Tank the Shedding Tortoise
Tank is a Shedding Tortoise?!
It was quiet and still in Rainbow Dash's cloud house. Everything was in place since she had left. The blankets were gently pulled up close to the pillows on her bed. On top of the bed was Tank, Rainbow Dash's pet tortoise. He was sleeping, dreaming about...erm, whatever tortoises dream about.
Suddenly, he slowly stretched and dropped to the floor. He slowly yawned as he began a slow walking gait. He needed to go somewhere to do something. But what was he doing? Where was he going? Only Tank knew the answers to these burning questions.
Five minutes later, Tank was in the kitchen. Just as he was about to eat his tortoise food, he heard a splitting sound from behind him. He turned around and closed his eyes. Bits of flaky skin soon became thin sheets of smooth skin literally ripping itself out from Tank's outer skin. His shell began to throb rapidly, and soon it exploded into millions of tiny pieces. Tank began to shiver because he was lacking a shell to insulate him.
Tank just shed his skin, and sooner or later Rainbow Dash was going to come back from flying to discover something remarkably strange.
It had been thirty minutes since a certain incident happened at Rainbow Dash's house, and the latter mare was heading home to her cloud house after a long day of flying.
"I'm going to need to rest these wings for a while."
Soon after she opened the door of her humble abode, her face froze. Her eyes were looking directly at a naked Tank who was staring directly at her as if to say: "I'm sorry, Rainbow Dash. I didn't know that this would happen to me."
"Tank, what happened here?"
Pieces of skin were littered everywhere in every single room. The pieces of Tank's shell were scattered near his food bowl. He was shivering so much that Rainbow Dash could hear his teeth chattering.
"Come on now little buddy. Let's go to Fluttershy's. She'll know what to do."
Rainbow Dash grabbed Tank and flew out of her house. A few minutes later, she found Fluttershy's house and landed on the ground with Tank intact. Rainbow Dash gently knocked on Fluttershy's door. The door opened with Fluttershy standing there.
"Hello Rainbow Dash and- eek!"
Fluttershy jumped back in both shock and fright. "What happened to Tank?"
"I have no idea!" spoke Rainbow Dash. "I think he shed his skin while I was out flying!"
"It looks to me that he also shed his shell," replied Fluttershy.
"When I first got Tank from you," Rainbow Dash began, "I didn't even know that he could shed!"
"Me either," replied Fluttershy. "Perhaps Twilight will know what to do. Y'know, because she's all about science and stuff?"
"Thanks for the idea, Fluttershy."
Rainbow Dash tightly clutched Tank and flew off the ground in search of the Friendship Rainbow Kingdom castle. She needed Twilight Sparkle's help with Tank.
"Good luck with Tank, Rainbow Dash."
It didn't take Rainbow Dash too long to safely land on the ground and burst through the Friendship Rainbow Kingdom castle's doors.
"Twilight, Twilight! I need help!"
"Woah, woah, woah! Slow down, Rainbow!"
Twilight Sparkle was obviously confused by all of this. "First of all, what is wrong? Second of all, I need to make this quick because somepony told me earlier that they need help with a friendship problem!"
"Well..." Rainbow Dash tried to tell the story of the incident from her point of view. "First, I was out flying, doing some tricks in front of my Wonderbolt training friends, practicing Sonic Rainbooms, y'know. Then, when I came home, it seemed like my pet tortoise Tank shed his skin and shell on my clean cloud floor!"
For a while, Twilight Sparkle couldn't respond to any of this. She was a princess, and she had to let this new and confusing information slowly sink inside of her.
"Hmm. Come inside the castle and bring Tank with you."
Rainbow Dash clutched Tank with her wings and followed Twilight Sparkle inside.
"Follow me into one of these spare rooms and I'll inspect Tank."
Rainbow Dash followed her into the spare room. It was small, but not too small; large, but not too large. It looked as if it could hold about twelve ponies at once. There was a single gray table in the middle with several small wooden stools scattered around it.
"Put Tank on the table."
Instantly Tank started to shiver after Rainbow Dash put him on the table. Twilight Sparkle crouched down to his eye level and slowly inspected him from head to a stumpy, naked tail. After about two minutes of inspection, she came to a conclusion.
"Follow me into one of the lab rooms."
It didn't take long for Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash to enter the lab room. It was located in the basement of the castle. Several flasks and books could be found in there. A small desk and a wooden stool were both near the door. However, the main detail of this room was a huge chair with a helmet connected to it. The helmet was gently resting on the chair. Next to the chair was a machine that would print out data that came from the helmet.
"I'm afraid that that's how I'll further inspect Tank."
Rainbow Dash quietly shuddered when Twilight Sparkle pointed to the chair. "Please don't hurt him. He just shed his skin and shell, y'know?"
"That's sort of why you're here," Twilight Sparkle replied, "is it not? Is there really no reason why I'm about to further inspect your pet?"
Rainbow Dash blushed. "T-there's a reason. I'm n-not making a-any of this up..."
"It's settled then."
Twilight Sparkle gently levitated a naked Tank next to the chair. She used her magic to adjust the helmet to fit Tank's head. She levitated the helmet onto his head and levitated him onto the chair. Twilight Sparkle galloped over to the machine next to the chair and pressed a large red button. Instantly the lights on the helmet began to blink and quickly flicker as information began to spit out from the machine's slot. Two minutes later, Twilight Sparkle was literally surrounded by a huge pile of data.
"Science rules!"
A minute later she finally turned off the machine. The lights on the helmet stopped blinking and data stopped coming out of the machine. Soon after that, Twilight Sparkle began to analyze the data.
"Hmm. Looks interesting."
"And to think that he had that in his lineage..."
"Rainbow's going to be shocked about this for sure..."
After five long minutes of Rainbow Dash literally just standing there watching her friend analyze data from a machine, Twilight Sparkle came to another conclusion. She walked up to Rainbow Dash:
"Rainbow Dash?"
"Yes, Twilight?"
Twilight Sparkle leaned over to her friend's ear and quietly whispered:
"Tank is a shedding tortoise. His own individual species."
Twilight Sparkle stepped away from Rainbow Dash, who was staring at her like she was crazy or something like that. Three minutes passed by.
"HOW AM I GONNA LIVE LIKE THIS, TWILIGHT?! HUH? TELL ME!"
