to get on her; she’s a complete one woman battalion with that armor of hers.” Cobra was told to avoid getting into a direct fight with her and he knew it was good advice given Samus took down an entire battalion of Hench Company people and an armed contingent of Valkyrians as well. Samus had reportedly come away from fighting the both of them at the same time without a scratch. “She’s tough, fast and it was highly recommended that we don’t get into a fight with her. Bonnie has obviously had a run in with her and she didn’t do much against her with stolen Valkyrian weapons. Valkyrian’s might not have the best technology in the Galactic Alliance, but they aren’t slouches when it comes to having effective weapon.”

“Can push red button?” Asked Shush with a hint of distress, she didn’t like the sound of Samus and the fact that she was seen attacking a member of her family.

“We don’t need to get there that fast Shush, I’m sure that Bonnie is okay. We’ll get there when we get there, now eat your food.” Sometimes Cobra had wanted to give into Shush and when he didn’t as always she understood it was better to listen to him about it. He’s had far more experience with things like this.

Even as Shush took to gnawing at a boiled corn cob silently, she still worried about Bonnie. They were already past Philadelphia where road workers were still cleaning up shattered glass from the monster trucks when Fluttershy had unleashed a shockwave on them; otherwise the road was quite clear.

Fluttershy looked to Donnabelle who batted one her fluffy ears out of her face with an angry huff; she frowned slightly at watching the puppy get slightly aggravated at her ears getting in her face.

“Donnabelle, would you like me to tie your ears back for you?” It was something Fluttershy had noticed about both Annabelle and Belladonna; they liked having their ears tied back and Donnabelle would likely like it that way too.

“What would you have to tie my ears back with?” In answer to her question, Donnabelle watched as Fluttershy pulled the hat from Soft’s head and then pulled out a red band of cloth from the lining with her other hoof before putting the hat back on Soft’s smiling head. She felt a bit of excitement welling up at the familiar sight. “Is that her band that she used to tie back her ears with, really? What about her vest?”

“I’m sorry, but that was buried with Belladonna, besides the vest would have been too big for you.” The puppy immediately swapped positions with Soft Echo and looked to Fluttershy expectantly from the corner of her eye left as she showed the back of her head to the pony. Belladonna’s vest had been mostly destroyed in the fight with Red and she had been buried with it, but she hadn’t been buried with what she tied her ears back with.

“Well what are you waiting for? I think I would like to explore how my ears feel held up and out of my face. Also I expect you to get a brush for me soon; you’ve obviously been living like a barbarian for a while. Despite that you somehow manage to maintain such a nice mane. I on the other paw do not rely on breaking physics by having perfect hair at all times.” Donnabelle really wasn’t asking for much here and hoped that her requests would be fulfilled. “By the way, I can’t wait to say ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’ to you big guy! Does the tick ever stop eating fruit or snuggling? I ask because it’s like she has a fruit deficiency whenever she gets a hold of some and the constant affection is starting to chafe a bit.”

“Oh she’s been like that since she was born, she just likes to be cuddly I guess and she’s part fruit vampire so it’s understandable that her diet consists largely of fruit alongside a few regular things.” As she spoke she gathered Donnabelle’s two fluffy ears into the crook of her right hoof as she brought the binding strip up to the base of her ears that she pulled upward to the top of her head. Slowly wrapping the ears into a ponytail, Fluttershy decided to address something else. “Also my hair does not break physics; I just use clouds as a combination comb and brush to keep all the dirt off my body. Pegasus ponies love to rub up against clouds to stay clean; although the last I heard there were laws about using a cloud to go to the bathroom as it can be quite unsanitary to the ponies possibly living below those clouds.”

“I’ll probably bring that up with mother the next time I see her, if I in fact ever do, then again I doubt spirits can actually pollute the physical world with their bodily wastes.” Donnabelle felt a final tug on her ears and Fluttershy sat back smiling at her. “So how does it look and do you live in the sky? I prefer a place with plumbing thank you, I’m house trained and happen to be a civilized hybrid somewhat reincarnation of someone you saw die.”

“Can you not remind me of that? It’s really sad. Anyway, I live on the ground back on my home planet in a cottage and yes, it has plumbing.” Looking the puppy over, Fluttershy had to smile. Her ponytail had a wildly fanned out, half of which was upwards and forward like Annabelle’s ears and the other downwards and back like Belladonna. It was rather adorable and it made for a fitting image of a mix from the pups supposed progenitors.

Soft Echo cheered a compliment in various squeaks as she nuzzled her puppy, she like the puppy’s ears like this as it reminded her of the older doggy who gave her a really fun piggyback ride before she went to sleep forever.

“Well there is one thing I would like to address before dropping the subject entirely, how ever did you escape your confinement?” Virgil wanted to know since he didn’t know what Fluttershy could do aside from being quiet and stealthy, he had heard that she had been chained down and had no feasible way of escaping in a normal manner.

“Well all ponies like me can control the weather; which involves things like creating lightning, clouds, gentle breezes or even thunder. I just took things to the logical extreme and if I could create a cool breeze by flapping my wings, then I can possible drop the temperature of the air around me.” It was a smart thing that Fluttershy did, but she felt disgusted with herself even if it did work.

“So you lowered the temperature of the metal holding you down to the point so that it broke from becoming brittle?” At least Virgil got the gist of what Fluttershy had done, just not exactly how she did it.

“Oh no, I couldn’t get the room temperature low enough for that. I did however internalize the cold in my mouth after remembering some weather based science lessons on liquid nitrogen, something that we produce in the weather factories back home to add to the clouds so that it will snow.” If one were to ask Fluttershy, she would obviously tell them she preferred living on the ground and hardly had any work during the winter months. She did like to read though and she was always interested in medical knowledge such as what temperatures a pony like her could survive at without permanent injury. “I had to spit on the metal; it wasn’t hard to get free after that. Though it did leave my mouth a bit dry and my body temperature dropped by quite a bit, not to mention it was not exactly the safest thing for me to do to begin with.”

“We’re almost there, we’re going to stop outside the city so I can explore the damage I see right now.” Cobra Bubbles abrupt voice brought their attention to the oncoming outskirts of Beach City.

The car came to a stop at the scene of various amounts of damage. Some of it ballistic weapons related, other bits of damage from energy weaponry beyond what humans can create and the last bit was obviously recognizable as Bonnie’s work which meant she was still alive. There was also an area where everything within fifty feet was completely destroyed by what looked like a very powerful bomb.

The massive mountain of a man that Cobra Bubbles happened to be made him intimidating when he frowned and he had already investigating the scene they stopped at with everyone following him around.

“You do realize you can go ahead and see if Bonnie is still in Beach City, you do know where she was staying at before you ended up time traveling? Look there if you will, I’m going to be busy with my investigation here. If you need me have Virgil call on this phone. It only has one number and that would be mine.” Cobra passed off an emergency cell phone to the humanoid chicken man who stuck it in his robe before nodding to the MIB agent. “At least your situation explains the excessive need for chocolate milk all throughout the east coast last Tuesday night; all MIB agents had to have their heads scanned for deadly parasites because of that.”

Walking into town and holding her daughters wing so she didn’t run off, Fluttershy noted the people were going about their business despite the obvious signs of some damage being done to some of the building due in part to some kind of wild fight.

Once again it was a little weird that the people of Beach City were ignoring the oddity that was Fluttershy’s group, especially since she was with two new beings. People here were really laid back and seemingly unflappable from her the perspective. The pony eventually found herself outside the Maheswaran’s residence just a bit after lunch time. She remembered which building it was because she flew up to the balcony to sniff out if it was the one Bonnie had been on.

Knocking on the front door Fluttershy waited patiently and when the door opened there was a moment of shock for the being standing on the other side before she tackled Fluttershy with a big hug.

“Fluttershy, you made it back! Dad said you visited him in Hawaii and I have to go through another crazy lecture of his because of you, but I’m just happy that you’re alright! So what happened?” Bonnie had been quite worried about where Fluttershy had ended up, apparently Hawaii was one of the locations and she was angry with herself that she didn’t dive over the side of the cliff after Fluttershy. Then again it was hard to fight her survival instinct, especially since she didn’t have beautifully crafted angelic wings like her wonderfully attractive friend did. Why were hooves definitely a thing for her? “Can we use that portal to get there the same way you did?”

“In order, I got involved in time travel, cross country portal jumps and demons, I saw some horrific things. A lot of people died because of something I did and it was all an accident so I should be mentally fine with it, at least I will be if I keep telling myself that.” The loss of life made Fluttershy shudder despite the outcome of Donnabelle being a slightly upbeat part of it all, all those poor humans in that insane asylum were all slaughtered before her friends had even arrived to the place. “The portal only works on Wednesdays and no, that would be a horrible idea and I don’t want to repeat my mistake. I almost destroyed the world by accident, so you can imagine that I’m feeling a bit reluctant about going through that portal again.”

“Ouch, that sounds really bad and I’ll get the full story later. It’s definitely out as a method for getting not only me, but also Head Hunter to Hawaii. Anyway come inside quickly and bring your two new tagalongs with you. That Samus chick is on the prowl in civvies, but that doesn’t mean she is any less dangerous for it. I don’t want to be outside or in the open longer than necessary with her around.” Looking around warily she motioned for them to come indoors where they saw Roller sleeping on the floor in front of the television in the living room. “Connie is letting us crash at you’re place until either we found out what happened to you or if you returned from wherever you went, long enough for us to decide how to proceed. No worries Sweet Cheeks, I’m still keeping my promise. Hello there I’m bonnie, so who are you guys?”

“The names Donnabelle, I can already tell you’re trouble. If you do something I don’t like, I’ll let you know by giving you a violent enema once I can figure out how to use my angelic and demonic powers.” Sitting on her haunches, Donnabelle crossed her forelegs and warily eyed Bonnie. She continued to hold her suspicion even when Soft Echo quietly nuzzled Bonnie then went to snuggle into the couch to take a nap. After moment she whimpered slightly. “Where’s the bathroom, it was kind of a long ride getting here.”

Donnabelle got accurate directions from Bonnie to the bathroom in the house and the puppy quickly ran off to release her bladder in a controlled manner into a toilet. She was a dog of sophistication and she would never drink from a toilet, she would also not lick Soft Echo’s face with a dirty tongue.

“I am Virgil and the last existing Lemurian on this planet Ms. Jookiba, I am also Chozo descendant and have personally seen many events in Earth’s history.” With the way the alien being reacted to him, one would think Virgil was made entirely out of lava by the way she had jumped. He knew she was an alien so he was open with the origin of the Lemurian’s as beings of intellect that were related to the Chozo that visited Earth long ago.

“Where in the hell did you find this guy!?” A Chozo descendant was almost as good as meeting a Chozo personally and it was making Bonnie freak out. “I could have used someone like him yesterday when Samus was hounding my butt. So in the interest of getting to know you, just how old are you?”

“I’m quite a few thousand years old at the very least, my aging process stopped somewhere before the fall of Atlantis. An incident I wished had never come to pass and of which I am partly responsible for. I’ve since stopped counting the years exactly and have recently decided to live in the moment.” Mostly because Virgil was friends with Fluttershy and things seemed much brighter around the pony despite the whole demon incident, he hadn’t been on a grand adventure in a while. Fluttershy was quite a poor little sweetheart that somehow attracted trouble. Thanks to her, he felt it was okay for him to make friends again and he would make sure that little Soft Echo didn’t befall the same fate Max had.

“Well come on in and let me tell you how yesterday went for me after you disappeared Fluttershy. So it all started when these lizard women charge up towards us at the lighthouse and I took out the first one with a swift jab to the chest with your knife after moving Connie out of the way.” Bonnie started off as she closed the door to the house.

After Fluttershy had given Bonnie her story they had full knowledge of what had happened and it seemed that for whatever reason time travel was now considered synonymous with demons. Not that Donnabelle was a bad half demon puppy; it’s just that time travel tended to lead to demons attacking people.

They had seen three examples and Virgil didn’t bother with correcting them in this thought, but he did say that it was quite an intriguing bit of history from three different races dealing with time travel and monsters popping up. He did bring up the technicality that Tirek didn’t sound like he was truly demonic, only just really powerful and sealed way in the underworld of Fluttershy’s planet.

“Well now that we’ve talked about how our Wednesdays went, I want to set up a meeting to talk with this Samus.” Of course Fluttershy’s suggestion wasn’t taken well by Bonnie or the recently awakened Roller.

“Whoa no way, she’s dangerous Fluttershy and you kind of did steal her ship. She doesn’t seem very talkative and she went at me with her gun blazing.” There was no way that Bonnie wanted the Samus to start aiming for Fluttershy and Roller was right there with her revving in disagreement to the idea. “She’s also kind of nigh unstoppable.”

“It doesn’t matter, I’m actually guilty of stealing from her and I should at the very least talk to her about it in a peaceful manner…. where’s Foxglove?” Fluttershy had finally noticed that the friendly little bat was missing.

“Foxglove, she’s having a magical time over at the gem temple, so long as she stays safe we don’t have much to worry about. How would you propose we even set up this little meeting between you and Samus, without her blasting our faces off that is?” Yeah, Bonnie didn’t like Samus very much at the moment.

“I might be of some assistance in this case; if you can point out this woman to me personally I can see to it that she will cease all volatile actions against you. I will attempt to act as a mediator so that Fluttershy may have her talk with this Samus.” Virgil stopped to adjust his spectacles a bit before continuing. “If she is truly related to the Chozo as you say, she will likely be willing to listen to reason.”

“Yeah, tell that to all the missiles she’s packing. It took forever for her to run out of them.” Sighing as she knew what was going to happen if she continued to argue, Bonnie turned to Fluttershy with a slight look of resigned sadness. “If you think things will be okay, then go ahead, but know that I protest this course of action.”

“I’m sure she’s actually really friendly once you get to know her. Well, friendlier than Herja is at least.” It was easy for Fluttershy to say that she was rather optimistic about meeting Samus, she would most likely throw herself at the bounty hunters mercy and explain the situation in its entirety. “First, we really need to print out some pamphlets. I’m tired of explaining who and what I am to everyone I meet. We’ll need about ten copies.”

“So what’s going on?” Donnabelle was filled in on the situation. “Yeah, that sounds pretty dangerous… let’s do it!”

Then Connie had to walk into the room asking pretty much the same question they had just finished filling Donnabelle on, making both Fluttershy and Bonnie sigh.

“Why don’t we just call the Galactic Guardians while we’re at it to make sure things don’t go out of control.” If only Bonnie didn’t notice that Fluttershy was taking her suggestion seriously. “Fine, I’ll get on it. Though you do realize Atomic Betty is going to be mad at us when she finds out we bluffed her and that we’re on her home planet of all things.”

“Hello feeble beings of my new planet!” Hater started off and the ponies looked particularly bored with him. “Why are they not reacting to me with fear Peepers, don’t they know I’m invading them!”

“Yeah, good luck with that you big skeletal ape feller.” Applejack said in a bored manner. “You’d have to at least defeat Discord to make us worry. Then there’s princesses Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Twilight and possibly even Queen Chrysalis. We’re Chrysalis’s food source you see, so she’d definitely be upset at you hurting us and stopping ponies from being able to feel love is kind of a big berserk button to her. Besides I don’t think you’d even survive Pinkie and Pearl looks like she’s already readying up to defend us even when she should rightly know that we can take care of ourselves.”

Pearl was busy building an army of the same kind of clones she used for training, which could also be used to fight. Despite their quite limited motions compared to the real Pearl, set to the highest level they were still quite dangerous and Pearl could create at least twenty to thirty of them at a given time.

A second ship dropped out of the sky and Hater turned to it with his hands on his hips and wondered who could be bothering him in the middle of a conquest. Three barrel shaped robots popped out of the small cargo vessel and they took some scans of the area and saw Haters forces, they hadn’t missed watching the Galactic Conjunction race.

Hater was in for a world of hurt, it just depended on who got to him first. It was around this moment that Discord appeared with a rather manic grin on his face, oh yes he didn’t like that Hater had fired at Fluttershy back then either and Hater was within the planet’s atmosphere which meant the guy was well within the range of his influence. Wander wasn’t a needed factor this time and would sleep through it all.

Author's Note

Well Fluttershy does have an 'in' with Virgil, let's see if Samus will calm down a bit. After the killer parasite scare and being chased out of the Federation sector, she's a little high strung.

I will see if this chapter needs editing later, right now it's practically finished.

Also note that I'm not really a fan of Equestria Girls, but I still read fan fiction related to it if it's actually good. In fact I think the fan fiction's I've read is better than those movies at times.

Today's episode, Coco Pommel has a project and Rarity is bringing in Applejack to help with it. Hopefully this will actually be Applejack focused.

Edit: Yep, this chapter needed editing.

106

“Ah, she’s currently feeding some old friends of yours Fluttershy. You’d recognize them if you saw them, you know those birds look like some of the ones from my chaos dimension. Anyway, I can see where her ship is hanging out from here.” Discord was being helpful in spotting for Fluttershy again; Virgil would be able to find the ship easily enough as he told her which direction the chicken man had to go in. A number of explosions sounded off behind the lord of chaos, but he just smirked and continued to revel in the feeling of chaos even if he wasn’t causing it. “Anyway, things are going okay here. I assure you, no ‘ponies’ are coming to harm on my watch and things have been positively chaotic otherwise. Why I’m having a good time, I’m having quite a ball, so don’t stop me now.”

“Are you sure things are okay Discord? It sounds like someone is in a lot of pain over there and there are explosions.” Sometime Fluttershy wondered if Discord actually needed to cause chaos to be truly happy, he was always rather happy just when it came to talking with her.

“Aside from the Star Nomad, you’re barrel shaped friends have also arrived and they started playing badminton with some ponies. They are really quite good at it and what you’re hearing is just the sound of the shuttlecock going over the net, that Absolute Resolve fellow certainly has a problem with going overboard though.” What Discord wasn’t telling Fluttershy was that the shuttlecock was someone’s head; he looked over his shoulder and giggled at the sight.

Those robots were really good too, Lucky Day was doing particularly well as he was fast, Absolute Resolve wouldn’t tone it down with the literally explosive hits and Lead Affront was putting up some pretty good support. Pinkie Pie was leading her team quite well too; Rainbow Dash had a hard time keeping up with the screaming shuttlecock after Absolute hit it and Rarity was being a dainty support for their team.

“Well thanks for the help Discord; I hope to have tea with you real soon.” Even if she was going home, Fluttershy still had to revive Clyde first and before that she had to settle some of her past actions with some good people. “Virgil I know where you have to go, you can leave as soon as Bonnie can assure us that Atomic Betty is coming over.”

“This is not what I expected you to call me for.” Kim Possible could do anything, including go into outer space to pick up the slack for her cousin Betty Barrett who was going on what sounded like a goodwill mission to the east coast.

“Oh yeah, I’m not going to get tired of this any time soon, Wing of Tinabi!” Shego shot by in the air and Kim Possible sighed in defeat at the fact that her once upon a time nemesis could now fly, in fact Shego took to installing hooks into the back of her black and green suits so that she could use the mystical object to fly.

Kim Possible had met the Xiaolin Dragons a few days ago and had gotten involved in a fight over the mystical objects collectively called Fancy Feet a day later. She was glad that she had won the showdown to earn them. At least the Fancy Feet didn’t have the same drawback the technological version of the mystical objects did.

“Look, it’ll only be for a short while. If you run into Maximus, don’t worry he’s not exactly great at taking a hit.” Betty was a lot younger than Kim, but she was also a three times tougher due in part to her hybrid alien genetics. She switched into her battle suit and got on her wrist communicator. “Okay Sparky, let’s get going!”

Betty beamed up to the sky leaving behind Kim, Shego and Ron to do her job while she was busy with something else.

“Oh come on!” Ron Stoppable had lost his pants again, this time to the tractor beam that pulled Betty into the sky. Luckily Rufus had abandoned pocket before it zipped too high into the sky.

Shego caught Rufus and just hovered above Ron with a rainbow flowing off of her back, all while pointing at him and laughing.

Virgil had managed to get Samus to agree to a meeting, on her terms. Of the things Virgil noted of the hunter was that she acted very weird around him, most likely because of his heritage given she was infused with Chozo genetics.

The meeting would take place later this evening, around six and right now it was four. Thursday had been pretty quiet overall for Fluttershy and Bonnie, they were expecting anything to happen. So until then Virgil dropped some of the knowledge he had of the Chozo as a people since he could still remember them. Samus was probably one of the few people to see last see a living Chozo in recent times, Virgil hadn’t seen one in thousands of years.

The Chozo were a wide spread species, perhaps they had spread themselves too thin throughout the entire universe, all while leaving behind many things on a grand number of planets. Most of what was left behind was the offshoots of their race, such as the Lemurians or some of the Griffons in existence on planet Equus. He remembered them fondly as being one with nature and quite friendly, their technology was advanced beyond any other civilization that he knew of and then suddenly they were all gone.

Among one of the things Virgil remembered, one was the mention of the Void Wars from when he last saw the Chozo before they had left the planet. It was only a few years later after they left that Atlantis fell. It was unknown whether Atlantis had any survivors, but it was feasible as it was really hard to make anything totally extinct and Virgil himself was constant proof of it.

The Void Wars were started with darkness spreading and infecting being. A grand army made of the people who were of the stars themselves started forming up and eventually they possibly succeeded in fighting the void itself to a standstill. The Chozo that Virgil saw had left the planet to join the war. Virgil surmised that they succeeded, but at a heavy price given that they had never returned to find that the fruits of their labor had sunk beneath the sea.

Fluttershy, being knowledgeable on the subject, interjected with what she heard. She went on about the Star Warriors and how they fought the being behind the Void Wars. The being only known as Nightmare which was possibly the void itself, Nightmare still existed and would probably do so forever. Since she has heard and seen several signs of Nightmares continued existence, even long after the Elements of Harmony took care of the bit of it that had infected Princess Luna. Nightmare was an ancient immortal god like being of malevolence, one that was obviously existed to keep the balance of things by making sure no one in the universe ever got complacent.

“Well that’s all fine and dandy theory Sweet Cheeks, but it’s almost time to get going. So are you wearing the suit or what?” Bonnie would prefer that Fluttershy have the suit on her for protection.

“I won’t be, but my little Soft Echo will. I’m not leaving anything up to chance after the last three days, some of which I spent extra hours on.” As she said this Fluttershy strapped the backpack form of the Rhizome suit to Soft Echo and it immediately encased her in a suit exactly like her mothers, if only thicker because she was smaller. “I don’t want my little filly to get hurt again after that mean old demon shattered her wing.”

“Hey where’s the… did you put it on her? Really, but you can use that to deflect Samus’s beam weaponry if she shoots at you!” It was rather easy for Bonnie to get more and more upset at the fact that Fluttershy didn’t seem to care at all about her own safety.

“If it comes to that, I want to have no regrets before hoof. I’m going to apologize to the both of them as I am, whether or not it gets me killed is to be seen.” This was said by a solemn sounding Fluttershy who was just looking out for Soft Echo. It sounded like every single last one of the Chozo were heroes from every angle in Fluttershy’s perspective, everywhere they traveled they always ended up helping people Just like she tried to do. She slapped her old saddlebags on, the ones that she had from the start of this adventure and put her last maximum tomato in the saddlebag along with the glass knife and some water in a container. “I will also be taking my last maximum tomato out of storage for this. If anyone nearly gets killed, a bite of that tomato might save a life. I think it’s a good idea to be proactive considering what’s been happened to the both of us over the past few days.”

“Are you really sure you should be doing this? I mean I know you stole the spaceship, but I can’t help but think what your doing is a little dangerous.” Even Foxglove was wary after hearing the story of the time travel and not to mention that she had personally seen how haggard Bonnie and Roller looked after they got back from evading Samus. Roller’s carapace had repaired itself and looked to be that much harder to break now.

“I’ve been in worse situations than this and I’m sure they’ll listen to reason. Now excuse me, I want to spend some time with Soft before I go to this meeting.” Fluttershy flew away from where Head Hunter was stashed carrying a happily squealing Soft Echo and Foxglove quickly followed after her at a distance leaving behind a slightly sour Bonnie.

Bonnie shook her head and went to see if Steven had any marshmallows, crackers and chocolate, it would certainly hit the spot and she was feeling like a snack right about now.

Donnabelle yawned as she waited at the spot and she concentrated her angelic energy between her paws, for some reason she had problems grasping both demonic and angelic energies at the same time. Then again she was kind of born yesterday, Virgil was a big help in teaching her how to manipulate her own energy as she waited.

“Better look alive chicken man, I think we’ve got company. Fluttershy should arrive soon; she decided the tick needed some flight practice.” Donnabelle’s ponytail twitched a bit as she saw Virgil walk up to her.

Soon they saw a pillar of light come down from the sky and three people appeared a redhead with ponytail and a suit, a green guy in a similar suit and a rectangular robot. Soon after a speeding Samus ran by leaving afterimages of her form, Samus eventually came back at a more normal if impressive speed.

Samus was scanning everything she was seeing; the Lemurian was definitely a surprise. A remnant of Chozo kind just sitting on some backwater planet, then again that was the kind of planet Chozo liked. The puppy she scanned was filled with both light and dark energies, but it was strange in how it undulated. When she got to the other three figures who had arrived moments prior she was a little surprise to find a human native with alien genetics mixed into her body, now she didn’t feel so alone or freakish with someone like her around. The green alien was like a living garbage disposal and the robot actually had a spirit in it.

“I’m Atomic Betty of the Galactic Guardians; I hope we won’t be having any problems here. So keep your weapons down unless it’s in the case of an emergency. Am I understood Sparky?” Atomic Betty took a look around the beach they were meeting at, it was near the gem temple and she could see it in the distance. She could also see the reason for her presence was needed; it was first contact ambassador Fluttershy. She was the very same ambassador that paid for Bonnie Jookiba’s release, most likely in the hopes that the galactic class thief could be reformed in some way or at least Betty hoped that’s why she freed her. She was carrying cargo it seemed, a little filly that instantly melted her heart at the sight of its adorable spacesuit. “Oh would you look that, isn’t she precious.”

“Oh yes, my daughter Soft Echo is precious to me. Hello, I want you all to read these before we begin. My name is Fluttershy and I wanted to say I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused Ms. Aran was it? I’m the one that stole your ship Head Hunter, but I would like to say that doing so caused me a lot of stress.” She started hoofing out pamphlets of her story to everyone who didn’t know it, Fluttershy was thankful to find a printer store in Beach City before this meeting.

It would be several minutes before anyone spoke up after looking the pamphlets over.

“Um did a little kid draw some of this stuff?” Betty was curious about the crayon art.

“Actually yes, my daughter and a boy named Steven wanted to help with making the pamphlets.” Fluttershy was still a bit sheepish about having fooled Betty previously.

“Betty, I must immediately inform you that Fluttershy is captain Sweet Cheeks. Am I to ascertain that you were captaining the ship Boojiboo which headed to Bathyos to offload cargo and then went straight to Planet Z?” The robot named X Five was a bit of an odd duck, he acted like he didn’t have emotions a lot of the time when he truly did. He was trying to find a reason to bring Fluttershy in, but she was absolved of all the laws that she unknowingly broke because she didn’t know any better at the time and was a first contact ambassador that had been kidnapped. He couldn’t even bring her in on the charge of falsifying her name as Sweet Cheeks was a nickname and she was technically legally captain of the Boojiboo at the time.

“I’m really sorry about that Ms. Betty. I was helping to… well I’m still trying to help save a life, but I’ve just been getting caught up in so many disasters.” Fluttershy’s ears wilted and she felt Soft Echo cuddling her. “Just recently I accidentally did something that led to the deaths of so many humans… page ten in the pamphlet.”

“You are absolved of that as you did not personally do those humans harm. It was the demons that killed them… although I find it illogical that demons exist. You are not to blame for those who perished.” X Five felt something small snap in him as he processed Fluttershy’s appearance and saved a copy of the image for whatever reason.

“Not as illogical as you think, I’m living proof that demons and angels exist. I’m half of both.” It was rather nice of Donnabelle to stand up for her little tick’s mother; she considered her actions and continued on as she finally managed a swirling ball of green fire in her left paw and a small white soft shining pillar light in her right. Her concentration was getting quite a workout. “She wasn’t responsible for the demons appearing or attacking innocent people, well if you can consider some insane people in an insane asylum innocent. I might not have been there personally, but my mommy was and she died in that incident.”

It was a little strange that the puppy could talk about death so coolly, it kind of made Atomic Betty feel odd to see a talking dog or that the dog was so indifferent about losing her mother. Much less hear that angels and demons were real if this was to be believed and she was clearly seeing the power the puppy held in both paws and her feathered wings.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Atomic Betty stated amiably.

“I exist because she died, so I’m not.” Donnabelle wondered why Betty had a horrified look on her face and shrugged. If Betty wanted to take it as her mother dying giving birth to her, then so be it as she wasn’t about to disavow her of the slightly correct notion. The only problem was the exact method of how she came into existence.

“Can you tell me exactly why you stole my ship or where it is so I could download some data from it?” Samus caused everyone to jump when she spoke up; her voice was soft and very hard sounding.

“Of course, everyone right this way. Oh please don’t get mad, but the ship has undergone a few changes since you last had it. I think the LGM’s went a little overboard with modifying it and they really like the Chozo since their race was rescued by them a long time ago.” Hopefully nothing would happen, at least Fluttershy could only hope as she knew that the sumo ninja and that Motor Ed man were still on the loose. Not only were they after her and the Lunar Locket, but they wanted Head Hunter now too and knowing her life as it was, they were bound to show up at some point. “Um, I would like to ask that you try to keep things nonlethal if we get attacked by sumo ninja or a strange man with a mullet.”

“No problem, I’m good at making takedowns without killing anyone.” Betty always took a peaceful option to things whenever she could.

“I won’t fail to kill something if I think it is a big enough threat to me. I’ve seen way too many things to hold back, since most of the things that I’ve fought were aiming to kill. Sometimes they were three to ten times my size.” Samus noted that Fluttershy looked a little uneasy around her and she should be. At least the pony was willing to admit that she was the one who had stolen the ship.

Coming into view of what became of the Head Hunter, Samus just stood there for a few minutes while gaping at it. Bonnie could be seen roasting marshmallows with Steven, Garnet and Amethyst next to the Head Hunter.

“Well I’m not being immediately shot at, so are things actually calm here?” Bonnie didn’t like the looks she was getting from Samus or Betty, but Lion walked up and stared at them making them look away from her.

“We’ll see.” Samus tried to access Head Hunter, but it denied her entrance. “I’m going to find out what happened to this ship in full.”

“Oh right, Head Hunter include her in having full access to the ship.” After that Fluttershy watched Samus enter the Head Hunter.

Samus put her gun into a slot left in the design and started downloading data, what she saw surprised her. It was her as the X was slowly killing her; she watched the screen as the two ships tied to the asteroid crashed to the deck. The bottom one was destroyed and after watching the scene, she rewound it and had to pause it on a moment where she saw something.

She could see Fluttershy being thrown across the bay by the force of a great impact and her trajectory had her coming from the destroyed Stiletto that had rescued her, so the people of the GFS Valhalla people likely didn’t know that she was the one piloting it and had saved her life. She had to watch as the twisted form of Fluttershy slam into the wall, the pony then rolled onto her chest to slowly crawl her way into a nearby vent.

She started placing a different scene in her helmet and found that the ship her friends had escaped the now destroyed planet on was the same one that crashed into the GFS Valhalla; she cross referenced it to the escape pod that had the signs that the animals had been inside that came from that escaping ship. For a moment Samus blinked and called up her friend.

“Adam, bring the ship around. If I’m right, our friends are about to meet an old friend of theirs.” Samus was connecting the dots quite quickly and her mind rapidly worked out how everything occurred. A curious alien who had never left her planet before suddenly ends up on a universe spanning trip, she’d eventually want to learn how to pilot a ship and a stiletto was not exactly the best first choice.

She disconnected her arm cannon from the ship for the last time, she wasn’t keeping it and she already had Adam and her new vessel. Maybe she could get Fluttershy to do her a favor in trade for her keeping this ship; it all depended on how her animal friends reacted to Fluttershy. If she was right they’d recognize her immediately.

Fluttershy was surprised when Samus had her other ship come in to drop off several familiar animals that immediately made a beeline straight for her upon sight. They all tackled her to the ground.

The little Dachora chick that was Fluttershy’s godchild got of the pony and looked at Soft Echo and Soft Echo looked back. Moments later Soft Echo was squealing as the little Dachora gave her a ride around the beach at a blazing fast pace. The Etecoons took to playing in the sand much to everyone’s amusement.

Fluttershy would never forgive herself for the deaths she had cause by accident, but she could at least live with herself after seeing Soft Echo ride around on the bird that had gotten so big in her absence. The older Dachora nudged her towards Samus and then gave off a cooing noise at seeing their children interact.

Samus turned to Fluttershy who tried to shy away from her until she felt Samus gently grab her.

“It’s okay; I’m not going to hurt you because you stole my ship. In fact I should be thanking you for saving my life. I’m willing to forgive the theft, however if you want to keep the ship I need you to do me a favor.” Samus wasn’t about to tell Fluttershy she doomed an entire research laboratory to be systematically killed off by a really dangerous parasite or that it led to her blowing up another planet. “Can you find a safe place for those guys, one where they can live in peace? I can’t keep dragging them around forever; they really need a new home.”

Author's Note

This a blind fire chapter, I made it and then posted it immediately.

Something of note, Discords chaos dimension had many random chaotic animals. One of them looks like a Dachora, It is the same episode that Tree Hugger first appeared in.

Also note that I fixed some errors in the previous chapter.

I didn't like Equestria Girls 3, then again I didn't like the first two either. I did however like 'Made In Manehatten'.

107

Fluttershy watched as Donnabelle was being snuggled on both sides by a small green bird and Soft Echo; it was adorable even if Donna was struggling against being snuggled by the two sleepy kids.

“Roller, please stay here and make sure nothing happens to them, I have to finish talking with the others. Are you feeling better Steven?” Fluttershy liked Steven since he seemed to take each day with his brightest smile. He was a very friendly child, if a bit awkward and she was glad to be a help in getting his aunt or surrogate mother home.

“Of course I am!” Steven said from up in his upstairs loft that was his bedroom, he was just happy to know Pearl was coming home. He turned his eyes towards the ceiling. “Are you okay up there Foxglove?”

“I’m fine; your roof is really comfortable and really clean. No cobwebs whatsoever.” Foxglove yawned and closed her eyes; she had fun making sure the kids didn’t hurt themselves and wondered what it would be like to have some little red nosed chipmunks with bat wings of her own as she drifted off.

Roller revved nominally even as he settled in the middle of the living room and watched as Fluttershy set off for Head Hunter armed with the Rhizome suit once more and the Lunar Locket around her neck. She still didn’t trust that nothing would happen as Thursday wasn’t over quite yet.

“I too will watch the young ones; do not stay out too late Ms. Shy.” Virgil was studying his scroll; there weren’t many portals in the area that led directly to Hawaii like the one in England. Also Bonnie was in a discussion about how Head hunter couldn’t fly before he had departed for the gem temple; it was nice to see that Rose Quartz had left behind a rather intriguing legacy. He wasn’t a fighter, but he was able to think his way out of most of the situations he got himself into.

Walking back up to the campfire, Fluttershy saw Samus looking towards the ship as Bonnie talked with her and the older Dachora crowed at her and stomped lightly at a spot next to her body near the fire. Taking the invitation the pony sat down next to the large green bird. It was a bit concerning that she didn’t see the Etecoons anywhere, where could those mischievous aliens have gone? In any case, they had quickly become friends with Bonnie given they could tell she had those shared genetics inside of her.

The pony saw that the two gems were enjoying themselves, about as much as three alien rocks could seem to enjoy themselves really. Three since Garnet counted as two. They seemed particularly worried about something, most likely their friend Pearl who was going to be returning with Wander when he came to pick the pony up. It was nice to know that the Star Nomad had found the pony planet and was alright, if sleepy when he got there.

“So the gravity pulse means that thing needs to be completely worked over, my dad has the capability to fix it given enough time.” It was a bit disheartening for Bonnie to hear that Samus couldn’t fix the problem with Head Hunter. She joined the others at the campfire with Samus following along. “Even if he specializes in genetic engineering, dad is a genius at many other things too.”

“I’m sure I can give you a lift to this Hawaii place, either that or the Galactic Guardians can considering they seem like a generally alright bunch.” Samus had to shudder at the mental images of the Galactic Federation getting hold of someone like Jumba; she had scanned Bonnie and had seen the Etecoon genetics along with several other species of various creatures inside her. Such a cocktail almost seemed impossible to cobble together and create a living being, but Bonnie’s father obviously managed it somehow. She actually felt something resembling a kinship with a lot of the beings here, to think she was just going to blast Bonnie first and ask questions later.

“You know chief; it’s pretty good to get a break every now and then. I mean when we came here I thought we would have to do something crazy. Instead I get a lot of free snacks!” Sparky the green elf like alien with blue hair seemed to always think with his bottomless stomach, possibly stomachs as his internal physiology changed quite often. His species outward appearance barely changes throughout their lives though. “I love your planets marshmallows.”

“We are on a mission Sparky; it would be wise for you to be aware of your surroundings as danger is imminent judging by the pamphlet Fluttershy gave us to read.” X Five said dully, he was making sure no one around him became aggressive. He wasn’t exactly a combat model robot, but he did have plenty of defensive protocols and he was taking this mission seriously. He was mostly useful for his mechanical expertise and encyclopedic knowledge of aliens and their weaknesses. “We are here to help ambassador Fluttershy in her troubles while she is on Earth. Protecting a first contact ambassador is top priority even if she has already successfully negotiated peace for her race with the Grand Councilwoman.”

“So what, it’s not like anything dangerous is about to…” Sparky started off.

“No, don’t!” Fluttershy, Bonnie, Betty and surprisingly Samus screamed while leaping for Sparky who jumped back and out of the way while looking confused at the pile of bodies before him.

“What I was just going to say that nothing bad is going to happen.” Sparky immediately found himself pushed out of the way of a bladed star of metal that would have struck him in the back if it hadn’t been for Bonnie. The star sunk into the sand a bit and Sparky looked around in a panic.

“Damn it, I hoping no one would say something that stupid! Especially around us, you just don’t ever say things like that around trouble magnets!” Bonnie pulled both of her freshly stolen Valkyrian blasters with faces painted on them. She gave twirling flourish of the one in her right hand before she blasted a kunai knife out of the air while looking up towards the ridge it had come from. “Now we’ve got to deal with the sumo ninjas that just found us, which is just great by the way. I guess it was our fault for yelling though!”

Samus groaned and scanned the ridge and gained some bit of disbelief as several large rather wide humans skillfully tumbled their way down the cliff at an insane speed. They stopped at the bottom without injury where they pulled out large swords and charged for them and Head Hunter. For fat guys, the incoming ninja were fast and there were more of them coming from the sides coming along the beach, turning around she even saw a few of them surfing in while playing musical instruments that looked like they doubled as weapons.

One had to wonder how these fat guys could sneak up anyone, but one thing was for certain they were quite stealthy up to the point they were discovered. The surfing sumo squad was the most ridiculous thing about the oncoming fight. Then Motor Ed reared his ugly head at the top of the ridge in his monster truck, where he multiple missiles down at them. They were highly inaccurate, but they were quite destructive and had knocked Fluttershy onto her side.

“Fluttershy, take the bird and try to disable mullet heads weapons; we’ll protect the Head Hunter as that’s obviously one of their objectives.” Shooting quick flying metal out of the air even as she dodged weapons that suddenly changed direction mid flight, despite their rather generous girths the sumo ninja were swift, strong and ridiculously skilled with throwing weapons.

Fluttershy nodded and hopped onto the Dachora and directed her towards the ridge. The bird managed to hit full speed within ten feet of the rock wall before stopping and squatting down to jump straight up the ridge at a blazing speed.

“Adam, we need aerial support like yesterday. I’m authorizing the use of cannons and missiles against all aggressors I’ve already painted the friendly targets so you don’t hit them. Try not to be lethal, please.” Dodging a glowing sword strike as she called in her newer ship, Samus lift her cannon and a beep sounded off before she swung out.

A bright focused jet of flame erupted from Samus’s cannon destroying the sword that came around for another swing with a hot plasma burst that also blinded the huge ninja. She slammed her knee into his belly before launching a suit thruster assisted flying roundhouse to the head knocking him down and out. She quickly morphed into a ball to roll away, avoiding the sudden mass of metal that struck the ground around her.

Atomic Betty immediately leapt into action along with her two friends and coworkers; she was smart enough to not let the faintly glowing swords hit her as she went hand to hand with one of the big ninja that were attacking them. Though she thought this situation was absurd, she was already put on the defensive by how fast these guys could move. She had thus far managed to disable three and not without trouble as their sumo sized bodies were quite tough to injure. At least concussions took them out of the fight quickly enough.

She looked away to see how Sparky and X Five were doing, X Five of course wasn’t actively fighting very much and had managed to electrocute one of the ninja into unconsciousness. Sparky however was quite competent when it came to fighting and he already had two men on the ground. Nodding to herself as she weaved her way around a chain and sickle, she turned back to the fight. She launched a wrist mounted grappling hook and used it to tear the chain weapon from the ninja’s hands, following that she started to use it with seemingly effortless efficiency.

“Give me some cover I’m going for Head Hunter to give us some real firepower.” Bonnie immediately turned and continued to blast metal out of the air; it seemed they were dead set on hitting her highly swift rear end. Samus did as she asked even as she was taking down four sumo ninja at the same time.

“This is crazy nuts, I kind of like it!”Amethyst was quite capable of dealing with the ninja problem. It was a little odd for the gems to see humans this big or strong. Amethyst was pretty hard for the ninja to keep up with as she wildly attacked at random.

Garnet just punched her way through every ninja available; she was the only other one aside from Samus capable of doing some real damage to sumo ninja in any other place aside from their heads or joints.

At some point Bonnie tripped over a kunai that hit the ground before her and she avoided the follow up with a bout of high speed evasion while moving towards Head Hunter.

Fluttershy let out a soft yelp as the Dachora landed and charged straight for the nearest monster truck, there were only five on the ridge. The bird sped forward rammed bodily through one destroying its wheels and axles immediately upon impact through its insane speed alone.

Looking behind her, a shivering Fluttershy could see a bird shape impression ripped straight through the monster truck, Dachora as a species were very dangerous. The two people who had been in the monster truck immediately jumped out of the truck and ran for it, it eventually exploded.

“What, not another one of my rides! You two are so going to pay for that you big chicken and little horse thing riding it, seriously!” Motor Ed turned his weapons on the Fluttershy and Dachora.

He fired a laser cannon and Fluttershy immediately leapt from the Dachora’s back into the path of the beam and redirected the contained energy into destroying the laser cannons on all the monster trucks with one sweep of her hooves as she flew. She really didn’t like wielding that kind of power, but it had been useful back when she couldn’t feel emotionally distraught about it.

The trucks all suddenly turned to her and launched a bunch of missiles at her she quickly tried to fly away from them and threw a pod grenade into the missiles once they closed in on her. That ended up causing a chain reaction of explosions that buffeted Fluttershy about a bit. While she was doing this the Dachora was already ripping into another truck with her powerful talons, the same ones she once used to rip a space pirate to shreds despite the fact that their suits were supposed to be armored. The bird didn’t kill the humans once they started running and was ready to move on to one of the last few monster trucks left that were trying to focus their collective firepower on Fluttershy.

Fluttershy’s hoof filled with a pod grenade and she sent it into the hood of the nearest monster truck, the two people already jumped and started running away since they knew what the grenades she threw did. She really didn’t relish having to fight at all, not once can she say she ever fought without having a very good reason to do so. At least she could safely say she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.

“You guys are totally a bunch of wimps, seriously!” The people abandoned the monster truck next to Motor Ed’s and seconds later it blew up when a beam ripped through it, looking up Motor Ed could see a purple ship flying overhead. “Seriously, you’re not scratching the paint on my baby!”

Samus’s air support had arrived and immediately started targeting Motor Ed’s vehicle which was armed with all kinds of neat things like flamethrowers, grenade launchers and he was already nearly out of missiles from firing the first salvo.

Instead of focusing on Fluttershy and the Dachora, Motor Ed started to drive defensively to fight off the aerial opponent.

“Okay I think that’s enough, let’s try to help out the others.” Fluttershy had barely settled down back on the ground before she found herself being lifted onto the Dachora’s back and before she could say anything the bird was already jumping off the edge of the ridge.

When the Dachora slammed a tubby ninja halfway into the sand with a solid impact and opened her beak to let out a roar. This was followed by a shockwave taking down five ninja in one blast, every ninja in the area turned to an angry looking red chinchilla flexing her ears and they started backing away quickly. Cobra Bubbles pulled out a tiny gun that also created powerful sonic shockwaves while making cricket noises and gunned down two more Sumo Ninja who would likely survive their injuries.

That was when the ninja started with attempts at gathering their fallen and any equipment they could in the form a rather hasty retreat. They were being viciously caught and thrown around by Bonnie wielding the grapple beam on Head Hunter and their tactical advantage in a surprise attack hadn’t been much of one.

“Since when could my old ship do that!?” Samus said in a rather upset tone, her old ship hadn’t been too terribly altered as it still had all its previous components. Except for the missing stuff from the Federation’s attempts on her life, it still riled Samus that they had tried to plant powerful explosives on her previous ship and was happy that the Chozo technology had prevented a premature death on her part. She knew it had viable deployable grapple beam point, she just didn’t know that it had a grapple beam of its own and it was currently incarcerating at least ten of the aggressors at the moment.

“Lady I think I’ve got the ring leader of this operation in my custody, who should we hand him over to?” Looking up Samus gave a hold signal to Adam.

“Now what should we do?” Samus asked of everyone as Adam dropped the battered, bruised and mangled Motor Ed before them.

“I believe I can answer that.” Cobra walked up to them. “I’m head authority of all aliens’ activity on this planet; we’re a bit backwater so you’ll have to forgive us for our bureaucracy of keeping a lid on things like invasions. Shush don’t eat those, those aren’t cookies! Any we were alerted to this area by some people yelling about monsters, a few of my men have them in custody and we’ll be taking the instigator of this attack personally.”

“It is within your jurisdiction to decide that Agent CB.” Nodding to the tall mass of muscle, Betty went over to see how Sparky was doing. He took a nasty hit during the fight and they were all a bit battered, those ninja were a lot tougher than some alien ninjas that Betty has faced.

“My men will work on catching any of the stragglers from Motor Ed’s gang. I however doubt we’ll catch all the summon ninjas.” Cobra walked over to Fluttershy who had the helmet of her suit down. “They won’t bother you much for a while after that.”

“I don’t know about you guys, but I need some sleep. It’s been a long day of jumping at shadows for me and I’m ready for it to end. Thursday didn’t end so horribly at least.” At least Bonnie had fun fighting the widest ninjas she had ever seen.

“Sleep would be nice, hopefully without a crisis to worry about tomorrow.” Fluttershy looked at all the people around her and she smiled slightly in a strained way, it was nice to have friends. Even new ones you might have slighted a bit in the past. The Dachora nuzzled Fluttershy, likely having felt her downward swerving mood. “I’m thankful to have so many wonderful friends like all of you to protect me.”

When she got back to the gem house from the short battle to see Donnabelle actively snuggling Soft Echo, Fluttershy smiled brightly at the adorable sight. A pony and her familiar snuggled together. She slowly lay with them and the older Dachora followed curling around her and the children.

The next day started on a harried note with everyone waking up to a shout. Fluttershy was quickly on her hooves and then she stumbled and fell back to the floor.

“What’s going on?” Fluttershy said dizzily as everyone was woken up by Bonnie.

“Where is he, where is he? Where’s my brother!” This earned Bonnie a few strange looks from the ones who didn’t know what she was talking about.

Fluttershy quickly pulled Bonnie into a hug and slowly Bonnie calmed down in her grasp, feeling the comforting hug.

“Better?” Fluttershy asked softly, Bonnie nodded into the snuggly soft fur that Fluttershy had. “When did you last have him?”

“I’ve always had him on me since we’ve arrived on Earth, you know that! I’m sorry Fluttershy; I didn’t mean to snap at you.” Taking on a thinking pose Bonnie went through everything she did yesterday, she even had him when she was on the beach. “The last I saw was last night… during the ninja attack. Oh for the love of, I swear one of these days…”

“We’re going straight to the moon to have a picnic?” Fluttershy said with a chipper tone.

“Cute, anyway I think we can find out the truth by looking through Head Hunter’s recordings of last night. Samus activated the ship and she didn’t bother to shut down the systems after she accessed the ship.” Speaking of the bounty hunter and the Galactic Guardian bodyguards, Bonnie looked around as she blushed at the suggestion of a picnic with her favorite alien pony. “Where are the guardians and the hunter? I’m pretty sure they didn’t sleep here with us.”

“I think they took accommodations in their ships as to not burden Steven’s family, I think that was rather nice of them.” Fluttershy stood up and stretched out, it was followed by seeing Donnabelle nudging a yawning Soft Echo awake.

“Yep, my brother was taken by one of the guys that escaped last night.” Bonnie looked rather depressed, they were in Head Hunter looking over last night’s visual feed.

“Don’t worry we’ll rescue him… again.” Fluttershy shuddered at being strapped to a table and somewhat tortured again. “Hopefully this time it won’t be nearly as painful.”

“I think he might have been mistaken for a smoke bomb, if so then that’s a lucky break at least. It means they don’t know what they have.” Bonnie got up and gave Fluttershy a rub on the back. “I’m not about to do that to you again Fluttershy. So, no time like the present.”

As soon as Jumba popped up on the screen, he had a blank look on his face as he saw Fluttershy and Bonnie staring at him from a familiar seat.

“I am happy to hear you are back together again. Anyway I am finding that location of one five zero is of interest to you yes?” Jumba got a nod from the pair; he sighed and rubbed his head. “He is being in Japan, within Nerima region. Please to be getting him to me sometime this year and to stop being sidetracked by crazy chaotic situations that keep popping up, meet up with one five eight there to help you find him. Hopefully you’ll be able to avoid the sidetracking.”

“We can be there with the next thirty minutes, how soon can we expect Finder to arrive in Japan?” Not that Bonnie was getting tired of seeing her sister Shush; it was just that her sister so airheaded at times and kept trying to eat the sharp pointy metal stars.

“Is being good news on that front, he is already in Japan for a convention. He is being the good tour guide, able to find just about anything is very useful to anyone who is looking for something in particular.” Jumba gave a jovial chuckle. “Now to just be getting one five zero back to me without trouble. Which I’m guessing is very hard for you one four nine.”

“Oh how I do so love a heaping steaming pile of… trouble.” Stated Bonnie flatly, knowing that she was living in interesting times with Fluttershy around. She wouldn’t have it any other way. “At least knowing Finder will be there is good news, we’ll have someone drop off Head Hunter you so you can fix the problem while we head directly for Japan.”

“Who knows, maybe Saturday will go better for us.” It had to, because Friday was already starting to look iffy to Fluttershy and it was just starting.

Author's Note

Yep, one last thing before Fluttershy goes to Hawaii correctly.

A nice little trip to Japan's insanity ward, where everything is messed up.

Finder (Experiment 158) - Able to find any item or person, requires some time to do so and can fly by spinning his ears. He is especially good at hide in seek, can seek out a hiding place and can find anyone who is hiding.

108

Bonnie had pulled Fluttershy into Head Hunter for a private little chat, since Stanley’s magic had worn off on her a long while ago and it was time that they had a talk.

“Okay we need to talk since I know you’re back in your right mind, especially before anything else happens. You’ve kind of distracted me from this and it’s important Fluttershy.” Crossing her arms Bonnie leaned back. “So what do we have in terms of friendship?”

“I think we’re doing okay. I know you can’t stop entirely, but you really have cut back on the stealing. Well, except for the few times when I’m not around.” Fluttershy pointed to the two blaster pistols Bonnie had holstered and Bonnie saw what she was pointing at, she had a few metal stars and three kunai knives on her. They still had to discuss who was going to Hawaii and who would be coming with them to Japan, Fluttershy was all for Soft Echo going to Hawaii with Roller and Donnabelle. She entirely trusted Bonnie’s six hundred plus siblings more than the place she was heading to, plus she really didn’t like the idea of dragging the filly through any more dangerous situations.

“Hey, I’m practical when it comes to a fight and they practically left these weapons behind. Now be honest, am I being a better being? I haven’t stolen from Steven’s house and I didn’t even promise not to do that to you.” If Bonnie were honest with herself, she might even be close to completely breaking her kleptomaniac tendencies and her genetic programming. She wasn’t doing it for Fluttershy since it was mostly for herself; only some of it was trying to make her friend proud of her. She could be pretty downright heroic if she put her talents and mind to it. “I’ve only recently picked up some stuff from those ninja and that’s about it. Also one of those strange green missiles I got from Samus and managed to disarm, but to be fair she did shoot it at me. I think that missile will be useful and she’s not exactly using it.”

“Well that’s wonderful news, but better is rather hard to quantify Bonnie. All you need to do is have your heart in the right place and to continue being my good friend.” Fluttershy put a hoof on Bonnie’s shoulder while giving her a bright room lighting smile. “At least you’re being really honest here.”

“Yeah, if I’m going to continue being completely honest here, I find you highly attractive and that’s not a part of my genetic programming talking. For some reason I’m attracted to your four legs, that long pink mane of yours and your adorable nature in general. The reason why I’m not acting on it or asking you out on a date is because I’m still trying to come to terms with my feelings. I’m also taking your current state of mind into consideration as you’ve accidentally did something that led to a lot of people dying, I know for a fact that you’re not exactly happy with how things have turned out thus far since you’ve met me and that I’ve also been the cause of some of your problems.” It felt rather nice to Bonnie to get all that off of her chest, Pleakley’s E.AR.W.A.X group might not have helped her, but a friend she loved certainly did in so many ways. Fluttershy made her feel like she was something worthwhile. “No matter what you say, I’m not going anywhere and I’ll always try to be the thief who’s a close friend of yours. Heck I’m even planning on going back to your home planet with you, though I’m really going to miss my family if we can’t come up with a way to keep touch. I’m missing Shush already and we haven’t left Beach city yet, she may be a ditz but family has kind of become really important to me.”

It was a lot for Fluttershy to take in and Bonnie was right, she was also quite flattered that Bonnie found her attractive. Bonnie was a little strange, but she has come a long way. She felt touched that Bonnie understood she felt sad that she kept getting put into the path of pain or suffering, sometimes that pain and suffering was not necessarily her own. She couldn’t begin to imagine how Annabelle was taking Belladonna’s death and then subsequent knowledge that she couldn’t even hold on to a piece of her that was Donnabelle, it was really quite sad.

“I think I’m okay with you being attracted to me, I’m not entirely comfortable or even ready to date you or do anything romantic. I know that may upset you to hear, but I must really thank you for being so understanding of my feelings Bonnie, you’re really quite sweet.” Fluttershy leaned forward and kissed Bonnie on the cheek causing her to blush as it wasn’t her forehead this time. “Maybe in the future I’ll give us a chance, but you might be waiting for an eternity. I might fall in love with someone else or I might not feel the same way about you after going on a few dates, but I would like to think we have an unbreakable friendship.”

“I’m okay with that and I can be an adult about this. So anything you want to talk about before we start making decisions as to who’s going to Japan? I know you don’t like being involved in fights, but you held up pretty well last night.” At some point you cared about someone so much that it wouldn’t be easy to let things go, but Bonnie was capable of keeping a clear head despite the fact that the ninjas might be capable of removing the stasis on her brother. She would clearly do the same with Fluttershy, as the pony was her own person and could make her own decisions.

“Yeah I did, didn’t I? I don’t like violence very much, but it sometimes seems necessary because sometimes some people don’t take no for an answer or won’t stop taking from others until nothing is left unless they fight back. I’m strong enough to wrestle a bear to the ground; it kind of makes me a bit meek to know that I could hurt a pony with my physical strength. I have some really strong earth pony genetics, most pegasi aren’t really known for their physical prowess with their hooves.” It bothered Fluttershy and she didn’t like ponies picking on animals or others picking on beings smaller than them. She personally didn’t mind being picked on personally; it was how she met Rainbow Dash. She shook her head and came back to the present with Bonnie. “I was always awkward when I was younger, I felt out of place by being a weak flyer. I can only fly okay when I put my mind to it. The Rhizome suit really makes up for my flying inadequacies such as being able to help me build up speed. Since the accident that tore me from my planet I’ve started to become really good at doing pegasus things and that’s kind of upsetting since I wasn’t so good at it before.”

“So you weren’t really good at fitting in when you were younger and you enjoyed your solitude huh? I guess that’s why I like you so much, you remind me a bit of myself. I really didn’t feel like I fit in anywhere with the rest of my family except for Clyde, even he had some trouble making friends. I really miss the big lug… am I crying? Look at me; I’m getting all emotional here.” Bonnie wiped at her eyes and she was pulled into a hug as Fluttershy started crying too. They both needed a good amount of release and let loose into each other to get rid of all that stress that kept building up.

“You know I have a brother too, but I kind of get embarrassed by him a lot.” It wasn’t often that Fluttershy talked about her brother, but it was time to mention that she had one of her own. “He must really be missing the letters that I send him. It’s also been a while since I’ve seen him as he has his own life to live.”

“Huh, your brother has his own life to live… there’s a thought. That’s kind of funny, that your people are still using letters I mean. Earth doesn’t do that personal kind of stuff anymore; most interactions are base in electronics on this planet nowadays. Rarely do you see people getting out and just enjoying a beautiful day or the horizon from a nice beach. I always look forward to seeing a horizon anytime I’m near a beach.” As she leaned into the cuddle, Bonnie couldn’t help but exclaim cutely. “They don’t know what they’re missing and if they don’t want to see it, then that’s okay. I’m following you home though, so you better keep me when I do even if we aren’t anything more than just good friends. Thanks for letting me blow off some steam on you. So, who are we bringing to Japan?”

“Me, I’m definitely going to Japan! They have manga there and while I don’t have all of Belladonna’s memories, I definitely have her fine tastes in violent media. Now where am I going to get the money for it? It also makes me wonder who got Belladonna’s extensive manga collection when she died.” The appearance of Donnabelle had made both Bonnie and Fluttershy jump apart as if they had been set on fire; she was enjoying their rather red faces. “Anyway if you try to put me in Hawaii, I will never let you know a moments rest for making miss the best place to find manga in the world!”

Annabelle silently read the manga with tears in her eyes; she never knew Belladonna had such a widespread collection of romance related graphic novels. It was rather nice that she got belladonna’s entire collection; most of it was violent stuff, but at least she had some part of Belladonna still with her.

The angel dog had to smile; someday she might meet another fetching boogey dog, but it wouldn’t be quite the same as that cantankerous whippet that she had whipped. Quite literally, she used to whip Belladonna and used to tie her up in that latex and leather getup she really liked.

She would always have those memories at least. So long as she doesn’t reincarnate and continues having her job as an angel, she would always be willing to carry a flame for the fallen.

No matter how much Fluttershy or Bonnie tried to get Donnabelle to decide otherwise, the puppy was set on going with them to Japan and she had her reasons for it. They were all outside the Head Hunter and the discussion has been going on for a while.

“I’m actually quite knowledgeable about all kinds of things in that country.” Donna would then go on about the spiritually gifted humans and all the magical stuff that went on there.

“I too am quite knowledgeable, but I’m afraid I will be going to Hawaii and I will be taking the Cosmic Cap with me either way. Japan has some of the most dangerous portals on the planet and I do not wish for you to accidentally come across them in your travels.” It was immediately decided that Virgil had a point and would be taking the hat with him, especially since he knew the most about its usage. Now it was a matter of whether or not Soft Echo would be going to Hawaii or not.

“We already know that the Etecoons and Dachora will be better off going to Hawaii to stay with the rest of your family Bonnie. Virgil is going with the hat because it’s safer for us that way and since Donnabelle is coming with us, it means that Soft and Roller will want to follow as well.” It was a good thing that Fluttershy had so many friends that wanted to look out for Soft in case she got lost. Apparently the Etecoons destroyed the other four other monster trucks that had been on the ridge last night and in the midst of having stolen one and they went on a wild ride around Beach City. “I really don’t like the sound of this place we’re heading to.”

Roller was a loyal to Fluttershy. Donnabella was a bit reluctant to let the kid com on the trip since she had told them about how dangerous Nerima was at any given time and had even told them about the nickname of it being the ‘insanity ward’. Soft Echo just wanted to go just because Donnabelle did. Fluttershy still needed someone who could fight to look out for the others.

It was assured that Fluttershy and Bonnie were going personally, they were still trying to convince Donnabelle to go to Hawaii and the puppy wasn’t having any of it. Roller rolled up to Fluttershy and revved loudly to gain her attention and then he started to make several noises in the form of a rather good suggestion, he mentioned that he was willing to go to Hawaii to watch out for Fluttershy’s other friends.

“Um, we never really thought about who would be taking what. We have two ships and one of them will have to carry Head Hunter to Hawaii, while the rest of us go to Japan.” Fluttershy had been arguing with everyone else over whether or not to let Soft Echo come with her to Japan, she had reasons to bring Soft Echo along and she had just as many to send her to Hawaii to stay with the Pelekai family.

“I’m doing the Hawaii run, I can carry the Head Hunter there. That is if you can trust me with delivering it there safely.” Volunteered Samus, who sometimes didn’t trust herself after all the destruction she’s caused. She had to second guess herself plenty of times before doing something such as destroying a race of deadly parasites that could have wiped out the universe by blowing up a planet on purpose.

“Yes, but a Chozo warrior would be very useful in Japan given many people there use spiritual energy based attacks.” It was the truth that Chozo made their armor to stand up to spiritual damage and Virgil could see that Fluttershy might need Samus’s firepower given her track record for running into ludicrous situations.

“It is our job as Galactic Guardians to watch over Ambassador Shy.” Stretching out and throwing a few punches and kicks Betty was waiting for them to finish discussing logistics of who was going where.

“Yeah, but can you fight off demons and take spiritual attacks from humans? Nerima has a reputation for a reason, there are these guys known as the Nerima Wrecking Crew and they specialize heavily in martial arts of all forms and they are physically capable enough to knock down buildings with a sneeze and that’s without using their spiritual energy.” Shaking her head Donnabelle at least made her point as to why she should go, she knew a thing or two about demons from what memories she did have of Belladonna. While she didn’t have everything, she certainly had enough to be useful. This included the knowledge that magic ran rampant throughout Nerima which had upset Bonnie for obvious reasons. “That’s just the humans, not counting the monsters and demons that can do the same that keep popping up there.”

“We can do our very best ma’am!” It seems Sparky never ran out of good cheer, despite his goofy countenance he was quite tough and had beaten eight sumo ninja and held off another five on his own. “I’m sure we can handle anything you can throw at us, we can really think outside the box. Was that the right Earth euphemism?”

“Can’t I just go to Hawaii?” Almost everyone seemed to be ignoring that Foxglove was still there, the bat had been fidgeting at the back and forth arguments and was a little frightened at the prospect of meeting demons, monsters and even humans that could level entire buildings with a sneeze if Donnabelle was to be believed. The puppy was half demon and angel, which Foxglove could detect with her sonar screeches and thus Donna’s story was quite believable to the bat.

“No, we need you with us in case someone breaks the stasis on my brother.” Taking an interest in the bat, Bonnie narrowed her eyes at Foxglove. “You can fix it if it comes to that right?”

“I guess I will have to and I believe that I can.” Foxglove said nervously while twiddling her wings, she did truly have the capacity for it after all. The spell wasn’t that complex and it was being performed on a small object that Foxglove could carry without needing magic to boost her flying strength.

“Okay, so that’s me, Bonnie, Foxglove, Donnabelle and Soft Echo. Roller, I trust you will watch out for the Virgil and the others for me. Hopefully things will work out. We’ll ride with Betty.” Everyone nodded and gathered with their respective groups as Fluttershy spoke. “Now, does anyone know how the people of Japan react to us? We scared a few people in San Francisco as we were leaving since they weren’t used to seeing weird things.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that, Japan is one of the weirdest places in the world. Heck that X Five guy could float around without a disguise on and he’d been seen as the tamest thing in the universe compared to the usual crap that the people there have to deal with.” Donnabelle was going to have to scrounge up some change from the sidewalk to buy at least one graphic novel, because she wasn’t leaving without at least one in her ownership. Whatever planet Fluttershy was from obviously didn’t have them. “Also don’t rely entirely on me since I’ll be working on what memories I have from Belladonna, just promise me we’ll stop by a manga store while we’re there. I can remember the words Dragon Ball, but I don’t know the context as to why I do. The only combat technique I got from Belladonna is that Hellfire Hammer thing and that’s all I got in the ways of fighting ability. So don’t expect me to be much help in a fight as I’m once again pointing out that I’m only a puppy, albeit a very intelligent, fun and incredibly awesome one with wings.”

Soft Echo threw a stick by Donnabelle and she glared at the filly who smiled at her expectantly, grumbling Donnbella went to pick up the stick with her paw. When she came back with it, she dropped it in front of Soft in a disdainful manner and the pony clapped her hooves together happily.

“It’s decided then, but what convention is currently going on there? It’s supposed to be where we can find Finder.” It had been a bit of a niggling portion of her brain that said it was important and Fluttershy wasn’t going into this blind. Bonnie had filled her in on Finder’s special abilities; he can find anyone and anything. Finder couldn’t have found her home planet though as his talents were limited to a general area.

“I looked it up on the internet with Head Hunter; apparently they have a weekend long martial arts, anime and sci-fi convention. The kind of convention with tournaments that is likely attracting the sumo ninjas we’re after because they took a big loss of from bothering us, they probably need the money to bribe someone to free their forces that have been incarcerated.” Bonnie had to shudder. Hearing Donnabelle go on about how dangerous humans were there, she just knew that they’d come across them. It was not a matter of ‘IF’, it was a matter of ‘WHEN’ and she knew that someone would eventually attack them. “I’m going to be so high strung during all this.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I’m giving you free reign to steal anything you want while we’re there. I’ll trust your judgment on it Bonnie.” Turning to the puppy, Fluttershy used ‘the stare’ on Donnabelle and she froze up. She was going to make it quite clear that she wanted Donnabelle to be a good familiar and on her best behavior while in Japan. “You will be watching out for my daughter and you will be with her at all times to make sure she doesn’t get hurt by anyone, do you understand me? If she gets lost, I expect you to bring her back to me safely are we clear?”

“Yes ma’am, loud and clear!” Throwing a salute the cowed and whimpering Donnabelle was shivering under that horrible gaze, she could even feel the ice slowly covering her spine. The ice soon broke as Fluttershy released her from the gaze and Soft Echo snuggled up against her affectionately to warm her back up. “The things I do manga… and love I guess.”

After saying their goodbyes to Steven’s family, they were all standing on the bridge of Betty’s ship having been beamed up to it. Soft Echo was already trying to playfully explore her surroundings only for Donnabelle to gain her attention to keep her from doing anything dangerous since she was wearing the Rhizome suit, Fluttershy decided to keep the Lunar Locket this time.

Foxglove was looking out the window of the starship that didn’t need to land to pick them up; the view from above the clouds was amazing. She had never been so high up before and Dale has been in space before, it was as amazing as he made it out to be. It was only a minute later that they were off above the planet and heading to Japan.

“Well, where do you guys think we should beam down? Also don’t forget your translator Sparky; we are not having another incident like the last time. I know Fluttershy has a translator for this situation.” Betty watched as Sparky even showed her that he was keeping his translator on his person, she always had to watch Sparky because he tended to cause trouble and sometimes that was a rather useful trait of his.

“Some place quiet and out of the way, I don’t want to be beamed down into the middle of so many people.” Fluttershy would never overcome her shyness entirely; she was still shy of big crowds and other ponies. The general Nerima area was loaded with people and she shied behind her mane slightly at the sight she was seeing on the screen, there were so many strangers there.

Author's Note

And so... it begins. The beginning of the end.

I will assure you, it will be the most boring collection of chapters ever, of all time. There is nothing interesting about Nerima. So you can ignore the giant robots, gender and species changing humans, robot cats with inanely weird gadgets, monsters from the internet, spirit detectives, alien princesses, sailor senshi and or demonic creatures running around. They will most certainly not be appearing all at the same time or will run afoul of each other or Fluttershy.

Here's why, Fluttershy is a chaos magnet, heading to a place where chaos magnets naturally gravitate. So she'll just as likely cancel all the weirdness out of the area just by being there. She couldn't 'possibly' make things worse by appearing in Nerima 'insanity' Ward.

I understand the plot of Axiom Verge perfectly, which is how I'm still writing this story. It doesn't even make sense in context, but I'm me and I'm unhinged enough to understand the plot of that game. So therefore I don't know what I'm doing now.

Anyway this is officially the Suikoden chapter or otherwise the elaborately long set up stalling chapter.

109

“Something has upset the future.” A pair of watchful eyes would be sending a team to Nerima to deal with the problem; usually this team had no problem solving skills beyond killing monsters.

If only those eyes realized that the future was upset because she sent that particular team there in the first place, hindsight and all that was going to come back to bit her.

Five figures beamed in into an alleyway, they stood there for a few seconds to get their bearings. Across the street from them a large monkey shaped machine burst out of a garage backwards. A monkey wearing a white lab coat and a strange helmet with a flashing red light on it was driving the machine.

Out of the garage a figure wearing grey garb and an orange scarf rushed forward and looked to multiply into three while holding what looked like a blue bar in a reverse grip in his right hand. The machine tried to smash him and he leapt forward with his two obviously fake clones on second look and started striking at the machine while dodging its laser fire and missiles.

After a few seconds of attacks from the ninja and his really bad fake clones, the machine exploded dropping the monkey who started making a run for it only to get entrapped in a net and where it immediately disappeared before Fluttershy’s eyes in a flash of light.

“I got him professor, I’m coming back now. Is Spike still hunting the gunners?” The ninja garbed human suddenly dropped the transformation to reveal an average looking blue haired teenager. “Right, I’m on my way, Specter is not going to cause trouble with us on the job!”

The kid pulled out a green device and ran forward while swinging his arm and on one upward swing the device launched him into the air where he glided off into the distance with a vibrant glowing propeller rapidly spinning above him.

“How long have we been here?” Fluttershy asked having seen something so bizarre that it was breaking her mental capability to put it into words.

“Oh for about ten seconds and yes I think I saw all that too.” Foxglove said in a dazed tone from atop Fluttershy’s head.

Before they could recover and move a turtle with a jets coming out of its butt and hind legs flew by. It stopped, came back and threw it’s flippers around Fluttershy and started to snuggle her while cooing affectionately.

It remembered Fluttershy from when it was still a spirit turtle, now a mechanical marvel filled with love. It soon it released Fluttershy and shot off for the apartment complex it lived in to tell its friends, the other spirit turtles that were freed from their torment.

“Okay I think we really need to…” Fluttershy was quickly interrupted.

“Doraemon wait for me!” A human kid with glasses ran by running after a strange blue humanoid machine that was wearing a collar and belle, they were running from a giant blob monster that bounced after them down the street.

“I think we really need to move on before…” Fluttershy stopped and looked around to make sure nothing would interrupt her this time. “Before things can…”

“Where the heck am I now?” A man with a black and yellow spotted bandana looking at a map complained, he turned into the alley with them and disappeared from sight suddenly within the blink of everyone’s eyes.

“Was that a hallucination?” Fluttershy just had to ask because her sanity was getting thoroughly challenged and they just got here.

“Well I think that’s perfectly fine.” Today was going pretty well for Celestia and suddenly a human being walked out from behind her throne holding a map.

“Excuse me, but could you direct me to Nerima again?” This was the same person that Fluttershy had just seen seconds ago.

“Hold on my little ponies. Yes, just wander around in an aimless direction out the front door, you can’t miss it.” Celestia knew of the existence of humans just because she’s met this particular human multiple times. He was always getting so lost and for once he actually appeared in front of other ponies aside from her sister, so she knew she wasn’t crazy because they could see him too.

“Okay, thank you again ma’am.” Then the one known as Ryoga Hibiki turned around and would disappear back behind the throne to never be seen again for a whole week.

“Who or what was that your highness?” Asked a pony in clear confusion as to how long that being had been behind her throne.

“It’s nothing to worry about, just a well traveled being me and Luna happen to be well acquainted with. It’s best just to give him directions even if they are the wrong ones and he’ll eventually find his way back to where he comes from. To be frank with everyone, even I don’t know how he does it but he disappears as soon as he’s out of sight.” Celestia knew he was an alien, but keeping hold of the wandering guy who disappeared at the drop of a pin was really hard. The one time she placed a tracking spell on him gave her a headache. She really wanted to introduce him to Discord who has been really nice lately and more intrigued by the chaos going on elsewhere. “He just popped out of one of my cakes once with no recollection to how he got inside it the first time I saw him, he’s quite harmless even if he’s always a nice surprise. He’s a bit angst ridden though.”

Fluttershy carefully stepped out of the alleyway looking both left and right while trying not to pay attention to the recently destroyed machine that was left behind.

“So, ‘Insanity Ward’?” Turning to the winged puppy who nodded at her, Bonnie sighed and turned back and continued to move forward onto the sidewalk. “Yeah, let’s go. I’ll find a bank so I can exchange some money so you can get your fix, because I doubt I’ll ever want to come back here again.”

“That sounds good to me.” As long as she was getting some Manga out of it, Donnabelle didn’t care if they weren’t coming back.

It was an hour or two later and nobody seemed to mind their little group; instead they were relatively ignored as they entered a bank so Bonnie could exchange some money. Things were going pretty well, the people were rather congenial about the five strange beings doing business with them. It wasn’t until after they got the money and were buying fruit at a stand for Soft Echo that they were suddenly accosted by five girls.

“Halt vile fiends!” One of the five saw five girls in schoolgirl outfits pointed them out and the other humans gave them all dull looks and moved out of the way of what would likely be a ensuing fight and went about their business. The girl was a little put off that nobody here seemed to be reacting to her presence like they did in the nearby area of Azabu-Juban area. “For Love and Justice, I am the pretty sailor suited soldier Sailor Moon! In the name of the moon I shall punish you!”

“Punish us for what?” Bonnie asked flatly, she wasn’t impressed by five schoolgirls in magical costumes.

“For whatever it is your doing! Look that little creature is draining the life out of that piece of fruit.” The girl with the two long strands of hair hanging out of the two buns on the sides of her head pointed to Soft Echo softly sucking the life out of the fruit. They watched as she consumed the rest of the fruit by chewing on the remains while looking around at the five girls, two of which were enamored by her cute squeaking bat noise.

“Is that really a crime? I mean they did pay for the fruit in the first place and the little one does look really hungry.” The fruit selling person even wondered what Sailor Moon was doing here of all places.

“Uh, surely that puppy isn’t natural and an evil being of the greatest sort!” Sailor Moon was beginning to get stares from the people and they didn’t look happy with her, what was happening here?

“Actually I was going to go by a manga store to buy some graphic novels. Besides that I’m half angel, so there you go. So what if I’m unnatural to you, I have the right to live just as anyone else does.” Even as she said this, Donnabelle for once acted affectionately towards Soft Echo earning her a happy squeak in return for a big hug. “Would you even really hurt a child as innocent as she is? Seriously what is wrong with you?”

“Yes, but you’re also half youma… how does that even work?” The girl with the short blue hair was looking over her computer getting scans of each being; the puppy was the only one with dark and light energy coursing through her. “The bat, the filly and small horse seem to have magical energies, but they aren’t giving off any dark energy readings. I can honestly say that none of them seem to be from the dark kingdom.”

“It just does and isn’t that another word for demon? Anyway, yes I’m also half demon, but I’m not evil.” Crossing her legs over her chest as Donna sat up and gave them an angry glare.

“You’re a talking dog with youma powers, how can you not be evil!” The girl in the red colors with the long black hair exclaimed and the other girls agreed, except for the one with the short blue hair who seemed to be the most intelligent out of all of them.

“Oh now you’re all just racial profiling just because I’m half demon! You hear that everyone these girls are bigots just because I’m a mixed breed!” A black cat ran up to the girls earning Donnabelle’s attention, but she didn’t move from her spot to chase down the obviously abnormal cat.

“Um Sailor Moon, I don’t think you’re doing the right thing here.” The cat said in a bit of an apprehensive manner.

“Oh so a talking cat with a moon shaped object on her forehead is completely normal! Seriously I don’t see you getting on to her case because she’s odd and out of place.” A lot of the crowd was surprisingly agreeing with Donnabelle on this sentiment.

Fluttershy just sat by looking to Bonnie who shrugged as it seemed their puppy had it under control; she turned to see Soft Echo just went back to eating the new tasty fruit as she watched the action.

“Yeah, not to mention the cat they have with them is an alien who has likely been illegally living in this country for a while now. Even I have a passport to be here and I’m actually an American citizen.” Not to mention Bonnie could speak fluent Japanese and was going to help the puppy with this situation, she did legally enter the country thanks to some help from the alien embassy and Atomic Betty’s connection to Kim Possible. She knew the cat was an alien because she knew what a native of the planet Mau was and looked like; the cat was definitely not a normal one.

“I was born in Japan, even if my race does come from elsewhere. By the way I’m Luna.” The cat introduced herself to them with a smile.

“I’m Jookiba Bonnie and it is nice to meet you Luna-chan, but I have to ask if both your parent’s were foreigners?” There was a bit of a sing song lilt in Bonnie’s accented voice.

“Yes, but what does that have to do with… oh dear.” Luna the cat suddenly had a panicked look in her eyes and her ears went down.

“What’s that all about?” It was like the cat looked like she swallowed a lemon and Donna wanted to know what the issue was.

“Japanese law makes it so that if both your parents were foreigners you’re not immediately a citizen of Japan if you are born here and it applies to all intelligent beings which the cat here is. She has just ousted herself to everyone here.” If there was one thing Bonnie knew it was the law of the land in any place she went to, it was so that she could evade things in court using various loopholes. Her ability to evade things did translate into court cases strangely enough and she could have been a pretty good lawyer. “So… hey everyone these girls are known accomplices to an illegal alien! The fact they know about her and haven’t done a single thing about it is rather suspicious isn’t it?”

The sailor soldiers were caught flat footed by the statement and that the entire crowd was on Bonnie and Donnabelle’s side glaring them down. Sailor Moon slowly, with a rather sheepish smile, picked up the talking black cat and then ran off to be slowly followed by the other sailor soldiers who looked confused for a moment before booking it after their leader.

“Really Bonnie, was that all necessary?” Fluttershy just shook her head, it wasn’t like things were bizarre enough already. She looked at all the crowd focusing on them and gave a slightly weak smile. “Um, thank you everyone, for helping us out that is.”

A lot of the people in the crowd said it was no problem and then set about their business like nothing happened, a few of them commented that they never thought that Sailor Moon could be so mean as to accost a family of tourists even if they were highly different from humans in appearance. A small few were making comments on how they were going to spread the fact that Sailor Moon was doing illegal things outside of her job of demon fighting.

“Eh, I thought it was worthwhile Fluttershy. Now let’s go drop the pup, kid and bat off at the nearest book store so we can begin asking around for where the convention is taking place so we can find either one of my brothers more importantly the one that is hopefully still in stasis here in crazy town.” Bonnie and Donnabelle were the only ones who could actually read the language so the ones in their group needed a designated reader with them at all times.

“I’m okay with that. Just so long as those girls don’t bother us again, they were full of unstable elemental magic and it scares me what kind of potential they all had.” It really freaked Foxglove out how powerful those girls were, she was quite thankful that things didn’t come to blows and it was settled peacefully in a relative manner.

It was thirty minutes later after they found a book store that found Fluttershy and Bonnie leaving the dog, bat and filly trio to their own devices. Hopefully Foxglove would keep them out of trouble. The two set out wandering around Nerima seeing so many odd occurrences it was hard to understand why everyone was trying so hard to ignore them.

“It’s like Beach City all over again.” The pony couldn’t help it, she looked around at all the big buildings and the city was just amazing. That wasn’t counting the fact that Fluttershy was also seeing so many strange occurrences every minute or so in a rampant manner.

“Yeah, which is kind of cool since Hawaii is like this about my family. Anywhere else and we’d be captured to be dissected on an operation table all while still being conscious.” Stopping Bonnie gave Fluttershy an apologetic look as she shivered uncontrollably. “Oh right, sorry about that Fluttershy. That was a bit callous of me to bring up the fact that you’ve been strapped to a table twice.”

“It’s okay Bonnie. We should really stop to ask for directions though, this place is so big.” Fluttershy would never like living near a city, even visiting Manehatten was kind of a problem for her and it wasn’t as nearly packed with as many ponies as this place was with people. Looking around she saw a guy with his hair braided lazily walking along a fence wearing black and red clothing, she thought it looked dangerous and the human looked to know his way around. “Um, excuse me.”

Despite her soft voice the guy had heard her and with an impressive leap, he jumped off the fence with several flips and twirls to land in front of Bonnie and Fluttershy.

“Hey, did either of you by any chance happen to meet my father some time the in past? Please don’t tell me he forcefully contracted me out to aliens too, I’m so glad that Lum didn’t become interested in me.” He asked this question before they could ask theirs. “I’m Saotome Ranma, sorry about having to meet me.”

“I’m uh… is Shy Flutter the right way to say it? Also this is Jookiba Bonnie, anyway no, we haven’t met you’re father and why would you be forcefully contracted to someone? That doesn’t sound very nice.” The strange guy in front of them seemed to visibly relax, however what Fluttershy said never caused him to tense up again. “We were actually going to ask for directions.”

“To where exactly are you heading?” Ranma looked really frightened by what their answer would be; his mind was obviously going through tons of scenarios even if the little horse thing sounded a lot like someone he knew.

“We’re looking for a martial arts, anime and science fiction convention here in Nerima, I hear that one of my brothers was attending and I need his help to find my other brother who was taken by sumo ninja. We’ve tracked them down to here in Japan.” Bonnie wasn’t about to tell this Ranma that the sumo ninja might have mistaken her brother for a smoke bomb as that would have taken along winded explanation that would have required them to print their pamphlets in Japanese. “Otherwise we’re just tourists and kind of lost, heck I doubt that we’ll be able to find Flutter’s kid, dog and our little friend at this rate as we’re just that lost.”

“I know I’m going to regret this later, but how about I help you out? A martial arts convention sounds like my kind of thing, but I doubt there will be anyone there nearly as tough as the crazy people I live with on a daily basis.” Ranma for once was inviting himself to the trouble, he didn’t know whether or not this was a smart idea, but he was going to end up helping these strangers either way. In any case he was always up for helping strangers and getting into fights, even if it’s in a tournament. “Come on; if there is anything interesting happening I’ll know who to go to for information.”

“Is there any place with a nice park around here. I have a special talent with animals and I kind of want to connect some with the local population of cute little critters.” Fluttershy started to follow after this Ranma as he led them along the sidewalk.

“Don’t see a problem with that, but I’m not exactly one to commune with nature very well… especially c-c-c-c-furry little demons. I had a rather unhappy childhood because of my father and I’ll explain to you on the way to the Tendo Dojo, because goodness knows they are going to drag me to this convention the minute I ask about it. Why anyone would want to hold a convention in Nerima is beyond me.” Especially when Ranma was part of the well labeled Nerima Wrecking Crew, most of the time it wasn’t his fault that things happened. The natural disaster budget was big because of his friends and what could be more natural then martial artists trained to toss around stupidly powerful spiritual attacks?

“Were you trying to say cats?” Watching as the guy look around in a panic Fluttershy wondered why that set him off. “Are you okay?”

“S-sure, it’s just that when I was younger my father wrapped me in fish and threw me into a pit full of the starving monsters then he covered it with a boulder so I could learn some fancy martial arts technique.” For Ranma it was getting easier to tell people why he had a problem with ferocious felines, especially to the now rightfully horrified Bonnie and Fluttershy.

“I’m guessing that your father is not in custody and has had problems with child services.” Bonnie could tell Fluttershy stories about Jumba’s negligence, even then she still liked her father.

“I wish, he actually outran the statute of limitations during all that and only got arrested for about a fourth of his crimes multiple times. Heck he’s even freeloading at the place I’m staying at, which is sadly where we’re going. So just a warning, don’t try to get in the way of whatever happens when we arrive. I will of course be taking any of the hits meant for you; sometimes my friends don’t know their own strengths and have surprisingly yet to kill an intelligent being like I was forced to.” From the way Ranma told it, it sounded like he lived in a highly abusive home.

“That sounds just horrible, how were you forced to kill someone?” At this point Fluttershy just wanted to understand and wouldn’t blame Ranma for extenuating circumstances. It sounded like he experienced that a lot in life by the way he greeted them with a preemptive apology for him meeting them.

“Well I did kill him; it was just that he didn’t stay dead for long. You see it was this guy named Saffron who was from this race of people who are called Phoenixes and it involved me blowing up a mountain in China, it’s really quite a long story.” It was rather strange that Ranma didn’t hear any of the girls charging after him or attacking him, for some reason he felt as if he was missing all the chaos. Ranma immediately destroyed that last thought with extreme prejudice as he was welcoming some quiet time after the last debacle, even if it had to be with these two strangers.

“I’m sure we’ll have enough time to hear about it, because you sound like you need a really good friend.” And friendship was all Fluttershy would offer to one Saotome Ranma, he would be eternally grateful for it too. She stopped and held out a hoof to him. “I can’t even begin to imagine what your life is like if you think you’re going to be attacked the moment you step through the door to the house you’re living in. I wouldn’t exactly call it a home, because home is where the heart is and my home is with any of the friends I have made. I hope that we can become good friends Ranma.”

Ranma winced at hearing the offer of friendship, but he shook her hoof anyway because she sounded quite sincere about it.

Author's Note

Before you get mad at me, my previous authors note is quite literal in more than one way.

"I will assure you, it will be the most boring collection of chapters ever, of all time."

I didn't say who it would be boring for, I have to write all of this you know and I don't have any proofreaders. I do this all by myself as I'm a one monster writing machine.

"There is nothing interesting about Nerima. So you can ignore the giant robots, gender and species changing humans, robot cats with inanely weird gadgets, monsters from the internet, spirit detectives, alien princesses, sailor senshi and or demonic creatures running around."

Because the reality of it is, the actual Nerima could be boring despite being the birthplace of anime. You 'can' ignore all the stuff running around in this chapter, but Fluttershy really can't having to be there personally to see it all.

"They will most certainly not be appearing all at the same time or will run afoul of each other or Fluttershy."

Quite literally, Fluttershy will not do anything foul to them and they won't be appearing in one big clump or attacking each other out of the blue, they will however be appearing one at a time. The not running afoul part means that Fluttershy can still definitely run afoul of them.

Things seen this chapter, Ape Escape, Love Hina (Mecha-Tama, all those spirit turtles Fluttershy freed from their imprisonment had to go somewhere), Doraemon, Sailor Moon and Ranma 1/2. Minor mention of Urusei Yatsura, where Lum has actually met Ranma and didn't care much forhim.

Welcome to the 'Insanity Ward' Fluttershy! We've been expecting you.

Also semantics is fun.

110

“It’s true… it’s so very true, all good dogs do go to heaven!” After that statement upon entering the store, Donna quickly had a pile of graphic novels sitting next to her and she had been reading for the last three hours since she walked in. “Do you think I could learn something like this?”

Soft Echo was cuddled up next to Donna listening to her read as she looked at her own graphic novel for children that was obtained by Foxglove. Donna had even read the premise for the bat to make sure the filly wasn’t looking at anything overly violent like she was; despite not being able to read the language Soft Echo still liked the funny pictures.

“I don’t know about that, it sounds really dangerous.” Foxglove was the designated adult of the group, she sat on a nearby shelf making sure Soft Echo didn’t wander off and that Donnabelle didn’t destroy something in her exuberance. She had been reading over the puppies shoulder every once in a while “Unless you mean to learn the blinding attack the guy can do.”

“I don’t see why I can’t learn both. First blind them with holy light and then hit them with a disk of angelic death! I need some angelic energy based techniques after all and that’s two… so I’ll need a demonic technique to balance it out.” After a moment of finally looking away from the stories Donnabelle found herself surrounded by a pile of books. She also noticed that the store owner hadn’t run them out yet. “Uh… you seem to be rather calm about us being in your store.”

“It’s getting me customers and besides, none of you are causing trouble for me. As long as you intend to be paying customers I don’t see a problem with it.” The shop owner was just that friendly and Donnabelle just shrugged at his comment.

“I have a question if you know the series, why doesn’t Kuririn ever use Sun Flash and Destruction Disk together? I mean all the opponents he comes up against have eyes which are always sensitive to such an attack. Plus there’s the fact that some of the tougher opponents don’t have the regenerative power to survive being cut in half.” Donnabelle had taken to reading some of the Dragon Ball stuff and skipped over a particular attack that Belladonna had learned, unlike Foxglove and more like Bonnie she could actually speak and read Japanese.

“Oh I’m well acquainted with the series. Kuririn never came off as particularly bright to me. I mean he had a fight where he acted like he could actually smell his opponent despite not having a nose in the original Dragon Ball series, it was against a grotesque man who usually defeated his opponents with his horrible smell alone.” The shop owner always thought the series had some weird stuff in it, but those were the highly interesting points before it got boring with the whole escalation of power levels thing. “Still though, most of the villains after Namek all had regenerative abilities making them really hard to kill with that technique even if he could land it. It was all about raw power after that point and he became kind of a joke character when before he was used more seriously as a foil for Son Goku. His technique is still quite powerful; it just became highly pointless for him to even use it after that point.”

“Well that was informative. Note to self, make sure the disk technique can feasibly explode or something while in the midst of cutting through opponent.” Donna was going to peruse some other books for a technique that she could possibly do with her demonic energy. “Watch the kid Foxglove; I’m going to find a graphic novel in here that will give me another awesome idea. Then I’ll pick out a few to buy. After that we can find a place to start putting my ideas into practice.”

“Why do I have bad feeling about this?” Foxglove was waved off by the puppy with the wagging tail as she sauntered off.

“You have to admit Pluto, they did have a point. Now we have three governments who now know who we are and where we live, also they have people that can see through our glamour. So Luna really does need to earn her citizenship and that’s why Ami is helping her with learning the things she needs to know.” Sailor Moon couldn’t be without her courageous cat sidekick who could take on a humanoid appearance, besides that it was a little bit awful to find out that you’ve been breaking the law for quite a while when you were supposed to be all about love and justice. “I don’t want them to deport my cat, she’s my best friend!”

“Fine, while you help Luna earn her citizenship, I’ll send the three outers to deal with the problem; hopefully they can take care of the disruptions to the future.” The pair of eyes that was Sailor Pluto was usually always watching the time stream for drastic changes and the future was now completely uncertain. “They’re less likely to be sidetracked by bureaucracy at least.”

The Tendo’s place wasn’t that large and Fluttershy was curious about all the neat little buildings and the signs she couldn’t read. Aside from Donna, Bonnie was the only one from their group that could read the sign.

The alien and pony duo were still following Ranma and he came to a stop at the door and then looked at them uneasily before he knocked, he at least let them know he was a guest in this house and the reasons why he was so pensive. Apparently his life sucked because of all the crap his father dropped on him, not to mention all the people who kept giving him crap over things that happened a long time ago in relation to that.

Neither Fluttershy nor Bonnie had any romantic inclinations towards Ranma who had a problem with woman throwing themselves at him with reckless abandon to either kill or marry him. Instead they just felt sorry for him more than anything and they’ve only been given an abridged version of his life.

“So, is Nerima always this…. weird?” While they waited for someone to get the door Fluttershy looked over her shoulder and saw several armored men in what she assumed were military uniforms firing weapons at what looked like a giant black ants crawling around on several buildings.

“It’s actually rather quiet today if all that’s happening is a small Ravager invasion, those EDF guys you’re seeing always take care of it before I can really do anything about it though. So I stopped bothering to jump into that kind of fight a while ago, unless the Tendo residence was being directly assaulted.” Having turned around to see what was going on Ranma had to shrug at the sight. He saw that Fluttershy was looking at the melting ants sadly. “Don’t worry Flutter those aren’t real ants. Ravagers are aliens who make mechanical monsters and have them mimic nature, which also apparently includes unstable chemicals that cause most of their technology to dissolve into nothing once destroyed. It is a bit crazy that those aliens can make them so realistic that it looks like they bleed. Nothing to really worry about as the Nerima Construction Crew tends to put things back to normal overnight, even if entire buildings get knocked down they’ll be back up before you know it.”

“How can they fix buildings being knocked down so fast?” A building exploded down the street as Fluttershy asked her question and she cringed reflexively at the sight, she looked worried and saw somebody with a jetpack fly over them while firing a laser into the horde of killer robotic ants.

“Oh trust me; the NCC has had lots of practice getting things back in order. If not because of me and my friends who are sometimes called the Nerima Wrecking Crew from the amount of collateral damage we tend to cause, then because of all the others things constantly destroying Nerima. Surprisingly there are almost never any casualties from the destruction of buildings or all the other weird things going on around Nerima, the tourist industry is always doing pretty good around here because of it.” Not that anyone ever bothered to ask Ranma what he thought before these two came along, this was a refreshing change of pace for him as he was not a jock of martial arts as some people paint him as. He was just bored with normal things like school and could get actually good grades if he just invented an academic form of martial arts. “You’re actually more likely to die of a paper cut while here than anything else. Quite frankly the simpler things kill more people around here than the absurd and it’s very absurd to live here in the first place, I would know.”

“Oh hello Ranma, who are your new friends? Would you like to come in for some tea? I’m Tendo Kasumi, it’s very nice to meet you and I must say your mane looks pretty.” Turning around they came face to face with the matron of the Tendo home was a peaceful looking woman with long brown hair. She had a similar air about her that Fluttershy had, but it was not exactly the same feeling entirely. She didn’t seem the least bit surprised to see Ranma or the stranger beings he dragged home with him.

“Thank you very much ma’am for inviting us into your home and the compliment. Also yes please, I would like to indulge in some tea.” Smiling up at the human Fluttershy received a simple happy smile in return before they entered.

“I’ll have some water, but thanks for the offer.” Bonnie looked at something and reached out as nobody was watching her.

“Oh and tell your friend not to steal anything while she’s here. I don’t mind when Genma-baka does it since he usually brings that stuff here so I can eventually give it back to their proper owners, it’s bad enough that he’s actively trying to eat us out our of house and home.” The serene sounding Kasumi hadn’t even turned around and Bonnie immediately put back what she had picked up. She seemed like a calm happy go lucky person, but she was quite stern where it counted. “I will not tolerate any thievery from anyone else, thank you for your understanding.”

“Wow, she really has me pegged.” Bonnie had never been caught before she could do something that fast before.

“Not really, among the other things my father is, he’s quite a horrible thief and Kasumi is a saint to let him keep living here like he does.” Shaking his head Ranma turned to Kasumi. “Where is everyone Kasumi and have you heard about a convention around here?”

“I don’t know where everyone is at this time, but I do know where a convention is being held. Here, I have a flyer for it that I picked up because I thought you might be interested in the tournament.” Kasumi handed Ranma the flyer for the convention which had its location listed on it, then she set off to make tea for her new rather adorable guests that she just knew Ranma would help. ”Now if you will excuse me, I think I’ll make you and your new friends some snacks as well while I’m at it.”

“Wow, it seems everything is going our way today… I feel gypped for some reason.” It was just a nagging feeling, but Bonnie couldn’t help but feel that things should have been more exciting than this. Maybe when they found the sumo ninja and the convention things would begin to heat up, instead of just being mildly weird according to Ranma’s idea of what weird was. “Well no point in looking a gift pony in the mouth.”

“That’s actually a saying on my planet.” Interjected Fluttershy who was kind of amused by what Bonnie said.

“Technically the reason I said it is because Ranma’s name translates to Wild Horse. So far things seem to be rather tame in comparison to his name.” Shrugging, Bonnie sat down at the nearby table and waited.

Ranma joined them at the table to continue talking about his horrid sounding life of misunderstandings and problems. After a while Kasumi came walking in with a tray loaded with bean and veggie dumplings, a kettle with warm tea, a couple of tea cups and the glass of water that Bonnie wanted.

“Here you go… oh dear!” Kasumi tripped slightly and it sent the lone glass of water sliding to the end of the tray and it launched its contents straight for Ranma who closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable. “Oh my, thank you! It’s so nice to not have to clean up the mess from yet another spill in the house.”

Hearing Kasumi’s exclamation, Ranma opened one eye. He followed that action with opening them both in amazement to see a small white cloud floating before him and Fluttershy’s outstretched hoof was touching it. Gently flapping her wings Fluttershy fluttered her way over to the glass of water and squeezed the cloud out over it once it was back in an upright position.

“There we go, no harm done.” Fluttershy said calmly having stopped one of Ranma’s poorest kept secrets from being discovered with her quick actions. She gave the glass over to Bonnie who took a sip from it before popping a dumpling into her mouth and crunching it loudly.

“Kasumi, did that just seriously happen?” Ranma was in quite a daze at having not been splashed with cold water, he had yet to tell Bonnie or Fluttershy of his major problem that continued to go unsolved. In fact he had been skirting the issue until it came up on its own like it usually had with everyone he met. When it had an opportunity to cause problems, Miss Shy just reached out and stopped it cold. The water hadn’t hit him and it was returned to the glass from whence it came and then passed off like it was nothing.

“I believe it did. Isn’t it nice to not have to mop the floor for a change? You and your friends are always getting everything so messy; it’s nice that you have some civilized friends for once.” Comparatively civilized in comparison to all the troublemakers Kasumi had to stay tranquil around on a daily basis, it was hard for her to hold back on giving them a stern talking to. Not that a stern talking would have stopped their antics, much to Kasumi’s unspoken and silent lament. “Oh, have you told them about your curse yet?”

“You have a curse? Well it couldn’t have been worse than the curse I had; you look perfectly okay to me Ranma-san.” Fluttershy had managed to use the polite verbiage and got a nod from Bonnie who was enjoying the dumplings.

“What do you mean when you say you had a curse?” Ranma’s interest in Fluttershy had skyrocketed upon hearing that she had been cursed.

“Eh, she looked like she was halfway twisted bat before the curse was stripped of her… of course curing herself of it had some unusually interesting side effects. The temporary one was the inability to feel much emotionally except for happiness, the lasting power depends on the size of the person and how powerful they are as far as I can guess. Fluttershy spent almost two days stuck like that.” Judging by the way he was looking at the pony Bonnie could tell he was interested. “The other side effect was a little more permanent and is running around somewhere with a puppy and a magical bat that personally knows the guy who cured her. At the time Fluttershy was bleeding and her curse kind of physically manifested into a child, hers to be specific.”

“It’s probably the best thing to happen to me since I left my home planet; my little Soft Echo is so adorable. I’m just glad she’s not as clingy as the curse was, oh and she’s a fruit vampire. She gets so cute when she sinks her tiny little fangs into some fruit and starts sucking away at it.” Fluttershy could go on like a real mother for once instead of listening to other ponies talk about their children.

“Yeah, the little ankle biter is admittedly cute and soft, sometimes I think she might be a bit too snuggly. Nothing wrong with that though.” Normally Bonnie would be iffy around children, especially after what happened with Lilo, but Soft Echo was hard to be nervous around because she was so friendly like her exquisite looking mother.

“How powerful was this guy that broke Flutter-san’s curse?” Ranma had a vested interest in anything that could possibly break his curse, even if it ended up with him having a sister or a daughter of his own.

“He was really quite powerful for his stature. He healed all my wounds, cleared some kind of pain causing poison from my body and helped out my slightly frayed mind. Even then I’m still quite under a lot of stress and this tea is really helping with that, does it have honey and mint in it by any chance?” Fluttershy got a nod from Kasumi before she turned back to Ranma. “If you want to know where he lives we could have someone come give you a ride to him, he lives in New York and so does our magical bat friend. She can help introduce you to him when you’re done helping us. So what is your curse? It doesn’t look very visible or disfiguring.”

“I change gender when I get hit with cold water and turn back with hot water; I also think it causes me to attract water to myself like a magnet. You said he can also help with mental issues? Maybe I can get over my fear of… you know, the furry devils with the claws.” Ranma didn’t want to say the C word and Kasumi gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder in understanding; she was always nice to him even if she didn’t particularly hold any romantic feelings for him. He had very few friends who were girls that didn’t take some kind of violent psychopathic romantic interest in him. Maybe this was his chance to finally get rid of his curse for good, but he wouldn’t bet on it.

“Come on, work damn it, Helios Halo!” Donnabelle traced a ring of bright burning light into the air with one of her digits and then she placed the palm of her right paw at the center of the ring of light. She sent the halo of light spiraling downrange by swiping her paw forward to launch the attack.

The attack hit the waiting large daikon dead center while being completely vertical and sawed into it slightly before dissipating. The vegetable didn’t seem to take much damage from the attack and it had been wedged into the ground slightly by Donnabelle so she could use it for target practice. They were currently in a daikon field after having finished shopping for graphic novels.

“Well that was better than last time when it exploded in your face; maybe you should try a different technique?” Foxglove had no idea why the puppy was so intent on learning to do a violent attack with such angelic properties. She was watching over the bag of manga Donna had acquired and Soft Echo seemed to be entirely content with just watching her puppy do neat tricks.

“You never know when you might need to cut something completely in half while melting it. Besides I paid for some time to practice my stuff and talked it out with that Hideki guy, plus it’s entertaining to the little tick.” Speaking of the filly, Donna frowned when the filly touched the Daikon and jumped back quickly putting her hoof in her mouth while whimpering. Walking up to the Daikon she could see a thin layer of steam coming off of it. She lifted up the daikon; she handled the heat far better than Soft Echo did. “Hey, I cooked it! Foxglove, could you do some kind of soothing magic spell on the ticks hoof or something? Her crying is annoying.”

Foxglove was immediately up to the challenge and managed to heal the slight burn. Should Donna perfect that attack, she didn’t think there would be anything left by anyone who was hit by it. It was rather sweet that Donna cared for Soft Echo while trying to pretend that she didn’t.

After their snack at the Tendo home and dojo, Fluttershy and Bonnie were once again by led by Ranma to the place where the convention was being held. Aside from passing two giant robots beating the crap out of each other a block over, two girls in a deadly sword fight, a pig that transformed into a pig themed car, two people running down the street firing rocket launchers at each other constantly, the blue mechanical humanoid figure she saw once before flying overhead with the propeller attached to the top of its head and what looked like a yeti calmly walking down the sidewalk, it had been relatively uneventful.

Well uneventful in consideration to the reaction of every human on the street to everything going on around them, they really didn’t seem to care about what was going on at all. Sometimes the people avoided falling debris or ran out of the way of something dangerous before continuing on like normal, aside from that they treated everything as if it were just another day.

“It must really be a slow day today for everyone; usually I’d see at least three yokai, a small dragon and be attacked by at least one of my fiancés out of the blue at this point.” Even Ranma was a bit lazy about it all. In fact everyone seemed to be taking everything in stride. “Hey when we find this ‘find it’ guy of yours and the rest of your group can I show you a nice place to eat for lunch?”

“I’d hate to see what your definition of fast actually is. Once we can get our whole group back together I’m good with lunch.” Bonnie was still watching the two giant robots fight in interest, one had a giant energy sword and the other one was firing a massive amount of missiles at it.

They had reached the place where the convention was taking place without any trouble, though Fluttershy was slightly perturbed by the things they had seen on the way.

Author's Note

Just going to call it right now, not every female becomes attracted to Ranma immediately or over time upon meeting him. Nabiki and Kasumi being two notable ones throughout Ranma 1/2. Also most of Ranma's problems stem from Genma alone.

Shampoo (Xian Pu) barely has anything resembling a legitimate claim on Ranma because Amazon laws don't exactly work outside of China. So in essence she still has to kill Ranma, yet ignores it entirely for trying to enact said tribal marriage law while in Japan on a Japanese citizen. She's done quite a few horrible things to Ranma in the name of her tribe to try and force him to be her husband. I also don't think they ever said they repealed the 'Kiss Of Death' thing and they likely will never repeal the 'Kiss Of Marriage' despite being given in a place where their laws weren't applicable whatsoever.

Ukyo actually is Ranma's friend, she knows how to cook and in general stopped attacking him nearly as viciously as the other girls have over the course of everything. Ranma thought she was a boy when they were younger, once that bit of confusion was cleared up she's the least aggressive of the girls. Her daydreams are always a tad creepy, but at least she's not trying to hurt Ranma nearly as much as the other girls are.

Akane is kind of a complete jerk to Ranma, not only that but she ignores that her cooking is liable to kill anyone who eats it and has a horrific ownership complex when it comes to Ranma. She's vicious most of the time and rarely lets up on that one trait when she thinks Ranma does something right for a change.

Kodachi Kuno was actually Ranma's fault entirely, he was nice to her once which set her off on her insane stalker theme. She's an insane individual who likely spends a lot of time in an enclosed, possibly poorly ventilated, room with strange and poisonous chemicals.

Out of all these main girls in Ranma's life I think Ukyo is the least vicious out of all of them in any confrontation. She actually continues to be a somewhat good friend despite fighting for Ranma's affection in a mostly indirect manner.

112

Fluttershy just stared up at the coming evening sky and due to Nerima’s light pollution from the night life that the humans tended to enjoy; she wouldn’t likely be seeing any stars tonight. One of which that might have been Celestia’s distant sun.

Hearing a squeak right next to her Fluttershy looked down to see Soft Echo press up against her, it seemed her daughter could feel her current mood and was as empathetic as she was at times. She looked so cute in the rhizome suit; it let her see what she looked like while wearing it. Looking over to Bonnie who was on the cell phone they heard her exclaim something in a shocked tone, after a second or two she sighed and closed the phone before coming over to them.

“I have best news, good news, strange news, bad news and awful news. Which comes first?” Bonnie stated dryly as she came up to Fluttershy and Soft Echo sitting on a bench outside the convention center. They had been waiting here for a while and just watched as Nerima devolved into chaos every other minute. Not one street corner had any sense of normalcy for more than thirty minutes at a time.

“So is the good news that we can stick around for the freebie Manga at the convention?” Donna said seeing nothing but the complete bright side to sticking around Japan, the puppy’s tail was positively waggling itself into an alternate dimension.

“I don’t know about you guys, but I’m sticking around for the conventions tournament. I might actually get so time to myself for once without anyone interrupting it trying to kill me.” Ranma was getting to know his clan and even partook of their gratuitous servings of food. He was termed as an ‘Ever Thin’ clan member and it was because all the food he ate went into becoming spirit energy instead of turning into fat, this was actually not uncommon among Sumo Ninjas. It just meant Ranma healed at an accelerated rate, whereas the ninjas who were sumo sized were less likely to be hurt in the first place and everything else was about even in capability.

“Get it over with Bonnie, worst to best news.” Fluttershy ran her hoof over Soft’s red mane causing the filly to coo with affection at the touch.

“Awful news, Hawaii was attacked by the Valkyrians. Strange news, no one got hurt in the attack except for the Valkyrians and no one died despite a small part of the Kokaua Town going up in flames. My family must have been batting a thousand today and I don’t just mean my brother Slugger.” Once again Bonnie would explain the function of one of her family members; Slugger was a rather avid baseball fan who could launch any projectile back at the shooter with extreme accuracy and velocity. “Bad news, while my family managed to bring down the Valkyrians main ship and capture all of them for MIB detainment, Samus and Betty are going to have a few problems with meeting up with us without their ships being in an operational enough condition and there are not any active spaceships currently in Hawaii. Just to note, it would cost a lot for us to ride a boat or an airplane out of the country and there are plenty of reasons why people won’t give us a ride all collectively together like we are. Good news, my father can make the repairs to Betty and Samus’s ship. Best news, though a bit creepy, someone hacked my phone and sent me a message that says we’re to be given free room and board if we need a place to stay tonight just as I found out we’re stuck here. They said they’d give us a ride when we need it by calling a number and it came along with this picture.”

Holding up the phone Fluttershy saw the picture of a robotic turtle, the very odd one that had snuggled her when they first beamed down to Japan. It was while Betty went to check on the situation in Hawaii to make sure Samus made it there without any trouble.

“Well that’s nice, I think… I guess we’ll be here for the convention until either Betty or Samus can come pick us up.” At least one of them was happy and it was easy for Fluttershy to tell who, especially given the reaction from a certain puppy’s happy prancing in circles.

“Speaking of this convention, what are the events and wouldn’t people freak out if we went?” Foxglove felt a little left out of the conversation and wanted to be heard, she was handed a pamphlet by Ranma and Fluttershy looked over her tiny form to read along with the little bat. It was a copy that was printed in English which Fluttershy had the barest understanding of. “Oh, all friendly beings can join in any events provided the Spirit Detective League, the Nerima Martial Arts Police, the local Alien Bureau or Japan-EDF can clear the backgrounds of entrants. Beings also need to be an adult or have an adult with them to enter the events that can speak the language or at least understand it well enough. Martial Arts competitors must not use building destroying attacks for the tournaments; all other rules may be found to the particular provided events in the rest of this pamphlet.”

“Well that adorability or singings contests don’t sound too bad, though I really don’t think it fits me. I’m not good in front of crowds. I’m not going near any of the martial arts competitions since I don’t like fighting… maybe I could do the design your own graphic novel story competition? I don’t actually have to be on a stage for that one.” Nobody was going to get Fluttershy to sing in front of a bunch of people. Doing it in front of animals was fine for her as it was her preferred audience; she still gets horrible stage fright.

“Fluttershy you have the voice of an angel and I doubt that anyone would boo you off the stage if you were to sing anything as long as you put a nice tune to it. Anyway I know you can wrestle so how about that? Nobody gets hurt and you can just pull people into heart melting hugs, heck you or your daughter would win the adorability one with almost no competition.” The pony shied behind her long curtain of pink hair and Bonnie’s cheeks began to heat up at the sight of Fluttershy being shy like a pro. “Okay you can do the writing thing, I still want to do something interesting and I’m always up for good scrap. I like the idea of the Rose Royale, free for all and nothing females kicking ass and taking names.”

“Sign me up to the adorability contest with Soft Echo.” That was surprisingly odd of Donabelle considering she didn’t like being cute and snuggly at all, she mostly tolerated it and accepted Soft Echo because she was too adorable to hate.

Bonnie saw the first prize for that contest and snickered, the puppy was a closet romantic considering all the girly romance graphic novels for various ages one would win from that competition. Shaking her head, she personally was going to fight in the Rose Royale competition for sure. She might not be a martial artist, but Bonnie had the one skill that mattered in a fight and that was not getting hit.

“I’ll join the singing competition, since I really have nothing better to do and it could be interesting. I think I know the perfect song for it too. As a bat you can imagine all the kinds of music I listen to, just not heavy metal.” It was a song Foxglove would dedicate to her new friend Fluttershy; it might even perk the pony up a bit since she was looking a little blue.

“Well I have to get home since you guys already have a place to stay, see you guys tomorrow. Today has been a pretty good day for me.” Ranma threw his left hand in the air and waved back at them as he walked away.

After a while of haggling out who would be doing what at the convention, including getting freebies and handouts which even Fluttershy wanted some of to take back home to Equus with her.

“I wonder if they serve dinner at this Hinata House Apartments place.” Flipping open her phone to make the call for a pickup, Bonnie saw a new message and read it. As she typed out the number to come pick them up she told others what she just read. “Apparently we’re expected for dinner by the residences of the place while we’re staying here in Japan. I don’t know why the robot turtle likes you so much, but it must be good karma on your part Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy shrugged in answer to the statement, she just does good things because they were the right thing to do. How that translates into a free place at an apartment complex and an invite to dinner because a metal turtle gave her cuddle didn’t matter to her. She was just going to accept that Nerima was ridiculous and go with the flow of things.

A minute after Bonnie punched in the number, four larger flying mechanical turtles appeared carrying a carriage in their mouths and they landed before them. Nobody batted an eye at the oddity, much less the fact that a little metal flying turtle squealed and motioned to them to board the carriage when the door on it opened. Everyone in Fluttershy’s group had become accustomed to the strangeness at this point except for Soft Echo who stared at the carriage in wonderment.

The people at the Hinata House Apartments were nice, if a bit strange and more normal than all the stuff seen in Nerima. Though Fluttershy was trying to ignore the fact that Foxglove pointed out that one of the girls was magical and that the naturally occurring biological flying turtle was the oddest thing around that also liked all the newcomers equally. Apparently Tama-chan the ‘flying hot spring turtle’ was a cool dude when everyone who lived here normally thought he was a girl, exception being to the only male resident throughout the whole complex whose name was Keitaro.

None of the regular residents seemed to mind the super smart magical girl name Su Kaolla in their midst that made life interesting by building dangerous robot turtles that had lasers, flamethrowers and rocket launchers. The story was that the Mecha-Tama’s got safer over time despite a few hiccups, some of them had even figure out the miraculous ability of somehow reproducing through mating despite being robots and having no biological reproductive organs whatsoever.

Donnabelle mentioned that the flying robot turtles actually had souls, but none of the human residents believed her despite being an angel demon hybrid puppy with wings that talks. The human residents of this place could even speak turtle, which was a bit ridiculous in consideration to how they could be so narrow sighted about robots actually having souls and the robots even said as much themselves. Other than the small amounts of insane weirdness and high levels of ignorance, they were all relatively normal which made them that much weirder since they were highly accepting of the not so human beings suddenly taking up one of their apartments for free without questioning it.

The next day Fluttershy woke up on the nice soft bed to once again in a familiar position she usually found herself in when she slept with friends and family. Everyone was using her as a pillow; she was cuddling her daughter, Donnabelle was on top of Soft Echo and snuggling both of them, Bonnie was once again snuggled up against her rump and lastly Foxglove was in the crook of her neck soundly sleeping upside down.

It was going to be another long day, at least Fluttershy enjoyed Saturdays or the pony relative term to the off day of the week where everyone took some time off to relax. She shook her body gently and everyone stirred slightly, it took them all a few minutes to get off of her. It felt so nice to be needed and considered comfortable for a good night’s sleep by everyone.

They needed a ride back to the convention center from the all girls apartment complex; they would hopefully be ready for what would be another day of crazy. Finder already had a place to stay for the convention and would likely be too busy helping other people to spend time with them; he did his job with incredible efficiency and Fluttershy had apologized to him for any perceived sleight to his ability to find things.

As she relaxed in the hot spring Flutttershy received a cute little visitor, the little hot spring turtle Tama-Chan was curious about her.

“Hello there, aren’t you a cute little fellow?” The turtle blushed and hovered over to Fluttershy and let her pat him on the head, quite a few of the mechanical turtles also came over to be a bit overly friendly with her.

Even Foxglove managed to get a nice relaxing spot next to the hot spring and was letting the springs steam air out her body of impurities.

The morning would continue to be pleasant throughout breakfast for the group and then they were off for the opening of the convention.

Having arrived early, they waited for the doors to open and with the free passes they would enjoy the day as best they could. It was going to be ten minutes before the doors opened and Fluttershy was getting a little antsy about the amount of people, aliens and what looked like demons gathering.

“Hey Tai, how do you think this convention will turn out and do you think I can finally get biyomon to like me?” A yellow toothy short and stout tyrannosaurus type being with green eyes inquired of his human friend who had a thick mass of brown hair on his head that almost looked like a live chicken was sitting up there.

“Hey calm down Agumon, I’m sure things will turn out great, just so long as someone doesn’t try to start something.” This Tai was apparently laid back about the convention, compared to the small dinosaur creature half his size who was worried. “You just need to keep your cool dude; I think she likes you back.”

At least Fluttershy wouldn’t be the weirdest thing these people have seen. She was possibly with one of the weirdest groups, but not one of the weirdest things here. She didn’t even know why it bothered her to be considered weird; here she’s practically normal compared to all the crazy stuff she saw on the way with the flying turtle carriage ride.

“You, we would like to talk with you!” Someone shouted and everyone turned to two sailor suit women who were immediately pegged by everyone who looked towards them as lesbians, the young girl with them was too young to have a sexual orientation and looked friendlier if slightly embarrassed by the older two. The one pointing into the crowd was a tall woman with short cut blond hair with sapphire colors on her uniform.

“Are you pointing at us? I guess the name Phoenix Wright has become popular lately.” A man wearing a business suit with slicked back spiky hair said with a smile and next to him was a curious girl that looked to be a spirit medium girl.

“No, I’m not pointing at you, I’m pointing at them! That group with the four legged monster among them.” The blonde haired woman said pointed in the general direction of Fluttershy’s group while the man looked entirely downtrodden.

“Do you mean us?” Looking over to Tai and Agumon, they had been joined by a white four legged monster with a red strip of mane that was with a smart looking blue haired scrawny kid with glasses.

“No I’m talking about the group with the alien, the small bat, the crazy dog and the two equine creatures.” Again the blond tried while the other two behind her started cracking up at the situation, it was getting pretty funny to them.

“You can’t possible mean us right?” To the left of Fluttershy’s group was a human who had red and white balls on a belt. With him were two flaming horses, a dog with a strange skull shaped protrusion on its head, a floating red creature with four red and blue tentacle limbs and a strange bat with no eyes and a large nose. “I don’t even know how I got here nor even why these Pokémon specifically are with me, could someone help me get back to Sinnoh? My GPS stopped working for some reason. Where am I even?”

“Okay, just what street am I exactly on?” The blonde after getting a horrible headache finally asked to the spiky haired man from before.

“’Shonen jump Street’ ma’am, it intersects with ‘Everywhere But Here Street’ and ‘Beat Em’ Up Boulevard’. I’m Phoenix Wright by the way, you wouldn’t happen to need a lawyer by any chance would you?” The man was offering to help these magical girls because it seems the beleaguered blonde one was about to do something illegal, like murdering someone in cold blood.

The short haired angry looking blonde woman moved over to the girl in the purple colored clothing similar to the other two while shaking her head and muttering angrily. The girl with the short shoulder length raven hair ended up giving her a comforting hug and the tension in the older woman’s shoulders eased slightly.

“Actually yes, a friend of ours has a pet cat named Luna who is an intelligent being and isn’t exactly a Japanese citizen because of both her parents being aliens, she was born in the country though. Do you think you could help with that?” The beautiful teal haired woman stepped forward to take charge of the situation, because it was already being as inconvenient as it could get, so the woman was taking the opportunity to get legal help for Sailor Moon’ s cat Luna.

“Sure thing, but I’d have to talk with the client first.” Soon this Wright person and the sailor warrior worked out a scheduled meeting with Luna the cat from Mau.

After they were done the teal haired lady walked up to Fluttershy’s group and kneeled down before them.

“Excuse me, but can we please talk? My girlfriend Uranus is a bit angry and she knows she’s not supposed to let her blood pressure get too high, even with magical powers keeping her together.” She waited for a moment and then realized she had made a mistake. “Oh right, I’m Sailor Neptune, that over there is Sailor Saturn and my love Sailor Uranus.”

“How often do people make jokes about her name and are you eventually going to marry Uranus, because I think everyone here has you two pegged as lesbians.” Now Bonnie could see that this situation was humorous in the extreme.

“Yes, I’m going to marry my ‘Anus’, it’s not like I haven’t heard that joke before.” The teal haired woman groused out.

“Whoa, touchy subject huh… have you ever given thought to getting her name legally changed?” It seemed like Donna was never too far behind when it came to working up a rapport with Bonnie.

“Can’t, the Sailor Scouts names were set in stone centuries ago based on the nine planets of this solar system. My love is the one unfortunate enough to end up with being the literal butt of all jokes.” Sailor Neptune sighed sadly and Fluttershy gave her a strained smile. “It’s only now that I’m beginning to question that we’re soldiers reincarnate still running on millennium old rules that got all the other people in the solar system killed except for the people of Earth. The eight other planets and the moon used to be inhabitable by an ancient technologically gifted civilization that my reincarnated form came from.”

“Yeah rules that old that ended up completely wiping eight planets worth of people off the map sounds like they were very helpful or conducive to the survival of civilizations because it got all the idiots killed. So why are you hunting us down like the other five girls did before we dropped a few logic bombs on them?” Turning to see more people gathering and going about their business while they waited for the convention to open, Bonnie turned to Neptune. “Also why are you bothering us specifically, Neptune was it?”

“I would like to know that as well, how exactly did this old civilization end up being destroyed?” Fluttershy liked all the lore of ancient civilizations she was picking up, Star Nomads, Star Warriors, The Chozo and the like. Here was a reincarnate of a long dead civilization, after getting Donnabelle as a traveling companion it was fairly easy to believe.

“Now that I think of it, I think it was hubris and not letting darkness stay balanced with the light in our lives really… you know what, screw it! We’re joining you at the convention, screw all that Crystal Tokyo crap Sailor Pluto keeps going on about!” Thus with Neptune denouncing the old order of the Silver Millennium that got trillions massacred because they let the darkness build up and ignored it for so long.

“You know what Neptune… no… Michiru-chan, you’re right. Screw continuing all that stupidity, I mean really! What’s the point of foresight if Crystal Tokyo happens and forces people to be pure? I’m not going to play a part to mass genocide and continued idiocy where we can’t learn from our pasts, heck I’m betting it all ends in the extinction of humanity anyway because we won’t stop being dumbasses who believe that all the good in the world should be pure.” Sailor Uranus stood proud and marched over to Fluttershy. “Hello my name is Tenoh Haruka, nice to meet you. That’s my girlfriend Kaiou Michiru who I will eventually ask to marry me and that’s our adoptive daughter Tomoe Hotaru. We were going to cause you some trouble and possibly attack you for disrupting the future, but I thought better of it. So what kind of events are they holding here?”

“Um, it’s very nice to meet you Haruka-san, this is my daughter Soft Echo.” Fluttershy might not have known the ramifications of the three sailor scouts suddenly quitting the plans of Sailor Pluto, but she had saved the world’s future population by pure happenstance of asking a single pointed question. She started introducing rest of her friends to the three and passed them the pamphlet of the conventions events.

Author's Note

Nerima got to three of the outers and they gave up on the stupid Utopian dream, thereby Fluttershy saves the world without unintentionally causing its destruction this time. She also saves the worlds population from the Crystal Tokyo events.

It somehow leads to Chibi-usa ceasing to exist unfortunately, but who cares about the one against the billions of people that die? My interpretation is that Usagi intentionally leads to the bad future on purpose because she met her daughter, if she never has her daughter she will never cause the imminent collapse of mankind.

Seriously though why can't she just become her own person instead of what others expect of her? Sure Usagi becomes a princess, but it requires her actions to lead up to a tragedy that leads to even more tragedy and it becomes a horrible downward spiral that started with the destruction of the Silver Millenium. Still it's nice that she wins her hearts desire in the end despite all that.

At this point there's not much dark tag left in this story.

Also in a world of gods Ash Ketchum would have to eventually end up getting teleported to some random dimension eventually by accident, he was just a joke cameo though.

113

Coming up to the doors they were given a group to report to, they were to be checked out by the Spirit Detective League and Fluttershy walked up to the four figures with her group in tow. At this moment Donna sniffed the air and then stared at the group with wide eyes.

“Quick warning, don’t antagonize any of these guys.” Donna was obviously spooked by the four men they came up to; her warning was meant entirely for Bonnie as much as a reminder to herself to not push them too far. The puppy was a master in the matters of detecting danger at least and was taken seriously.

“I’m Urameshi Yusuke; we will be performing our inspections on you to determine whether or not you’ll be a problem for the convention. So who’s going first?” They guy in the green suit seemed to be relaxed and not at all disturbed by the five in front of him. “We need a name, species, the contest you’ll be entering and any pertinent information you wish to divulge. You will also need to answer any other questions we ask or deem important.”

“I am.” Donna said immediately and padded forward to stand before the four men. “My name is Donnabelle, half angel and demon puppy and familiar to one Soft Echo. I’m participating in the cute contest.”

Yusuke nodded and motioned one of the others forward while he looked over the computer.

“I am simply Kurama, we actually don’t have any files on you, can you tell us how exactly your existence is possible?” The man with the long red hair seemed kind, but there was a dangerous air about him.

“It just is and I’m beginning to think there’s a rule in Nerima about not over thinking things, you guys don’t look local to the ‘Insanity Ward’. I have to ask why the human soul doesn’t mind your presence at all despite the fact that you’re fused into it kitsune?” Despite striking a nerve, the kitsune before Donna didn’t say much else when the short one of the four men decided to step in as the kitsune stepped back looking a bit put off.

“I am at peace with myself and what I’ve done, that is all you need to know.” Kurama said calmly despite Donna pointing out the human soul he was fused with as still being active and not overwritten like he had thought. He would personally look into this fact that the puppy told him of later.

“When or how were you born and why are you not in the records of the Underworld or Heaven? Also explain to me why I can’t read any of your minds.” The short guy with the smell of a hellfire about him stepped forward. After a moment he finally deigned to give his name. “I am Hiei.”

“I was born within this last week as was my partner and happen to be a relatively new soul. Anyway, I am the result of the death of a particular demonic dog that’s had a lot of liaisons with an angel dog. Don’t honestly know how that resulted in me, but I carry some of her memories and a small portion of her soul when she passed on from life.” Looking at the three eyed demon in his two visible eyes Donna didn’t back down at his creepy stare. “I may be weak and you could kill me in but a blink of an eye, but there are many different ways to be strong and even the weakest of beings can still pose a threat if given a chance. So I’m just protecting my family’s privacy from being personally violated.”

“She gets a pass from me.” Hiei didn’t have to explain himself as Yusuke nodded, before motioning to the last member of the four.

“Hey there I’m Kuwabara Kazuma, why are you entering the cute competition?” Blunt and to the point the muscular guy with the small red pompadour who called himself Kazuma was the least threatening of the four. Considering that he was the only purely human one among them was saying a lot about how strong he was if he could match up to the other three.

“I would like to ask why you guys are here in return. A hybrid son of some kind of demon lord, a kitsune who’s fused into a human’s soul and body, an inexorably powerful fire demon born of ice maidens so somebody had to have done something forbidden there and a human with enough spirit power that likely dwarfs half the people coming to this convention. It’s a little oddly overkill for security measures; then again this is Nerima so I can understand the need for it.” They all stared at her flatly after she pointed them out and Donna decided to continue on with the actual information. “I have my reasons. I believe that by being cute and adorable with my companion I will get what I want at the end of the contest.”

“Graphic Novels based around romance? Well I’ve heard demons interested in stranger things before, besides you’re not powerful enough to cause too many problems. You’re cleared for the convention.” Yusuke turned to look at Fluttershy and the rest of the group ignoring the blushing Donna. “Next.”

“Jookiba Bonnie, I plan to join the Rose Royale martial arts competition. I’m a genetically created being, so I have wild genetics and can’t be termed as a single species.” Bonnie moved forward this time. “Put me down as a mutt if you have to.”

“It says here you have a rather extensive criminal history from what we have from the Alien Bureau.” Kurama pulled up the data and showed a mug shot of Bonnie on the screen to the group. “I’m actually kind of jealous of what you’ve managed to steal. That’s quite a lot.”

“I’ve been cleared of the charges and haven’t been caught stealing recently. However I will use my abilities freely during the competition. I know some legends of foxes being thieves, so it takes one to know one and I thank you for the compliment to my skills.” Crossing her arms Bonnie coolly looked at the four despite the fact that Donna was wary of them. “I’ve been working on bettering myself despite being genetically programmed to steal for a living.”

“Surprisingly, you’re legally cleared for this. You have a passport to be here and were personally seen to by an Atomic Betty. Okay, who’s next?” Yusuke didn’t seem to like the desk job, but he did seem intrigued by the people he was meeting with. This time Foxglove flew up to them and landed on the desk looking about as shy as Fluttershy was feeling as crowds of people were being slowly cleared by the three other groups.

“I’m Foxglove, a magical bat from New York in America. My home is in Central Park, in a tree. I intend to sing a song during the convention.” The little bat looked up at the four humans with a shy demeanor and Kazuma kneeled down and tickled her under the chin. Frankly it relieved the tension of having to deal with three powerful demons in her midst.

“Ah, isn’t she a cute little thing guys. She reminds me of one of my cats.” Kazuma didn’t seem so scary, but that was because he was a human that Donna had pointed out to Foxglove and humans she could deal with.

“Hmmm… are you a part of any organizations or have a set field of magical expertise?” Hiei was a rather spooky looking humanoid demon. He didn’t look like a very happy person, especially with the katana strapped to his waist. “Also if you have mentor, we would like to know right away.”

“Yes, I’m reserve member of the Rescue Rangers and sometimes hospital aid in the Rescue Aid Society. I’ve also been taking magic lessons from a small friendly troll name Stanley in Central Park who specializes in healing and life magic, he grows a really nice garden with dancing flowers.” After a few minutes of waiting, Foxglove fidgeted a little when Yusuke turned the screen to the little bat showing he image on it. It also showed the Rescue Rangers and even Stanley. “I’m not very powerful. I can do Speech, increasing my own flying strength or offsetting any weight I’m carrying, some magical detection, minor healing and increasing my echo sight. That’s all the notable abilities that I have aside from the ability to channel magic to do small things.”

“You’re all clear ma’am and you do good work, but I have a request. I would like you to eventually introduce me to this Stanley character, his gardening skills are of interest to me.” The seemingly friendly Kurama liked plants and gardening. Given his usual method of attack, that was to be expected as the rose he had behind his ear wasn’t just for show. “We will not hold any of this information for very long if that’s what you’re worried about, just long enough for background checks.”

Foxglove gave a sigh of relief and went to wait with Bonnie and Donna as Fluttershy came forward with Soft Echo. Kurama stared at the Rhizome suit Soft Echo was wearing; it didn’t look like he would comment on it at the moment.

“I’m Shy Flutter; this is my daughter Soft. We’re magical alien ponies; my daughter is part vampire fruit bat which is why she looks like she does and has fangs. Soft will be taking part in the cute contest.” Once again Fluttershy watched as Soft Echo squeaked cutely and earned softened eyes from all the men, even Hiei looked to have softened for a few seconds before he scowled at the filly. “I’ll be entering the story idea contest.”

“You’re cleared already Ambassador ‘Shy’, you’ve got quite a history. We hope you find the convention enjoyable. However we can’t pass your daughter yet since you said she’s part vampire.” Yusuke didn’t bother to question why her daughter was part vampire; he just accepted this after having met ogres in the afterlife. “We need to test her vampirism to see if it’s under control. It doesn’t matter if she isn’t technically a vampire; we still have to test for it. She doesn’t look all too dangerous, so she’ll likely pass and since she’s not giving off an aura of allure we can safely say that she isn’t rigging the cute contest. Hiei, if you will?”

Hiei flickered for a second and then he was holding a blood bag, making Fluttershy look at it questioningly. Obviously there hadn’t been a blood bag anywhere near the security setup and that meant that Hiei was ridiculously fast to have grabbed one from somewhere as she didn’t see any at the other security stations that were checking people through.

Without prompting he opened the blood bag slightly and held it near Soft Echo’s nose, the filly immediately recoiled, gagged and backed away.

“She only sucks on fruit; do you have to test that?” It was just for clarifications sake that Fluttershy asked this. Nodding Hiei closed the bag and disappeared, within seconds he reappeared before Fluttershy holding an apple and he set it down a foot away from Soft Echo who looked at her with big watery eyes. “She won’t take things without permission. Is she allowed to eat it?”

“Well she seems to be very well behaved, so I don’t see why not.” As soon as Yusuke gave the go ahead, Soft Echo was on the apple before anyone could blink and sucking merrily at its juices while curled around it. “Are we sure she isn’t using any allure on us, because that right there is ridiculously cute.”

A moment passed and Fluttershy noted that they were sending silent signals to each other and had probably been doing so quietly all along, after a moment they all nodded.

“You’re daughter is clear to enter the convention, have a fun time and if there’s any trouble don’t be afraid to shout. We can handle all kinds of things.” With the inspection by the Spirit Detective League, Fluttershy was allowed entrance into a wonderland of intrigue.

Fluttershy had the whole convention to write down her story idea; she was given a free pen and notepad to write things down on after visiting the people who were in charge of that event. A ballpoint pen was definitely something Fluttershy wanted to show to Twilight Sparkle, quills and ink wells were a tad messy. Even so she had a small idea of what to write, she needed characters, a goal for the main character and something interesting for the character to do to reach that goal. She would have to submit it within an hour before the convention ended the next day.

It didn’t take them long to meet up with Ranma who was signed up for the one on one tournament. She looked slightly roughed up from the last time she was seen. Her explanation was that he had ran into all his would be fiancés all at once as soon as he got back to the Tendo home, apparently there was a misunderstanding that Ranma was hanging out with two tourists of the female persuasion. Ranma had a really rough life and it was the first time that Fluttershy saw her as a girl, why would anyone attack her for just making friends? It seemed like Ranma suffered a lot of continuous cruelty and abuse and then treated it as if it were a normal thing to experience in everyday life.

Ranma did well in his tournament and very little had went wrong for him, he was dominating the competition. He had even met the cousin of a friend of his whose name was Hibiki Dan who was just as directionally poor as the rest of the Hibiki family, of which Ranma would later explain easily got lost in a room with one door. Hibiki Dan was the inspiration for a character from a popular series of video games; however he fought nothing like that video game character and was actually quite competent in a fight. The only reason he arrived to the fight on time was because of one the family dogs which actually did have a sense of direction that didn’t somehow cause massive spontaneous jumps around the universe or planet.

The announcement for the Rose Royale came up soon after Ranma won the tournament undefeated. Bonnie wanted to win the free for all fight and win the cash prize involved. She however wasn’t alone in entering as several females fantastically familiar with female Ranma got into the large arena.

“I think that they think they’re going to find the girls I was spending time with yesterday. They are going to rough them up because I got anywhere near them, it’s like they assumed the girls I met to be martial artists and they will likely go for Bonnie once her name is called. Gee I wonder why that is?” The red headed female Ranma was positively dripping with sarcasm. “What I have to wonder is if Kuno Kodachi got her poisons into the convention.

Fluttershy looked at all the girls Ranma pointed out were nuisances in his life. Akane the average looking one with an angry temperament who regularly wails on him for being a pervert, Shampoo the large one with purple hair who kissed him as a girl then attempted to end his life over something rather trivial, Ukyo the least active of the girls trying to get him and Kodachi the crazy looking one with the ribbon who has poisoned him enough times that he’s immune to most of them by now.

As a weird twist there was also Shiratori Azusa who was wearing roller skates. Ranma had nothing against Azusa or her mannerisms as she never personally cared about him beyond martial arts figure skating and that was a one off fight, she was a very horrible kleptomaniac though. He doubted she would stay for long after she grabbed something, which she would run off with after naming it.

Quite a few females entered the arena and Ranma knew a few of them and what they were good at, then Bonnie entered the arena and there was a priceless collective flabbergasted expressions on the girls that wanted Ranma to love them. They had not even once expected the girls that Ranma was hanging out with to be aliens, since they never bothered to learn what exactly he was hanging out with as they had immediately accused him of doing something wrong upon walking through the door last night. He had made mention of hanging out with another alien named Lum once before and was happy to have made a female friend that had no interest in him whatsoever since that alien was already in love with someone else.

“Why don’t you get help for all this?” Fluttershy took a glance at Soft Echo snuggling Donna sitting and watching Bonnie stretch out for the match, Foxglove wasn’t there as she was busy practicing her song.

“Don’t you think I’ve tried? No psychologist would come within twenty miles of Nerima.” It was something Ranma couldn’t deal with, having a bunch of girls who thought that they could own him and were basically using the marriage proposals as a way to stake a claim on his person.

“Then why don’t you just leave the abusive environment and go somewhere nicer?” Glancing at the arena, Fluttershy saw that things hadn’t started yet so she returned her gaze to the female Ranma.

“How would I do that? They’d track me down and find me to haul my ass all the way back here to Japan where the cycle would continue.” A forlorn Ranma really wanted to get away from it all.

“You could get abducted by aliens.” It was a good idea to Fluttershy, she knew some ‘aliens’ that could ‘abduct’ Ranma and get him away from this life.

“If you can set that up, I’ll take whatever way out I can get. Still can’t believe I blew up a mountain for Akane, I’m tired of the ungrateful people that gravitate around me in my life with Kasumi as an exception to it all.” It was about time for things to start and the quieted down and looked at the large arena being provided for the Rose Royale; an all out anything goes battle.

It started a bit quickly in just how fast the weaker girls got knocked out of the competition, the Amazon named Xian Pu who’s named sounded suspiciously like Shampoo went directly after Bonnie and whiffed entirely with her strike. After that no one had any idea where Bonnie went as she disappeared from the fight entirely, but she wasn’t listed as out since someone obviously saw her.

The noted speedy demon Hiei was helping referee things since he could keep up with more than one thing at once, he was the only one that actually saw where Bonnie went and said that she was still in it while he was busy pulling injured fighters out of the arena.

Soft Echo was looking to where Bonnie was and she was sitting very still while all the girls eliminated each other, she squeaked at her mother’s friend who was playing hid and seek really well. After the number of girls narrowed down to only a few left, that’s when Bonnie came out swinging.

It was amazing how well Bonnie dealt with each one of Ranma’s forced marriage proposals. Ukyo was taken down gently with a swift blow to the head, she had tried to throw a spatula or use a sack filled with gunpowder and tempura flakes, but they were missing. It was soon found out that the gunpowder loaded sack would be used against Shampoo at point-blank range with dangerous efficiency by Bonnie, injuring the Amazon enough to put her out of the fight without any permanent damage dealt. Akane, who was already worn out on taking out the weaker girls, was subsequently taken down with a flying kick to the head that was propelled by the same explosion.

Kodachi was one of the last few standing. She tried to use her ribbon only to find that it was missing and she saw Azusa running off with it away from the arena, so she tried to switch to the spiked bowling pins and razor edged hula hoop only to find that they were all missing. She was suddenly hit in the with one of her own bowling pins which sent her stumbling a bit, she shook her head and tried to find one of her hidden poison stashes she had on her. She only found out that every weapon she had was missing including all her poisons and she was utterly useless in a fight without her rhythmic gymnastics weapons.

Bonnie wasn’t much of a martial artist, but she was the smartest one in the battle and just took the fight to Kodachi who couldn’t defend herself. Anyone who relied on weapons alone was entirely helpless against Bonnie who could just steal them out of the hands of combatants without getting caught.

In the end Bonnie won with ruthless tactics. She couldn’t have possibly overpowered all of her opponents, but she could out think anyone who used brawn or pinpoint attacks to win a fight. The only ones who had any idea of when Bonnie had stolen the stuff in the middle of the chaos were Fluttershy, Soft Echo, Hiei and Ranma.

“Well the next event should be the singing contest with Foxglove, you were quite amazing out there Bonnie. All the fighting was so scary; I don’t know how you could get into an arena with all those people. They were bigger than you and you had a whole audience watching you’re every movement… well when they could see you that is.” It was a scary thought for Fluttershy to get out there in front of so many people watching you and with so many people that were bigger or stronger than you were. It had been actually fun to watch, though Fluttershy still didn’t condone violence.

“As that old crank from the Star Wars movie would say, size matters not in the slightest.” With that Bonnie and Ranma followed Fluttershy over to the concert area and heard several amazing songs. “Then again all my opponents were mentally unarmed, so it was a tad unfair.”

When it was finally Foxglove’s turn she marched bravely out in front of the audience with a microphone in wing and cleared her throat, before the music started playing. It sounded particular peppy even if it sounded like someone was having a bad day to start with.

Fluttershy lightened up with a smile at Foxglove’s singing, the lyrics made it sound like a party she’d want to be a part of.

Author's Note

Hinted at in the previous chapter, the characters of Yu Yu Hakusho everyone. Apologies, for I wrote this chapter half asleep, I sorely need my twelve hours.

Waiting for that other horseshoe to drop? Horseshoes are supposedly lucky right? Well unless it falls on your head, then you'd just get stuck with killer robots again.

The song Foxglove goes for below.

It's all about having a bad day, then smiling at the end of it because you know you're going to party the blues away.

114

Foxglove’s song had been rather nice and uplifting for a whole lot of people, the bat really could sing in Japanese well enough. The one line that really got to Fluttershy was the one about ‘smiling despite knowing that things were bad and likely getting worse’, it kind of touched a lot of people in the audience who had lives just as hectic as Ranma’s in the area of Nerima which was always plagued by chaos. It surprised a lot of people that she didn’t just screech a lot and that being a bat did not make her bad at singing or tone death, in fact her tone was really quite spot on.

Fluttershy was a bit upset that Foxglove didn’t really win, but she was surprised at how good Agumon and a cute little pink bird named Biyomon did. They were strange creatures, but just as viable in the contest and sung a remarkable duet that barely topped Foxglove’s amazing performance and aerial dance routine with the microphone. The creature known as Agumon looked embarrassed about winning while the pink bird cuddled the short yellow dinosaur.

Shaking her head Fluttershy started writing things down, the contest she was in didn’t need her to focus on it all that much and if she for whatever reason won and couldn’t accept the prize she could have someone accept it for her. So she wrote down Tendo Kasumi as the one to receive the prize if she wasn’t available to receive it. It was rather nice of the convention people to let you give your prize to whoever you wanted to, Fluttershy didn’t know if she would be around to receive the prize because it would take a month or two for the grand or second place prizes to actually be finished whatever that meant, but the winners would be announced before the convention ended.

What Fluttershy was writing was the concept of her story at the moment. She was doing this while she and her friend wandered around picking up free souvenirs from around the convention, martial arts T-shirts, free manga sample from the anime portion of the convention and even a little sidetrack into the science fiction part to see some of the stranger aliens that were huge science fiction fans despite being capable of interstellar travel. She guessed humans were really quite inventive when it came to imaginative stories and stuff like that, as much as Japan was at coming up with really odd stuff thus far.

“What a haul, Jackpot!” An old looking gnome like creature yelled as Fluttershy’s group and Ranma walked by a machine that sold used underwear.

“Well at least I know Happosai isn’t going to be bothering me today. The letch is actually one of the best martial artists here, but he’s a huge pervert.” Ranma just shook his head ruefully as he watched Happosai danced as he spent more money on the machine, it was like the machine was designed with him in mind.

Again Japan came up with really odd stuff, stuff which Fluttershy didn’t understand or have inkling as to why it existed. Like why would the strange little man thing be so highly interested in worn clothing, aside from it being unsanitary maybe Fluttershy was missing some cultural significance there. However Ranma mentioning that she knew the guy gave her pause, nobody knew what had happened to the fiancés after Bonnie had beaten them. Although with the Sumo Ninjas nearby, one could only guess.

Thinking about what else to write down as a story idea, Fluttershy was led to a massive food court where many people congregated. It was time for lunch and she could flesh out her idea some more over some Japanese cuisine. So far she had a character and an idea as to what they would be doing and how that character would go about solving problems seemed oddly familiar to her. Her character wasn’t a strong or courageous hero; it was a simple pony that solved problems with empathy or great willpower despite a constant healthy fear of a lot of things.

“You might not have won Foxy, but you gave them a great show out there. The strange dinosaur and bird duo almost didn’t top your performance. So what was the prize for second place the singing contest again?” Bonnie was eating some fried dango on a stick a rather sweet and slightly salty snack food that was quite delectable and usually seen as desert, looking to Fluttershy she could see the pony using a fork for her large plate of vegetables. “At least the convention people thought of everything when it came to people who can’t use chopsticks.”

“Well a cash prize, which I can use to make purchases through mail order. The other thing is a signed photograph from some famous singer.” Shrugging, the little bat smiled at them, it was fun for Foxglove at the very least. “I’ll have proof that I actually did something like this when I tell the story to my friends. I wonder if Monterey knows anyone in the area. I’ll be sure to ask him when I get home; do you think I can get a ride there?”

“Of course you can get a ride Foxglove. I think Betty and Samus are open to the idea of helping us and not just because of my ambassador status. They are just a genuinely nice people.” It was nice to have lunch among friends, there were still quite a few other events Fluttershy or the others weren’t participating in. The story idea event was one that had a grand prize she didn’t care much for, but she didn’t want to be the only one not participating in some event. She blushed slightly at her excitement to see the rest of the convention without interference. “So what are we going to do next? Oh listen to me; I’m actually not being very shy despite so many people being around me.”

“Hey, you’re surrounded by friends; you’ve got no reason to be shy with us around.” After a moment Donna actually felt a bit shocked with herself for admitting that she was Fluttershy’s friend. Sure she was the snuggly little ticks familiar, but that didn’t mean she had to be friendly with anyone else. She continued to read her graphic novel about romantic artificial intelligences popping out of the computers and breaking reality. Feeling something bump up against her, the puppy turned to Soft Echo who gave her a bright smile while squeaking. “Alright already, yes I’m your puppy, I get it. Now stop trying to give me and everyone a heart attack through sheer unleaded adorable like your mother does on a regular basis.”

“Um, what do you mean?” For the life of her Fluttershy had no idea what Donna meant.

“Look behind you Sweet Cheeks.” It had been happening with a large relatively large and alarming frequency; Bonnie honestly thought Fluttershy would have noticed by now.

The pony looked behind her and saw a person stopped to look at Soft Echo and her. After a moment the person started clutching at their heart and fell to the ground. Within seconds Hiei arrived with a defibrillator and shocked the person back to life.

“Do I have to follow your group around all day? This thing is almost out of battery power and it’ll take me a whole minute to get a new battery.” Hiei muttered angrily, he had to revive seventy three people because some who saw Fluttershy’s group couldn’t help but have heart failures from the concentrated cuteness.

Soft Echo was cute on her own with her soft pink fur, choppy looking red hair, small body and large bright purple eyes, Donna had her own level of cute going when she was in the midst of reading a graphic novel at the table, Fluttershy and Foxglove didn’t need an explanation as they were both shy beautiful creatures and then there was Bonnie as she was created to look disarmingly cute and cuddly.

“Excuse me; is this the group with a Soft Echo and Donnabelle, as in the ones taking place in the cute contest later on?” The tall rather average looking man with short brown hair and the letters ‘Jr’ on his forehead approached the five eating beings and the one gender flipping human at the table.

“Yes, that would be my daughter and her puppy. Is there something wrong?” With all the heart attacks that she had accidentally been causing Fluttershy almost expected to be thrown out of the convention, she hadn’t realized that her group had been doing something so horrible without really trying.

“No, nothing’s wrong, it’s just that they won first place in that contest and don’t have to actually show up. Whoever sticks around is fighting for second place though; the reason for this is because we don’t want everyone in the building to die from them actively acting cute for an audience.” The man set down a full stack of manga and the cash prize. “Here’s the grand prize for the contest, please don’t show up on stage for the safety of everyone at the convention. We don’t want a massacre by cuteness, though it wouldn’t be a bad way to die. At least if I die I won’t get stuck with the paperwork and it’d all go to Yusuke and Botan.”

“I love you so much my little tick.” Donnabelle immediately pulled Soft Echo into an affectionate hug for winning her those graphic novels without even trying, this was unfortunately too much for the man and he had a heart attack much to Fluttershy’s visible worry.

“Damn it all, stop doing that to people!” Hiei yelled as he disappeared with a flicker as the defibrillator had lost its charge entirely when he tried to rub the two pads together.

Fluttershy immediately spilled out some water and created a cloud, she split it in half and wrapped it around her two hooves and started rubbing the bits of cloud together and doing what Rainbow told her to do to get the cloud gloves to charge up. While she was doing this Bonnie quickly got the man’s chest exposed seeing where Fluttershy was going with this. Nodding her thanks to Bonnie, she quickly slammed both hooves into the man’s chest and he started gasping for air and took one long look at Fluttershy’s worried and adorable visage and went into a second heart attack.

Thankfully the man wouldn’t go into a third heart attack after Hiei came back to revive him and scared the wits out of him with a dark pressuring force, using his very own intent to counter the cheery cutesy nature of Fluttershy and her friends.

“Thank you Hiei. Sorry, about all this and for worrying you. I hope you understand my reasoning for vacating the area swiftly.” The man stood up and staggered away slightly smoking from being zapped harshly twice. Hiei just stood by shaking his head sourly.

Fluttershy was almost done putting notes down on the note pad; she could turn it in real soon and would do so once she was sure her idea was a solid one and she had several small stories written down that would go with the main overarching story idea. She was going to still watch the cute contest, even if she wouldn’t be seeing Soft Echo and Donna on stage for health related reasons. Apparently Mr. Koenma really didn’t like the idea of so many people dying of heart failures in one spot and Fluttershy wasn’t exactly happy with the idea of it happening either.

The contest was definitely its namesake; many a cute creature went up to do something adorable to win the crowd over for second place. Foxglove, Fluttershy and Soft Echo liked it, but Donna didn’t and just kept her nose in a graphic novel and Bonnie just lazed about not really interested in the competition.

The flying turtle Tama-chan had joined this particular event and was winning over a lot of the crowd with his antics. Fluttershy cheered for the flying turtle since she was friends with him.

While Ranma just shrugged at some of the things he saw, he had disappeared entirely when a critter named Gatomon took the stage with a teenage girl name Kari. Gatomon looked like a bipedal cat that wore gloves, so Ranma’s disappearance wasn’t hard to understand.

After the cute event was over with, Fluttershy and others wandered around looking over the other events into the evening. Dancing, martial arts tea ceremony, design your own robot contest and things of that nature were happening in all three parts of the convention. At some point Fluttershy turned in her entry for the story idea contest and quickly forgot about it, the winner would be declared tomorrow at the end of the convention.

Upon coming up to a stand Fluttershy saw the blue robot thing she had seen twice before and decided to meet with him. If nothing more than for curiosities sake since she had wondered what he was selling at the convention, speaking of selling stuff Fluttershy had quite a small stipend from Bonnie winning the Rose Royale and was looking to spend it before they had to leave Japan. Fluttershy really didn’t have much use for Japanese money and was not above buying souvenirs for her friends.

“Um hello there I’m Shy Flutter, but I prefer Fluttershy what do you have here?” It looked like some kind of polish with a rock label on it was the sign for this booth and Fluttershy was curious about it, she wanted to get Maud a souvenir because she was going to Miss Pearl a lot if what she’s been hearing is correct.

“Hello Fluttershy, I’m Doraemon the gadget cat robot of the future! What you see before you is Pet Polish. If you have a pet rock, this will make them mobile and more exciting. Comes with a free leash, the rocks will start eating sand and drinking water once applied and the average active lifespan is expected to be twenty to five hundred years depending on how well you take care of them. If immortal that could become indefinitely.” His futuristic spiel and selling some of the more easily acquirable gadgets on him was something Doraemon was doing for his friend, he had to pay for a couch destroyed by a blob monster and needed the money. “It is a good idea to not let your rock overfeed. So would you like to buy a one use tube of it?”

Fluttershy looked to Bonnie who was the one who understood the currency better than she did, she wondered if rock farms would have been more popular if the rocks were actually mobile. She knew Pinkie would have liked a pet rock back when she lived on her boring old farm, which actually made her think of Maud Pie again.

“Does this stuff actually even work?” In answer to Bonnie’s question, Doraemon pulled out a cage with a barking rock that ran around inside of it. He even took a regular rock out and demonstrated by polishing it in front of them; they watched as it came to life and started to playfully wrestle with the other rock when he put it in the cage. “Yeah, I guess it works. We’ll take one.”

“I know this might be a touchy subject and I’m sorry if it is so you don’t have to answer, but what happened to your ears if you’re supposed to be a cat?” The robot just smiled wanly at Fluttershy making her wonder if she might have asked the wrong thing.

“It’s a long story, it involves robotic mouse chewing them off and then having them removed entirely from my body. I got over it and I’m doing better nowadays, I can even talk about it and laugh when I look back on what happened.” The blue and white cat robot without ears just gave a bright smile and waved at them as they walked off. “Can you please do me a small favor? When you go outside, tell the green haired lady to ‘stop living in the past, it’s a new generation’. Also tell her to look for a Time Lord over the next few days and mention that things will work themselves out from there. Anyway, it’s been nice meeting you again Fluttershy; you ponies are always so friendly. Oh and tell Applejack and Rainbow Dash I said ‘hello’ when you see them!”

Fluttershy looked over her shoulder at Doraemon’s rather odd statement, what was odder was that he somehow had known who Applejack and Rainbow Dash were. She never recalled seeing anything like Doraemon on planet Equus before.

“I’m so glad they fixed the bugs when it came to time traveling, at least the Time Lord eventually stopped causing demon outbreaks.” Doraemon’s comment went unheard as he continued to try and sell his inconsequential odds.

Yawning as she walked out of the convention that evening with saddlebags loaded with souvenirs, Fluttershy came upon a familiar trio arguing with a tall lady with green hair down to her knees wielding a staff. That lady reminded her of Celestia and Luna in stature, she also gave off this strange air that said she was quite ancient. She looked to be in a rather heated argument with Haruka.

“Look Pluto, we’re going to continue fighting Youma, but darn you if you think we’re going to carry out your stupid plans Ms. I can be in two places at once!” Haruka and Sailor Pluto had been at it since they walked out the convention doors to be met by the watcher herself.

“We are supposed to be allies united under a…” Sailor Pluto stopped upon sight of Fluttershy who walked up to her with her group.

“I’m very sorry for interrupting. Somebody said that you have to stop living in the past and that it’s a new generation. Oh and look for a Time Lord over the next few days, everything should work itself out from there.” When you met strangers that seem to know what your species were and asked a favor of you while knowing the names of your friends, Fluttershy figured you may as well do it. Besides he asked nicely and Fluttershy was now waiting one the flying turtle escort service to carry them back to their free apartment.

Tama-chan floated up next to the group standing around and started to get playful with Soft Echo, who galloped around chasing the flying turtle having forgotten that she herself could fly. Donnabelle was still perusing her haul which she had her own sack for, Bonnie was checking her Valkyrian laser blasters and Foxglove was idly hanging from a nearby lamp post snapping at insects that flew too close to her.

Watching from the sidelines was a confused Pluto, she didn’t have any inkling as to why someone would tell her that, but the word Time Lord sent a shiver down here spine and she immediately warped herself back to the time gate. She might not be able to view the possible futures at the moment, but she could still see the past that already happened. She was Sailor Pluto the defender of the time gate and someone just made an implied threat on her domain.

Incidentally Sailor Pluto had left Haruka, Michiru and Hotaru to their own devices since she disappeared on them, the course Pluto was trying to divert the time stream back to seemed to of have set itself in stone right then and there. It was sad to say that the Sailor Warrior of Time was her own worst enemy and she did in fact meet a lord of time, it turned out pretty well in the end.

“Is the c-c-cc-demon gone?” A very nervous Ranma hung from a different post than the one Foxglove took to.

“It’s okay Ranma; no cat will hurt you while we’re around. Come on down, please?” Fluttershy managed to coax her down in time for the Mechanical Flying Turtle Carriage to arrive. Japan didn’t seem too overly hectic, even with the weirdness factor at an all time high. “Come with us, you can get a nice dinner and a good night’s sleep away from all your troubles. You just need to stay a girl for a while since our apartments has a no boy’s policy.”

“Thanks for helping me out guys, so this is what real friendship feels like. Aside from Kasumi and Ukyo I mean. Though Ukyo tends to have ulterior motives behind her friendly exterior.” The redhead really didn’t mind being a girl anymore, he had accepted the fact that he would never be rid of the curse until Fluttershy’s group came and his hope was sadly rekindled anew.

Hinata House Apartments was quite welcoming of the half time girl and even listened to her story, they didn’t think ill of Ranma for naturally being a boy with a curse. Everyone at the girls’ only apartment complex had really mellowed out from their wilder days and didn’t really enforce the no men allowed rule all too hard given who their landlord was.

“So, that’s good. At least we’ll have a clear shot at getting to Hawaii tomorrow. How soon can dad personally come for us? Okay got it. Hey Fluttershy, are we going back to the convention tomorrow for the second day?” Bonnie continued to chat with one of her relatives over the phone after receiving a positive response from Fluttershy who decided to make her own call.

“Discord, how are things back on Equus?” After a while she was given an answer.

“Why I do believe in friendship a lot more than I used too, as friendship is positively chaotic! Also torturing invading aliens has never been so much fun. Don’t worry I’m not doing anything too horrible to them; I’m just trying to make them leave and trust me they really want to. Anyway that Star Nomad of yours recently awoke today, he’s quite the chaotic little fur ball and he’s really good with a banjo. He’s having too much fun here, he said it would take him about a week or more to reach you and I’ve already told him there were some people who needed a ride to Earth. He’s agreed to take our dear friend Pearl with him.” Discord was speaking so fast it almost sounded like he got into Celestia’s ice-cream cake stores. “Please do be a dear and pick up something nice for me, unless you’re keeping it a secret and already have something. Maybe a little bobble head toy souvenir that will agree with whatever I say?”

Fluttershy could only smile at Discord’s childishness; a cute bobble head toy wouldn’t be too far out of their price range.

Author's Note

One last chapter on the convention which will be the last action packed chapter. At least Fluttershy has been given some reprieve.

115

It was Sunday and Fluttershy felt okay about this day considering nothing had happened to her on Saturday, plus the convention had powerful security people. She was waiting outside the convention place for the doors to open after a nice breakfast at the Hinata House Apartments.

They had left almost all the stuff they had gained at the convention yesterday at the apartment, today would be a quick runaround and possible get a bobble head for Discord who had hinted that he wanted one.

Ranma was sticking around for the fun events and was waiting with them. He got a different apartment for one night, but paid for it because he didn’t have mechanical turtles that liked him quite like they loved Fluttershy.

“There you are!” At least this time Sailor Moon wasn’t calling Fluttershy a fiend and Luna the cat was noticeably nowhere to be found. The four other magical girls with her looked anywhere but at her. “I would say in the name of the moon I will punish you, but I’m more curious what that is that you’re wearing?”

“Oh this, it’s called the Lunar Locket. I found it in New York and won it playing ‘the quiet game’ and it came into my possession. Oh and I met some really nice people who knew about it, though I don’t think they understood exactly what it was fully capable of.” Fluttershy still didn’t feel like it was safe for Soft Echo to wander around in Nerima without protection, besides her filly looked really cute in the Rhizome suit. Her precious little flower that needed cuddles every now and then.

“Why what does that and the other thing you’re wearing do?” Sailor Moon really hadn’t seen the locket before or had really paid much attention to it before she had gone into her love and justice spiel the previous time; she also noticed that Fluttershy was wearing the translator.

“It’s a translator, I am from a different planet entirely and can’t naturally speak you’re language. I can’t even read anything on this planet. I’m thankful to have such good friends as Bonnie and Donnabelle here.” Not that Fluttershy liked the idea that they were looking like they were raring for a fight, Bonnie noticeably had her hands near her blaster pistols and Donna was idly drawing a glowing circles in the air while pretending to entertain Soft by making the several glowing circles look like a smiley face. “Anyway this Lunar Locket allows me to control the moon and…”

“Okay that’s definitely evil, Mars fire ignite!” The girl in the red colored sailor suit clasped her hands together to send a ball of fire at Fluttershy, Ranma was about to jump in when Bonnie grabbed his leg and shook her head no. Soft Echo was pulled back by Donna and Foxglove stayed out of the way having had it explained to her before what the locket did.

Sailor Mercury stared at her computer screen and watched as all the magical energy absorbed into the locket, some of the raw magical energy went to Fluttershy, the elemental energy was completely absorbed and then a percentage of the energy shot back out and struck Hino Rei with undeniable accuracy despite her attempts to dodge her own attack taking her down with a blow to the face. It was also to note that the reaction had not been controlled by Fluttershy whatsoever and the Lunar Locket did that all on its own, the locket also had more energy than any of the sailor soldiers had combined and a lot the energy it held was solar energy.

“Um… guys… I don’t think it’s a good idea to attack her, she’s not exactly at fault for...” Sailor Mercury otherwise known as Mizuno Ami sighed when Sailor Jupiter started up her attack which was firing lightning. If what she saw on her computer screen was right, an attack like that would backfire spectacularly and hit them all. Oh and her element of water would make her get hurt twice as hard by such an attack, this was a pretty bad situation for Ami since she wouldn’t be able to stop Kino Makoto’s in time.

“Take this, sparkling wide pressure!” As Sailor Jupiter began her attack by building up an electrical charge, the pony reacted to this in a startlingly calm manner.

Fluttershy slowly took out the container of water she always had on hoof from her saddlebag poured some of the water out into her other hoof immediately creating a cloud, then she stashed her water container away and held the cloud out in front of her to catch the magical attack within the magically formed cloud.

“You know, I’m kind of astonished that you did that so calmly.” Bonnie had known things would be fine the second she pulled out the water. To think Ranma and the gathered crowd just stood there staring dumbly at the little cloud that stopped Sailor Jupiter’s attack cold.

“Oh I’m actually quite scared they’re going to continue attacking me, but I would prefer it if we could settle this peacefully.” Turning to the roiling cloud before her she tapped the bottom of it and sent a bright streak of lightning into the sky. She pulled back her hoof while wincing slightly. “As I was saying before I was rudely interrupted, the Lunar Locket also absorbs energy and reflects a percentage of it back. I can sometimes control it with enough focus.”

“I can confirm without a doubt that she did not actively attack Sailor Mars and she prevented Sailor Jupiter from harming us. Besides that, didn’t we say we were going to give her a chance after Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Saturn called us telling us that they found a decent lawyer for Luna?” The two girls looked sheepish as Sailor Mercury took to standing beside Fluttershy while glaring at them. “Besides she doesn’t have a scrap of demonic energy in her and she’s not evil or she would have done something with the moon already. Though this would really begin to explain that one time the moon eclipsed the sun randomly, would you have happened to be on this planet a year or so ago?”

“Um, no, I’ve only been here for a week counting the fact that I was in a crash landing last Monday. Apparently this locket is among one of many mystical things called Shen Gong Wu that keep getting scattered around the planet, the xiaolin dragon warriors were nice enough to let me keep it.” Fluttershy took cover behind Sailor Mercury since she didn’t seem to be all too willing to attack her. “I’m Shy Flutter by the way, nice to meet you um…”

“Sailor Mercury, but call me Ami.” The girl squatted down and held a hand out to Fluttershy who shook it. “See, she’s not inherently evil nor does she have an evil plot, do you guys honestly think these five and the center of Nerima’s Wrecking Crew are really up to anything? The filly doesn’t look the least bit dangerous and we’ve actually seen what dangerous is like!”

“I swear, I’ll never live being the center piece of destruction down. Despite all the giant robots that are present around here knocking down half the city every other day when my so called friends aren’t.” Ranma’s reputation always had a tendency to precede him by a mile, of course none of his friends or he had to pay for the damages caused by their antics and that was thanks to the Nerima Construction Crew.

“That’s because you’re humans and they are giant robots, the fact that you can knock down walls and buildings is a bit more notable than a giant machine doing it.” It was true and Donna wanted to point that out, giant robots’ knocking down buildings was always going to be a thing. It was why there was so much manga dedicated to giant robot fights. Currently the puppy was lazily perusing Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure; she only brought one graphic novel with her and needed the space in her carrying sack that was currently in Fluttershy’s right hoof saddlebag.

“Hey the dog has a point… you do kind of make an impression by knocking down buildings to the point of infamy even in Juban. I’m Sailor Venus by the way, call me Minako.” Sailor Venus was willing to stand down even if Sailor Moon wasn’t; she had a strict policy against hurting children. Attacking the puppy and the filly would have been cruel to her; the puppy seemed highly disinterested in performing wantonly evil acts.

It was around the time the EDF soldiers, the Nerima Martial Arts Police and the Spirit Detective League arrived along with the Japanese equivalent of MIB from the Alien Bureau. Yusuke walked up to the Sailor Moon having watched her seem to look put off by all of her friends actions.

“Sailor Moon huh? Are these magical girls bothering you ambassador?” Yusuke was not usually one for trying to push home a point outside of combat, but in this situation he would make an exception by calling the sailor suited magical girls out on attacking someone who’s an ambassador of her species.

“No Urameshi-san, the situation is okay and no one got seriously hurt.” It was a correct statement as Fluttershy watched Sailor Mars get back to her feet with Sailor Jupiter’s help.

“She’s an ambassador?” Sailor Moon blinked at that, she looked worriedly at the pony.

“Yes, first contact ambassador of the pony race apparently who is visiting Earth on a mission of good will for a friend of hers. She’s helped a lot of people. If anyone knew you were stupid enough to continue pursuing a course of action in attacking an innocent such as her, you’d bring a lot of galactic law enforcers down on your head, not to mention everyone here.” Tapping his foot Kurama wasn’t happy with these magical girls bumbling into the Nerima area to seek out someone as friendly and mostly innocent as Fluttershy. She still gave those people heart attacks after all. These girls had a huge and rather completely understandable bias against youma’s; it still wasn’t an excuse for attacking Fluttershy’s group.

“Right well… oh look it’s Uranus and the others!” Sailor Moon wanted to divert all attention away from the fact that she had almost caused the worst kind of international incident imaginable.

Fluttershy’s ears twitched and she could hear many screaming people running from the area as Sailor Uranus, Neptune and Saturn arrived looking around with worry.

“What’s all the screaming about?” Fluttershy looked behind them and two blocks away turning the corner, was a vast number of what looked to be blonde haired robots with solid red glowing eyes marching down the street and among them was a throne being carried. “Oh please don’t tell me those are…”

“Fluttershy, at this point I’m not surprised in the slightest.” Shaking her head in a sad manner, Bonnie looked on at the army of robots. “You always did have a problem with attracting danger, especially in the form of a mechanical persuasion with the inclination for causing pain and or injury to the extreme manner of eventually causing death. Yes, they’re killer robots.”

“Oh dear, that’s not good. I actually know what those things are. Why would anyone build more of them?” Everyone turned to Foxglove who noticed that the spotlight was suddenly on her, she became rather shy at the attention. “They’re Bebe robots, once made by one Dr. Drakken who was once one of Kim Possible’s villains. Thankfully he’s retired, but his most dangerous inventions always turned out to always be robots in some way. Those are his robots and if they are running on the same programming code he used, there’s a ninety nine percent chance that’ll they’ll turn on whoever built them depending on whether or not they are a complete idiot. If it was the most recent version of Bebe robot, they would have immediately considered their creator an idiot for even thinking of rebuilding them. So someone must have gotten a hold of the blueprints and the older coding.”

“Saotome you’re foul sorcery will end today with my terracotta army supporting me you will not know victory, For I the Blue Thunder will finally free the tree born red headed kettle girl and the beautiful tigress Akane from you’re clutches!” The strange man waving around the wooden sword shouted from his perch on the chair.

“So let’s see, the biggest idiot in the world creates a massive army of robots that are prone to flipping out on their creator.” Even Ranma could see where this was all going. “This isn’t going to end well at all is it? Not only do we have to protect all the civilians from Kuno’s idiocy, but we also have to save him from these things when they turn on him.”

“I should quickly mention something before this guy decides to have them attack everyone in the vicinity. The robots can move at super speeds and can extend parts of their bodies, however they can’t move side to side very well at high speeds since they’re mostly good at moving forward only.” At least Foxglove knew something of the Bebe’s, it reminded her of Rescue Ranger lessons in defeating robotic antagonists armed with bananas. It was a really weird lesson, but a highly informative one nonetheless. Thankfully the robots didn’t have bananas.

“Can we do this another time Kuno?” Ranma shouted out to the guy in the hopes that he would not have the robots attack everyone.

“No, you have gathered you’re armies and now I have my own, attack them my warriors!” Kuno Tatewaki pointed his wooden sword forward towards the shrinking mass of people, the robots started vibrating and then the mass of them shot forward at insane speeds.

Kuno Tatewaki was well known to the Martial Arts Police, which is why they started moving every civilian into the convention center while those who could fight stayed right where they were while the Martial Arts Police would always act as the final line of defense. As usual the Martial Arts Police were not capable of handling such powerful foes.

The present EDF soldiers started opening fire immediately as all the robots rushed forward at high speeds, their slightly futuristic weapons put quite a few holes in the Bebe Horde that was bearing down on them and they didn’t falter one bit. One in particular was a woman in some fancy army with a jetpack who crouched and pulled the trigger on her weapon as the first hundred or so robots were just about reached her. A flash of arcing lighting tore through the horde with one pull of the trigger. That person immediately took to the air and started firing hundreds of lasers beams down at the robots.

“I am Bebe.” One of the robots pronounced as it reached an average EDF soldier and was about to punch through his torso only to be sliced to pieces by a sword being wielded by Sailor Uranus.

“Yeah well, you’re just a hunk of junk now!” Ever since Sailor Uranus said screw it to Sailor Pluto and Sailor Moon she felt free to not stand around announcing her attacks like an idiot and just did them instead of doing a slow charge up while you’re enemies stood by waiting for you to do it. In this case she didn’t think the enemies were stupid enough to wait for them to get their acts in gear, she swung her glowing sword and fired a crescent beam of energy through a mass of robots. She proceeded to block another one preventing it from wrapping it’s extending arm around her.

A blast of energy erupted taking out another high speed Bebe from getting Uranus while she dealt with the one in front of her, Neptune was immediately by her side firing off blasts of energy from a mirror. It didn’t take long for Sailor Jupiter, Venus and Mars to join in as the magical artillery they were known for being.

Fluttershy shied away towards the convention center with Soft Echo and Foxglove. While Donnabelle took to the air and started flinging glowing razor edged halos at the robots, Bonnie was on the street dodging and shooting with the EDF soldiers who not only held their ground but managed to keep the Bebe’s at bay with their combined firepower alone and there were only about ten EDF people at the convention.

In the middle of the action was Hiei darting between robots and bullet at speeds faster than both could move. Kurama was using a whip made from the rose he had on him to keep them off the EDF soldiers. Kazuma was wielding a sword of pure energy to create some kind of vacuum hole before slashing at the air to send the robots flying back out of the vacuum as deadly projectiles. Even Yusuke had a talent for dealing with the robots as he fired massive amounts of small beams through them all in a shotgun blast.

Through all that Fluttershy noticed that one of the robots went down when it ran into a rock knocked into the air by an explosion. It fell over with a hole in its torso despite the rock not having much momentum, but it did have inertia on the other hoof. That caused a chain reaction among the other robots that fell and tripped while moving at high speeds as well causing a domino effect that would continue to work against the robots. It gave Fluttershy an idea that would definitely help with all this.

“Foxglove will you be safe here on your own? I can make things easier for everyone, without having to put myself in any great danger.” Looking to the cloudy sky, Fluttershy nodded to herself and dragged the cloud that she still had with her up into the air. “Come on Soft, I want to teach you something!”

“Where are you going?” In the middle of a battle no less, at least Foxglove thought she had a very good reason. Soft Echo haphazardly flapped her way into the air after her mother and actually managed to gain some altitude, she had obviously been practicing.

“To make it rain of course, they aren’t protected against inertia when they move fast! Though that doesn’t stop them entirely, it will give everyone fighting an advantage.” It was a good thing to Fluttershy and everyone involved that Drakken had never considered super speedy robots were weak against rain; they weren’t made of tough alien materials and were still proven to be quite destructible.

Flying high into the sky Fluttershy started performing a rain dance in the sky with a little help from Soft Echo, while everyone back on the ground was struggling to hold off the hundreds of killer robots that were set to attack innocent civilian and protector alike. This reminded her of what she did back on Rhizome. She still felt bad about having left behind two infirmed friends; she wished them well as she set about helping those who needed it.

Soft Echo was following in Fluttershy’s hoof steps by gathering clouds and sticking them into one really big one above the area, she didn’t like the unfriendly red eye things since her mother definitely didn’t. It seemed they were doing something like making a rainbow. Oh, that would be really neat! Rainbows were really pretty.

“Now jump on the cloud, like this.” Fluttershy had taken the last three minutes to build up this storm and she hoped it actually did something helpful. She leapt up and stomped all four of her hooves down on the cloud and Soft Echo followed playful by bouncing around on top of the soft fluffy clouds.

Below them the clouds started rumbling, but it didn’t sprinkle any rain. They were soon joined by a purple puppy that looked at them with an eye raised and it took her a moment to figure out what they were doing, she smiled slightly and started gathering angelic energy to cool down the clouds and then she started striking the fluffy mass alongside them.

“Can you tell me what we’re exactly doing this?” Donna yelled, as eight hooves and four paws slammed into the cloud at the same time.

“You’ll see!” It was Fluttershy’s only answer as she was trying to concentrate on getting a storm started.

“Darn these guys are coming at us fast, do you guys have any support coming or what?” Bonnie dodged around another high speed extending fist and shot the head off a Bebe robot, her reflexes barely gave her an edge against these things.

“Ten minutes!” An EDF soldier with an antenna poking up from his backpack said as he littered the streets with explosives that fired shrapnel, it was quite effective in dealing with the robots that ran through the area.

“Yeah, we’re not going to last that long, they’re pressuring us with numbers and those numbers are built like...” Suddenly it started raining and the hundreds of rushing Bebe’s started to disintegrate before Bonnie’s eyes, she looked towards the sky and saw Fluttershy pushing more and more clouds together above the convention center with help from Donna and Soft Echo. “Never mind, we’re good.”

The Bebe’s further back slowed down and looked to the sky. They continued their advance, but their super speed was now useless and without their ability to close distance at insane speeds they were being destroyed much more easily by the ranged offensive leveled against them.

“Let’s show them who we are, everyone will know our names!” Bonnie led the charge, the EDF soldiers took it to the Bebe’s with extreme prejudice as several of them had been badly injured already by the high speed machines. The Spirit Detective League was already cutting a huge swath through the robots and it only got that much better when the rain really started pouring.

Fluttershy flew down to the ground and landed next to the Martial Arts Police who were getting the injured EDF soldiers to safety and the Calvary arrived swiftly as several EDF gunships started dropping cluster bombs over the horde, they swerved around and dropped off several heavily armored soldiers with Gatling cannons in front of the convention building.

“It’s just another day.”With a sigh Fluttershy flew down to the nearest injured person and pulled out the maximum tomato, she was willing to take the role of medic again and Finder was quite useful as a nurse since he had arrived at her side with a medical kit. She would be busy medically aiding the stalwart heroes of the EDF who never backed down against any odds unless it was completely necessary.

It wouldn’t be long before Ranma got to Kuno and beat him into submission for all of this after saving the guys life when the robots finally decided to turn on him for poor leadership; victory was a foregone conclusion at that point.

Author's Note

Next up, Fluttershy and Bonnie have finally made it to Hawaii, has the journey to Earth really been worth it?

"Darker than black" has taught me something, inertia is a really cruel mistress when you don't have a built in protection for it. Bebe's could break down walls, but they never used their super speed at all times with good reason.

Imagine wishing on a genie that you had super speed without the endurance, invulnerability or even the protection from being torn apart by inertia itself.

Given that the Bebe's vibrate their bodies before moving, they make themselves highly vulnerable to inertia based attacks when in super speed mode. Mind you when Kim Possible fought them she didn't actually have military grade weapons meant for fighting aliens.

I just like this music, hardly much to do with the chapter though.

116

It was two days after another run in with killer robots, at least this time she didn’t have to deal with them. At this time Fluttershy was sitting on the roof of the Hinata House Apartments looking to the sky.

“He’s on his way Fluttershy, he just had to deal with Pinkie Pie’s welcome to Ponyville party, thank you for helping out our friends party and so on and so forth. He’s quite a party animal, never doubt the power of a good party he says. Still stuck in the most interestingly chaotic place ever?” Discord really liked Nerima; he even created a third eye in his forehead just to keep watch of what was going on in the city.

“It’s been kind of pain in my flank Discord; can you see how Betty, Samus and Jumba are doing in Hawaii?” Fluttershy idly pulled out a hairbrush from her saddlebags and started working on her mane; she really needed to take better care of herself.

“I believe you’re friend Betty is already on the way, all of Bonnie’s brothers and sisters in Hawaii are in the midst of rebuilding the destroyed parts of town or at least they are trying to. All you need to do is get Clyde to yonder place and then wait for a chance to wander home from yonder. Oh and look out, there’s a giant robot about to crush you.” Discord watched as Fluttershy leapt to the side as a giant robot’s backside nearly slammed down on her, it didn’t manage to land as the mechanical turtles defended their home judiciously. They rendered the two fighting robots inoperable before they bothered anyone else and launched the fused masses to the far side of Nerima.

“Thank you!” Fluttershy went back to what she was doing after shouting to the little metal turtles that waved their flippers at her in a welcome to the thankful pony, they were really nice.

“I swear if we’re here for one more day I’m going to go completely insane!” Crawling her way onto the roof, Bonnie was feeling fatigued from all the crazy crap that went on around Nerima. It wasn’t bad enough with robots, demons and random monster attacks going on at every street corner at every hour of the day. The apartment they were currently taking residence in was the quietest place in Nerima and it only mostly catered to the female persuasion as being the weird thing about it. In fact that purposeful weirdness is probably what kept all the other weirdness from becoming too much for the residents who lived there. One such resident wanted to take over the world with technology despite being from the magical side of the Earth; however she believed her greatest nemesis to be a flying turtle so it was a toss up to how far she would get with the world conquering schemes given she kept trying to make mechanical turtles that would represent how dangerous she saw the actual biological flying turtle.

“I don’t care what you guys say, I love Japan!” Donnabelle flicked a paw and sent a burning halo over her shoulder spiraling at a carrot monster that was diced by the explosion of blades the halo caused after it dug its way into the center of the monster. She didn’t even look up from her graphic novel, she was so calm with Soft Echo snuggled into her side and looking at the nifty pictures in the book.

Soft Echo was enjoying the peace and quiet, except for the carrot monster… which she promptly got up to eat a still warm chunk of before cuddling back up with her really smart puppy.

“Betty is on her way, we have to get our stuff together. So, do you think Ranma will be okay with being abducted? I mean I don’t want to bother him, it’s just that he really seems unhappy here.” Tapping her hooves together shyly as she looked over the edge of the roof, Fluttershy looked up at the sky and saw a unicorn shaped cloud pass by.

“Oh I’m sure he won’t mind. I watched him all day yesterday; he definitely needs cosmic intervention of the greatest sort. It’ll be so good to get out of Nerima, I thought the Rescue Rangers ran into ridiculous things but Nerima is positively beyond anything they are capable of getting involved in. I hope to never have to come back to here, because I don’t think anyone can solve all these problems.” Nobody wanted to mention Foxglove looked a little unhinged after the incident yesterday that involved a giant moth the size of a skyscraper almost eating her.

Gathering their stuff, Betty arrived in a beam of light having beamed down upon locating Fluttershy and her group along with Finder who decided to keep Bonnie company and to make sure that Clyde couldn’t be lost. She had their stuff beamed up after everyone said their goodbyes to the mechanical turtles and Tama-chan.

“So anything to do before we head to Hawaii, I mean like some place you just need to stop by before we leave.” Betty immediately took to the captain’s chair while the others sat on the floor like last time. “X-Five, please see to it we get some folding chairs for future visitors.”

“I’ll get to it when an opportunity presents itself captain.” X-Five hovered over to Fluttershy and gave her a big hug, before going about his duties.

“Well at least the more sentient robots like you.” Of that Bonnie had no doubt with those mechanical turtles protecting Fluttershy at all times, especially when they heard robots were attacking the convention center. The robot turtles easily decimated the Bebe robots and not a single one escaped their wrath.

“Actually there is one thing I want to do… It’s a bit odd, but please hear me out Captain Betty.” Taking in a breath and thinking really hard on whether or not to do it, Fluttershy made a decision. “I would like you to abduct someone who’s in a bad situation.”

“Ranma you horrible pervert! How dare you get into bestiality and become a pedophile?” Tendo Akane pulled out her mallet to beat the utter perversion out of Ranma, she was referring to Soft Echo and Donnabelle when it came to the pedophile comment.

This was despite Ranma having no bad intentions whatsoever when he befriended Fluttershy and all her friends, at least Kuno Tatewaki couldn’t get out of jail this time even with the Kuno fortune. Sure they were female, but none of them garnered a strange instant lust for him from out of nowhere, not even a platonic relationship which would be a little more intimate than friendship.

So Ranma stood there and waited for the hammer to fall and he continued to waiting until someone splashed him with tiny amount of water and she suddenly found herself in a strange place. She also saw Fluttershy giving her a sad smile.

“Can they really blame you for being abducted by aliens?” Fluttershy asked sweetly if a bit nervous.

“They can sure as hell try to find a way to blame this one on me!” Ranma said with a hint of humor in her voice.

“Can we make just one more stop before heading straight to Hawaii? If you don’t mind that I make a request as well?” Hey, Foxglove figured if Betty was taking requests then she might as well have her pick up someone else.

Betty’s ship turned to pick someone else up and beamed him up as well. It was a surprised looking Kurama who saw everyone and just nodded before putting his rose back behind his ear.

“I guess this is my ride to New York then?” The ship shot off with Kurama also in tow, to a different section of Nerima to pick up some more people.

If Betty had to make a stop by New York to drop off Foxglove and her demon friend, then she may as well pick up a few more people. Kurama would have to get back to Japan on his own however.

Kokaua Town came into view on the ships screen. Betty had seen all the experiments running around trying to help rebuild, but they weren’t exactly carpenters or experts in building houses.

Since Betty was already in the business of abducting people already, she just went ahead and abducted half the Nerima Construction Crew to help out in Hawaii. They didn’t mind the abduction as it wasn’t the first time their construction skills were needed; they were also capable of fixing broken spaceships as well given how often alien’s crash landed in Nerima. If Jumba hadn’t figured out the problem with the Head Hunter by now then these guys would be able to fix it.

The ship came in for a landing outside the Pelekai residence, their landing was met with hundreds of worried experiments and a sad looking Lilo. The Nerima Construction Crew immediately set out to rebuild Kokaua Town.

“Jumba they’re here!” Lilo said almost immediately as Bonnie and Finder descended the ramp.

“Okay who spilled the beans? No I’m not blaming you Uncanny; I know you wouldn’t do something like that.” An experiment that looked like a living can opener frowned only further, as Bonnie pulled out Clyde’s pod and moved forward. “Come on let’s go see what the damage is to one of our Ohana. Make way coming through, dad needs to operate soon! Foxglove I believe I will be in need of your services, so come on. Let’s see what the damage is.”

Fluttershy stood by shyly with so many of Bonnie’s brothers and sisters here, they turned to and welcomed her warmly if a bit muted from hearing about Clyde’s current situation as a death knelled experiment.

“Is taking a quite a while, is extensively damaged. Is not beyond saving however, loss of memory is certainty. He is being alright now in my capable hands. Bonnie, go be spending some time with friends okay? Am not liking daughter sad about siblings condition, I would like to work in silence and peace. To be giving me a few days before you check back in, he will not be able to deteriorate any further under my care.” It made Jumba a little happy to see that he could even remotely cheer Bonnie up by calling her by her given name instead of a number. “Am thinking I am evil, but this. This is a great travesty to one of my own family, but hopefully recent scientific developments by me will restore Clyde to mostly previous self, probably better as in before loss of arm.”

“So how did you manage to down that Valkyrian ship thing?” Looking on at an image Foxglove tried not to throw up even as her face turned bright green at the image on the computer screen.

Even Fluttershy was having problems with keeping her vomit down at the screen showing sections of spinal cord, ripped sinew, scarred flesh and exposed organs. It was twisted and macabre sight; it was even a surprise that Clyde had even managed to talk if that was the state he was in when Bonnie met him. He must have a willpower and spirit beyond reasoning to have kept sane or even conscious in that state, plus it didn’t even look like his mouth could work not even taking into consideration his vocal chords were barely intact to begin with.

“Six zero seven, Launch, rammed body through rear of invaders main ship, causing it to crash and all other children be fighting with their abilities to their fullest. They even did some things that even surprise even me and I was the one who created them. Fighters were bit of a problem, but eh… not too hard to be dealing with. Now to the be going with all of you.” Shooing off all the watchers Jumba turned back to the screen and held a hand out towards the twisted thing that was almost a corpse in a sad manner.

“You better come back to us in a good enough state Clyde.” With those parting words, Bonnie felt Fluttershy encompass her in a hug and then led her out of the room. The door locked behind them. “I got him this far, it’s about time I saved him for change.”

“It’s okay, it’ll be alright Bonnie.” Sweet words from a sweet pony like Fluttershy meant a lot, even when it looked like Bonnie was crumbling into herself as she finally allowed herself to feel the situation fully.

What meant that much more to Bonnie was that every single experiment was in Hawaii at the house. They were all there for her and Clyde. Even Shush and her traveling brother Elastico were here. Shush seemed slightly upset, but she hugged Bonnie for all she was worth. The entire family had congregated to Hawaii hearing of one of their own was close to death and they were as upset as Bonnie still felt. The closest to experiencing death out of all of them was Stitch when he himself nearly died to a glitch problem, the Leroy’s never really counted as family to any of them.

“You have family, sure someone in that family may be a little broken, but we can all agree that we’ll be here when he gets better. Even if he doesn’t...” Lilo smiled at Bonnie and the feelings of community and family couldn’t have been any stronger between all of the present experiments. “Family, nobody get’s left behind…”

“Or forgotten….” Everyone intoned solemnly in their own way, six hundred plus voices all at once even the ones who could only make sounds to be heard did their best.

Hawaii was quite a peaceful place, Foxglove had even met Lahwhinie in the limited time she was there and let her hitch a ride back to New York with Betty against her better judgment. Like Fluttershy she wanted what was an enemy to become her friend, the poor mouse looked like she needed one. She had performed her job and had stuck with them through thick and thin, she was worried that she was needed back in New York and no one could fault her for leaving two days after they came arrive in Hawaii.

Virgil had found camaraderie with Samus and they talked about a lot of things together, it seemed as if he was going to do some traveling with her in the future after he was done seeing Fluttershy returned home safely personally. He wasn’t quite ready to return the Cosmic Crown to Soft Echo quite yet, not until he could be assured it was safe to do so.

Bonnie would have a lot of brothers and sisters trying to keep her occupied all day every day and they were obviously worried about her when she didn’t lift a finger to steal a single thing the entire time. Unleashing the full amount of her emotional turmoil was what finally broke her genetic programming, she was her own person and she chose to be what she wanted to be. Oh she wasn’t about to let herself get rusty, even if she now had complete control over her reflex ability. Only her ability wasn’t reflexive anymore. She can actively use it like she did back on Planet Z when she was completely enraged.

Even Donnabelle was beginning to resemble a real puppy when it came to Soft Echo, she wouldn’t let anyone else treat her like a dog though and she wouldn’t fetch the stick for anyone else.

Fluttershy relaxed and hoped that Clyde would get better even if they had never met personally. He sounded like a heroic little brother. All she had to do now was waiting for Wander to arrive. She had come a long way from home and now she was going to go back to whence she came, she had made many friends along her travels and faced just as many dangers as well. It was so strange that she’d survived so much.

As she watched the Thursday sunset, Fluttershy looked to her left to see Bonnie and the rest of her family coming down to join her in watching as the sun disappeared over the horizon. Even some fish named Pudge joined them and was asking about a peanut butter sandwich, which Fluttershy relayed to Lilo who pulled out a sandwich and tossed it into the water, where it surprisingly didn’t get soggy at all and held together as if it hadn’t gotten wet at all.

“Huh, weird magical fish.” Donna mentioned idly as she brushed out Soft Echo’s mane causing the little filly to purr at the ministrations. “So how long do you think we’ll be stuck here?”

“Don’t you think you’ve had enough Annabelle?” Sasha was about ready to cut the angel off. Sure she couldn’t possibly die from alcohol poisoning or at least she hoped an angel couldn’t die that way, but Annabelle was becoming incapable of doing her job. She was a wreck without her significant other.

Annabelle didn’t say anything and just tapped the counter; Sasha acquiesced and gave her another bottle anyway.

“Hey is this seat taken?” Someone asked and all Annabelle did in response was grunt as that dog took a seat next to her. “Say, did it hurt?”

“Did what hurt?” Annabelle asked blandly as it seemed like this dog wasn’t going to leave her be, didn’t this dog know she was disinterested in hearing a lame pickup line.

“You know when you literally fell from heaven, because it’s definitely missing an angel by now. You’re quite a beautiful one too!” The dog that sat next to Annabelle was getting stared at by Sasha as she moved her paw out to gently stroke one of Annabelle’s wings sending pleasure coursing down the pink whippet’s spine.

Annabelle turned to the dog slightly angry and saw a dirt covered white whippet, a completely mortal one with no demonic or angelic energies and she was beautiful.

“What’s your name?” Annabelle suddenly asked just staring blankly at the dog.

“Whatever you want it to be, but you can call me Bella.” The White dog smiled slightly. “So where did you get the wings from? They remind me of my little puppy that I couldn’t take care of properly, I hope she didn’t cause those Pound Puppy guys too much trouble. My rambunctious little scamp needed a loving family after all and I’m a hopeless tramp, maybe you wouldn’t mind indulging my company lady?”

Ranma, Foxglove and Kurama all were talking about the options of how fixing Ranma’s curse would go and the Rescue Rangers did in fact need Foxglove’s help. In the end the results were a little weirder than expected.

Why else would Ranma end up with a female earth pony version of himself? Sure he was cured, but having a pony that was his age for a sister was ridiculous. Somehow Fluttershy left behind some infectious ambient magic; it helped cure him of his curse. His new sister was just as confused about her existence as he was, her name was Ranko and she had a orchid growing off a piece of bamboo sticking up out of a pool of water for a cutie mark.

Kurama just found it all too funny and chuckled at the situation.

Another week on Earth passed by and Fluttershy was with Bonnie and Jumba had been working feverishly on restoring Clyde. Then he asked Bonnie to come into his room for Clyde’s reactivation, he had no idea what would happen when her brother was reactivated. Who knows what Clyde was missing? One thing was for sure; his genetic programming was irreparably damaged and was the one thing that couldn’t be fixed.

“Now to be reactivating Clyde, I completely restored his body. Whatever is lost is lost for good. Activating One Five Zero.” It seemed as if even Jumba was pensive about reactivating Clyde after restoring his body, flesh he could work with and he even gave Clyde back his lost arm. He couldn’t have done it previously, but now he had enough know how and mail order junk from space to build something that can regenerate his injured son back to a state before he had lost an arm. Quite frankly it was more challenging for Jumba to make stuff from random stuff he scrapped, but it was quite rewarding since it actually worked.

“Activating One Five Zero, primary function… error, primary function is inoperable. Secondary function, resilience is still operational. Vital functions performing nominally within parameters.” The word ‘error’ was never a good thing to hear a computer say, they waited as the tube lifted upward to reveal a much healthier looking Clyde. He had both his arms and his fur was slightly discolored in the places that had been replaced in the regeneration, he blinked his eyes and looked about idly.

“Where, what, my arm, what’s going on? It’s not metal anymore, what happened?” Clyde looked a little bewildered and Bonnie stepped forward with a hopeful look in her eyes.

“Clyde what’s the last thing you remember?” This was always the first question to ask someone who lost their memory and Bonnie knew it was horrible a cliché.

“Bonnie? Ohana, Family… my head is rather fuzzy, was the last thing we did together sharing ice cream? Something must have happened to me, I don’t know what made you sad Bonnie but I’ll try to make it all better.” Clyde drew his older sister in to a hug, his form engulfing her.

“You’re missing a lot bro, I’ll try to fill you in. Do you remember anything painful by any chance?” Like being flayed alive and still managing to somehow talk out what was once you’re mouth, it was something Bonnie didn’t want to say to him.

“I don’t remember how I lost my arm or how I even got it back, but I definitely remember you Bonnie. You were never as smart as you claimed to be, you were always smarter. You better not be getting any more bright idea’s now, you’re always getting us into trouble Bonnie.” Clyde snuggled his older sister, he was himself only with a lot of missing memories. He could only recall happier memories, all the time he spent with family and the very core of his heart in protecting his older sister Bonnie with all he had. “Say, who is that? I don’t remember an experiment like her existing before.”

“She’s not an experiment, but she’s kind of special to me.” Bonnie gave a bright smile to Fluttershy. “I’m sure you’ll get to know her, because her family will be sticking around with our family with a while.”

“You really need those X, Y and Z talks again don’t you?” Of all the embarrassing things Clyde had to remember, that just had to be one of them.

Author's Note

Ending in less than two chapters.

117

It had been the better part of a month and Fluttershy had easily become a part of the massive ohana, all the experiments accepted her and even Lilo and Nani were quite welcoming of her presence. Being quite opposed to freeloading, Fluttershy tried to clean the house only to meet Felix the experiment who can clean or mess up a house faster than Fluttershy could blink.

Thus started a series of events where Fluttershy tried to be useful, only to find that there was already an experiment to fulfill that particular function around Hawaii.

She was getting frustrated until Bonnie pointed out that she needed someone who can help rehabilitate her little brother and Clyde definitely needed the help, even after he had been entirely filled in on what he was missing. Clyde was glad he couldn’t remember it or much of anything aside from his family and the good times he spent with them, he remembered Bonnie fondly despite all the stuff she was partially responsible for putting him through.

Among the things Clyde couldn’t remember, were pain, any suffering, his thousands of thefts, his primary function and he couldn’t even remember what happened with the long since euthanized Leroy clones. Heck, the guy could barely even remember how to walk. He had to be taught how to do multiple things again, including math as he slowly reintegrated back into his family and the society they were a part of. He was happy to be accepted so readily back from wherever he had been and Fluttershy was happy to help him around as a chaperone. He had forgotten the functions of many of his family members and was happy to explore them with Fluttershy whom he liked and thought Bonnie had made a really good friend in her.

Fluttershy was of course kind and incredibly patient with him, despite becoming as clumsy as one of his brothers known as Woops who was the local walking disaster zone who knocked things over. Woops even started a new branch of the Nerima Construction Crew in Hawaii. Shoe was also another experiment whom took to following Fluttershy and Clyde around to give them nothing but good luck as a walking luck generator; he was invested in helping out his brother as were the six hundred and twenty four brothers and sisters. Reuben had to return to his job as a head chef of the galley onboard Gantu’s ship as support personnel and personal friend to a head Galactic Alliance Enforcer, he just wouldn’t leave until he found the perfect sandwich for Fluttershy and he had done so within three tries. His primary function was oddly sandwich maker; Jumba may have goofed up his genetic programming slightly but it obviously turned out okay in the end.

Fluttershy wondered if Jumba used the same genetics for Reuben that he did for Bonnie and Clyde, since they resembled each other so much.

“Hawaii is a really nice place, it’s so exciting and yet so peaceful.” The nature was beautiful, the food was great and Pudge the fish was some kind of god like entity that Lilo somehow correctly guessed the name of, thus she earned his respect and friendship.

It was a little odd that Pudge controlled the local weather around Hawaii, even the other experiments were a little put off by Pudge being capable of doing so once they had Fluttershy as a translator. Lilo couldn’t have been any smugger to her older sister about being right about the fish she kept giving peanut butter sandwiches to, also it was confirmed that Pudge didn’t like the idea of eating Tuna.

“Yeah, there’s no place like family. Its home and where the heart is, I’ll always have a home here.” Bonnie was sitting on the beach staring off into the horizon again, this time Fluttershy was sitting besides her staring as the sun slowly sank over the horizon and they were alone together. She was wearing a red scarf around her neck that had been made by Clyde due to Flutterhsy helping to teach him how to sew and knit.

This situation was a bit odd considering that neither Bonnie nor Clyde had been alone ever since they came back to Hawaii and Clyde was partly restored; now that Bonnie looked around curious as to where everyone was. Even Soft Echo wasn’t present at the moment and she felt something wrap around her body and pulled her into a soft embrace, the little filly was probably enjoying all the exotic fruits somewhere else while she was busy here enjoying an exotic cuddly mare.

“I heard Wander was supposed to be arriving soon, can you really say good bye to all of this? Your family really cares about you and will miss you if you come with me Bonnie.” Of the things Fluttershy liked about Bonnie, she was as cuddly as a teddy bear and she was a good friend despite her vast history. She was glad to have helped Bonnie become a better person. She brought her wings around to wrap Bonnie in a nice comfortable blanket of warmth and cuddles.

“The guy stops to help everyone, it’s really kind of annoying that he could have gotten here by now if he didn’t make stops along the way. What’s keeping him? Is he carrying passengers or something? He’s a male version of you, willing to stop and help everyone!” After her little excited shout Bonnie leaned into her friends cuddling and finished watching the sun set in a picturesque scene that was Hawaii.

Seconds afterward a portal opened in the air and out popped Lion with a confused looking Steven, Connie, Amethyst and Garnet. Causing both Bonnie and Fluttershy to lazily look towards them, they didn’t separate from each other and continued to cuddle.

“Hello Steven, Connie, Amethyst, Garnet and Mr. Lion, what are all of you doing here?” Fluttershy was comfortable in her position and she wasn’t about to change her positioning because of unexpected visitors. She wanted to cuddle and she was going to get cuddles!

“I don’t know, Lion just woke me up and then he took us all to Connie’s and then brought us all here… is this Hawaii?” Steven was looking around and saw the trees and the local flora, so yes he figured it was Hawaii as the sun was going down. “Lion, why did you bring us here?”

Lion didn’t answer and was looking to the sky, as were Fluttershy and Bonnie. A Large bubble slowly descended from the sky carrying several figures. Two of them were obviously Wander and Sylvia, another one was Pearl in pony form and the last one was a bit of a surprise when the bubble fully came into view. Maud was with them, it looked like Fluttershy would have to give Maud her souvenir early since it looked like she was going to be on this planet for a while if the suitcase was anything to go by and her bland expression.

“What?” Maud asked as she saw Fluttershy staring at her, the bland toned mare had a bit of a blush going on in her face as she slowly moved over to Pearl who was being enthusiastically welcomed by her family.

Amethyst was already making fun of Pearl’s highly adorable pony appearance and Pearl was soon to introduce them to her personal rock psychiatrist who would eventually help them through all their issues.

“Boulder, come here boy, heel.” The rock stopped at Maud’s hooves and bounced a few times, she smiled slightly at him as he remember all the good times they’ve had together after she gave him a onetime use polish Fluttershy bought at the convention. This was the most active Boulder had been in years, he had never been capable of moving this fast before.

Head Hunter was operational and Fluttershy saw that they were almost upon the Luxmea and saw a different elongated ship that had a familiar mask on the front of it next to Grand Councilwoman Veritas’s ship.

Following the Head Hunter was Hunter Mark Two and the Valkyrian mother ship repurposed. In fact it was entirely restructured, renamed and of course painted mostly red as an aesthetic choice of Jumba’s children. The ship was now called The Jookiba Jumbler, it was put to a vote and all of Jumba’s children liked that name. The two escorting ships were there for Fluttershy to make sure nothing happened to her as she made her way home, but first she had to make a few stops on the way. For the pony’s first stop, telling Veritas that she was on her way home with overkill for escort.

Fluttershy really hoped that Veritas didn’t mind the Jookiba family having their own ship, along with multiple fighters.

It was so nice to see Mr. Knight again and his ship the Halberd was really unique and hand built, the fact that he built it all by himself was a testament to how incredible Meta-Knight was. He had hardly any help, yet he managed to build a huge battleship like that? Well he had managed to ‘rebuild’ it after dredging up the wreck that Kirby had caused.

Veritas was a little upset that the Jookiba’s had a ship, but she decided to let them finish escorting Fluttershy. She dared anyone to be stupid enough to attack the entirety of Jookiba family minus Reuben, the experiment who was now recognized as an all time sandwich champion of the Galactic Alliance who could match a personal sandwich to anyone’s tastes.

“I hope they don’t cause too much trouble.” Stated a bland Veritas as she watched Fluttershy set off for Rhizome, she was worried all the Jookiba’s running around in one place would cause untold havoc. So far she was still holding her breath that nothing would happen and that no one would be dumb enough to upset the six hundred plus dangerous individuals.

“I believe that Lady Fluttershy has things well in hand at the moment.” Meta-Knight came to stop beside Veritas and watched as all the ships warped away. Swishing his caped as he pivoted around his eyes met the tall councilwoman’s. “We must prepare for the future. Nightmare still plagues Popstar, like a moth to a flame the planet of dreams draws the most of its power and my incredible young charge is holding its dangerous attention almost constantly. From what you tell me it is apparently not idle in trying to spread its influence elsewhere, this planet of Equus might need our help in the future if it truly seeks to start another void war.”

“We will be waiting for that eventuality should Nightmare try to rise up too far.” Veritas said after a moment of silence between them. She added after a moment of pensive thought. “Can it ever be truly defeated?”

Now Fluttershy was on Rhizome, in a hospital. She was visiting an old friend who had something horrible happen to them. Walking up to the counter with her little filly on her back, Fluttershy smiled slightly at the receptionist.

“Um please excuse me miss, sorry for interrupting you if you were busy, but could you tell me what room Kleptchi Mossport is in? Well that is if she’s still here.” It had to be considered that they would have had to be here a while to still be in the hospital, Fluttershy was hopeful however that Kleptchi was all better. Truffle likely was already out and about.

“Of course, she already has a visitor in the room so please don’t shock him. Its three floors up in room C twenty three. It’s nice to see you again Fluttershy, the great mother Janet is happy to hear you’ve come to visit one of her infirmed children. Wait here while I call a nurse to lead you up to her room.” The receptionist called someone to lead them to the room and it was none of than Pwerta Delarosin. Roller revved happily at seeing a familiar being, he was out and about now giving Soft Echo a ride since Donnabelle was too small to carry her weight.

Virgil and Samus were elsewhere taking an interest in the Janet’s body and were walking around with the Cosmic Crown with Virgil looking at his magical scroll as they explored the world Janet gave birth to.

“It is so nice to have you here again Fluttershy. I hope that you can stop by the spa, the girls would really like to give you a full treatment and I must say you certainly look better than you have been.” Continuing to lead the group, Pwerta stopped outside the room that Kleptchi was in and looked back to Fluttershy. “I know you were upset about what happened to her, but she’s been mostly fixed up and she’s been doing better. At least she’s lucid enough to receive visitors; Truffle is also in the room and visiting his friend. He still wants to thank you for saving his life; he’s managed to get back into athletics.”

Fluttershy wilted slightly only to be gently dragged into the room by Pwerta, upon looking up she saw Truffle look up from the bed he was seated at and came over to her and gave her a strong quick hug.

“I’ve been waiting to say this for a long time, thank you. Kleptchi has really wanted to see you by the way; I’ll be taking my leave then.” Truffle looked happy as he left Fluttershy to move towards the bed he was sitting at, she crawled into the nearby chair and looked down on the poor Rhizomian occupying the bed with part of her suit still fused to some of flesh and she looked as immobile as ever despite the serene smile on her face.

“Ms. Mossport, are you awake?” Fluttershy tried and Kleptchi slowly opened her eyes and reached out to rub Fluttershy behind her left ear.

“I am, though I could be better Fluttershy. I must still look like a mess to you. Removing me entirely from my suit will still kill me, but at least they freed up one of my arms from it. I hope to eventually be able to move again in the future, being paraplegic isn’t fun.” Kleptchi shook her head and her mass of hair shook with her, it look relatively clean which meant someone had to come in and brush it for her and keep it clean. “When you have so many friends, hope keeps you going that things could get better if even slightly. It’s nice that you actually came to visit me before you continued on your way home.”

After that Fluttershy opened up slightly and talked about how she’s been feeling lately and what she’s been through since she left Rhizome. It was a fantastical tale that Fluttershy wouldn’t have believed herself had she not lived through the fall of an empire.

With no other distractions in her way, Fluttershy and rest of her strange little fleet set off for Equus with Wander leading everyone towards the home planet of the ponies. The stars blurred by the Head Hunter as it moved through the universe with Fluttershy at the helm.

“I can’t believe I’m almost back.” Had it really been so long ago that she had been stuck out in space without a single way home? Fluttershy would like to think that she had never left, that home was always in her heart, but she would have just been lying to herself as she sorely missed all her friends.

“Well you better believe it; Wander says that as long as nothing distracts us from this course you’ll be back home and frolicking in flowers soon.” Turning to the puppy, Bonnie couldn’t help but note her dour attitude. “Okay what’s wrong with you dog breathe?”

“Does Equus even have Manga? Also I floss and brush regularly thank you!” Donnabelle was along for the ride and she was in the middle of lamenting at the fact that she’d never get more chances at getting manga.

“My world has magical comic books you can really get into.” Fluttershy hoped comics would do just as well for the puppy.

“It’s just not the same.” Donna cracked open a manga she hadn’t read several times before.

“Well you’re obviously intelligent and so am I, so why don’t I suggest something that you seem to be missing. If a planet doesn’t have manga on it, then publish your own and sell it!” After saying that Bonnie could swear she saw the dollar signs in the puppies eyes, rolling her own she looked to Fluttershy. “So how hard is it to set up a small publishing company in a four legged economy?”

“Not that hard, how is the stock of fruit doing on Jumbler?” It was rather important to keep track of how much fruit the ships collectively had; it was safe for Fluttershy to say that Soft Echo would never get scurvy when she was currently wiping out all the fruits on The Jookiba Jumbler. She was a hungry little growing filly.

There it was. A sight Fluttershy didn’t think she’d see again since long ago when she was trapped in a magical bubble. It was just as beautiful as the last time she saw it. The planet of Equus, she was home once more. Her eyes were starting to water with relief to finally be back.

“Hey it’s okay to cry Fluttershy, you should know better than to hold it in. Let it all out into Roller while I take the wheel.” Bonnie thought the planet looked beautiful and peaceful; she just knew the powers that be probably wouldn’t leave it alone. That was provided that anyone could actually find the planet without a Star Nomad that is, it was in a really obscure place in space that was not easily reachable unless you knew how to get there.

“But if you take Mr. Wheel, how will I cry into him?” A giggling Fluttershy was happy to be home even as she got up from the helm and went over to Roller to get hive a hug. “Oh I can’t wait to see all my animal friends, provided that they are still around that is, things must be so different or must have become different without me around. Oh I’ve read stories about trying to go back to how things were after being away for some long and it becoming impossible to adjust.”

“Hey we’re here aren’t we? Well let’s stop worrying about what ifs and gather those who are going ground side, I would suggest that only one ship go down to the planet since it’s only technically space capable with having magical travel bubbles. Apparently not as good as an Orbble, but you somehow survived the experience. I and Wander never had a problem when it comes to food.” It was obvious that Sylvia was talking about Wanders hat giving them what they needed when they needed it. “It’s quite a beautiful world you got there, then again Janet was also looking pretty good despite all the children she had.”

“Oh yes and they were all oh so cute and friendly!” Wander shouted gleefully as he came forward. “You know Sylvia; we should really go around meeting old friends to see how they are doing. I can’t wait to see what kind of party Pinkie Pie has set up for us this time, oh wait… you don’t suppose she’s sad that her sister moved away to another planet entirely? That going away party had an awful lot of tears in it.”

“Wander if there’s one thing I know from traveling with you, things will always work out in the end.” Sylvia leaned into Wander as she lifts him up and hugged him.

It was a little cramped in Head Hunter and Fluttershy was the pilot for the landing, along with Roller, Bonnie, Soft Echo, Donnabelle, Virgil, Samus, the Etecoons, the Dachoras and finally Clyde who wanted to say his final goodbye to Bonnie.

Apparently Discord was going to be involved in some kind of cover up about where Fluttershy has been for more than a year, he would distract any news ponies and keep them away from Fluttershy’s landing site which was just outside the Ever Free Forest near her cottage.

Samus would be taking her Mark Two back into orbit after she helped unload all the souvenirs from Fluttershy’s journey; she was one of the few who weren’t staying with Fluttershy along with Clyde and Virgil. Clyde was going back to Earth with the rest of the ohana and Virgil was going to take up traveling with Samus.

The ship coasted along the sky and Discord was making sure it was completely invisible to any nefarious ponies. He didn’t want anything to happen to his friend now that she had finally made it home. It landed peacefully and soon it opened and Fluttershy walked down the ramp to see Ponyville in the distance and her friends waiting for her.

Soft Echo was perched on Fluttershy’s back wearing the Cosmic Crown and she smiled at seeing so many other beings like her mother, was this where her mommy was from? This felt right to the filly either way.

Fluttershy immediately ran straight for the group and the group did likewise. Even Discord was jogging gaily forward with the other ponies to meet with Fluttershy, however the Cosmic Crown activated and the planned surprise party for Fluttershy’s return was put on hold for a few minutes. Her friends of course ran through the one way portal and Fluttershy backed far enough away from it for it to close. At least the party would be put on hold until Discord could teleport them back from halfway around the world.

“Oh my goodness, this is just another day for you huh Fluttershy?” Bonnie was laughing riotously, even Fluttershy started laughing, Donna chuckled dryly and shook her head as she started to drag her bag of manga past them towards Fluttershy’s home. Soft Echo didn’t know what was so funny, but she laughed anyway because the laughter was just plain infectious at this point. Even the usually stoic Dachora and her child were cackling jovially alongside the happy bouncing Etecoons.

“I take it every planet has a portal system like this?” Fluttershy asked of Virgil who simply nodded at her and would later give her a copy of the Equus hidden pathways. A familiar white rabbit rammed its way into Fluttershy’s chest having avoided the same mistake that befell the other elements of harmony and Discord. “Oh Angel, I’m so happy to see you too! Wait, no, my friends! Are they okay, what if that portal was dangerous?”

“They should be, the portal just opens out on the exact opposite side of the planet. Above a calm river it would seem.” Virgil didn’t ease Fluttershy’s worries, but Discord popping back with her friends looking waterlogged and spitting a fish out of his mouth into a fishbowl cheered her right up.

The welcome home party was vast; though Fluttershy brought many strange friends home with her the ponies of Ponyville were welcoming and less scared of newcomers than they previously were. They didn’t want to have a repeat of Zecora shunning since these visitors were definitely friendly, even Celestia and Luna were here.

The party was exactly the kind of party Fluttershy would like, calm and quiet with tea. Not too many ponies and all the ones who were there were friends, she needed to discuss the possible impact of introducing Dachoras and Etecoons to the planet. The mother Dachora was already nesting in her living room and Fluttershy was back to business as usual as all her animal friends came up to her to show her how much they missed her presence.

Kasumi didn’t believe the money she was just handed and a first edition issue of the cute manga titled “Problem Pony”, the author was apparently Fluttershy who named her as the one to receive the grand prize.

Sitting down to read the book she smiled, she was going to create a bank account and keep this money out of the hands of her father and Mr. Saotome. She wasn’t about to let them waste it all on frivolous things.

As she was reading, Ranma and Ranko ran by being chased by multiple martial artists who wanted to know how Ranma became cured of the Jusenkyo curse and were pestering him and Ranko all about it. Except curiously enough Ryoga wasn’t one of them and came to the table to calmly sit with Kasumi and drink some tea, she noticed he had a strange unicorn stallion with him that was levitating the tea cup to his mouth.

It was so nice that Ranma had finally managed to find a cure and that he shared it with his best friend, but she didn’t think he was ever going to settle down and marry anyone who didn’t try to get to know him first. Ranko was certainly quite helpful in fighting off the more forceful suitors, plus Kasumi always wanted a pony when she was younger.

It was the end of the party and Fluttershy was showing her new family around her old home, her friends were quite intrigued or happy to meet Soft Echo. They couldn’t understand her adorable little squeaks, but they liked her all the same and Donna’s ability to talk was a novelty to Twilight who had seen it before.

“It’s so good to be home.” Fluttershy said as she yawned and crawled into bed to lay her sleepy head, then she was joined by every other animal in the house including a bear. Her bed was broken, but she didn’t move from her spot. She was too tired to deal with her destroyed bed at the moment and just closed her eyes as she was buried under a mountain of animals and friends. “Good night.”

A bunch of noisy animals sounded off and then it was quiet as a mouse, her souvenirs handed off, her journey at its end and all the pain and or horrible things she went through... Fluttershy slept peacefully and had a good night’s rest in her bed.

Thend?

Space… what can I say about it? It’s really out there and… beyond compare~!

I was launched out into the atmosphere. In a powerful bubble of magic... I was lost in space, I did fear.

Can’t, you imagine how I must have felt? Constantly getting into trouble, starting with polluted planet, my homesickness it did swell!

Craziness, out in space, I was always one step from being in danger. I was slowly falling to madness, until I met some friendly strangers. I made some new friends!

It starts!

The first was a friendly team of mercenaries. (Yes, mercenaries) Who fought for peace… it’s their dream, and they were quite nice!

Can’t say, that I’m really to be blamed for what happened to me next. It was a really quite a bit... well… kind of sort of… it was actually beyond strange!

I was captured by horrible alien toads, with their strange ships and awful machines. With my friend whose name is Katt, and then we rescued all their captured slaves~. Yes, we did all that~!

Stage left!

What happened to me next wasn’t quite a nice thing; I was warped into a twisted into halfway stuck between bat and pegasus. Now can you guess what happened next? It’s quite a tale.
-

I made some animal friends who nursed me back to health. I was sick and they saved my life, really~. Then I escaped an exploding planet~. I lost hope and then Discord and Luna sparked it right back!

What followed was me getting trapped aboard a strange vessel, and separated from those friends. I got stuck in some vents, at least for a while. Then I stole the Head Hunter, after saving a life, but at that point, could you really blame me? I was really messed up!

Craziness, out in space, I was always one step from being in danger. I was slowly falling to madness, until I met some friendly strangers. I made some new friends!

Next up!

I went to a planet of completely wondrous dreams. Where you all appeared~, I had to continue, pushing forward.

I~ was attacked, by a killer tree~. And that’s not really something that I thought I would come fear, and then there I found out, that there was still much more in store for me!

I then met Roller, but I really like to call him Mr. Wheel. He’s been my constant com-pan-ion, ever since I patched his wheel. He’s been there for me!

What now?

I was now entrapped in a really scary place. (Horrible it was) With all these killer robots, they really wanted to~, eat my face.

As the end result of a rather complicated hectic struggle, I get small a taste of home~, before a lot of random chaos… sorely popped my bubble!

Craziness, out in space, I was always one step from being in danger. I was slowly falling to madness, until I met some friendly strangers. I made some new friends!

I end up on a new planet that’s alive~ and met with space ranger Mira Nova~. She taught me of Space Rangers, she became my friend and I knew rest until the robots came.
-

You’d think by now I would seriously get to the point. I seem to attract a lot of trouble~. I got involved in helping the friendly people of the planet. Now I’m a friend to all of Rhizome~!

What followed was me being target for multiple assassins. It was terrifying~, I wouldn’t give up, or even quit. I never really believed myself this strong you see~. Then I end up in a torture chamber, because of my good new friend, whose name is Bonnie!

Hey, don’t be mad at her! I forgave her for it long ago~. She’s been a true companion to me, as you all should know~! Really girls~!

Race Start!

I found myself involved in a really dangerous race~. With Herja trying to hound me, but she couldn’t keep up, with the pace.

I then, find myself, coming in fourth place. I and Roller did better than we thought we would. Especially considering, all the dangers that we would face!

I paid for Bonnie’s bail, and then we went to a strange planet that was called The Earth. We were on our way to save Clyde only to crash, strangeness was truly given birth~! It was weird~!

Last part!

We explored the earth and its many magical wonders~. (Everything was incredible) My daughter was a result… of a magical trolls… blu-hunders~.

I, can’t really say that I’m really upset about that at all~. Soft Echo and Donnabelle are as cute as you can get. They make your hearts, just melt and fail!

Traveling through time and space, with what is a rather innocuous looking hat. Magical bats and aliens, plus the crystal gems in the midst of all that! Japan up to bat~!

You’d think I would be okay with things thus far in avoiding the mass of demons. Only to come into more trouble, then I met Nerima and its strangeness will certainly cream ya~.
-

After a pitched fight with even more robots and dangers~, I started my journey to come on back home to all of you~.

I’m so happy just to be back from whence I did~ roam! It’s a relief, to finally be all the way back home~!

Then you threw me this really~ big party. For my new family, it has definitely increased, by a lot more than three.

I’m no longer the lost soul of kindness, with these last few words. My song will truly be, completely fin-ished!

Craziness, out in space, I was always one step from being in danger. I was slowly falling to madness, until I met some friendly strangers. I made some new friends!

Made it!

Author's Note

Take it as you will, but I don't think I'll be fixing anything in this story for a while.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to think of lyrics to fast beat music, now imagine Fluttershy singing that song.

I'm done, THEND. Always wanted to end it all on an odd number.

1

It all started on an average day in Equestria, as every pony knows nothing about a day on the world of Equus was average. One shy pony was about to go beyond her comfort zone, so far in fact that there is no such thing as understatement in this fact.

A pony with a silken pink mane, four soft fuzzy hooves, two adorable fluffy feathered wings, ocean blue eyes, three butterflies marking her flanks and the voice of a dove. This was the least likely pony to go on adventure unless she was along for the ride as a guest.

Her name was Fluttershy; she was sweet, kind and adorable. If there was ever an angel born of normal flesh, this would be it in a nutshell. Said angel was about to go on a mentally scarring adventure and it all starts with a rabbit named as such. It wouldn’t be all scars though as she was about to see things that were amazing, far and beyond the scope of her small town life which was already chaotic enough for her.

Angel the rabbit was a playful and rambunctious, he could be grumpy at times but he truly cared about Fluttershy and was smart enough to take care of things when she was too tired to work. His workload was about to increase exponentially and it was Angels fault that his favorite pony in existence disappeared to infinity and beyond. He wouldn’t stop crying for weeks straight but this isn’t his story.

“Angel, come back!” Fluttershy chased after her pet rabbit, the reason is not really the important. She could have been chasing Angel because he was in a playful mood, he could have stolen something and Fluttershy was just getting it back for the owner, whatever the reason Fluttershy was chasing Angel.

The shy pony chased her rabbit on hoof, she could have caught him sooner had she bothered to use her wings and fly after him. The following situation could have been avoided in that circumstance. As far as the narrative is concerned, this was an event that was entirely unavoidable since Fluttershy was a patient and gentle creature at heart. She wasn’t about to roughhouse with the rabbit despite him wanting it.

Elsewhere a purple pony named Twilight Sparkle, the most magically gifted pony who found residence and home in Ponyville was practicing a spell. This spell was rather important given it was called a bubblehead spell, a spell used to help a pony explore underwater and handle large amounts of pressure while making sure the being under its effects has air.

As you can surmise, Twilight had accidentally launched the spell out a window having missed herself in the mirror and didn’t think twice about it or if it would cause a problem, not to mention the strength of the spell would make it last for a few days at least. Twilight hardly cared about the actions or results of her spells, it took her quite a long while to turn that orange jay back into blue jay. There was also the frog she turned partially into an orange, the one which she didn’t return to normal until after Fluttershy brought it to her attention a month later. The reason why it took her so long to deal with the frog was because it was the very frog that slapped her in the face. Said frog was one that Fluttershy was moving to Froggy Bottom Bog a long while ago and she was still holding a grudge against it for hopping out of the sky bound transport and landing on her face on purpose.

No guesses as to who the spell hit.

“Oh my goodness, um… some pony… help? Some pony I seem to be kind of stuck.” Instead of encompassing her head, it encircled her entire body. Given the strength of the spell Fluttershy couldn’t pop the bubble and she pushed her hooves against it. She tried several times to pop the bubble, biting, poking it with a feather or slapping at it with her tail were all failures.

“Hey Fluttershy, you’re looking a little trapped there.” Rainbow giggled and bumped the bubble making it go higher, being a weather mare she thought the bubble would pop as soon as it hit a cold enough atmosphere. She was sorely mistaken and would later recall the last time she saw Fluttershy floating straight up into sky.

“Could you maybe… Rainbow… oh when will this bubble pop? I need to catch angel, I also really need get back to Ponyville to meet up with Rarity at the spa.” The severity of her situation was not yet known to her, until she floated by the upper atmosphere without getting cold and only then did the true panic set it as the world grew smaller and she could clearly see both the sun and moon in the sky. “Oh no, oh no, what do I do? There’s no oxygen out here… if the bubble pops…”

Inhaling deeply, Fluttershy closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them to a sight that would stay with her for what she thought was the rest of her life. As short as it admittedly would be if the bubble were to pop while she was in open space, she tried to put the idea of her imminent demise out of her mind. Though there was the niggling thought of all the friends and loved ones who’d miss her when she passed on. If the bubble never popped she would die of starvation, she was glad that she had already eaten lunch and had a snack in a single solitary carrot in the saddlebags she currently wore.

The sight was beautifully rendered in her eyes, she could see the universe as her bubble drifted further and further away from the planet. The stars, the sun, the blue and green world that was her home for most of her young life and now she was being taken by the universe but at least she would enjoy the view. Sighing she watched as her world drifted away and she started crying, how could it end like this?

Slowly Fluttershy closed her eyes and decided to go to sleep; she’d rather go while slumbering then awake in what would be a painful manner. Her demise was guaranteed; only now it was all a waiting game and was only a matter of when she died which could be measured in minutes or hours as far as she was concerned being trapped in a seemingly endless abyss.

Fluttershy hoped this was all a nightmare and that it was not really happening to her.

Author's Note

Just to note the crossover or overs will appear at random so your mileage may vary upon reading.

By the title of this story you're probably expecting a wanderer and his steed to come to the rescue of the fair maiden. Nope, not happening or at least they aren't going to be helping immediately or very much.

5

It wasn’t long before she found herself staring back at the planet as they left it behind. Fluttershy was generally welcome aboard the space vessel; even the bird was less jumpy and temperamental around her. She stayed out of the way of those who lived on this space faring metal ship and spoke out loud on the things she was curious about as they flew away from the ocean planet, the frog seemed insistent that she talk out loud while pointing out his headset.

Talking actually helped her think about her situation and allowed her to stay calm despite having no control of where she was going given she back in space again and not of her own volition. She was relying on the kindness of strangers to take care of her. The ocean planet had been nice when she was nowhere near the toxic sludge that was twisting the mostly docile animals of the world. Now she had no clue where these four bipedal animals were heading, but she was along for the ride and didn’t know what to do or say about her need to get home.

“I don’t even know where home is from here.” Fluttershy lamented as she a saw a map of the current galaxy she was in, it all revolved around a central sun. A foreign concept to her but one she quickly accepted readily as to how things worked here. They were now on a route to another nearby planet that was also covered in water but actually had some land masses. What the four had to do there was unknown to her, but it didn’t matter as long as they weren’t trying to hurt her and seemed more worried about her presence on their ship.

Fluttershy was entirely grateful that they were fine with her using their warm water and soap, bathing with cold water wasn’t pleasant even if it was necessary. The bathroom was almost just like the ones back home, so she had no problems with using their toilets and she figured she had surprised them somewhat with how well she managed to care for herself over the few days she had been onboard. Without little animals to care for she had a lot of time to worry more about her own needs.

The fact that these males on the ship were all gentle stallions made her feel less shy around them, but she kept her head down and communicated with them to the best of her ability. It was later when she was given an important question by the fox. Where in the universe had she come from? The only answer that she was able to give them that was the best she got them to understand was this; she had ended up on the ocean planet and had come from beyond their solar system in a bubble and that she didn’t know how to find home. They knew she was sincere in being lost; the rabbit had gently run a hand up and down her back as a sign of trying to comfort her.

She figured that they would scoff at the idea of a bubble being useful as a space faring transportation device, the bird had in fact done so. The frog didn’t, the fox was interested in what the frog had to say and the rabbit seemed to share the frog’s emotional sentiment that it wasn’t impossible that Fluttershy had in fact ended up in their system riding a bubble that had encased her from out of nowhere.

What little they were able to show her that was related to the subject appeared to be stone images with engraved pictures of a strange bottle shaped thing with a bubble on it along with a series of other etchings related to it. How these transportation bubbles were made was not known or how she would go about acquiring the ability to make them should she even want to. The two legged animals on this ship only had some information about stuff like the bubble she arrived in actually existing and that was from the ancient ruins like the ones on the planet she had recently been on.

From what little Fluttershy could understand this magical bubble stuff didn’t seem to exist now given how old the images seemed and hadn’t been around for a long time. The fox, bird, rabbit and frogs people instead focused on hardier solid modes of transportation and protection that didn’t seem entirely ludicrous to them or that’s the idea she was getting when the bird opened his mouth to let his derisive sounding remarks be known about the idea of bubble transportation.

They didn’t seem to know what magic was, but Fluttershy thought she understood the story the images told. Whoever they were could use magic to make those bubbles through a very overly complicated method to traverse the universe with no real goal in mind other than to explore everything; they seemed to be wanderers or nomads that moved among the stars wherever they pleased and appeared to be capable of navigating to anywhere they set their minds on wanting to be. Some kind of great travesty struck the planet which hadn’t always been covered entirely in an ocean and the ones who had settled down there had likely fled the rising waters using this method. If Twilight were here she’d be able to get more details out of the most insignificant things Fluttershy was seeing, that or she’d overly complicate it and miss the obvious.

Fluttershy made a note that if she couldn’t find a way home on her own, then she would try to find one of these nomads and ask them if they can help her find Equus or return home. She wasn’t as hopeful that she’d ever meet one or that they had the powers the images stated they did. The ability to find any place you wanted to be or go to in the universe would be helpful right about now.

The fox being the leader of the group decided they should all move on to other things, his tone was one of authority and Fluttershy accepted his authority as long as she was going to be on this ship. Thus frog started to share what their worlds were like with her; they showed her vast cities even bigger then Canterlot and incredible feats of engineering that were hard to believe as not being magic. The notable thing about the diversity of every species in this solar system is that they all had animal characteristics related to the ones she would have seen as pets back in Equestria, this was alongside every single one of them being entirely bipedal and intelligent.

Given some writing utensils Fluttershy was able to return some knowledge in the form of the cultural exchange currently taking place. She described a world where the sun and moon revolved around it, where there were three main types of her species and the amazing things they could do. When she made mention of ponies like her moving clouds around, the bird was proving to be ever the skeptic.

Unfortunately they did not know of a place like what she described and were a little confused as to her odd insinuation that the sun revolved around the world like the moon did. The frog once again conversed with his friends and pointed out her home as being quite possible by the demonstration he showed all of them. Even with that bit of information they didn’t have an idea as to where her home planet of Equus was, even if they knew what to look for it would probably take their lifetimes to find it.

They seemed particularly confused about something for a while and then it was made known to her that they were sad that her written language did not match up to that of the ones that came from the ancient ruins from the planets in their system.

“Can I please get a glass of water?” It was one of the easier things for Fluttershy to pantomime; she said it out loud as emphasis. She wanted to show them that what she was trying to tell them was real. Any pegasus can easily create a cloud with some water, the rabbit swiftly left to go fetch some for her.

“I don’t see why we are entertaining this thing or even brought her onboard, we’re can’t be taking on inedible livestock when we’re so busy dealing with that big ugly monkey face.” It took a moment, but Fluttershy realized she understood what the bird had said.

“Um… I’m sorry if I’m getting in the way of whatever it is you and your friends do Mr. Bird.” Fluttershy hoped he understood what she had just said and by the way he jumped, he had.

“What the hell!” The bird said causing her to squeak and back away from him, frightened by his sudden reaction to hearing what she had said.

Fluttershy shrunk into herself shivering with her tail between her legs and her ears clamped down tightly as the bird pointed an L shaped device at her only to have an arm placed in front of him by the fox. The fox looked over to the frog while raising an eyebrow.

“I guess my universal translator device finally kicked in for her, it has sampled enough of her language to translate what she’s saying and she can now understand us as well.” The frog was particularly jovial and happy that his device worked.

“Is that what this thing on my head is doing, that’s really amazing Mr. frog and I’m so glad that I don’t have to keep using my body language to communicate. Thank you for such a wonderful gift.” She gave them a cheerful smile; finally they’d be able to learn about each other much more easily.

“You’re welcome. Oh and actually it’s Mr. Toad, even if I am a frog. My father’s grandfather was a toad who married a frog and… well yeah, not much to say there really. So what do we do now Fox?” The fox opened his mouth to answer his high pitched companion only for something to go off.

“Message incoming, we have reached target coordinates for our staging area and will be receiving orders shortly. Fox proceed to the bridge at your soonest convenience.” The metallic voice was as dull toned as ever.

“Right, you guys stay here getting to know our guest better while I go receive our orders. Just be nice to her okay.” The fox had singled out the bird in particular who gruffly huffed while crossing his arms and looking away.

“I got the water, now what seems to be the problem here?” The rabbit noticed that his friends were being awfully quiet. He didn’t know they were a little put off by being able to understand Fluttershy verbally now.

“Apparently Mr. Toad’s invention works, now we can talk now all hunky dory like. I don’t see the point, any one of us could be shot down at any time and all that’s going to do is make her cry if we even think of giving her any reason to form any emotional attachments .” Despite the snide tone, Fluttershy smiled at the bird and the fact that he actually cared about her feelings in his own unique grumpy way.

“Hey, lay off her! We still need to know what she was doing on that planet.” The frog turned to ask Fluttershy when the bird got in yet another bit of his ever brilliant commentary.

“Well that’s an obvious one; she was surviving and doing a barely half decent job of it until we literally ran into her. It’s just a good thing she was recognized as a non native species or we’d be wiping the smear of whatever she is off of our ship and I can’t be bothered to do windows at a time like this. At least we know she’s not one of those crazy bio weapons, she’s way too pathetic and small to be one of those nasty things.” Despite the blue bird’s awful comments, Fluttershy silently agreed that she was pretty pathetic and that whatever he just said actually sounded more like a back hoofed compliment.

“What’s a bio weapon, does it have to do with those flying things dumping all those toxic sludge on those poor innocent creatures?” Fluttershy spilled her water on purpose and then slapped a hoof at it immediately creating a cloud as the splattered water became a cohesive gas formation before all their eyes. It earned shocked gasps and amazed reactions from her new friends who she had yet bothered to learn the names of and wasn’t bothering to ask as she did at least know Fox and Mr. Toad’s name at least.

“Whoa, how did you do that? I mean I know you showed us you lived in the clouds, but I didn’t think you meant literally or that you could create them from any source of liquid.” The frog watched as Fluttershy squeezed fresh liquid from the cloud she had created out of what was once a puddle of spilled water.

“My species can manipulate all kinds of weather phenomenon and most of us live in the clouds of our world; I prefer to live on the ground though with all my little animal friends. I’m a pony or more specifically a pegasus pony.” Fluttershy knew her tone drooped into a depressed tone and her wings went with her; making new friends didn’t really help her from being homesick for too long even if it did ease the burden by a large margin. “We can separate all kinds of contaminations from clouds for the freshest tasting water; my friend Rainbow taught me how to do it. It is how I’ve managed to stay hydrated back down on the infinite ocean, if I wasn’t able to do that I wouldn’t have been able to survive the first few days before I found the underwater fruit trees. I was almost dying of starvation before I could even get any food as soon as my bubble popped in the upper atmosphere of that planet. Thank you for taking care of me, I’m sorry to be such a burden to all of you.”

“Oh think nothing of it Miss and to answer your question, a bio weapon is what those mutated creatures were. We took out the main problem and the thing that was perpetuating the pollution so the ocean and the sea life should return to normal right quick.” The rabbit knew exactly what to tell Fluttershy to make her feel a bit better. “And you’re not a burden; we took you onboard because you looked like you needed the help. You kind of remind me of my daughter in some way, I hope she’s alright.”

“Well that’s good to know; at least those poor creatures will be able to live their lives in peace now.” Fluttershy felt so helpless and she was in fact quite helpless. What was she supposed to do to stop those ships from dumping sludge into the ocean, stare them and their dangerous weapons into submission from several miles away and hoped it worked? “So um… what are your names if you don’t mind me asking that is…? Oh I’m sorry; I really should introduce myself too all of you properly. My name is Fluttershy; my special talent is communing with nature and befriending animals of all kinds.”

“Oh great, we just picked up a space hippie. You can just tell how she’s going to react to us when we tell her what we do for a living. If she acts anything like a Rhizomian about it, I am definitely going to scream bloody murder.” The bird sounded really peeved about something as he looked away with a grim frown on his beak.

Fluttershy giggled a bit and already had a pretty good guess that they were warriors of some sort like Celestia’s guards. They did just save a planets ecosystem, even if they killed quite a few creatures that were horribly twisted by the ones who polluted it in the first place to do it.

18

Fluttershy gasped awake and her suddenly motion and intake of air spooked the four other passengers on the odd white ship. Taking deep breathes she looked around and wondered what was going on.

The large green bird leapt backwards squawking in shock while tripping and falling on her butt.

The blue alien monkeys all latched onto the nearby walls and just stared at the large green bird curiously; they dropped to the floor once their shock wore off. They came up to the pony to see Fluttershy slowly taking in her surroundings.

After a moment a cracking noise pierced the air and the large green bird was with Fluttershy in a second getting its beak under her. She lifted Fluttershy into a sitting position where she wrapped her neck around to the left side of Fluttershy’s face and rubbed her beak up against pony’s cheek with a soft trill as she curled around the pony.

Fluttershy inhaled softly, her head wasn’t as fuzzy as it used to be. Her shoulder and torso still didn’t feel all too great and the egg pressed against her belly was shaking. That took her immediate interest; it looked like it was hatching and there were cracks on one centralized small part of the egg.

Fluttershy watched in awe as the life inside the egg valiantly poked its tiny beak through the top of the egg which caused the broken bits of egg to collapse inward on it.

The bird was really tiny and chirping up at Fluttershy from its position at the bottom of the egg it hadn’t even opened its eyes yet, the big green bird cooed at the little thing softly.

Fluttershy’s eyes were filled with love and joy at this moment, it wasn’t hard to tell her heart was melting at seeing such a tiny life being born now of all times. The little creature hearing the cooing nose opened its eyes and flinched at the light entering the egg from above. After a moment the tiny bird became used to the light and saw its mother and Fluttershy looking down at it, it chirped anxiously at the two figures.

Fluttershy wondered how one could take care of little alien birds, obviously it would need to be taken out of the egg first and… where was the mother going? She watched the big green bird pull away from her and quickly thundered off; she then turned back to the little nearly featherless bird that just lay at the bottom of the egg which was chirping up a storm now.

It was really adorable looking alien bird that was so tiny and defenseless; it made Fluttershy wonder why the mother left it alone with her like this? Well at least she was able to stay in an upright position without the mother holding her in place. Looking at the alien chick it was hard to tell what gender it was; she really did not understand the greater biology of the alien bird quite yet, just that it had really strong legs and could rip an alien crab monster, literally armed with lasers, completely in half.

After a moment the mother came back and poked her beak gently into the hole in the egg, she followed this up with a familiar retching sound that was heard when it came to feeding Fluttershy. She unleashed a small dribble into the egg. The tiny bird started happily ingesting the fluid and bathed in the love of its mother.

Said mother turned to Fluttershy and nuzzled her before pecking at one of her fluffy bat ears in a completely jovial manner. It looked like Fluttershy was now officially the godmother and babysitter of a little alien bird, said bird was happily fed and chirping for a bit then it slowly drifted off and curled up at the bottom of the egg, getting exceptionally cozy as it was tired from finally breaking its shell.

“Um… shouldn’t we take…I’m sorry to ask this, but do you know your babies gender? Anyway, shouldn’t we take it out of the egg?” Fluttershy was staring into the friendly eyes of the mother bird that tilted her head curiously to the side at the first question. It didn’t seem the large bird understood what she was asking about at all, Fluttershy wasn’t willing to ask an intelligent creature about its genitalia or the operations of said alien anatomy as that seemed like too much personal prying. Seeing as the green avian shook its head no at the second question, Fluttershy knew the bird had clearly understood that question well enough. “Why not, can you tell me why it has to stay in the egg?”

The bird nodded, she bent her head around and tapped both her legs and made a hopping motion by looking like it was preparing to jump, then pointed at the egg with one of her toes. After that she went back to normal and cooed at the sleeping little bird at the bottom of the egg.

“It has to jump out of the egg?” There was an incredulous look on Fluttershy’s face. If what she was hearing from the mother was right, it needed to be able to be strong enough to jump out of the egg on its own. It may sound ridiculous at first glance, but this mother would know better how to raise her own alien baby bird then Fluttershy would.

The mother bird nodded sagely then went back to cooing softly over her sleeping chick.

The three short tailed alien monkeys finally came over and peered into the egg and chattered excitedly about the baby, they were clearly happy to see Fluttershy awake and feeling much better. One of the small monkeys even jumped on Fluttershy’s back to look over her shoulder, but it was knocked off by the cooing mother, who suddenly clucked in an angry tone while motioning to Fluttershy with her beak.

The monkey chattered something as in an apologetic to the bird and gave Fluttershy a hug before quickly backing off. The other two joined it and they all scampered off out through a doorway that closed up behind them, most likely they were going for the front of the ship.

Fluttershy giggled lightly as she looked around idly cradling the egg in her left hoof. What kind of alien ship was this? It was strangely built; it seemed to be made for taller creatures like the green bird than it did the little alien monkeys that could stick to the walls. The fact that none of them had a viable language other than using their bodies in accompany to sound said that they clearly hadn’t built this ship, but they knew what it was and how to vaguely pilot it.

Fluttershy had been so out of it when the acid had been pouring into the room back on the planet when it was… she let tears brim in her eyes until a bundle of feathers wiped them away. Trying to get her thoughts back on track from the new mother tickling her out of her depressing thoughts, Fluttershy hadn’t really seen much of the interior of the ship when she was dragged aboard.

It was simple in design, nothing extravagant or overly elaborate but definitely a pearly white color with a slight tint to it. She was quite certain the ship was large enough to have two floors to it and from what she saw on the Croaker transport, there was usually a living area, food storage and at least a bridge for piloting controls.

Fluttershy was currently in small room and was sitting in a recreated much greener looking nest; it looked to be a living area of sorts. Whoever the previous owners were didn’t leave much behind. She decided it was time to try standing up; putting weight on her right shoulder was met immediately agony and the hole in her patched up torso wasn’t feeling much better.

The mother bird seeing Fluttershy in pain quickly pushed the pony back into sitting down and curled up around her and the egg protectively while getting settled.

Sighing Fluttershy leaned back against the feathers. She wasn’t very sleepy, but the mother’s feathers were really comfortable and she rested thinking about the dream she had. Were Luna, Discord and Rarity really there? Had they found some way to connect to her or was that just her being completely mental because of her twisted cutie mark and body?

Discord had said they would be waiting for her to return home, Rarity wanted to be here with her and Luna wanted her to get better. It was nice to know that even if they weren’t real they were worried about her in her imagination. If they were real Fluttershy probably really worried them by shutting down like she had and would apologize later when she could.

Her head was still a bit fuzzy and she still felt the pain of her injuries, the destruction of an entire planet full of life was still eating away at her heart and all the things that were happening in the universe were pretty bad. Despite all that Fluttershy smiled at seeing this little baby sleeping so peacefully and that a new life was given birth in the middle of nowhere in space.

Sure Fluttershy knew the road ahead might be bad or that it could get much worse, like for instance the question of where they were currently going came to mind or even what the ship they were on would run into on the way there or if they were truly going anywhere at all. There was also the thought of a limited food supply and there was now another mouth to feed that couldn’t very well handle solid foods. She’d deal with all the stress of worrying about everything later when it really became a huge problem, for now Fluttershy would just sing a quiet song to herself.

In the midst of her song, a small chattering noise was heard and Fluttershy stopped. She saw that an alien monkey, probably the same one that jumped on her from earlier, was holding the purple gourd filled with water. She carefully lifted her left hoof off of the egg and took the offered gourd and drank freely of it. After she finished she hoofed it back into the hands of the small alien monkey who smiled and sat down staring at her.

“Do you want me to continue singing?” It didn’t take long for her to receive an answer as it obviously wanted Fluttershy to continue. It even took up a position cuddling into the feathers of the large green bird and drinking the water from a different side of the large pimply hollowed out gourd, it cuddled into Fluttershy’s side and made sure not to disturb the egg. Clearing her throat Fluttershy continued to sing until the little critter yawned and nodded off snuggling against her.

Fluttershy was not the happiest pony around even if she was the only pony on this ship, but she was going to continue living since these critters had went to great length to save her life. Maybe she could even discover more about this ship and learn a little more about culture of the beings that made it.

Sitting still and being the one cared for was not something Fluttershy was good at. She didn’t mind that she was being cared for; it was just that she was the one that usually did the caring for others that were sick or needy of her attention. At least her talent with animals counted no matter where she went and these animals were being exceedingly kind to her, she wondered how many animals they left behind on that planet to die. She even wondered what became of that really tall creature that shot a hole into the hidden room with that powerful rainbow colored beam, the one that let her friends in before running off.

It might have been a few hours, but since Fluttershy wasn’t allowed to move and since she was so comfy she started nodding off deciding to get some more rest. At least her sickness was clearing up, she somewhat wished she knew the name of these creatures. Maybe she would find out when she was well enough to start exploring the ship.

As she closed her eyes, she wondered what the alien monkeys or the large green bird could have done with her saddlebags, her slightly busted universal translator and the ever important galactic map that she would have to update everywhere she went. She knew they had to be somewhere else on the ship or else she would have felt the bags on her when she woke up.

Fluttershy sat in a meadow under a weeping willow with all her friends just taking in the day and relaxing, only within minutes did Luna appear and approached Fluttershy.

“I am most sorry to interrupt your dream Fluttershy, but I need to speak with you.” Luna said in a rather serious tone.

“What about and can my new friends come to Equus for a visit?” Fluttershy said in a lackadaisical manner, she was currently in her happy place and she wasn’t really all there at the moment.

“Give me but a moment.” Luna lit her horn and with a pop two figures appeared in Fluttershy’s dream world; both the green bird and the blue monkey took one look at Luna and immediately bowed to her politely. “Strange, they are intelligent enough to know what I am. They are smarter then they appear but not fully above an animal’s intelligence. They are much like your pet rabbit Angel.”

“Angel, Oh dear, is my little angel bunny alright? Oh never mind, there he is right now!” A dream version of Angel hopped up to Fluttershy, all the while Luna and the other two creatures stood off to the side watching her play with the rabbit. This time in her dream world she was perfectly fine and looked like her old self.

“Is she fully mentally sound at the moment?” Luna received a shrug from both of the aliens and then another being appeared in the dream. A tiny little visitor that snuggled up against Luna’s back causing her to spread her wings in shock. Looking back at the little bird creature rubbing up against her fur and chirping merrily made her give a little sigh at how adorable it was. She knew Celestia would have loved to see it, but she was already stretching herself thin by bringing two creatures into the dream realm from an inexorably vast distance away that were most definitely not ponies. “This is your child I take? It is certainly a precious little thing and from what I have gathered of Fluttershy she adores babies, Discord said as much and that it brought the life back into her eyes. She’d defend and raise it as her own if you weren’t well enough to take care of it yourself. Is Fluttershy getting better or healthier? I must know for the sake of my own mind.”

The big green bird gave a caw and the little baby jumped right onto her back, not being feeble or small as it was in the real world it nestled into its mother’s feathers chirping a little song. The monkey answered the other question by motioning that, Fluttershy was indeed getting better in the head but pointed out the shoulder and body were still recovering from bad wounds.

“That is about as much as I expected to learn, thank you very much for watching out for one of my subjects. If we are to physically meet one day, I will prostrate myself before you in the waking world.” Luna walked over to Fluttershy frolicking with all her dream friends; she looked a lot livelier and less dreary.

“Fluttershy, please you must listen to me!” Luna finally got Fluttershy to notice her as she motioned with a hoof to come over. “You are dreaming and I can connect to you while you sleep, I wish to know that the things I saw… did they truly happen to you?”

“Yes, I’m a terrible po…” Before she could finish uttering her sentence a little chirping sound found itself in one of her ears and she looked up at the top of her head to see the baby bird playing in her mane. Her looks reverted to how she really looked at the moment; even then the bird cuddled into one of her ears and looked like it wanted to live there. It didn’t like that strange bad feeling around her and wanted to cheer her up in its own infantile manner.

“The young one see’s you as important to it. It knows only of the love you gave it from the moment it saw you looking down upon it. You are no monster Fluttershy, there was not much you could do in the situation those aliens creatures with the laser weaponry had put you in. I saw how they fired upon you the moment they were close enough to see what you were and one even laughed at your pain and suffering. They would be dead anyway, either from the planet exploding, by this brave mother that came to your rescue or maybe even that mysterious glowing tall armored orange creature who helped your friends get into the room to save you and the egg. I see it has hatched by the way.” Luna paused and remembered something about the really tall creature; it had fired a beam of rainbow colors that blasted a hole into the room Fluttershy was lying incapacitated in. “Speaking of the tall creature, I see the elements of harmony are not just a thing of our world. That tall creature you saw seems to have embodied the spirit of harmony itself or something like it. Even when the planet was exploding, that being stopped and helped your friends escape their imminent demise instead of selfishly worrying about its own life. I pray that that creature made it out alive.”

The large green bird suddenly made a loud trilling noise in a specific tune, an S shaped bolt of lightning appeared in a circle above her. A vision of what looked like a large and wise bipedal griffon was shown watching a little being so unlike itself running around chasing what looked like another small green bird with a smile on its face. The griffon looking creature was looking towards the ones watching this scene with more than a hint of curiosity; it was as if it could truly see all of them. The vision had ended as soon as it came and the large green bird imparted that the being was a friend without words and that the friend was most certainly alive in her heart if not in the flesh.

“How mysterious… that being that looks like a griffon looked vaguely familiar. Fluttershy, I want you to know that all your pony friends and I will try to stay in touch through your dreams. We have not lost hope on you getting home; however we don’t know how you are to find your way back to us or how long it will take.” Luna frowned a little before she walked up to Fluttershy and wrapped her hooves around the sad little pony. ”Know this Fluttershy; your friends will always care about you no matter whether they are old ones or all the new ones you seem to be making. No matter your actions we will always believe the best of you and that whatever comes that you will try to be true to whom you are. Also know that your friend Rainbow is quite proud of you and wished that you could learn of this fact as soon as possible.”

“She… she is? I’m not exactly proud of what happened to those three alien crabs.” Fluttershy wondered what she could have possibly done or what Luna could of told Rainbow Dash that would have made her proud. Being the cause of the three crab beings deaths no matter how cruel they were was nothing to be proud of.

“We all are proud of you Fluttershy for that very reason, that you can be as strong as to care so deeply where others would call you weak. Rainbow has just been the most vocal about it by telling every single pony in Ponyville that you are out there fighting and befriending aliens everywhere. I believe she said that you’ll kick flank and take names where she wishes she could be doing the same right alongside you.” A smile of amusement came to Luna’s face as one also appeared on Fluttershy’s countenance. They sat in the grass with the three alien animals underneath the tree and they had a discussion about who Fluttershy would see in her dreams next, possibly Twilight who was distraught to find out that she was the cause of all this.

Author's Note

Next stop... maybe Valhalla?

22

It’s been two and a half weeks and Fluttershy was making herself at home aboard the Valhalla, she was surviving quite well despite all the attempts to capture and kill her. She had learned a few things about her mutations, like the fact that she should avoid anything that tasted like apples or else she could risk getting stuck in full bat form. She eventually went back to her half pony winged state after the first two days after the cider incident, her cutie mark morphed from the three pink bats into its twisted yin yang symbol.

Becoming a full on bat pony had let her move faster and made her much stronger, but Fluttershy didn’t truly revel in the feeling of her alternative form. In fact becoming a full on bat pony really freaked her out because she was conscious of the changes this time and didn’t lose herself mentally. Despite her friend’s reassurances that she would be okay through her dreams Fluttershy still had trouble coming to terms with it.

At least her survival was assured for the moment even if she felt bad for leeching food from all the other beings onboard. Fluttershy had studied all parts of the ship and heard many an interesting conversation that was about her, she was like a ghost story to all the crew members of a strange alien creature that was skulking around the bowels of ship doing who knows what. It was weird that they were already afraid of her even if she hadn’t done anything aggressive except hissing angrily at someone for breaking up her cider guzzling in the mess space where many of those who lived on this ship congregated to eat. At least not everyone wanted to dissect her, but there were still a fair number of scientists on the research and development deck that would love to get a hold of her.

Habitation, the bridge, weapons research and development decks that Fluttershy knew were heavily manned at all times, as such she stuck close to hydroponics and habitation. Habitation deck was important to Fluttershy for cleanliness reasons; she had eventually remembered that she could create clouds and use them to wipe her body clean as she had forgotten in the turmoil that her mutations were causing her. Forgetting she was a pegasus would have been a nail in one coffin.

Hydroponics grew its own food source which was interesting to Fluttershy as the Croakers, Aniversians or those of the Lylat System didn’t seem to have or care much for renewable food sources onboard their ships. In this ship these beings were quite clever by having an environment for growing food in, one that Fluttershy feared she was taking too much advantage of. At least she hasn’t been caught sneaking into and out of hydroponics like she has in the habitation deck; there was a lot of debate about her sentience given how smart she was in avoiding them. If it weren’t for her sonar hearing she wouldn’t be able to hear their heartbeats or even know that they were coming for her.

The hydroponics deck was like a forest that was completely devoid of animals except for the ones in the small farming section. The next time she saw Applejack in her dreams, she would have so much to discuss about plants being carried around in outer space.

It seriously disturbed Fluttershy that the cow like creatures in the hydroponics farm weren’t intelligent or sentient like the ones back home, but she did receive a friendly welcome from them all the same because her connection to animals. Apparently from what she learned of the farming section of hydroponics the more intelligent beings needed to resupply food less and the ship was more self sufficient if it had its own food sources. There were a lot of omnivores and carnivorous species aboard, not one of them was herbivorous like Fluttershy, learning of this made her isolation even more daunting if it were not for her friendship with the short lived farm animals that would be killed for food processing.

Fluttershy did feed her ferrets back home some fish and tried to not tear up at the death of the less than sentient creatures that became affectionate when she visited them. It was still unpleasant, but Fluttershy understood the cycle of life quite well and couldn’t begrudge them for what they ate to continue living so long as they didn’t feed on other sentient beings. Fluttershy had always been wary around Griffons because they once upon a time did eat the hearts of their enemies, a history lesson that made her feel queasy.

Speaking of griffons, Fluttershy was wary of being on a Galactic Federation battleship, she would have preferred to getting stuck on a large cargo vessels she heard about. The problem is cargo vessels didn’t have renewable food sources and another one wasn’t scheduled to meet up with the Valhalla for another month. They only need to resupply themselves at least once every three months depending on urgency or repairs needed after a fight.

At least Fluttershy knew that no matter where one went in the universe there would always be war, pain and intolerance. On the opposite hoof there was also joy, unknown wonders and so many different creatures wandering the vastness distances of space itself. The universe was a big place and ponies were a really small part of it, for all the good there would be bad and everything between.

It was no wonder that Twilight was so giddy to be in Fluttershy’s hooves to see what kind of ways of keeping knowledge the other races of the universe had. The super smart pony was even keeping track of all the things Fluttershy had seen and making notes on any of her observations about the other beings she has met in the universe. Fluttershy did get the point across that it was not all fun and games for her, because not every being she met in the universe was immediately friendly and she wished she could tell the Alderbaran people she forgave them for her having a bat episode.

What Fluttershy was doing currently was sitting in a vent located around the habitation deck and listening into conversations of people passing by quietly, it was the one form of entertainment that kept her sane. In her mind she wished for more company then when she slept and she wanted the presence of a friend.

Fluttershy twitched when something begin to vibrate near her. In fact it was right next to her and a little bit downwards, the vibration was weird and it felt like magic when Twilight had enwrapped her in a cocoon during her time as a supermodel something she was glad to get away from. Magic was something comforting to feel despite all this cold unfeeling technology even if it was amazing.

“Huh, which of my sister is it that calls for the aid of the high artificer Katrina Felicitous? This feeling is familiar, but I can’t place a claw on the one who calls. Is that you Willy Duwitt, I hear Jenny gave you one of our stones as a secret keeper? No it feels much more like a sister, but not of my race… puzzling.” Fluttershy blinked at hearing the voice almost as if it were in her head, she quickly pried the memory stone from Aldebaran out of her souvenir bag while avoiding the sharp edged blade of glass. She had enwrapped the handle of her glass knife with a bit of her own mane; she also used some of the sap she still had left to harden her makeshift handle. Holding out the glowing stone in her hoof, Fluttershy stared at it in wonder.

“Katrina?” Fluttershy said shyly not sure if what she had heard was real, she really did not like the idea that she was going insane, not that the universe cared for sanity.

“Fluttershy, you’re alive!? Thank the stars, when we sent you away I had thought for sure that the little lost traveler I had befriended perished by our magic and to the sickness of that twisted form. I had been held in a time of great sorrow for what happened to you! Quark demons are much more dangerous then we have ever truly realized. I am more thankful for the immunity we Aldebaran have adapted against them.” Katrina had clearly remembered her voice. Fluttershy could physically hear the female cat being crying on the other end of the stone, they sounded like tears of joy instead of sorrow. “Are you well, tell me what has become of you and why do you feel more like a sister now then just another magical being? How did you become connected to us so thoroughly? This certainly requires investigating, but it does my heart good to know your still in the realm of the living.”

“Fluttershy are you asleep? I feel something is amiss, as it feels like you are in a waking dream.” This time Fluttershy heard Luna’s voice coming from the stone which was a bit weird and it once again made Fluttershy question her sanity at the moment.

“Who are you and how did you become connected to a memory stone!” Katrina asked in a slightly blithe tone at hearing Fluttershy was alive, but it was slightly soured by hearing a different voice entirely.

“I am Princess Luna keeper of the night and who are you that I am speaking to? Much less why do I feel so many beings peacefully slumbering so far from our planet and the moon of which I ferry?” Luna sounded completely confused and Fluttershy was right there with her.

“Princess Luna I’m most certainly awake, but how am I talking to you? What’s going on? I’m still on the Valhalla and could you keep it down, I don’t want to be shot at again they grazed my left hind leg the last time they saw me and I don’t want them to send machines to try and pry me out of the vents like the last few times.” Fluttershy shuddered at the memory; she had learned to navigate the vents much faster after the last few times she had been spotted out in the open.

“You are Princess Luna? I am Katrina Felicitous, High Artificer of Aldebaran; Fluttershy has told me much of your race. Still, I wonder how you have connected to the memory stone that was given willingly to Fluttershy. What is this Valhalla you are on Fluttershy and who would shoot at a being who has regained her heart so pure? I want to know how you are faring and if you are well since you called for aid? I’m not sure how much I can truly lend.” Katrina was now as confused at the two other ponies on the magical stone that connected all three of them.

“I recently connected with my subject while she sleeps; I am a dream walker as well as protector of the night. Now I am seeing many alien minds that are distant from my own. Fluttershy has told me of your race, it is amazing by the way to view their dreams. They are much like us yet so vastly different; I don’t even know how I know their language.” Both the ponies heard a gasp of understanding was heard from Katrina.

“If you have a link to her mind, the memory stone in her possession must be linking not only her but you as well to those of the Aldebaran race. The reason you can understand us is that all words are spoken in understanding when spoken with the mind and the heart, the stone can link those who are secret keepers or are true sisters of our race. I’m curious that Fluttershy sounded off an alarm as a fully fledged sister and yet I know she is not of Aldebaran, but of your world and its own magic.” Katrina waited for a response she decided to add something. “The fact that it even became activate now is strange when it seemingly went inert before.”

“This is not how I expected our first contact to happen aside from what Fluttershy is giving us, we are not yet a space bound race. I heard a cry of need and it came from one of my subjects at a vast distance away and the only subject I know that far away is Fluttershy.” Luna regained her composure. “What is this memory stone you have given her? It seems to be a great boon to her if it allows me communication while she is awake. We, her friends, worry about Fluttershy and that she isn’t doing well being so alone.”

“This is all very confusing.” Fluttershy interjected because she hardly believed her ears, twitching them she decided to move to a more isolated section of ductworks where she could hold this conversation in a safer environment then the habitation deck. She answered one of Katrina’s earlier questions. “I’m currently on an alien battleship called the Valhalla with creatures that are really not nice, I think it’s mostly because of my appearance Katrina. The planet you sent me to kind of well… it exploded… violently. I was on that planet and thanks to some animal friends who nurtured me back to a relatively better health I escaped. I now find myself in another situation where they shoot at me if they see me; I think it is because the ship I escaped the exploding planet on kind of crashed into this one or my general current appearance. I’d like to think that they are just like scared animals lashing out at the unknown so I don’t hold it against them because of my current state and I might have hissed at one. Oh I forgot to ask, did I do anything horrible on Aldebaran?”

“You caused quite a stir Fluttershy, but out of all the damage you caused you didn’t do permanent harm and I didn’t even know Berserker Baboons could be spooked badly as usually nothing scares them. I can see where something like an accident you described would bring about large amounts of displeasure, but I still don’t see why they would shoot at something as friendly as you. You are not the cause of that planet exploding I take it?” Katrina sounded worried for Fluttershy even as she spoke in a dry tone; there were feelings that the pony on the other end of the stone was quite troubled.

“I know the answer is neigh, my lost subject ended up on the planet because of your people’s magic sending her there. We still do not know the cause of it exploding, but it seems to be engraved in poor Fluttershy’s memory and I along with her many friends have been trying to be of some comfort to her. The creatures she met who rescued her were near fully sentient and quite friendly, they aided her quite valiantly and I had the pleasure of meeting them mentally while they were sleeping while in contact with Fluttershy. She is most certainly not fully healthy in mind or body, but she is doing well considering the circumstance. Whatever magic you enacted upon her has mutated her into being mostly stuck halfway between two states and she has mentioned that it was quite painful for a while, even more so after taking a shot through a shoulder and one that went through her torso from energy weapons which I hear are alarmingly common to more technologically gifted beings in the universe.” Luna was just recounting all of it from second hoof information; it made Fluttershy pout a bit that she was considered to not be fully there in the head.

“I’m right here you know…” Fluttershy mumbled given that Luna forgot she was talking to two beings on the same magically connected line between them.

“And I am glad to hear at least that much, even if you are not entirely safe wherever you currently are. I now have reason to not be as sad, but celebrating while you are trapped in a hostile place is not a proper thing to do. These mutations sound horrific even upon my ears even if I cannot see them whereas you probably have Luna and I swear I did not mean for this to occur to your subject.” Katrina answered sounding truly regretful of what happened. “I beg forgiveness for letting this event occur while she would have otherwise been safe on our planet.”

“It’s okay; I have already forgiven you for it.” Fluttershy stated immediately, she was way too kind for her own good and she knew it. She didn’t rightfully care as kindness was its own reward.

“I however find myself less forgiving, but I will side with Fluttershy on this matter as you likely didn’t know where she’d end up when you sent her away.” Luna was not surprised to hear the living embodiment of kindness itself being so forgiving. That she was so quickly willing to put things in the past and continue on, she was truly an inspiration to all ponies by surviving the horrors Fluttershy has witnessed among all the wonders. This was one of the many wonders Luna could stand behind as it might help her cope much better if she could talk to her friends more often. “I am happy to forgive you as well, for now I can speak to my subject whenever I want.”

“Should your people achieve true space travel, we’d welcome you to our home world at any time. I hear your agricultural achievements are incredible.” Katrina made her peace with Luna and turned her thoughts back to the Fluttershy. “What aid do you need of me that I might lend Fluttershy?”

“Um… what can you do with a memory stone exactly? I know you said it could be used to contact me, but I didn’t know how it worked.” Fluttershy knew it was bound to her and she’d never be capable of losing it or so Katrina had told her.

“About as much as you can use it for really. It’s meant to help with homesickness… its certainly working as intended for you and it’s quite good for communicating vast distances, all the people of our world are never alone if they wish to travel the great beyond. Remember that no matter where you go, you can never truly lose it as it belongs to you and we will always be capable of talking.” Katrina sounded a bit upset. “I wish I could do more for you, the memory stone also allows Aldebarans to share their magic with other Aldebarans in times of great duress. It is obvious to me that we can’t lend you our magic as you would be incapable of using it effectively.”

“You could talk to me more often and maybe talk with my friends too; I think it might help me not feel so alone.” Fluttershy said hopefully.

“I would like that; I thank you for your forgiveness for not being able to properly aid you in a time of need.” Katrina said solemnly.

“I as well dear Fluttershy would like to open communications with the Aldebaran people, have you found a way off the Valhalla yet? Your continued safety onboard such a dangerous place has me and your friends praying constantly for your continued safety.” Luna asked with a bit of a somber tone.

“I’m still trying to find a safe way to get off. I’ve found out a lot about the people here, they could be nicer if they weren’t so afraid of me. It feels so strange for me to be feared like this when I’m usually the one that’s afraid and I currently am for myself and them. I also had a small accident near an airlock and I learned why I should never go near one especially without protective gear.” Fluttershy shuddered at the memory, space faring races knew the dangers of traveling outside the atmosphere of their home planet quite well. It’s surprising that some intelligent beings didn’t need to breathe to survive in outer space, though they definitely needed some form of temperature protection. “I’m trying to figure out if I should just steal a smaller ship which I’m still very much against the idea of Luna or if I should wait to sneak aboard a cargo vessel. I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere I want and would be at the whims of wherever that cargo vessel ends up and there’s also the fact that the cargo vessels can be attacked which makes staying here safer by comparison. I think I can pilot one of their fighter ships called a Stiletto since they are said to have simplistic controls. I’m not exactly sure I’d be willing to pilot one without knowing what I’m doing and without a habitable planet nearby since I really don’t fully know what a Stiletto can even do or how far it will get me. Dying in an explosion due to ignorance is something I actually expected of Rainbow Dash for a long time; by the way can you go to my home and look underneath my bed for a green box Luna? It was my eulogy for her in case it happened and I want you to update it for me in case I do actually try piloting something. The Etecoons were the pilots of The Vagrant and they did a really good job of it before it ran out of fuel and the escape pod they were on ejected.”

Fluttershy moved on to talking about all of her discoveries including hydroponics deck and her still wanting to see Applejack the next time she dreamed. Fluttershy had seen so much of the workings of how other people built their spaceships, she still didn’t understand what fueled them or the finer things but she learned much of their culture just by being on them. She already had Luna intrigued of designing her own space fleet which was not likely to happen yet as ponies were still working on airship technology as it is. Katrina was more interested in convincing Fluttershy to expand her options to involve the use of her stare and to not limit herself to being shot at constantly.

Author's Note

Fluttershy getting her ship is incoming and no it most certainly isn't the Vic Viper that has been mentioned the past two chapters. This is not overly specific denial.

Though the Vic Viper will be involved in something alright,comes with plenty of options and can wreck entire flotillas just as advertised.

Interesting fact:The GF Stilletto class fighters look a lot like Faye Valentine's Red Tail.

40

Clutching on to Roller as well as she could as they got further away from their chasers, Fluttershy tried to think back to when everything started. It likely had begun when she landed on a cloud of butterflies all flapping their wings at the same time and weren’t exactly migrating in a normal manner at all. In fact a clump of random butterflies gathered together tightly enough to slow down and temporarily lift a filly that weighed at least eighty pounds or more while falling at terminal velocity at the time was more than a bit odd. It led Fluttershy to believe that particular situation alone was quite contrived and incredibly suspicious now that she looked back on it, she had after all researched the migration pattern of those butterflies and being specifically saved by them was like a little red flag going up in her mind now. She knew what ponies had to say about butterflies, but she didn’t think too much of it even after she became friends with Discord. The current situation she was in now actually made a great deal of sense if you believed in the superstition about a butterfly flapping their wings.

The pony now had the odd belief that her cutie mark was no mere coincidence in the events leading up to what happened, it could have been a cutie mark of a little bunny or a cute squirrel and heck Fluttershy would have just been happy if it was just a cutie mark of some random paw print. But no, it was the small innocent insects that can theoretically did big things with minimal effort by having a much larger impact than they likely would ever be capable of perceiving just for even the slightest of their movements.

Her cutie mark just had to be butterflies didn’t it! Fluttershy wasn’t bitter at her cutie mark, just the idea that it could represent such destructive forces. She silently remembered what happened at the gala, the time when Discord brought out her meaner side and then it happened again with Iron Will’s assertiveness training, she couldn’t truly say it wasn’t far from the truth that she was a mare of vast destructive ability.

They had made good time with Discord’s directions, they were now on an elevator heading up to the right floor and they had lost the deadly duo. The Big Mouth was too damaged to burst through the floors or climb up the shaft, Discord was directing them so they could avoid its spawn which were deadlier at the moment. The head of the humanoid machines was routed for a bit and again Discord was making sure Fluttershy and Roller was not in the path of the head honcho or his many minions searching for a pony skin rug.

All Fluttershy had to do was rest while letting Roller worry about getting them back to the ship safely so she could carve out a bit of tomato to eat. Hopefully the tomato would replenish her blood as well because her head was getting dizzy. The elevators weren’t exactly functioning at full capacity because of the recent damage to the power source, but it still got them to the floor where Head Hunter sat and waited. The surroundings soon became familiar and before she knew it she was once again in the small room with the Head Hunter stuck inside, just how they left it.

Slowly rolling up the side of the ship, they entered through the top and lowered down into the safety of the vessel. Fluttershy slowly tried to limp away from Roller only for him to shoulder her and help her move to storage; she pulled off the laser rifle and placed it on the floor before pulling out a perfectly preserved tomato from the cold storage unit.

Taking out her glass knife, Fluttershy cut a small chunk of it out and immediately thought better about eating it at the moment, she tossed it on the floor and looked to Roller who gladly ate it and revved in appreciation. After that Fluttershy made sure her right hind leg was laid flat by laying on her right side and checked twice to make sure the bones were oriented correctly in her leg. She had to do this before she took a chunk of tomato in her mouth; she didn’t want her bones to knit back together wrong. She’s had enough horrific things happen to her already, she didn’t need to add having to break her own leg on purpose to her mental list.

Slowly the pony was feeling much better, her wounds were slowly ebbing away and she felt as if she ate a full course meal with that one little bit of tomato. After a minute she stood up and stowed away her knife and laser rifle. She was walking perfectly fine now, getting to the pilots seat of the ship she could see that it was still pointed at a wall.

“You made it back with some time to spare Fluttershy, you’re little friend is very fast and Rainbow won’t stop harping on about how cool it is that you survived all that. At least Pinkie and Rarity understand that you’re not out of the woods yet, the chaos field is going to hit in the next ten seconds so be ready for it.” Discord was keeping his eyes locked on the Head Hunter, chaos was a fickle mistress at times and this would be one of those times even he would be at a complete loss as to what it would do.

“Huh… I feel a big one coming. Uh Fluttershy, I’ve always loved you as a friend whatever happens I will still throw parties and I will try not to fall into a super depressed state because of what may or may not happen to you in the next few seconds because of this D-O-O-Z-Y I’m feeling here.” Pinkie was hovering in the air and vibrating more violently then a normal Pinkie Sense would have her feel.

Fluttershy hugged Roller and they closed their eyes at the same time; the ship was hovering slightly in the small room as soon as Fluttershy got its systems running.

A wave of colors and wild energy washed over the Head Hunter and then it disappeared from sight. Discord started to look around wildly for where it went, but it was hard to follow the chaotic energies bouncing the ship randomly all across the universe, through dimensions, time and space.

Fluttershy opened her eyes and she saw a dessert planet below the ship and a giant sand worm shot up at the screen. Her eyes clenched shut in fear and when she opened them again she saw an asteroid field.

Blinking in surprise, Fluttershy took in the fact that the ship was now hovering over a world that had what looked like red water that looked to be blood, it led up to a beach which led to a city named ‘Miseryville’. That was what was written on the big sign that nobody would likely ever read or come by unless they were space travelers. This place had a spooky feel to it and in the distance their looked to be a factory made to look like a giant mouth with three eyes, this caused her to shudder at the memories of what she just went through.

Another blink and Fluttershy was hovering in front of her friends and… Fluttershy tried so hard not to blink and even her friends were dumbfounded. She was back on Equus, she was finally home! Only when she blinked, she wasn’t any more.

Discord was so dumbfounded by seeing the ship suddenly appearing in front of him that he didn’t react in time to stop the chaotic energies from visibly distorting and warping it away. He could have stopped it with a snap of claw had he reacted faster, a frown crossed his face. He looked to the other ponies who were just as clearly shocked as he was that it made an appearance within ten feet of them and they too were frowning. That was the first time in months that Fluttershy had been home. It might have been for a few seconds, but it at least gave them some form of hope that she could find her way back without chaotic fields turning the Head Hunter into a pinball jumping across the entire universe at impossible distances at a time.

The Head Hunter appeared in several more places. Some of these places were weird, some were dangerous and all of it was highly confusing.

One was a vast ocean with a wooden galleon on it with a raccoon sitting at the helm steering it to battle while another ship had a parrot and a mouse dueling each other with swords on the rigging

A humongous cave with a battle going on between two factions of humans ones with white hair riding what looked to be interesting fish shaped technology, the other seemed to be different on makeshift propeller driven devices being launched from four wheeled vehicles.

There was a big glowing green emerald sitting on an altar with seven smaller alters holding several similar shaped yet differently colored floating gems in some ruins. This reminded Fluttershy of the elements of harmony somewhat.

The next location the Head Hunter had appeared upside down so Fluttershy didn’t have any time to see anything as she fell to the ceiling with a grunt. She fell to the floor again when she ended right side up at the next location; she sat up and got a glimpse of a bunch of four legged canines with gills and no eyes that all turned and lunged for the ship before it disappeared again.

After glimpsing twenty or more worlds, the chaotic energy coursing around the ship came to halt and there was nothing but an empty void around the Head hunter.

“Um… has it stopped?” After a moment Fluttershy’s right eye started twitching. She had made it back to Equus she could feel the welcoming energy of the elements of harmony trying to grab onto her before she was ripped away from it again. She didn’t cry, she didn’t whimper, she just sat there with a dull and dead look in her eyes. She moved her hooves over the controls and set the autopilot for the nearest habitable planet with lots of vegetation. It would orbit whatever planet it came across automatically so that was one less thing to worry about.

Roller revved softly asking if she was okay, he was still confused about all the places they just went to so fast. One of them was Fluttershy’s home obviously because he saw the pink one, the blue one with wings like her and the white one with a horn. He felt a hoof rub slowly over his carapace as Fluttershy got up from her seat.

“I’m going to go lie down now Roller. Please, don’t make too much noise.” Fluttershy strode away from the pilots seat leaving the sentient wheel behind. She had seen so many strange and chaotic things, was that what being Discord was like all the time? Her heart ached and her head hurt, she didn’t even want to know what became of that vessel due to all that chaotic energy. The laser rifle she now owned was just another souvenir added to her collection.

That night in her dreams all her friends and Luna gathered around her to give her a gentle loving hug, she returned it as well as she could and even Celestia spoke gentle nothings into her ears as she rested against all their bodies cuddling up to her dream self. They even got to meet and talk to Roller as he to was tired from all the fighting. Mr. Wheel, like the unusual wheel shaped puppy he was, had fallen asleep next to her and had quickly accepted Fluttershy’s dream world easily enough and went rolling along the wide opens plains free to go as fast as he wanted without tiring.

Three days later… where Discord was still trying to figure out how a soulless robot managed to stuff all those spiritual turtles into such a confined space to power the generator that confined them in a way that tormented them endlessly for a rather economical and self renewing free energy source. The turtle spirits were set free and they fled out into the universe before the chaotic field consumed the vessel to the point even he didn’t know where it ended up or what would become of it. He however did manage to find Fluttershy again to keep an eye on her, quite literally as he now wearing a fetching eye-patch while his other eye was outside of his skull on constant watch and never blinking.

Fluttershy had learned a lot about Roller Wheel, mostly about why Mr. Wheel had gone through a minor if noticeable change.

Wheelies in general were a highly adaptive species. Ask questions like, how did they deal with large predators hunting them? The end result is those big black toothy monstrous wheelies who survived the dangerous process of bringing down said predators to adapt a larger size and become more dangerous. Get injured a lot? Grow a tough red carapace over the top half of your body. Need to warn off smaller predators, get a boost or just plain fart? Tubes that fired pressurized magical energy out their backsides. Like being up at night more than the day? Eventually grow a horn that goes through the biological process of generating phosphorous as you moved.

The downside to all these adaptations was that the wheelie in question moved much slower than they normally would to incorporate such abilities, Mr. Wheel was afraid he had gotten slower because of his now markedly tougher tire and wanted to test it out in a much more open space. The irony was not lost on Fluttershy, as that was all she saw for the past few days.

Get attacked by a bunch of killer robots? Eat them and eventually adapt a harder to pop tire along with the possible ability to eat much crunchier substances apparently. That’s at least Fluttershy’s diagnosis on his slightly changed wheel.

Roller’s size hadn’t changed, but his tire looked more durable than it used to be. The tire should have looked thicker but it wasn’t, the noticeable change was that it was grayer in appearance. Wheelies really were miraculous creatures; learning directly from one was quite the lesson in how their biology actually made complete sense. They started out looking like snails whose foot quickly wraps their central mass, then went from there adapting as they rolled along.

Fluttershy was still trying to get over the mental scar of being put on Equus then suddenly being completely stripped away again. Her heart was filled with hopes and dreams only to be horribly dashed on the rocks of reality that the little fishing boat hits in a reef with no lighthouse. Well that was poetic and she felt slightly dead inside, she now realizes Photo Finish was right about her and having Gothic undertones in her personality.

A beeping noise was heard; Fluttershy looked up at the screen and away from Roller who had been idle at her side chatting with her. Head Hunter had found a planet and it was definitely green, quite covered in vegetation really and there was a lot of sentient life on it or the planet was the sentient life, hard to tell from the readings she was seeing on the screen as she twisted and shifted her hooves.

It wasn’t hard to see that Chozo technology was built with the words ‘user friendly’ in mind for just about any kind of race that had at least one limb to touch the screens with; the only thing that wasn’t user friendly was the language being half griffon script.

Sighing Fluttershy looked to Roller and he stared back at her, well no time like the present to go and get herself killed in numerous possible ways. Like going outside her door wasn’t dangerous enough with the timber wolves, cockatrices and other nasty creatures of her home world.

The descent went perfectly fine, the landing perfectly fine, the air perfectly fine, the wildlife was perfectly cute and adorable. Fluttershy still wondering when the other shoe would drop as she told Roller not to get lost and let him run loose so he could get some exercise, she had set the ship down next to a wide slow flowing river outside a forest. She checked the water and it was perfectly clean, something was definitely up with this planet and Fluttershy was afraid to ask.

“This place is really beautiful as is this planet.” After a moment of looking around and seeing no sign of danger or anyone, Fluttershy sighed and decided to say it and hope she didn’t get a response. “I really am afraid to ask this out loud, but what exactly is wrong with this place?”

“Not much, I try to keep things nice around here for everyone who visits me.” A little red flower that looked like a flytrap popped up from the ground, Fluttershy squeaked and fell over onto her side in fright. After all the killer robots you’d think she would have lost the ability to be adorable, Private Pansy her ancestor certainly didn’t and she fought in wars. “Hello there, I’m really sorry about startling you. Been a long time since I’ve been capable of speech but your presence has put a bit of oomph back into my tired body. Feels nice to stretch out the leaves again, giving birth to an entire race will take a lot out of you, you know what I mean? Probably not, since you’re not a planet and you didn’t birth and raise an entire sentient species on your body... do you by any chance have the ability to talk to microorganisms?”

“W-who are you?” After trying to hide behind her mane Fluttershy realized she didn’t have that luxury anymore and she became sad until the flower grew up to her face and lifted it with a soft leaf to her chin.

“You poor thing, what’s wrong? I’m getting some seriously downer vibes from you, here on me you need a good disposition and I might be able to help you out better. I love it when people have positive energy and these negative feelings are really harsh to my mellow as my babies like to say.” After a moment where the plant frowns, it then curved its lips up into a smile. “I know what will cheer you up! Oh wait… we forgot to introduce ourselves to each other, haven’t exactly been the same or this strong since I gave birth. Hi, my name is Janet and I’m a planet.”

Lifting a leaf in friendship toward Fluttershy, she carefully let the leaf wrap around the end of her hoof and they shook once before separating.

“Hello Janet, I’m Fluttershy and I’m a pegasus pony.” It felt a little odd for her to be talking to something that she would have once looked at as food; in fact it was kind of freaking her out a bit.

“Hey Fluttershy, come on and tell little old me what’s wrong. It’ll make you feel better and I can direct you to the sentient species I gave birth to. They’re really nice and they are really good at doing the whole spa treatment thing visitors tend to like! They’ll help anyone relax really, friendly bunch my babies are.” After looking over her new friend Janet decided to pull back on the enthusiasm at meeting a kindred spirit much like her children. “Sorry… you’ve must have been through a lot and here I am yapping away and you’ve must have been flying for so many galactic miles.”

“Um… there are other spaceships that come through here?” The Head Hunter didn’t detect anything coming in except life and lots of plants, so Fluttershy was understandably confused.

“Yeah, but not the kind of spaceships your kind builds… kind of odd looking for a species with four legs to build a ship that looks like that.” Noticing the grimace on the pony’s face, Janet figured something was wrong with what she had just said. “So I take it that ship is not yours huh?”

“It’s a long story.” It was the beginning of a new friendship between pony and a fully sentient planet, Fluttershy let off her worries, her fears, her pains she felt, the things she has done and all the mental scars she had accrued getting to this point.

“Wow… you don’t usually see that much crazy stuff unless you’re a star nomad and yeah, a planet blowing up is a pretty scary thing. Then again star nomads don’t tend to get injured as badly as you seem to do. You almost seem like one otherwise, going where the wind blows and all that. I hope you eventually find your way home, until then I hope you can enjoy my… hospit… tality?” There was something in the expression on the pony’s face that Janet worried; it was a sudden smile as if she had heard the best news ever. “Was it something I said?”

“You’ve actually seen a star nomad!” This was something that Fluttershy had to explore; of course she wouldn’t get ahead of herself. Oh no… she was definitely shy and bitten more than twice.

“Of course I have, let me tell you a story about a little fuzzy orange happy go lucky fellow and the horrors I unleashed on him because I was once a lonely deserted rock. The guy was ridiculously kind and so was his friend to have forgiven me for almost killing the both of them. Things have gotten a lot better since they left.” Then that led into Janet telling Fluttershy about her two visitors, one of which she injured numerous times and yet that being wouldn’t die despite being pushed into the molten core of her body. So Mr. Meta Knight was right in saying that those who travel with a star nomad as their close companion are immortal.

Author's Note

I wasn't as distracted as I usually was and started writing the next chapter from the point of posting the last one, this is how fast I can put out a new chapter if I'm pushing it. It's been about five hours.

Sylvia never died despite everything that happens to her, makes you wonder why she even bothers running from the watchdogs if being at the center of a planet couldn't do her in. It makes sense if she's only doing it to protect Wander because otherwise she's really tough. Injuries tend to only hinder Sylvia for a short while, just because she's immortal doesn't mean she can't still feel crippling amounts of pain. Then again if Wander was killed, it would make Sylvia mortal the moment he died which is far from likely in the natural causes department, but goodness knows Lord Hater really tries.

Everyone remembers Janet the planet? Well the race Janet gave birth to is part of the mix of crossovers and it really mixes well given the natives particular technological prowess.

65

Neither Luna nor Fluttershy knew what to expect, but they could only see shadows and a light that showed a very sparse area like a flashlight. A mewling sound was heard and slowly the two spotlights widened revealing the surroundings area, after one sweep of the room it was entirely revealed.

The light had dimmed drastically to reveal that it was Bonnie who looked around the room she was in a sitting position looking at her surroundings curiously from the inside of a glass tube, next to her was another glass tube with a small sphere in it. Slowly a large being that looked like a four eyed alien bear walked into view holding a clipboard, he was wearing lab coat and had a thick mound of black hair on his head.

“You are experiment one four nine, is good to see you are already becoming aware of your surroundings as soon as you were activated. Your primary functions is stealing things that are not the being nailed down and then to be taking the nails too if possible. Your ability where you truly shine is to evade any projectile fire directly at you with incredible agility; I will test that safely later. Your abilities might even end up being put into future experiments, with some itsy bitsy tweaking here or there. Why I telling you this, you have just come to life… still is nice sentiment to tell you what you are even if you might not remember this.” The large being started writing some things down on the clipboard. He then proceeded to open the tube. “Now to be testing your ability to take in your surroundings. Do you understand what it is I am the saying?”

Bonnie tilted her head curiously at the big guy, she was little more than freshly born at the moment and her mind was quickly forming from all the new sensations of suddenly existing. She was already receiving information in her head about how to do many things, her stomach gurgled and her ears perked up she looked around frightened and then she felt something and looked down at her tummy. Jumba lifted her from her spot and carried her over to a nearby table.

“Ah, the joys of making a new experiment and then with the feeding of them, why they are always hungry seconds into life has been a puzzling dilemma I am having to work out for future experiments. I am the charging them full of energy and they always come out hungry. I am the getting of the food and then I will let you witness the activation of one who shares in your primary function and has abilities of his own that compliments what you are capable of.” As the large being left to get some food, Bonnie smiled and held up what was obviously a wallet and looked into it and smiled at the shiny bits of stuff she starting pulling from it. She was exploring this new object she had taken from the big guy; she looked at his image on a card and smiled.

“She is quite a sly one; I almost didn’t catch her taking it from him. She did it when he picked her up.” Luna felt a bit off being in the dreams of this particular being.

“She did say she was made to steal, this must be the day she was born. That must be her father and he is not exactly what I expected.” Then again, what had Fluttershy exactly expected the one who created Bonnie to be?

A door slammed bringing Fluttershy’s attention back to the scene, the big guy looked angry as he came storming back into the room until he saw what Bonnie was doing with the wallet. He gave a broad grin and let off an evil sounding chortle that startled Bonnie.

“Ah, yes, you are the clever one even a few minutes minute into existence. Is good data I will be getting from this, now to be giving back my wallet if you will?” The big guy held out a hand and expected to receive his wallet and his belongings back.

“Naga!” Bonnie said in a juvenile tone of denial and gathered all the stuff taken to her protectively. Instead of getting angry the big guy patted her gently on the head and petted her.

“Is being how I envisioned your first theft to go, is making evil genius like me proud. Jumba Jookiba log, experiment one four nine spoke in Tantalog. Like previous experiments, this is being a continuing anomaly. It possibly from the dead wall hopping creatures genetics having an odd effect in every experiment I make, should eventually switch to Galactic Standard given time as her linguistic cortex becomes stronger.” Jumba then left with his wallet much to the sad confusion of the affectionate attention suddenly leaving her all alone in the room. A second later Jumba came back and had a curious Bonnie’s attention as her nose lifted up in the air and her eyes fluttered at the scent and she had a smile on her face. “Is catching the scent of food, I like to spoil my experiments so I am the buying of a nutrition disk and you will share it with your other as soon as I release him. He will be activated in a moment, made him for exact purpose of working with you to see how it will affect you psychologically.”

Bonnie tilted her head curiously at the strange being who was talking to her as he walked over to the other glass tube. It filled with liquid a second later an explosion of light, a form started to appear in the tube. Bonnie’s ears rose in interest at seeing the sight of another almost like her except brown and big, at this point his left arm was just like his right one, being completely made of flesh.

“I am seeing curiosity in the presence of her other over need for sustenance, having left the box with the nutrition disk unguarded next to her. She does not seem to notice and is more interested in experiment one five zero’s immediate presence.” Jumba was taking in Bonnie’s curious gaze at the large brown creature as the tube drained and lifted out the way; he hefted the chunky creature and sat it next to Bonnie. Immediately Bonnie crawled over to the larger experiment and snuggled into his side despite Clyde still being disoriented from suddenly existing as much as Bonnie had been minutes before. “It seems I am correct in thinking all experiments to this point will have some level of deep rooted connection should they ever meet, it must be instinctual to her genetics that she would look after him over her own needs.”

The experiments stomachs growled and Jumba chuckled at them, this made them both look to him for a way to stop the growing pains in their belly regions.

“Is time to be learning the great need of eating, yes?” Jumba lifted the flap on the box to expose the gooey nutrition disk to the two. Instead of taking all of the food and eating it herself, Bonnie crawled over and started dragging the box back to Clyde. “Is sharing? Not in design, but fundamentally expected. She is looking out for her other who is less acclimated to the world. One four nine, meet one five zero made to be by your side and to be the more durable of the two of you… also to be the helping in carrying lots of stolen property due to greater size.”

The scene blurred out and Fluttershy and Luna looked at each other.

“You’re friend certainly is an interesting being. She was made to steal, but then she’s suddenly so giving? She must love her brother dearly, almost to the length that I once cared for Celestia and she should be doing the same for me.” Sighing Luna waited for the next scene to come into focus, trying not to relive her Nightmare Moon episode.

“That’s her brother Clyde; they were both made to be thieves.”Fluttershy gave a quick rundown of what was going on with her.

“She’d really sacrifice your life for her brother? Does she really care not for who stands between her and her brother? Such devotion I wish I had for my sister.” The questions were quickly answered and both Luna and Fluttershy watched it in full horror.

Bonnie and Clyde were escaping from a good run of recently picking pockets on some strange planet when a large ship high up in the air above them exploded. Hundreds of chunks of this ship were going to hit them and even Bonnie couldn’t have possible dodged it all coming at them at high speed and such mass. Clyde threw himself over Bonnie and took every impact for her, when it was all over his left arm was shredded and his skin all across his back was flayed and torn. Underneath him getting covered in his blood was Bonnie who was perfectly safe and sound, she was frightened by the sudden change in mood from being happy go lucky thieves to being suddenly put in a horrid situation had jarred her terribly.

“What the, One five zero your arm and there’s so much blood. Why?” Bonnie was already crying and looking around for something to staunch the flow of blood as he clutched it to his chest. Even with his body badly damaged from the falling debris, Clyde still managed to shove the portions of the wreckage that had crashed on top them off with his one good arm with a pained grunt.

“I’m b-built to be t-tougher, so I p-protect you. One four nine can’t be replaced.” He stated simply, looking around the area everything had been summarily destroyed and currently trying to ignore the massive blunt force he just took to his skull. Clyde was obviously in massive amounts of pain at the moment, but he managed to protect his big sister from suffering and he could smile about doing a good job of it.

“But what about you, you can’t be replaced either little brother! What are you smiling about you big stupid lug, you’re seriously hurt here and you might even Death Knell! Even Fat-Jumba can barely return you from that in the same condition going into it! Oh please don’t leave me alone.” Bonnie frantically looked around and saw a hover car fly down and there was this one eyed with an antenna poking his head out of the hovering vehicle looking around at the devastation with a wide open mouth revealing that he had two purple tongues. The scene turned slightly red, she didn’t care who was between her and her brother as she was going to save him!

Bonnie quickly ran up to the car and with a strength even she didn’t know she had, she grabbed the three legged noodle like alien by the neck and toss him from the vehicle without looking where he fell. She got into the vehicle and drove it over to her brothers injured form and quickly helped him get in and then the car shot off for the sky.

Both Fluttershy and Luna cringed when they watched the back of the noodle like aliens head smacked the ground and it laid there unconscious, it didn’t even look to of had the time to realize what had happened it. They turned back to the scene to see Bonnie flying off in the stolen car, presumably to save her brother’s life.

“I am to be doing what I can, but arm is being the totally kaput. Damage is being too extensive, is shocking development considering one five zero is designed to take being hit by lots of force. Parts of crashing battleship was not part of one five zeroes ability to resist injury, his survival is phenomenal occurrence.” The scene had shifted back to Bonnie looking worried and she was with Jumba. “You are being the lucky to even be getting him back to me, especially without the activation of Death Knell protocol. His resilience to pain is rather astounding that he managed to stay awake until arrival here. The parameters of this will help me learn to make more resilient experiments for future.”

“Can’t you clone it and attach a new one or something; this is my little brother we’re talking about here! Also stuff your parameters up your patookie; I just want my little brother to be okay.” Bonnie ran up to the tank and held her left hand up to the tank which presented a damaged Clyde’s body floating lifelessly in there. Slowly his right arm twitched and met Bonnie’s at the glass between them.

“Is complex genetic design, is taking forever to clone new arm… however can be making prosthesis replacement faster.” Bonnie didn’t look back at Jumba she just looked at Clyde’s hand against the glass trying to meet hers. “My mechanical expertise is not as good as the genetic experiments making, but will do what I can.”

“Then do it.” Bonnie said in a blank tone as she looked at her little brother.

“Is needing help to get used to new prosthetic when acquired, is lucky having you for partner. If was working alone, might have been first fatality out of all experiments.” Jumba received a look from Bonnie that had him frowning then the scene blurred out of focus.

“Why can’t we see everything? Why do we only mostly see what Bonnie does?” This would explain the metal arm Clyde had later when he was hugging Bonnie in that picture that burned.

“I can get a full recollection of what happened from multiple ponies minds to recreate the full situation in dreams. What we’re seeing is what Bonnie saw as going on around her and is in fact her memory which is constructing her surroundings as she saw them, so that is why they appear a little disjointed at times since she could not have been looking in all directions at once.” Even Luna didn’t like to admit that she was still trying to find the root of Bonnie’s nightmares. This was one of them and it was obviously losing her little brother who was bigger than she was. This Clyde was an amazingly tough being to handle the wreckage of whatever a battleship was crashing into him directly; he covered his sister with his body and almost lost his life in the process of protecting her.

The next scene showed Clyde and Bonnie on dark world and the skies were filled with black and red clouds.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you mean Clyde? I’m not going anywhere without you! We’ll find some way out of here together, I’m sure of it.” Bonnie looked up to a frowning Clyde who shoved something into her grasp.

“I’m going to lead them off while I get you out of here, sorry Bonnie.” The scene blacked out when a metal fist met with Bonnie’s face.

When it came back Bonnie slowly came too and was surrounded by a ton of dead bodies, all of them lifeless and bug like beings with antenna and their blank open eyes that stared at nothing. Then a sound was heard the world tumbled until Bonnie could see she was on a different planet. She slowly stood up and took a look around looked down at the object clutched in her hands.

“So the shipment finally arrived, I wonder what these things are or where they come from? All these bug things look vaguely familiar.” A man’s voice could be heard as Bonnie stumbled to her feet clutching at the object Clyde shoved into her grasp. Slowly she stumbled away from the pile of dead bodies; likely because of her size she went entirely unnoticed as she fled the dead corpses.

Another scene change showed Bonnie crawling through a duct and she stopped, looking down she saw what appeared to be an office below her.

“Hope they take this seriously or a lot of people are going to die, not that I care as it only means less people to steal from for me.” Bonnie carefully dropped the object wrapped in some cloth and Commander Nebula appeared alerted by the sound of it hitting the floor. Fluttershy recognized that Bonnie was in Star Command.

The next thing the two viewers in Bonnie’s mind saw was some digital news being put up on a screen from a computer. Both Fluttershy and Luna looked on as she read what was on the screen.

“Mysterious benefactor delivers plans to an actual planet destroying weapon being built by Evil Emperor Zurg, Team Lightyear once again saves the day. Yeah well, I wish I could save my brother. All I’ve got left is my rep and this stolen computer.” Sitting there on an abandoned couch Bonnie just sighed and looked out of the alleyway at all the people milling about. “Well I did my one really good deed in my screwed up life and to think all it cost me was my brother being captured by a complete sadist.”

The next thing that came up was an actual dream and not a memory. It was a haunting sight really, Bonnie was looking at a tall pillar and dangling from the two outstretched arms of the pillar were two hanging platforms. On these platforms were Clyde and Fluttershy.

“This is no memory; this is the nightmare that is haunting your friend and where her mind currently is.” Luna had never seen something as visceral as trying to balance the love she felt for her brother and the friendship she had with Fluttershy.

“Save her Bonnie, I’m likely already dead. Besides I’m not worth crying over and you don’t really need me. Without me around you’ll have all those things you steal to yourself, you know you want to let you’re greed consume you. Once I’m gone and no longer in the way you can finally be greedy to your hearts content.” Clyde here seemed to be advocating that Bonnie live as she wanted to. “I won’t be disappointed if you replace me with her either. It’s not like you to have used me all these years or that you never cared one speck about me as much as I did you. Oh right, you don’t care anymore! Some sister you are, you’ve never really cared about anything.”

“Just ask me to kill myself; I’m willing to die for you if it saves your brother. All you have to do is learn to let go of me, you don’t know me and I’m nothing special. I promise I won’t hold it against you, love and friendship is not greed. I will gladly throw myself away for you and then you can continue on being happy with your brother.” The Fluttershy here seemed to be off in that she had a pair of large white wings and a halo of light above her head. “All you’d need to do is ignore what you would be doing to me, there’s nothing special about me and I made those promises to you. I will keep them, but you have to give me up. I know that I’m lost and I might never find my home or see my friends and family again, but I will die knowing I did something important to help a friend who needed me. All you have to do is ask and then sacrifice me.”

“Yeah, but then she’d be losing a friend, oh wait… she doesn’t really have any! Ohana means ‘family’ and that nobody gets left behind, what a load of tripe that is. We couldn’t handle being around our family without causing problems. No matter what happens it all depends on where your greed goes, it’s our drug Bonnie.” Clyde now looked slightly grimmer than the saintly version of Fluttershy. “The need to steal is in us and you know you care little about what you actually take from others, yet you still do it. A life of freedom to do whatever you please, that’s what you really wanted isn’t it? You know Jumba can create life right? Then get some genetic samples from her and you can have him make a clone so you can have her all to yourself, best of both worlds huh? Who cares if she dies when you can have a false copy? It wouldn’t be the same because the copy would be what you wanted her to be. To think it can never know you led to the murder of the original that was actually born from a womb, unlike us bastards of the universe. Of course I might never speak to you again even if you do save me by telling her to off herself, murderer. You can certainly risk that I’m still alive right?”

Bonnie reeled back at the accusation, but she didn’t say anything and just stared between the two sitting on the scales and then curled up on the floor whimpering.

“Tick tock, the clock is ticking Bonnie. You can only keep one and lose the other or risk losing them both. Choose which one you want to save and then feel miserable for the rest of your life. That’s the kind of guy I am, I just wanted to kill billions of lives and you just had to go and save them all. Rather noble for someone so unnatural and created to be evil on purpose.” Zurg popped up in front of the pillar in a cloud of smoke wielding a pitchfork and had two red horns popping out of his helmet. “Save your new friend and I eventually murder you brother, save your brother and I eventually murder your new friend. Its win-win for me Bonnie, there is no other option.”

“What if she can save both, I ask this of you foul nightmare?” Deciding to make her presence known Luna stalked forward and looked at Bonnie’s inner demon.

“She won’t because she won’t risk losing them both. She knows either way that I will stab her in the back and try for a hat trick by getting all three of them or that I’ll always have people hunting Sweet Cheeks down, she can’t protect her forever. I’m a mastermind after all and I’ve been indirectly responsible for millions of deaths.” Nightmare Zurg seemed particularly pleased with himself. “She’s just a pathetic “little” coward.”

“I know she can do it.” The entire nightmare immediately collapses into itself with those solid words from Fluttershy leaving a spotlight on three beings; the inner demon had looked positively shocked as he disappeared. Bonnie just looked up from her curled up position on the floor to see the two ponies before her, Fluttershy held out her hoof to Bonnie. “All she needs is to do is believe in herself and try her best with whatever it is she’s planning. I trust her.”

Author's Note

A past run in with Pleakley, one that neither the experiment nor the 'earth' enthusiast seem to remember too well.

Jumba Jookiba is making great leaps in experimenting with seeing how two of his experiments interact with each other. Despite the fact that he creates evil experiments and was a part of EGO, the Evil Genius Organization, I'd like to think he actually cared about every one of his experiments lives.

Just a reminder, (149) Bonnie and (150) Clyde come before (177) Clip, therefore Jumba still had his hair at the time he let Clyde and Bonnie run loose. He has had a lot of time before he got upwards to six hundred experiments, he eventually had to return every single experiment back to their pod form and is strong enough to take Stitch in a fight. It's likely that Jumba experiments on himself as well, which is something to really think about considering Stitch barely puts a dent in him when they fought.

90

Head Hunter was parked about ten miles from Beach City in the middle of a forested area next to a body of fresh water, Fluttershy crawled out of the water tossing her mane with a smile. It felt so nice to get a little bit cleaner, she could use a cloud to scrub all the grime off of her body and she could even immediately dry out her body by forming a cloud using the water that she was drenched in. Her fur was completely clean and dry within seconds; she also performed the same thing for Soft Echo having scrubbed the little giggling filly down. Soft had quietly crawled out of the water following Fluttershy chirruping all the way and was happy to suddenly be dry and watched as her smaller cloud followed the larger one into the sky with smile.

Bonnie just watched Fluttershy toss her mane and sighed, she still wondered why she was so attracted to the four legged being. Maybe it was because she never exactly had a mother or maybe she just had a thing for quadrupeds. Shaking her head, she went back to inspecting the grapple beam port after having checked everything else over. This was the last thing before they roll the city in the makeshift tank.

Foxglove landed next to Bonnie who reached in and started pulling wallets out of the grapple beam port, much to the bats consternation. There were about seven or eight of them in there, Bonnie took the best looking wallet out of the bunch and started taking the money out of the other wallets to put into that one.

“What? Didn’t you notice how the things I kept grappling were gradually getting smaller? I kind of clogged the grapple beam by stealing their wallets. Thanks to all the missing glass, their pockets were wide open for me and I did tell Fluttershy I was going to show her a magic trick.” Grinning sheepishly up at the blank faced Fluttershy as she made sure the grapple beam was cleaned and ready for use again. “Besides the little ankle biter of Sweet Cheeks is going to need food and the criminals obviously weren’t going to be using their money in prison. In any case there’s a reason why I told the dragon warrior guys not to blink. Did you guys know me and Clyde could have made it as stage magicians? Our motto is, ‘Don’t Blink, we’re magicians and you don’t know what’ll be missing when you do so around us.’”

“I wish I could be angry at you right now.” Fluttershy stated in a bland tone, she had no bleeding cuts since Foxglove used a little magic to heal the minor wounds she took in evading the ninja throwing objects. The bat had also pulled two ninja stars out of Fluttershy in the process of healing her and Bonnie said she was keeping them as it was finder’s keepers and she was pretty good with throwing weapons.

“I didn’t even see when she stole the wallets and I was sitting right there watching her drive the entire time.” Oh Foxglove knew that Bonnie referred to herself as a thief, she just had no idea how good a thief Bonnie was.

“At least you aren’t getting on to me about stealing Jakes phone. Speaking of, I need to do something right quick.” Pulling out the cell phone Bonnie hit one of the numbers on it and waited for someone to pick up. “Hello? Yeah, I have his phone. He never asked for it back to begin with, so it’s not me you should be angry at Trixie. Anyway, I’m just calling to let Jake know that I have his phone and I’m wondering if I could keep it, he could use a new one anyway. By the way are you his girlfriend or something? Oh, well that’s cool. So are you that Spud guy’s girlfriend or something…. that sounds oddly rather defensive of you, are you sure you’re not dating that guy? Nope, not magical, I’m alien in origin and I’m thinking Jake hasn’t told you about the existence of extra terrestrials yet. I heard he’s going to be dealing with us as well soon and there are plenty of aliens around New York for him to worry about.”

“WHAT!” The voice on the phone screeched and then the cell phone Bonnie was holding went dark.

“Huh, she hung up. Okay the phone is officially mine, especially since I diverted her from being angry at me to being angry at someone else.” Bonnie smiled brightly as she was still good at redirecting attention; there was hardly a thief on this planet that could match her.

“Bonnie are you taking advantage of the fact that I can’t get angry with you?” Well at least angry enough for Fluttershy to use ‘The Stare’. That did require Fluttershy to have emotions other than happiness to use, while she understood Bonnie couldn’t help herself it seemed like she doing it purpose at the moment.

“When you get your full emotional range back I’ll honestly tell you and then we’ll go from there.” In all seriousness Bonnie wasn’t actually trying to make Fluttershy angry, but cutting back on thieving was quite hard when it was literally written into your genetics. “Just remember that I was created hard wired to steal stuff and evade danger. I could easily become a treasure hunter, no victim in robbing empty ruins unless I run into someone else.”

“Are you sure that money will be useful?” While Fluttershy couldn’t properly emotionally voice her concerns, she still at least wanted to know that Bonnie wasn’t stealing for all the wrong reasons.

“Most certainly, the people of Beach City sound like they’re aware of weird things. They will probably ignore what we look like, meaning we can do business with the people there. As I said before ankle biter needs food badly, food that isn’t the medical tomatoes as we’ve only got a limited supply of those things. We need to save them for important situations. Foxglove can’t heal everything with her magic and she can only do small potatoes things from what I’m seeing.” To Bonnie it was rather logical, her thefts up to this point were clearly necessary and Soft Echo did need a balanced diet and couldn’t survive off tomatoes forever no matter how much she loved them. “There’s still that one maximum tomato thing you got in there and if that thing is as powerful as you say it is, we need it as a last resort medical item.”

“You do realize the only reason I’m here is to help you and Fluttershy right? I don’t like the fact that you’re stealing stuff, I used to steal stuff until I thought better about what I was doing.” Foxglove didn’t like that Bonnie was a thief, but she could understand that some things were beyond the created alien’s control. Over the hundred miles they took getting to Philadelphia she had learned that Bonnie was made instead of born, it was right horrifying that someone out there could create someone like her. “I don’t hate you; I do hate the situation of you stealing as being an ingrained part of your character.”

“Yeah well Fluttershy helps me out with that somewhat, I’m only going to steal for good reasons and or when I find it completely necessary.” At least Bonnie had come a long way in that respect, her brother was a more heroic thief then she was as he actually wanted to do the right thing with his skills. Of course thinking of her brother brought her mood down a notch. “At least I’m no longer taking everything that’s nailed down, the nails and the things that were nailed down. I’ve come a long way since retrieving my currently almost half dead brother from a madman, though I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stop myself from stealing entirely and accept your acknowledgement of my situation. I’m not really a bad person; I just do bad things sometimes because of my kleptomaniac genetics. I put emphasis on the ‘maniac’ part because I’ve stolen some things that are literally out of this world. That Tantibus thing I took from Fluttershy’s version of ‘Sleeping Beauty’ was a small urge I had to scratch, didn’t rightfully know what it was until I had taken it. It was a good thing I did that too, I exposed her problem and she really needed to seek help instead of letting something like that fester.”

“That’s why I trust you to do the right thing Bonnie, even when you don’t know that you are.” The honest affection in Fluttershy’s voice had given the friendly thief warm feelings that spread from her chest throughout her entire body. “Now how about we actually get back inside and go to Beach City?”

The next ten mile journey was generally okay until they came to the quiet Beach City suburbs. The spaceship currently performed its role as a tank perfectly and surprisingly without attracting any attention to itself as it stopped at a house on a street.

“Okay that should be the right house, where that Connie Maheswaran girl lives. You guys go ahead, I’ll stash our ride nearby where it won’t draw attention and lock it down to make sure no one can take it for a destructive joyride. We don’t want it drawing the trouble that attacked us on the way here.” Waiting for the four beings to get off, Bonnie watched as Fluttershy waved to her with a flat look on her face that they were clear. Bonnie drove the Head Hunter off to stash it away for a while; Beach City didn’t seem to have a police force or much of anything aside from some of the amusement stuff she could see near the beach in the distance.

Fluttershy was with Mr. Roller Wheel, Foxglove and Soft Echo. Soft Echo was draped over Fluttershy’s back and Foxglove was sitting on top of her head, with Mr. Wheel at her side she walked up to the door past the mailbox of the house jammed in tightly among the other small houses. Ponies wouldn’t have been capable of living this way, so closely packed together like this. It made her wonder how the humans could live like this.

“So should I talk first or should you be the one to address whoever is living here?” Mentally Fluttershy hoped that it was the right location and it was around lunchtime given they left New York earlier that morning. She had left her Rhizome suit on Head Hunter and didn’t think she’d need it at the moment, if things got dangerous Mr. Wheel would protect them.

“These houses don’t seem have doorbells so you’ll have to knock.” All Foxglove wanted to do was to point that out; she was nervous and fidgeting slightly about having to talk to a human. “I’ll talk first.”

“Okay then.” Fluttershy wondered where all the people were, there didn’t seem to be much going on around here. They were all probably somewhere else likely at work or something, usually little fillies would be at school and she didn’t exactly know what time of the year on earth was so the filly might be home.

Reaching up to the door with her right hoof, the pony gave it a few soft raps. The bat and the wheel looked at her slightly with bored expressions and the filly just yawned and snuggled into Fluttershy’s canary yellow backside.

“It’s going to have to be a little harder than that.” Foxglove watched as Fluttershy rapped the door slightly hard than last time.

Roller rolled his eyes and rolled straight up to the door and smacked it hard with his carapace three times in rapid succession making sure he was heard, the fact that he did it without damaging the wood was surprising in and of itself. After that some feminine mumbling could be heard coming from inside, two legged footsteps were heard coming up to the door.

“Steven is that you… you haven’t really been the same since Pearl…” The girl that had opened the door tried to grasp what she was seeing; a normal human would have either fainted or have immediately screamed their heads off. This girl was not normal and had been touched by magic that fixed her eyesight, she stood there and blinked a few times to make sure what she was seeing was correct.

On the doorstep of the Maheswarans was a little cute pinkish brown bat sitting on an oddly colorful beautiful yet strange looking horse, to the side was a strange one wheeled creature and then there was the enigmatic bat filly snuggling into what amounted as her mother’s fur.

“Oh my goodness… please tell me you’re part of some magical school and that you’ve come here to teach me your ways and that one of you is going to be my familiar!” Connie on the other hand not being a normal human got excited about the prospect that she might be capable of doing magic because of Steven. She had brown skin and dark brown puffy hair, she was wearing glasses without lenses in them but none of the visitors were going to say anything about that as she obviously had her reasons.

“That’s not exactly why we’re here… though I kind of worked as something like a familiar once for a witch, long story short things didn’t exactly work out between us because she was evil and I decided to turn on her.” After a moment Foxglove took to wringing her wings against each other. “I really don’t like being reminded about that, but I did find out that I myself am a magical bat and became somewhat apprenticed to a troll who’s good at using magic from the heart.”

“Really, please tell me everything!” Connie kneeled down so that she was eye level with the nervous bat.

“Her story has nothing to do as to why we’re here, are you Connie Maheswaran?” The girl was taken aback by the flat tone Fluttershy spoke in.

“Yes, I am… um, is something wrong with her?” Connie deferred to the strange talking magical bat on the pony at her doorstep; Steven wasn’t going to believe this unless she showed him these strange beings outright.

“The troll that taught me some magic kind of went overboard with healing her, her entire body was under some kind of mostly benign clingy magical curse and he wasn’t exactly the best at destroying stuff like that.” At this point Foxglove pointed out the filly on Fluttershy’s back. “So the blood she might have been spilling from injuries at the time coalesced into the child that’s currently on her back. The side effect of the healing was that she lost most of her ability to feel emotions except for happiness or other positive emotions related to it for a while. Quite frankly my teacher is better at giving life, healing and growing plants then he is at destroying dark or odd curses. The only curse he’s managed to reverse is a petrify spell which he can also cast since he learned it inside and out after being petrified by some evil troll once upon a time.”

Roller revved his two cents in on the discussion. He saw a positive outlook in another being that was family to the first one it budded off of; he enjoyed the little creature’s adorable nature and would protect her as she felt like Fluttershy if only in a vaguely different manner.

“Roller says that he doesn’t mind the change and I must admit it feels better to be myself and if I get a daughter out of it I can’t really complain until I can put emotions to all the events that have happened leading up to this moment.” Turning to the bat on her head with her flat demeanor Fluttershy continued on. “From what I understand there’s some emotional backlash involved in my future since Foxglove had her wing healed after a bullet shredded it and went through similar problems for an entire week when it was healed. I’m sure it will last only another day or two at the most, which is hopefully a good estimate.”

“Yeah, it’s not going to hurt really. I didn’t feel any pain, but I did go through a full range of emotions from embarrassment to anger at myself after it was over with. Since you’re bigger than me the effects should wear off sooner.” Shaking her head Foxglove couldn’t believe they had gotten so off track. “Look can we get to the reason as to why we’re here? I think Connie might explode if we don’t tell her.”

“Yes please, I have to know why a bunch of strange creatures are on my doorstep and if we’re going to go on magical adventures together.” Connie was looking at this from a storybook angle and was trying to be genre savvy about it, given all the stories in a series she’s read about familiars and the bat being one for an evil witch made things all that much more intriguing to her. “Oh right, please come in. Don’t track anything on the floor, my parents are out and trying to cheer up my best friend Steven has been really hard on me lately.”

“Is it because that dame Pearl is missing?” The girl swiftly spun around and saw Bonnie lying on a couch lazily kicking her feet as if she belonged there and was there all along. Fluttershy moved past Connie and she silently rolled Soft Echo onto the couch from her back, the little filly squeaked and waggled her legs into the air on her back before she rolled onto her side. She snuggled into the couch next to the alien that silently broke into and entered the Maheswarans home from the upper floor balcony.

Connie stood there in silence staring at Bonnie with wide eyes.

“What, never seen a completely strange and alien creature in your house before?” As Bonnie waggled her eyebrows Fluttershy got into her face.

“Bonnie no stealing, we’re guests in this house.” Despite the flat tone, when Fluttershy got her emotions back she was going to stare Bonnie into the floor if she did and soap in the mouth would be the least of the genetically engineered beings worries.

“I swear to you as your friend Fluttershy, that I have done nothing more than pick the lock on the upper balcony.” This was actually the truth, Bonnie hadn’t touched a single thing but the floor and obviously the couch since entering the house and she felt no great urge to steal at the moment. So she could actually resist the temptation when she needed to. “I’ll even Pinkie Pie Promise not to steal anything while I’m here and that I haven’t already. Breaking a promise is a quick way to losing a friend you know.”

On Equus Pinkie pulled out a little black book and wrote something down, someone just made a Pinkie Promise and she was going to make sure they kept it. Whatever it is that promise was. Now onto that delicious cake she was making for Maud so she could take Pearl on a stealth date, her sister was quite smitten with the alien rock being.

“Those are rather adorable names for magical creatures.” Connie wanted to bring their attention back to her, she was a little shocked at hearing Pearls name and wondered just how these strange beings in her living room knew about her.

“Technically Sweet Cheeks here is a magical alien from a different planet. Soft Echo was actually born out of magic from her on this planet yesterday from that curse; don’t honestly know how that works as she came out like that and not as an infant. I’m Bonnie and basically an alien mutt created from multiple sources of genetic material; if you ever go to Hawaii you’ll definitely see my family resemblance running around everywhere. Roller there is a naturally existing animal from a different planet from Sweet Cheeks.” Turning to the last being in their merry band of weird people Bonnie addressed Foxglove now taking a position on one of the couches. “Foxglove here was actually born here on earth naturally and is the most normal out of all of us; well as normal as an animal with magic can be anyway.”

It took a while for Connie to process all this, she knew the Crystal Gems were magical aliens. She had been witness to the Lowardian invasion, except she had written it off as a mad scientist impersonating an alien doing things like Dr. Drakken or Professor Nimnul had done. Connie herself was interested in science and fantasy based stories because of that. Here she was standing and staring at living proof that there was actually magic on earth and that there were more aliens out there then just Steven’s family from his mother’s side. Instead of passing out, she decided to accept the truth for what it was and wanted to know why they were visiting her of all people.

“So why are you here and how do you know about Pearl being gone?” Connie looked to the strange beings, she was trying to remember their names perfectly so she wouldn’t ever forget this magical day and it was almost lunch. She wanted to join Steven for a slice of pizza at the Fish Stew Pizza place; it was a little weird but the food was good in her opinion. Her parents were getting much more lenient around her these days and were okay with her hanging out with the Universes and the Gems.

“Yeah, funny story that. First she wants you and the rest of her family to know she’s still alive and that she ended up on Fluttershy’s home planet of all places. In an ironic twist of events it’s the same home planet she’s been trying to find for the better part of what amounts to a year since she got lost from it.” Turning to Fluttershy with a frown Bonnie took her hoof in her hands and hugged it to her chest. “One of the planets she went to was full of female cat people which is how she gained a connection back to her home through some weird magical happenstance and is one of the ways she gets into contact with her home planet despite not being able to find it. Only recently she’s found a way for her to get home in the way of a being known as a Star Nomad, he’ll be bringing Pearl back to Earth and he’ll be taking Fluttershy back to her home.”

“Wow, your lives sound like they would make a really good story… I have to tell Steven that Pearl is alive!” Connie pulled out her phone to message Steven if he wanted to go out for pizza. “Oh he’ll be so happy to hear about this!”

Author's Note

Keep Beach City Weird takes on a whole new meaning when Beach City is weirder than three alien beings, a bat and a magically born child.

Aside from that say hello to Connie, she's got to be happy to knowing magic and aliens exist outside of Steven's family. 'The Unfamiliar Familiar' books really don't help here as this is reality Connie, just wait for that to set in.

No sighting of Crystal Gems yet.

103

It was still early morning Wednesday, Fluttershy and Soft Echo was sitting with many a strange being for a funeral. Soft Echo’s ears wouldn’t raise and she wasn’t very happy about what they were doing, her wing had been healed by Annabelle so she was completely fine.

“She broke my calculations you know… never have I ever been more terrified of such a being as her.” Virgil stated over the grave site as he lowered his beak to look at the purple furred corpse lying in the grave. Alongside the corpse was the torn off wing and leg, he closed his eyes and sent her a prayer that her next life would be a good one. He took off his spectacles and gave them a rub with his feathered fingers. “A demon that bled the blood of mortals, something you don’t see very often. That it came from someone like her is simply amazing.”

“Yeah, there’s something I’d like to know, what exactly does that mean Annabelle?” Charlie along with his platonic partner Itchy had never seen the harder side of their jobs, having been shown the truth they were a little put off. That didn’t mean they’d give it up though, if he quit how would he visit Sasha?

“Well it all has to do with how everything is part of the circle of life and death. Every time a being dies they have multiple options, reincarnation being the main one for most beings. Whatever Belladonna was, will no longer be if she reincarnates. The other things that occur are either becoming part of heaven, the underworld or to the rare unlucky few who get stuck in purgatory because of an accident.” As she said this Annabelle gnawed the cork off a bottle of wine and started to pour it over Belladonna’s body. She even dropped the bottle into the grave after she was finished and turned around to start kicking dirt into the grave with her hind legs. “As a rule, the first death of any freshly reincarnated or new dog is that they automatically end up in heaven with no exceptions. It’s a bit of a bother when some dogs really belong relegated to punishment in the underworld, Belladonna was the only dog to ever actually choose to go down there and apply for a job. That she started bleeding mortal blood instead of a demons blood means something important or special was happening to her as she was dying. Aside from Anubis and Cerberus who do their jobs in reigning over dead souls or making sure the more foul ones never escape, there aren’t any other dogs who actually work downstairs. Those two were never a normal dog like Belladonna once was though. To think Belladonna did her job so exceptionally well that she only had to be softly reprimanded a few times.”

“Wait isn’t Anubis Egyptian god of death and Cerberus a Greek myth?” Itchy earned the attention of everyone; he blushed and started to scratch himself a bit. “Hey, I read! Unlike Charlie I don’t like being ignorant. No offense buddy.”

“Yes, well… I would like to start out by telling you all religion is an entirely manmade concept, but all myths have some level of truth to them. In fact I find human religions to be quite horrid; mind you I have good reasons for saying that.” When an angel says something was horrid, you just had to listen to what she had to say about it. Seeing the expectant faces, Annabelle decided to give her reasoning. “Anyone who looks at religion enough will notice they all have similarities and it is the good ideals each religion tries to teach to its followers that is sometimes the problem. Charlie, if you know your history well enough, can you tell me exactly what happened when the prohibition laws on alcohol was passed?”

“Of course, I do. I know a lot about Alcohol, especially since it was how I died and ended up meeting you in the first place Annabelle. If I remember right, humans started drinking even more alcohol once it became illegal.” At least Charlie knew that much, he wasn’t a complete idiot. He did manage to get a jackhammer smuggled into a dog pound; while he wasn’t knowledgeable he was always quite clever.

“Now apply that to how every religion that ever was far into past were used as the laws of the land, how often were those laws broken? All the time! Some humans really can’t follow what they preach and that’s because if they are told not to do something, they will inevitably end up doing it. The more taboo a person knows it to be; the more likely it is to occur to someone to eventually break that rule. I know how things work upstairs, being a multiple counts rapist and then trying to pray away your sins after each rape to completely absolve yourself of your sins is not how it works. Let me tell you, more people end up in the Underworld because they don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions after they commit so many atrocities. It’s easy to ask for forgiveness, but forgiveness is seldom given if you’re never truly repentant for your actions and continue to do them after praying to be absolved of them the first time. You usually only get absolved of a particular sin once if you truly meant it, possibly twice.” Sighing out loud from hearing her own tirade, Annabelle just couldn’t help but be frustrated with what people thought they could pray away. Truthful prayer was a rare thing nowadays and usually done by abused children. “That said things like same sex relationships or consensual sexual love are not sins. I seriously don’t understand why so many humans are against same sex marriage. The one thing humans are getting right, at the very least, is that there are higher powers and I’m not making a mistake that there are multiple beings of godly power out there and Gabriel’s Horn of Opening is living proof of that.”

“Well that makes sense; I guess. Though I have to ask, why do dogs on this world always automatically get into heaven?” At least Fluttershy was grasping the subject somewhat, but she wanted to know more about why dogs ended up in heaven despite whatever they did in life. “Oh and I know two god like beings who control the sun and moon of my home planet and they have been alive for thousands of years.”

“I also want to know why you your views are so strong when it comes to same sex relationships Annabelle.” Itchy noticed the subject of consenting same sexual relationships was kind of a strong thing for Annabelle.

“To answer Itchiford’s question first. I’ve actually slept with Belladonna, multiple times in fact. We were basically almost lovers; more towards the realm of strong friends with benefits. Plus as I’ve stated before we’re distant cousins, the fact that I’m still an angel says a lot about how well our relationship was taken upstairs and downstairs at the same time.” Annabelle looked at the grave and put a paw to her chin, she smacked her left paw with her right and then with a snap of her nubs she summoned a gravestone honoring Belladonna. “As to why dogs always get into heaven? Not sure and just because dogs always get into heaven doesn’t automatically make them holy beings or perfect. In fact Virgil is quite right when he says the underworld and heaven are two sides of the same coin, with the edge of the coin encompassing the Earth, its magical side and purgatory. It’s all really quite a grey area; all dogs are so loyal to something and that’s why I ‘think’ we get a free pass to heaven. I may not be right or believe my own idea all too much, but the free pass seems to be intrinsic to how our world works. I’m quite interested to hear what the outsiders have to say about it, since their worlds obviously have different workings when it comes to the cycles of life and death. Basically our world has new souls always being formed, old souls can be reconstituted into new souls and some souls that have been reincarnated one too many times go on to new realms beyond our imagining or the next great adventure if you will. It will take some time before I can tell whether or not Belladonna went on to her next great adventure, I would have been immediately notified if she somehow ended up in heaven as she died within my jurisdiction. There is one rare thing that almost never happens, the one often rare soul that reincarnates as themselves with their memories completely intact. Only Charlie or possibly Itchy would be an example of that as they were given a second life while keeping their jobs as angels. Job carrying Demons and Angels are meant to keep the balance of things, other than that I would rather not bore you with the extensive convoluted laws behind which both sides of the spirit realm are governed. One last thing, you can only end up in purgatory as the end result of an accident or because you went there on purpose.”

“Well at least I know my parents are right about free love now.” Willy was the son of two parents who truly loved each other and they were former hippies who likely knew what he was doing every single time he disappeared for hours or days on end. He looked at the mound of dirt and the headstone with cute little devil horns poking out of it. “Sometimes, some things are so important that they’re worth doing no matter what the cost.”

So far Willy hasn’t lost anyone close or important to him, the crew of the Righteous Indignation had been pretty lucky to have him as an engineer. Being stuck in the middle of a war wasn’t doing him any favors on his sanity, now he knew Earth had magic and aliens visitors. He was intelligent enough to know not to speak out loud about this to anyone. Even if he needed to talk to someone about Jenny and Felicia almost dying this morning, he decided it was best to sit with the one who needed some affection right now. He started petting Annabelle who looked like she needed a soft touch at the moment.

Fluttershy just held a saddened Soft Echo in one hoof and thought about what she needed to do next, she didn’t particularly feel like traveling back to Gem Temple on the east coast at the moment. Virgil came up to her to give a single gentle squeeze to the shoulder with his left wing hand before leaving them to stand off to the side while he looked over his magic scroll.

Equus had its own Cerberus and Orthros as naturally occurring species, but it didn’t have an Anubis even if jackals existed. All this was interesting to everyone present to hear about it. She also talked about the Elysium or the Elysian Fields. Annabelle got into the discussion of afterlife ideals with Fluttershy and the Aldebarans, each world was truly unique in the respects of ideas as to what happens to the dead. Soon after Jenny and Felicia were leaving and preparing to head back for the Righteous Indignation along with Willy who gave Annabelle a pat on the head before they set off.

The three heaven dogs and Fluttershy’s group stayed for a while before they too left Belladonna’s gravesite.

Soft Echo would spend the rest of Wednesday in a slump and Fluttershy was sharing in the same slump alongside her, they were currently in Itchy and Charlie’s apartment for the day where they would set off tomorrow to head back to the gem temple.

Fluttershy could only hope that Bonnie was doing better than she was at the moment, she was finally getting some rest after a hardy meal of fruit and vegetables for dinner. Though she had to wonder how Charlie and Itchy paid for this food or even came to acquire it.

Bonnie figuratively had her back to the wall and the Rhizome suit had taken quite a bit of damage, it was getting pretty close to becoming incapable of fixing itself. She had moved outside of Beach City with the Chozo beacon to avoid civilians getting caught in the line of fire, but she was pretty beaten at this point.

Samus was something far beyond what Bonnie was capable of dodging for more than a few minutes at a time, it was like she was a machine and the fight had been a running one. Despite the fact that she had the ability of flight with Fluttershy’s suit, Bonnie wasn’t doing any better than her opponent and that was when the Valkyrians and Hench Company people started a small war. It was quite a mess.

“I can at least hope that wherever Fluttershy is, she’s at least having a better luck than we are.” A revving noise sounded off in agreement causing Bonnie to flinch. It was just Roller and he had taken quite a bit of carapace damage from protecting her from Samus. The Crystal Gems, Garnet and Amethyst, were helping her out for whatever reason and it was a good thing Steven and Connie didn’t know this was all going on. Speaking of which, Foxglove was hopefully keeping them entertained.

So far Bonnie had relied on her talent to steal and evade to the best of her abilities, it didn’t take her long to figure out Samus was not something that she could handle. The Hench Company thugs and the Valkyrians were much easier to deal with; she had stolen several weapons from them and used them to barely hold off Samus. She had been especially inventive in throwing the Hench Company and Valkyrians into each other’s and ultimately Samus’s path. She was barely keeping herself ahead of the bounty hunter who was tracking her down; her ability of evasion was being put to the ultimate test.

A hole was blown into the object Bonnie was behind and she immediately threw a pod grenade over her shoulder and got on Roller for a quick getaway, that measly little grenade wouldn’t stop the hunter for long. Wednesday was turning out to be a pretty horrible day all around; at least Samus couldn’t find Head Hunter where Bonnie had hidden it.

Now that she thought of it, Bonnie should probably ditch the Chozo distress beacon while she was at it. Except the beacon could still be useful… okay, Bonnie could finally admit to herself that she had a problem.

A whimpering sad Soft Echo was having nightmares of the big scary cat demon hurting Belladonna until Luna came along and made the bad dreams go away. She squeaked and snuggled against her auntie and cried.

“What is wrong with her?” No matter what Luna did, Soft Echo just wouldn’t cheer up.

“It’s a long story, but it starts with me falling into a portal and time traveling backwards quite a bit.” Fluttershy held the sad filly who was still trying to cope with the loss.

Sasha was closing up her bar, yesterdays news of Belladonna’s death was a bit hard for her to take in. Heck, she was still trying to come to terms that Belladonna was actually a good dog or that she had saved two lives and helped the world early yesterday morning before perishing as the sun rose upon San Francisco.

She had recently finished cleaning up the mess from a good round of business; she had some rather unusual visitors. These were some dogs from an organization that never really bothered her too often for anything. Once a Pound Puppy always a Pound Puppy took on a new meaning to her ever since she remembered her past work, being approached by several dogs obviously from one of the many shelters where the organization operates was interesting.

“Hello there, I was just getting closed up after a long night, what do you gents and ladies need?” Sasha didn’t know which shelter these operatives were from, but she knew they were here on business of some kind. One of the dogs walked up who was obviously the head of his personal shelter.

“Hey there, you’re Sasha La Fleur correct?” Receiving a nod the dog continued on. “By any chance are you related to Canina La Fur?”

“Well yes I’m a cousin of hers, but what does that have to do with Pound Puppy business?” Leaning on the counter Sasha waited for them to get on with it, she really needed to get some sleep after a long night of bar tending.

“Oh I’ve just been a fan of hers for years and years since I was a little pup… it’s a bit surprising that she’s still alive and spry for an old gal. Anyway the names Lucky Smarts of the Pound Puppies and we’re from shelter seventeen. The reason we’re coming to you is because we’re having problems finding the home of a pup’s perfect person.” Lucky here seemed to begin to wilt a bit; he was an average looking mutt and one that looked to be as cunning as Charlie is. “Anyway these are Cookie, Niblet, Strudel and Squirt. We really need to find this person fast, because this pup is driving us nuts! It’s almost like she’s a spawn of hell or something! I’ve seen many weird pups, but the one we’re looking out for is taking the cake on driving us insane! There is just something not natural about her.”

Sasha looked intrigued, she knew the reputation of shelter seventeen, they were good dogs and they hardly ever failed a mission. Sometimes they succeeded by failing, which meant that they were quite an honorable group of dogs who went above and beyond.

“Do you have the name of who is supposed to be the pup’s owner; I know a lot of names in San Francisco and I might be able to help you.” It was a little strange that they’d come to her for help, but Sasha wasn’t going to turn them away.

“Yeah, that’s the strange thing about all this. We only have a clue that led us here; I’m still wondering who would name their kid something along the lines of ‘Fluffy Vibrations’. The database hasn’t failed us yet and it only gave us an idea of where we’re supposed to find this perfect person, we don’t have much to go on but we’re working on it even if the crazy pup has been havoc since she was brought to our pound by Olaf yesterday.” Squirt the yellow little Chihuahua was particularly irritable. “We still don’t even know the puppies name and she’s the worst case we’ve ever had to deal with and we’ve only been stuck with her since yesterday.”

“Where is that puppy now?” There was a sinking feeling in Sasha’s gut ever since she heard the words ‘Fluffy Vibrations’ and that the puppy was found yesterday.

“Well she’s right… oh no, where did she get off to now?” The tough looking female Boxer named Cookie with a cute bow on her head was suddenly panicked. She had only looked away for a second and was now wondering where that puppy could have gone to. “Strudel did you see where she went?”

“I believe I see her, but I don’t believe I understand how she managed to get up there. It boggles the mind how she keeps doing this to us.” Strudel the German Dachshund was looking up at the roof tops.

Looking up at where Strudels vision was currently pointed, Sasha saw something that made her go pale and thankfully the puppy was eventually rescued without harm coming to her. The one who eventually rescued the puppy was a very familiar pink whippet.

“I believe I know where that pup’s perfect person is… but we better hurry or you’ll miss your chance to be rid of her for a long time. Trust me; you don’t want to be saddled with ‘HER’ of all dogs longer than you have to be.” Sasha wouldn’t wish such a puppy on anyone from the Pound Puppies organization for more than a minute. She was getting a few stares. “Don’t ask how I know who that puppy is. Just don’t, it’s really complicated.”

Soft Echo was still down in the dumps and they were down at the docks waiting while Virgil was getting a boat ready. The next portal was in a very interesting place this time; it was apparently under the middle of the Golden Gate Bridge twenty feet down into the water. It was one of those portals that ran on interesting physics when it opened, the Cosmic Crown Virgil gave back to Soft after Red had knocked it off her head would be causing a small whirlpool soon.

“Wait, Fluttershy!” Sasha yelling had attracted Fluttershy’s attention before she got into the boat, several dogs came running up to them. “I’m so glad we caught up to you before you left. Now where is she?”

“Whoa whoa, hold up a minute, what in the world is that thing! Heh, it smells like chicken.” Niblet the sheep dog of mild intelligence was the first one to voice his mind on seeing three completely strange beings.

Soft Echo’s ears flicked upwards and started twitching, her eyes sharpened and she looked around as she felt something nearby. Looking behind all the dogs she could see one trying to slink away from everyone, charging forwards and leaping into the air to fly straight for the little puppy with her hooves stretched out. She came down on the puppy with a squeaking yell to bring her into a straddling hug.

“Ah damn it; now I’m stuck with you.” The puppy sized Belladonna with the unbound fluffy ears said in a high pitched whiny voice while she was being snuggled by an overly happy and affectionate Soft Echo. “You stupid tick, stop snuggling me so hard I’m just a puppy for crying out loud! Do you want me to die? Seriously, someone help me out here, she’s slowly killing me with love!”

“Is that…” Fluttershy started before Sasha cut her off.

“Not exactly, but she’s close enough. She’s a bit different now; like all the humans and most of those demons yesterday, the old Belladonna is definitely quite dead.” That was quite a loaded statement; Sasha didn’t know whether the reincarnated boogey dog was better or worse now. Sasha was even one of the few that could actually see the purple feathered wings the puppy was sporting.

Author's Note

Note: This chapter has controversial subject matters. As far as things go, humans do things that are considerably counterproductive all the time.

Tell someone not to to touch a recently painted fence because the paint is wet, they will touch it just to make sure.

I believe there is at least one or more higher powers, just not in the way some people would want me to believe them. I believe that 'belief' is a personal thing to the person and is nobody's business but that person in question, unless they wish to share their beliefs with someone.

For those who guessed perfectly reincarnated Belladonna, your only half right. There is a bit of irony I'm going to spoil here.

Angel is Fluttershy's familiar, Belladonna is...

111

The convention looked like it was still in the midst of being set up to open that evening. The thing that was already set up was the lost, found and help desk where something that looked like a small red cross between an aardvark and a shrew was busy sprucing things up. The word ‘lost’ had a large red X painted over it.

There was the little red being that was flying with his two ears and after he finished putting up the banner in front of the desk advertising what it was there for, he turned around and saw Bonnie. He immediately shot for her and gave her a big hug.

“He seems really happy to see you.” Fluttershy thought Finder looked cute even though she was unsure how spinning his ears helped him achieve flight.

“He should be happy to see me, me and Clyde are the reason he exists in the first place. This is my little brother One Five Eight otherwise known as Finder or in the Japanese language his name is literally ‘Find it’. He can find whatever you want.” Bonnie gave her little brother a pat on his small head. “Unfortunately his powers don’t work so well when in outer space, compared to what you told me of the Star Nomads he can’t actually find his way around to any planet in existence. While in the atmosphere of a planet he can find anything provided that the thing you want him to find actually exists and is on that planet. If you need something to help you out with any situation he can find and quickly provide something that would be the most useful in that given circumstance.”

“Like say a cure for the Jusenkyo Curse, can he find that?” A curse of that hadn’t activated, especially since Ranma met Fluttershy who kept stopping any cold water from striking him.

Finder looked at Ranma for a moment before pointing in a direction. Then he motioned to Bonnie with several bits of sign language, he obviously wasn’t one of the experiments that could talk or if he could he just chose not to.

“He says the cure is easier to find somewhere to the East. He doesn’t know what the exact form of the cure is, only where it is at the moment. He can’t exactly leave Japan as he promised a friend of his that he’d help out with the convention.” After Bonnie finished translating for Finder, he nodded to Ranma.

“So there is a cure… huh… it’s not a pipe dream after all, I’ve just been looking in all the wrong places.” Ranma slumped at hearing that his trips to China were kind of pointless when it came to looking for a cure. “Now I know how Ryoga feels, I’ve seen hell.”

“Um, how are you responsible for Finder’s existence?” They needed a distraction and Fluttershy was going to provide it since she didn’t like the idea of Ranma falling into a huge bout of depression.

“It’s not a long story, but me and Clyde kept stealing and hiding things from our father and he got really tired of it. So he created Finder to find the stuff we kept stashing away, along with his keys. It took him a while to think up an experiment idea to counter our thieving ways, so he figured why not something that can easily find what is lost or stolen?” Bonnie put an arm around Finder and gave him a friendly hug which he accepted with great enthusiasm. “Anyway, it wasn’t until later that Finders combat ability showed up and that was quite a while after having met Lilo. He’s very accurate with projectile weapons. Instead of being a sniper, he’s perfectly friendly and helpful. Little to no evil about him and he hates hurting people or getting violent, so he has a lot in common with you Sweet Cheeks. He’s one of fathers perfectly good experiments.”

Finder looked rather sheepish and then eyed Fluttershy for a bit, then after eyeing Bonnie for a bit he started signing something out to Bonnie causing her to blush.

“Eh, I’ve told her how I feel, but we’re not exactly ready for anything yet and are just good friends at the moment. Anyway, we came here for a reason and not just to see you! Though it is very nice to see you’re doing okay Finder, we really need your help.” Bonnie saw the friendly look on Finder’s face as he signed to her that he was always ready to help family.

Before Bonnie could respond, Finder noticed it for himself and started to sign in a panicked manner to Bonnie. He had finally noticed that the brother and sister pair weren’t in the same place; he didn’t even see Clyde lifting anything in the background anywhere while they were all distracted. He immediately knew something was entirely wrong when Bonnie just gave him a weak smile, the time he didn’t see his brother or sister up to something together was rare and they hadn’t been on the planet in quite a while.

“Yeah, about that… we’ll do lunch with Fluttershy’s family and our friend and then we’ll get to business. So if you could find out where her daughter is currently for us? She should be with a puppy and a magical talking bat.” While Bonnie’s brother didn’t entirely calm down, he did immediately start looking around and after putting up a sign that he was ‘out to lunch’, he then pointed in a direction before going to the doors and motioning for them to follow him.

“We’re not in any hurry, but it would be nice to fix the problem in a timely manner. I think I’m losing my mind from being here in Nerima.” Fluttershy followed after the slow flying master of finding things that was one of Bonnie’s little brothers. “So can he find places he hasn’t been to before?”

“He can find buried treasure without knowing beforehand where it was buried and without a map, he’s just that good.” Bonnie just got a cheerful smile and wave from Finder for the acknowledgement of his abilities as he led them to where Soft Echo and the others went to.

Ranma just took on an intrigued look as he followed the flying weird animal, he did say he was going to show them where lunch was.

Finder landed on the ground and pointed out a completely destroyed part of a daikon field, upon which at the edges sat Soft Echo and Foxglove looking into a crater that Donnabelle was stuck in the middle of with the rear half of her body in the ground.

“What happened?” Shying away a bit as she had spooked the bat, Fluttershy gave her a small shy smile. “Sorry for scaring you Foxglove, I didn’t mean to.”

“Oh, hello Fluttershy, Donna just went a bit overboard and destroyed this section of field she rented out.” Foxglove had her ears back and down since she hoped Fluttershy never found out what happened here.

“Nice to see the Daikon Brothers are doing something with their field aside from causing trouble.” Ranma commented blandly with his arms behind his head.

“Can someone help me out here? I can’t dig my way out!” Donna started whining after that and Fluttershy sighed. The pony started to move forward to dig her out when Soft Echo did something surprising.

Soft Echo knew her puppy was having problems getting out of the hole in the ground and she wanted to help. Holding up both her little hooves after rubbing them together, a buildup of energy started sparking between her hooves until she was holding a growing orb of crackling electricity. The rhizome suit seemed to be preventing her from hurting herself while doing this.

Everyone watched the filly Jump up in the air, she slammed the orb into the ground and a crack ran all the way over to Donnabelle. A moment later the ground erupted beneath her in a jolt of energy sending a bolt of lightning straight to the cloudless sky.

Donna came back to the ground flopping in boneless manner while groaning in pain, Fluttershy was about to move over to her only for a steaming daikon to land on the puppies face.

“Ouch, well that stung quite a bit. Where in the hell did the tick learn to do that?” Donna tossed the daikon over her shoulder while Fluttershy moved in to check on her injuries, she looked to be perfectly fine if slightly scorched. Soft Echo ran up to Donna to snuggle her all better from her boo-boos.

“She got into your manga stash while you were experimenting, I didn’t really think much of it at the time.” Foxglove didn’t think Soft Echo would be able do things like that. Looking at the manga in question nearby that Soft had perused, one had a man who held a ball of lightning above his head on the cover. Donna had said it was something about a guy with the title of Blue Thunder.

“I’m so glad that you didn’t hurt yourself.” Fluttershy tickled the filly on the belly after picking her up with a hoof, the filly squealed and giggled. Then she reprimanded the filly in an equally soft manner. “Now never do something so dangerous like that again!”

“What am I, chopped liver?” Donna said still slightly fried and coughing up a bit of smoke. Sure the short snuggle from Soft made her feel better, but it didn’t take away the stinging sensation.

“Hey your okay and you have your manga don’t you? Now come on it’s time for lunch.” Bonnie picked up the puppies bag of manga and swung it left to right in front of Donna getting her heel immediately.

“Here we are, Ucchans!” Ranma was still thinking about looking up manga as a source of creating new techniques after seeing what Soft Echo could do, though he was suspicious that the Blue Thunder manga had something to do with someone he knew. She looked so innocent despite being able to draw electricity out of the air itself which was likely a trait she had acquired from Fluttershy. “Hopefully Ukyo won’t try anything; she makes the best okonomiyaki in Japan and it’s been a good day for me so far.”

“What is okonomiyaki exactly?” Having been eating strange foods since she got to Earth, Fluttershy wanted to know if it was healthy to be eating out so much. She at least knew that Soft Echo was in good health so far because she refused to let her daughter get pudgy on too much fattening stuff.

“It’s a form of Japan style pizza or pancake with stuff on it. That’s at least what Finder is signing to me.” Understanding her silent brother wasn’t hard for Bonnie, he seemed rather excited to try something new.

“Hey Konatsu, Ucchan, I’ve got some hungry customers for you!” Ranma entered first followed by the group of travelers.

“Hey Ranma-kun, so who are these? Please tell me that they aren’t trouble or new fiancés.” Konatsu was a guy who looked really girly; he was raised as a kunoichi and could look rather feminine thanks to being raised by some ugly stepsisters. He introduced himself in a polite manner as the waitress of the restaurant that Ukyo ran. Fluttershy had no trouble with his cross dressing tendencies, even though it had confused Soft Echo quite a bit.

“Oh, so you’re actually paying for once Ran-chan? Hi I’m Kuonji Ukyo, owner of Ucchans. Who are you?” Ukyo was a girl that tended to cross dress as much as Konatsu seemed to do; it was an earned personality quirk as she introduced herself to the strange beings following Ranma around. She had longer hair than Kasumi and she befriended Soft Echo and followed that up by giving them some food on the house since the filly was adorable, Bonnie at least paid for a second round.

The food was good and the people here were genial, Fluttershy pretty much stated that none of them had any attraction to Ranma whatsoever and were just using him as a friendly tour guide until they met Finder who could get them around just as well.

“That was delicious Miss Kuonji, thank you very much for a wonderful lunch but we really have to get going. Finder, do you think you can find and direct us to Clyde?” For whatever reason Fluttershy had somehow upset Finder by asking that and he sniffed derisively. “Why is he angry with me?”

“Of course he can, he just doesn’t like anyone doubting his abilities as he knows exactly where to find Clyde-kun, right brother?” The aardvark shrew nodded to Bonnie and left through the door of the restaurant and hopped into the air while pointing in a direction to go. “Say Ranma, since you’re a martial artist do you think you can fight off multiple sumo ninjas? The guys are pretty darn fast and we can use all the help we can get for this, plus they use these glowing sword things.”

“I haven’t had a decent challenge all day; I have to admit it’s been pretty therapeutic for nothing crazy to happen to me for once.” Ranma was pretty sure that something had to happen soon as Nerima wasn’t a place where things were peaceful like this. It was kind of unnaturally peaceful. “I’m really good at fighting, if you don’t mind my continued help now that you don’t need a tour guide.”

“Thanks for continuing to help us Ranma, you’re a really nice person.” With that said, Fluttershy and the rest of the group followed Finder along with a slightly flustered Ranma.

Finder led them inside and around to the anime and martial arts section of the convention that had been fully set up, it looked like things were almost ready to go and he was looking towards the martial arts area that was set up. He lowered himself to the ground and led them in that direction while snuffling at the ground.

Finder’s ability worked in mysterious ways, Clyde was in this direction and there was something odd about the size as he detected him getting closer. It seemed as if Clyde was both frozen and reduced somehow… was he death knelled? He stopped and looked to Bonnie with worry and signed something out to her.

“Yeah, but he’s in stasis thanks to the bats magic tutor. Just hurry up and find him. The sooner we get to Hawaii, the quicker we can fix him.” Something flipped like a switch in her brother and Bonnie knew that Finder was taking this twice as seriously as he was before as he started moving all that much faster.

Finder had led them all over the martial arts portion of the convention looking around for something and he stopped at a nondescript wall. Staring at it and sniffing slightly, he started flying and hit a small spot high on it that no normal person would be able to reach. The wall slid out of the way revealing a secret entrance.

“Yeah, that looks like something a ninja would put into a building.” Ranma commented having followed them all this way; nobody would really suspect the sumo ninjas to have a headquarters in a convention center.

Finder motioned them forward and flew in, Fluttershy frowned and slowly trotted forward while warily looking around for danger as they descended down a set of stairs into the basement level that the convention center didn’t have normally.

Eventually they ended up in a hallway and Finder pointed at a doorway, he turned to Bonnie and pointed at the lock on the door. Bonnie nodded and flicked a hairpin out of her ear and started working the lock, once she got the door open they walked into a locker room and Finder eventually pointed out a specific locker. Bonnie went to work on it because if this was where Finder said Clyde was, then she was going to eventually break the lock on this locker to get at him.

“Doesn’t it concern anyone that we haven’t seen any of the sumo ninjas?” Fluttershy was shivering because those guys were stealthy and fast despite their sizes.

“It does, but I’m not seeing anyone. I don’t smell any sumo ninjas present either, got a whiff of them back at Beach City. They are spirit energy users and have this really annoying smell which is powerful around here, but not fresh as in the last three hours.” Donna yawned and got a pat to the head by Soft Echo; she smiled some at the affection.

“As long as they aren’t here I don’t care. Now quiet! I need to concentrate.” Bonnie first took to figuring out the combination on the locker by pressing an ear against the lock. The entrance was incredibly secure as people wouldn’t find it as easily and if what she was hearing was true, the rest of their security was low level because of the obscurity surrounding the entrance to their place of operations. After a moment she heard a click and several other clicks as well. That didn’t sound natural at all. “Back away from the locker. Since we are dealing with ninjas, they likely have these things booby trapped.”

Everyone backed well away from the locker and Bonnie clung to the lock next to it and quickly opened and jumped away. A flamethrower popped out of it and spewed a quick burst of fire which was followed by ten flaming ninja stars launching out in a spread.

Ranma quickly kicked up and caught the nearby bench, which he used to deflect two of the stars that came at the rest of the group before anyone could get hurt.

“Okay, I think that might have been it.” Looking into the locker Bonnie started to quickly disable the bomb at the bottom of the locker that was about to go off in the next twenty seconds. She did it by stealing the parts that would make it explode. “Then again, these guys are nuts and paranoid.”

Searching the locker, she eventually came upon a box of smoke pellets. Lo and behold, within the box they found Clyde’s pod still in stasis. Sighing with relief Bonnie took the pod and then the whole box and started pulling out some of the other stuff in the locker, a spool of wire, several kunai and a packet of throwing stars.

“Who dares invades the locker room of the Saotome Sumo Ninja Clan?” The group jumped and turned to the large heavy set man who led several other ninjas into the room, they had snuck in so easily without being heard despite their large statures.

“Wait, did you just say Saotome? Well that explains so much about why I could never find my father’s family history and why so many people were interested in making a deal with him to marry me.” Ranma just shook his head despairingly and then realized that this was his first time meeting this particular part of his family. “This really explains a lot about my father. Um… would you attack us or do something horrible if I were to say that Genma Saotome is my father?”

“…” The large figure had managed to get closer to them without anyone noticing, he chuckled slightly while leaning forward. “Ah yes, he is the bastard who has no honor. So you’re his son. We’ve heard many great things about you. What are you doing here with one of our prior targets, the one who wears the Lunar Locket?”

Fluttershy, despite being frightened and cornered, shyly moved forward and held out a pamphlet printed in Japanese to the sumo ninja. It now came with an added section about Bonnie’s brother being taken by sumo ninjas. The large man read it over quickly and then nodded.

“Hmm… we know just how to deal with you.” The sumo ninjas moved for the group at the large ninjas words.

Soft Echo sucked on a fruit flavored lollipop as she was sitting with the rest of sumo ninjas who were busy eating massive quantities of food.

The ninjas had kindly offered Fluttershy’s group a free pass to the convention if they had time to join in the festivities.

Ranma was having a good time talking with his family. Apparently the head sumo ninjas name was Choji, which meant ‘butterfly’ in Japanese and Fluttershy thought it was a nice name for a big guy.

“We are sorry for incidentally taking your brother Jookiba-san. Our contract to steal the locket has expired and we are sorry for the inconvenience at that time. However unlike the black horse, we are not without honor and we welcome Ranma to the clan. He may never be sumo, but he is an honorable martial artist of great renown throughout Nerima. We would have eventually attacked the Tendo Dojo, but we were gathering information before following through on rescuing you from Genma’s machinations.” Choji was of a friendly jovial sort, he had fought the likes of Kim Possible and Ron Stoppable personally. If he weren’t so ticklish he wouldn’t have lost that fight.

“Yeah well, where were you guys? You know, in concerns to your location for the most of my life?” Ranma was surprised things didn’t end up in a fight; he usually got into a vicious life or death struggle and had to do something crazy to survive. Only now he was finding out about Genma’s side of the family, he already knew his mother’s side had lots of noble samurai in it. That he had some ninja heritage was a bit much to take in.

“Genma, while not the greatest at being a sumo ninja, is in fact incredibly crafty in his ways. He knew we wouldn’t go anywhere near the Amazon tribe or Jusenkyo in China, we had lost track of you and or had other prior arrangements and contracts to deal with. We of the clan have to make a living after all and we consume lots of food, which is quite costly and a usual thing for those born of our blood.” Choji had a large rice bowl with several steaks in it and was eating at a quick pace. “Incidentally spirit energy attacks come to us easily and it is how we learn to cut through almost anything with our swords.”

“I’m so glad things didn’t end in violence and thank you very much for the tea and the offer of a free pass to the convention for all of us Choji-san.” Sipping on some tea, Fluttershy thought that these people were actually a friendly jolly lot when they weren’t actively attacking her and her friends.

Author's Note

Despite what you may think, this isn't the end of the Japan arc.

Quick question, where's Betty during all this? That's why it's not over yet.

Also Soft Echo learning to do something from looking at pictures in a manga with someone titled 'Blue Thunder'? Yeah, at a guess some guy named Tatewaki is a fan of it and tries to replace reality with that story.

Sumo Ninjas eat a lot of food, so they sometimes take questionable contracts with people like Dr. Drakken to keep their bellies fed. At least they aren't lazy jobless slobs like Genma generally is when he's not being a panda in a zoo.

This is probably the most boring day Ranma 'interesting times' Saotome has ever had.