A yellow pegasus with pink hair bent close to the controls in her cockpit, as though trying to hide herself among the levers and switches. In front of her, on the monitor, the dunes of the Mohoove desert stretched out into the shimmering distance, an endless sine wave of sand, broken only here and there by stirred-up clouds of dust and the flashing of beam weapons. One flashed dangerously close, and the whole world shook and tilted sideways as the ship banked left to evade it.
“FS-78-2, you've been cleared for takeoff!” hissed a voice in her ear.
Fluttershy gulped, and stared down the length of the launch catapult on which she was perched. “Oh. Well. Um... This is F-Fluttershy. G-Gundam Temerity... launching. If that's okay, I mean. Are you sure I should launch? I can just stay here if you'd rather. Maybe I could help treat the wounded? I'm sure I’d be of much more use to everypony if I—”
“Oh for Pete's sake!” yelled another voice, and a large, bulky green shape rushed onto the monitor from the left, filling up the entire screen. “This is Rainbow Dash. Guntank, taking off!”
The green mass sprang from the catapult under its own power, and quickly resolved itself into a huge mechanical tortoise, bristling with guns, the ends of its legs glowing with blue fire as it soared out over the desert.
“'Bout time!” a third voice rang in Fluttershy's headset. “They've got me pinned down over here!”
“Roger that Gunapple, help's on the way,” said Rainbow Dash. “Come on you Neighon bastards!” The guns lining one side of the tortoise flashed with pinkish light, and a dune in the distance glowed white hot, sand melting to glass. Answering lights flashed out in the desert, and the brilliant pink beams scorched through the air, narrowly missing the Guntank as it dove to the ground.
Fluttershy squeaked.
“Ensign Fluttershy, you're cleared for launch,” repeated the first voice, not unkindly. “Please. We need you out there.”
“I don't think I can...”
“What?" said the voice, faintly, as though no longer speaking into the microphone. “No, Captain, I am not just going to launch the Gundam if the pilot isn't ready!” There was a pause. “You and I both know that battlefield immersion therapy hasn't been tested by an independent laboratory! Now, Fluttershy—Fluttershy why is the Gundam's cockpit open? Ensign?”
Smack!
Fluttershy almost fell over under the force of Captain Brightsun's blow. She felt tears well in her eyes. “Y-you hit me... even my father never hit me—”
The Captain, nearly twice her height, reached up a long, long foreleg and slapped her again.
“Oh... okay...” said Fluttershy, lowering her head. “I guess I deserve it.”
A moment passed, then Twilight Sparke, the ship’s Communications Officer, and owner of the first voice that had spoken through Fluttershy’s headset, approached. “Um, Celes—I mean, Captain Brightsun,” she said. The captain shot her a sharp look at the slip up, which Twilight batted off with an apologetic 'I'm definitely not sleeping with you,' smile. “Maybe you should stop hitting her now? It's been almost three minutes, and she's just sort of cowering in the corner.”
“I'm trying to—” Slap, whimper. “Get her to—” Stomp, squeal. “Toughen up!”
“It looks a little bit more like you're turning her to pudding,” said Twilight, as Fluttershy finally gave up all pretense of a spine and oozed to the floor, hooves desperately covering her face.
“Well, pour her back into the Gundam and see if it took,” said the captain, turning on hoof and marching back out of Fluttershy's quarters.
Twilight carefully helped Fluttershy back to her hooves, despite the other pony's protests that the floor was really quite lovely, and besides which please, please, no don't make me get back in that thing noooo!
“I know you're afraid to fight, Fluttershy, but if we're ever going to stop the Nightmare family's nefarious plot we're all going to have to make sacrifices.”
“I-I want to transfer to engineering,” sniffed Fluttershy. “I only signed up to be a pilot because Dash said it would be fun, and we'd get to protect the ship, and—”
Twilight’s face became grave. “Fluttershy, trust me. You don't want to be an engineer. This last week alone we've lost... gee, has it really been seventeen of them? Anyway, come on, let's get you in a nice, safe, giant war robot.”
“Sparrow! Help me!” Fluttershy pleaded, reaching out to the mechanical flying squirrel perched on her dresser as Twilight dragged her off by her tail.
“Fluttershy! Sad! Sad!” squawked the robot.
The Gundam's feet hitting the sand sent a massive tremor up through the cockpit, jerking Fluttershy's still-tender barrel against the harness strapping her in place. Locking her in place, as it happened. Like with a lock.
A beam burned through the sand next to her, the screen dimming automatically to drown out the intense light. Fluttershy squeaked in shock and grabbed the controls, flipping levers, mashing pedals as hard as she could.
The Gundam buried its head in the sand.
“Fluttershy! Look out!” yelled Rainbow Dash through the headset. “It's... it's the Pink Comet!”
Something pink and very fast slammed into the Gundam, jostling it out of the sand. When everything stopped spinning Fluttershy looked up at the monitor and saw, bearing down on her, an enormous pink pony mobile steed, its curly mane tipped with razor wire, a glowing, double-bladed sword clutched in its mouth.
“Today's the day I get you, Gundam!” said the robot's masked pilot, the machine raising its blade to strike.
“Not on my watch!” rang a welcome voice in Fluttershy's ear—a voice she'd heard, lately, only in her dreams. From out of nowhere, a bright yellow, water bug-shaped supply carrier smashed into the pink mobile steed, knocking it for a loop with a screech of tearing metal. The flier’s legs snapped on impact, but the cockpit and engines tore away, flying on unharmed. “Hah! Even us folks in supply can still—”
A tendril of pink, metal hair lashed out, towards the limping remnants of the cargo transport. The voice on the line went dead in a burst of static.
A second later the ship hit the ground and exploded in a huge fireball.
“No...” whispered Fluttershy. “No... MATILDAAAAAA!”
“That’s right, Gundam!” sneered the masked mare. “There’s nopony for you to hide behind. Not today. I’m going to settle this, once and for all—with this Gelhoof mobile steed!”
Fluttershy said nothing at first, hate and pain and despair welling in her eyes. But then, as the world closed in, pools of darkness shrinking around her, she heard that same, familiar voice again.
“Fluttershy,” said Matilda. Fluttershy looked up and saw the donkey—her spirit—floating in front of her like an apparition, like a dream. She was naked. But then, Matilda usually was naked. It was one of the things Fluttershy had loved about her. “You’ve got to fight. Don’t let my death be pointless. Fight!”
Fluttershy nodded, and, blinking her tears away, locked eyes on the pink mobile suit racing towards her.
Outside, the eyes of the huge mechanical rabbit glowed green to match its pilot’s.
“You,” said Fluttershy, hooves finding the controls. “YOU DO NOT! KILL! MY! FRIENDS!”
Hours later, after White Stable had retrieved the Gunpony from a the scrapheap that was all that remained of the enemy mobile steeds, and when they had finally unchained Fluttershy from the controls and helped her wobbling from the cockpit, the captain lay a supportive hoof on her shoulder.
“You did good, kid.”
“Well, Captain,” corrected Twilight.
“Lieutenant Sparkle, if you keep correcting a superior officer I am going to have to discipline you,” said Brightsun, with a mischievous smirk.
“O-oh,” said Twilight, shivering, and trying very hard not to smile. “Then you should hear what I thought of that last battle plan. It's a wonder any of us are alive.”
“You insubordinate little foal,” sneered the captain, with no real malice. “I can have you thrown in the brig for that.”
Around them, the mechanics rolled their eyes and went back to work.
Fluttershy sighed and stepped around the two ponies, who were now standing practically nose-to-barrel. Nopony would understand. Oh, sure, most of the younger crewmen had had their crushes on Matilda, but for Fluttershy, it was the first time she had ever known the wiles of a jenny.
And now she was gone. With nothing for Fluttershy to remember her by except the faint sound of excited laughter behind her, as Captain Brightsun pulled Twilight close and—
“Pinkie, stop! You can't say those sorts of things about the Princess!” burst Twilight. The five of them were gathered around a small campfire—Rarity having flatly refused to get that close to an open flame, given the amount of product in her mane. “I mean, in the first place she would never, ever... I mean she'd never hit Fluttershy too! That's just wrong! But she'd definitely never... not in a hundred years... oh...” Twilight abruptly took a keen interest in a little patch of ground in front of her.
“I um... I...” Fluttershy began. “Wh-wh-wh-at was that about... Matilda—?”
“Yeah, sugarcube, I gotta admit I'm a mite lost. Did you just kill yourself off?”
“What? No of course not! The Pink Comet always escapes. It's her special talent.”
“Yeah, come on you guys, that was awesome. What happens next?”
Applejack sighed. She was already regretting letting Rainbow and Pinkie go through Big Mac's old comics. “Yeah, okay, go ahead Pinkie.”
“Well, meanwhile in the Nightmare Family's secret base on A Boa Tai—”
Author's Note
So yeah, as I mention in the description this was written because "Suit Up" was one of the Thirty Minute Pony prompts and... well I love Gundam, and I'd never actually done anything pony-related with that before.
I doubt I will continue this in any meaningful way, but you never know. Doing a straightforward version of the Gundam story starring Fluttershy doesn't really appeal (although I would love to see art of Fluttershy with Amuro's fro or Pinkie as Char), but maybe if the mood strikes me I'll write specific scenes that would be especially funny?
Stuff that didn't make it in: the Pink Comet's real fake name is "Pie Omnable."
