The Bronies Beyond The Star Adventure Series

B.B.T.S. Starbound Adventure #1:

Zailiner’s Rescue Mission

“Central command! Central command, please respond! The gray mare shouted into her control panel on board her space craft as she held her bruised flank, and the fractured femur contained inside. “Commander Moshi! Lieutenant Conrad! E-Shredder! That… that purple dragon thing! If anyone can hear me right now, please send a rescue pod to my coordinates! My scout craft crashed on the target planet, and… I think I broke one of my back legs… buck it hurts.”

The fractured screen on the injured mare’s vehicle crackled to life, as a hologram of a faceless white mare dressed entirely in a black suit appeared in front of the mare.

“Ah, good morning, vice-commander Zailiner, I trust you have slept well?”

The white mare’s sarcasm didn’t process well with the gray mare, as she made a weak gesture of sweeping across the hologram with her free hoof.

“I’ve no time for jokes artist! My ship crashed on Tartaurus-3, and I think I broke one of my legs. Please, just send help! I’m dying over here!”

Zailiner could swore the white mare gave out the hint of a smirk underneath that faceless skin of his.

“Oh my, it would seem even the great vice-commander Zailiner have her… how you say, “forgetful days?” If I recall correctly, the criminal brothers you are currently pursuing have the power to shift gravity to their advantage; surely, a great navigator such as yourself would have remembered to steer your ship, ahem, far away from them, before attempting to apprehend them, yes? Well, I suppose even the greatest of space captains can have her-

“Oh shut it you dumb foal!” The gray mare became more than annoyed with the combination of the white mare’s irritating remarks coupled from the periodic dull pain pulsating from her fractured femur. “Look, will you come help me or not?”

“Ah, yes… unfortunately for you, dear-vice commander, your ship’s targeting system seemed to have damaged in the landing. I’m afraid you have to manually fire a flare upward into the air in order to attract our attention.” The white mare spoke in a rather nonchalant tone as he put his hoof over the com-link button. “I shall monitor the planet carefully for any sign of a flare; here’s to hoping you are not on the opposite side of the planet as I am!” Before the injured captain could respond, the white mare severed the connection between them, leaving the mare’s ship in a strange and eerie silence.

The gray mare grumbled as he carefully lifted up the cockpit window of her broken ship. The air on Tartaurus-3 is breathable, but tasted arid and dry, with a hint of copper mixed in between. The barren planet is composed of nothing but plateaus made from various metallic elements; the fact that the sun beams down onto the surface of the planet 30 hours out of 32 hours of the planetary day, coupled with metal’s excellent heat conductivity made the planet a literal oven. Zailiner began to sweat bullet soon as she lifted open her cockpit window; she dared not touch the outer walls of her steaming-hot metallic craft. She cautiously reached into her utility belt, lifting up her trusty flare gun with her bare hoof. With methods and forces unknown to human folks, she aimed the device up toward the cloudless sky, and somehow pulled the trigger with her flat, stubby arm. A single bright mini-flare missile jettisoned into the air, intending to fly its way into outer space, and cause a big shiny explosion right as the friction from the atmosphere melt away its delicate outer shell. However, even before the projectile could begin the pierce the atmosphere, the missile began to slow down, then began its sharp, unnatural descend toward the ground. With a loud bang, the flare missile exploded upon a dark, sleek giant beetle’s shell.

“Well lookie what we have here fellas!” A dark beetle the size of a mini-cruiser, dressed in a western cowboy attire, spoke toward the two identical-looking beetles adjacent to him. “If it isn’t the lil’ lady that’s looking to get our bounty! Well, I guess you’ve found us. Please, let us show you why they call us the ‘bad beetles brothers!’”

Zailiner leaped away just before the beetles fired their laser toward the cockpit. The explosion blew her into the sky, forcing her to land with only her training reactions. Unfortunately for her, that meant landing on her broken leg. With a sharp “SNAP!” The gray mare screamed in horrific pain as a sharp shock coursed through her body. However, she had no luxury of hesitation, as she dodged a barrage of laser beams coming from the three beetle brothers. On any other day, the gray mare would have dodged the shots with ease; however, her limp made this task close to impossible. She tried her best to enlarge the distance between him and the shooting beetles, but the brothers picked up on that.

“Whoa there lil’ lady! Ya can’t just leave without seeing the ability that made us famed across quadrant-5!” The beetles stopped shooting their lasers, and began grunting while their hard beetle shells. A dark aura began to emit from all three of them as the vice commander began to feel a slight tug on her mane. The tug became more intense as nearby metallic pebbles began rolling toward the grunting brothers, as the space around them began shifting toward them.

“You see, lil’ miss, us outlaws are tired of being hounded around by bounty hunters like yourself, so we’ve started a bounty board of our own!” The beetles began churning out more dark aura, as the gravity around them intensified. “You came around at a bounty of 20,000 pixels when turned in alive, and we aim to collect!” As Zailiner regained her senses, she found herself to be floating in midair, hurtling toward the center of the beetles’ gravity.

Hours of intensive training had prepare the gray mare for this kind of situation. With her hooves extended, she pushes against the biggest of the beetle brothers just as she made impact with him, and propelled upwards. The intense gravitational field flung her over the beetle brothers; she did a twirl mid-air, as she landed on her front hooves, far away from the band of criminals. With the beetles in a temporary moment of confusion over her little “disappearing act”, the gray mare began limping away from them as quietly and swiftly as possible.

“We shoot brother! We’ve lost them!” One of the smaller beetle siblings whined to his eldest brother as the beetles ceased vibrating, and withdrew their dark aura. The older beetle tipped his hat at the sun, and smirked.

“Don’t you worry about that none; our little horsy friend done crash landed on top of a plateau. With that bum leg of hers, there ain’t no way she’s getting’ off of this piece of rock.” The eldest beetle began ascending into the air, as his little brothers followed suit. “Billy! You get to the foot of this plateau; me and Jim will fly to 2 other ends of the plateau’s foot. I believe it’s time we do the ‘beetle-muda triangle!”

Zailiner limped across the heated metallic plateau, taking care not to let her bum leg touch the floor. Each time her heart beats, the four-chambered pump sends her precious blood through the punctured part of her arteries serrated by her sharp, broken bones, pooling a little bit more of her blood into her already swollen flank. She almost wished that her heart would stop beating, so the pain can stop. As she stumbled across the heated terrain however, she came across what seems to be a snail shell. The lone, rustic shell the size of a 4 off-terrain vehicles stood alone in this barren, metallic landscape. It’s brown, ancient shell is laden with graffiti of different styles, culture and languages. Zailiner stood in amazement: through all her years studying languages from around the quadrant, taking special care to memorize the origin of each language and style. The different amount of languages written the on snail astounded her; each different word or phrase seemed to originate from a different planet. The visual expression from the phrases are unique in their own right; truly, Zai thought, this was a masterpiece lost in a sea of steel. Of course, Zai had more uses for this shell than a mere sculpture. She gently placed her front hooves onto the ground, and lifted up the shell with her good hoof. The entry point of the shell revealed to have a thick, white mucus covering it, indicating that the owner of this shelter is still moist and live. “Sorry to intrude!” Zailiner spoke to the shell, knowing full well that it’s owner will not understand nor mind her entry. “hope ya don’t mind a lone straggler staying in your shell for a while.”

The gray mare carefully lifted over the snail’s green membrane cover, revealing an opening just small enough for her to enter. She gently squeezed past the snail’s thick mucus-covered body, and found her way into a cozy air pocket inside of the snail’s shell. The snail’s unique ability to breathe through its body supplies the air pocket with ample amount of fresh air, though this ventilation does nothing to reduce the heat and moisture inside the snail. The smell of mucus is thick inside, and the humid heat made the gray mare sweat; though this is paradise compared to the nightmare of the barren wasteland outside. Zailiner licked the surface of the snail’s body in order to retrieve some much-needed fluid; this was nothing new to her, as she had endured conditions way more arduous during her combat training back on the space station. The snail’s semi-lucent shell allowed the gray mare to see out into the sunny sky, which distracted her from the pain shooting up her bad leg. She reflected upon her actions today; for the first time in what seemed to be an eternity, she didn’t have a plan. Ever since she was but a sub-lieutenant, she’s always fond of predicting her opponents’ next move, and make plans accordingly. No mission of hers would be executed without at least 3 different attack plans, and 5 different plans of escape. However, she never knew that all of her plans require her to be physically fit. Whenever her teammate is in trouble, the plan is for her to save them; whenever the plan fails, she would be responsible to get everyone out of danger. She would love and tolerate all the members of her clan… except herself. As the years went by, she became less and less aware of her vulnerability, of her mortality. And now, her carelessness finally caught up to her with a bang. All 5 of her of attack and capture for this mission required her to perform a flying buck toward the beetle brothers just as they wield their gravitational powers; however, all of her plans went over the plateau as the beetles brothers brought down her spacecraft before she could even land. And now she lays face up inside the shell of a snail, awaiting for her rescue… or demise. Whichever comes first she supposed.

It took her a whole minute to realize the plateau the snail rested on was shaking and fissuring. She tilted her head up for as much as she can, trying her best to look at the ground through the semi-translucent snail shell. For some reason, the entire plateau is fracturing and sinking to the earth, as if being sucked in by some sinkhole.

“By Celestia, the brothers are trying to take down the entire plateau!” Before she could have finished her thought process, the metallic ground gave way, and a crack that appeared right below them sucked them into the abyss below.

Zai grasped onto the snail’s inner body tightly as her body floated slightly upward during the descent. Fortunately, the snail’s hard shell protected the two of them from the impact, and the snail’s soft body saved the gray mare from the fall.

However, despite the rather “softened” landing, the mare’s leg snapped once more, almost as if someone had pushed the two splintered femur together, and gave it a 180 degree twist. Zailiner grunted through the pain, knowing full well that she could not afford to scream, when she could see one of the beetles right outside of the semi-translucent shell.

“Hey brother!” The beetle shouted into the distance. “Sun’s goin’ down! Should we take a two hour break, and wait for the sun to go up again?”

The injured mare could hear the eldest brother shouting back from a distance away:

“Heck no! That mare be a crafty one! Comb the area for her body; assume she’s alive if ya can’t find it! We need her to be in one piece and/or breathing to get the ‘alive’ bounty on her!”

As the brothers conversed with each other, the injured mare lie motionless inside the semi-clear shell; having exhausted of all her strength, she was unable to move. She looked at the back wings of the beetle brother that was closest to her, knowing that the inevitable moment would come when that beetle finishes conversing with his big brother, and make a 180 degree turn that would place her within his sight range. She held her breath; hoping for the conversation to last for as long as possible.

“Alright! I’ll keep an eye on that!” The beetle began to turn as he started searching the terrain. The injured mare held her breath as he swept his range of vision across the snail shell, only to turn back again, focused on the tiny mare trapped inside the snail shell. The sight of her in this disposition surprised him for a slight fraction of a second, as he exclaimed:

“What the…? Hey! Big brother! I think I-

Before the beetle could even finish that sentence, a dark mass swept across his face, and knocked it down with one fell swoop. Before the other two beetles brothers could react to their brother’s fall, two more dark shapes swooped upon them as well.

“Take your positions! She’s here!” The eldest beetle shouted orders at his siblings as a swarm of dark mass swarmed above them, like a sea of storm that was about to rain down upon them. The swarm circled around the beetle brothers, as the dark figure descended from the eye of the storm. The slim, tall figure is around 2 times bigger than individuals at her swarm, each one the size of a regular pony. The big black mare had holes all over her hooves, wings and hair; her horns are twisted, and her smile reeked of evil.

“Behold! The queen of changelings have arrived! Cower in fear, for I shall unleash a never-ending nightmare upon you for injuring my fri-

The Changeling queen could not finish her sentence before feeling the intense gravity emitted by the three beetle brothers. Her loyal drones began to have great difficulty holding their positions, as the shift in gravity caused them to swing out of orbit. One bumped to the next, and the two bumped into four more. Her entire squadron began to fall out of position, forcing the queen and her drones to land.

“Why if it isn’t a famed Lieutenant Conrad-7!” The eldest beetle emitted even darker auras as gravity around him intensified. “While our gravitational powers have very little effect towards melee users, all ranged attacks are doom to fail! The three of them curled up into a ball, causing all the drones that got dragged into their gravitational field to bounce back onto the metallic ground. “With these shells of ours, coupled with our ability drag flying projectiles off course, your bullet drones stand no chance at cracking our outer shells!”

Zailiner could see through the snail shell that her changeling friend was obviously ticked off. She could see the changeling queen spouting profanities at the beetle trio, as he hurled her subjects at the three balls of gravity. “Conrad really hate it when somebody treats her subjects like objects… though she really have a strange way of conveying their love to them….”

A sudden shift within the snail’s membrane alerted the injured mare of her new threat. The snail, possibly intimidated by the battle at hand, begun puffing up its membrane inside of its shell, slowly closing the pocket of air which Zai resides in. “No! Wait! Stop!” Zailiner shouted various commands at the snail. “You’re…you’re crushing me!”

The poor mare desperately tried to shift her body to a finer position as the space between the snail’s shell and membrane became smaller and smaller. Each increment of the snail’s skin snaps the mare’s fracture by a bit more, causing her excruciating pain beyond the tolerance of a normal pony. It took only seconds for the mare to be pressed against the semi-translucent snail shell, having barely enough space to breath. The snail puffed up even more, pressing the mare’s body against the soft, slimy membrane. She could see from beyond the shell, her changeling friend doing her best smacking her subjects on the hard outer exoskeleton of the beetle bros. As Zailiner touched upon the soft snail membrane for what she thought to be the last time, she reached a sudden realization:

“The snail isn’t puffing up because it is scared; it’s charging for an attack!”

The snail’s membrane miraculously restored itself back to its original position the moment Zai thought about that. She breathed deeply as the murky, wet air refilled her near-collapsed chest. A blue glow seemingly filled the area outside of the snail’s shell as everything on the outside begun to float upwards.

“What’s happening brother?!” The panicked beetle sibling uncurled itself as all three of them begun to float upwards into the atmosphere.

“Darn it! Something be canceling out our gravity power with theirs!” The panicking eldest beetle and his other sibling uncurled themselves in their confusion, as they come eye to eye with the gigantic graffiti ridden snail shell, floating up into the sky.

“By the gums! This be the legendary anti-gravity snail, hopping from planet to planet using its anti-gravity powers! It’s our biggest weakness!”

The trio of beetles, the changeling queen and all of her subjects, along with the snail shell along with all the broken boulders floated up high in the sky, just as the morning sun began to rise over the valley, ending the brief night of darkness.
As the beetles rose upward into the sky, the eldest of the beetles spotted a pink blur flashing in between the floating boulders, getting closer and closer to them.

“What in the pixels is going on here?!” Before the outlaw could respond to the sudden change in his situation, a pink mare holding a bazooka appeared in front of him.”

“…So, were you saying something about ranged weapons being ineffective against you?”

“Wait a minute…. You’re, you’re-

The pink mare held up her custom-designed bazooka in between the beetle’s eyes, the missile cocked neatly inside, ready to explode at a moment’s notice.

“Don’t blink.”

Zai squeezed her way out of the snail’s shell just in time to see the brilliant flash of pink explosion. She raised her hooves, and waved at the black mass coming toward her, accompanied by a certain pink bazooka pony, carrying three very unconscious beetles.

“Heeeeeeey! Over here!” The gray mare waved her arms back and forth. The changeling queen swooped over the snail shell, grabbing the gray mare and lifting her into the air.

“Holy Celestia, Zai, your leg is banged up! We gotta disinfect that back at the base! And just what the heck is that thing you were on anyways?”

“Just a friend.” Zai uttered, as she watched the floating shell floated slowly toward the morning sun.

Mission Report

Dear Clan Leader Moshi:

Today, I have apprehended the criminal trio known as the “Bad Beetle Brothers”. I had encountered some difficulty restraining them, but thanks to you and Conrad-7, things turned out pretty ok. But the most important thing I’ve learned today is that I need to take care of myself every now and then! Helping our clan members might be fun and rewarding, it’s still pretty important to make sure to have a plan to save yourself, in case of life-threatening emergencies that could happen at a moment’s notice. On an unrelated note, someone has been putting a reverse-bounty on our clan members as a sign of retaliation; during the battle, the beetle brothers informed me that I actually have a 20,000 pixel bounty on my head! Well, whoever put money for my head won’t be paying that money for a while, that’s to be sure. I have also encountered the legendary anti-gravity snail on my adventure too! I had a great time with it. When it visits a planet with sentient people, they would often leave a mark on his shell for prosperity. However, I do wonder if anyone would ever notice the green hoof print made inside of its shell?

-End Report-

PS: Obviously, Spike didn’t get to help out today, because he was busy sweeping up the mess the other ponies made during that huge party yesterday. I should definitely consider granting him a day off for his-

“Ted! What are you doing with my tablet?!”

“Uh, nothing Zai! Let me jus-

-Transmission Terminated-