//------------------------------//
// Chapter Eleven - Vinyl Scratch: Forgive an Angel 
// Story: Equestria Girls /0 
// by Bitt_Player 
//------------------------------//

Knowing that Rarity slept like a sedated log the moment her head and pillow met made it easy to transfer Luna's find from the Gustav's trailers to a secondary hangar by night, despite the loud equipment and multiple spotlights required to lug dysfunctional Zoids around after sundown.
The Zoid was ancient, having moldered in its base for centuries. Its rotary laser and electromagnetic net launcher had been removed, likely cannibalized by Helic Republic engineers desperate to get higher-priority machines fighting fit. Its Multisensor array, electron fangs, and strike laser claws had all been burned out, critically overheated in some brutal combat engagement. Its seat needed replacing and everything else required, at the very least, a thorough scrub, probably sterilization just to be sure, and definitely stripping down to the metal and a new paint job. And that was just Sunset Shimmer's admittedly-inexpert evaluation.
Sunset and Luna, having watched Fluttershy appraise the timeworn and battle-scarred machine, eagerly awaited her professional diagnosis. Fluttershy pulled her respirator off and took a deep breath. "I can fix it," she pronounced.
"Excellent!" Luna said, clapping her hands together. "Let me know if there's anything you need."
"We have a lot of compatible internals, but several armor plates will need to be replaced. Sunset, do you have a weapon loadout in mind?"
"I have a few ideas. What about sticking a couple small-caliber lasers onto the sides of the main weapon for close combat, and missile pods on the shoulders?"
"The lasers might need some work, depending on the main gun, but nothing I can't do. The missile racks won't be a problem. I can attach five-missile pods to the sides of the front shoulders with minimal aerodynamic alteration. It's got hardpoints for that, they'll be plug-and-shoot. Or, their replacements will be, the hardpoints on there now might as well be made of rust."
"Perfect!" Sunset turned her attention to the Zoid's turret mount. "That leads us to the main weapon."
"That turret is supposed to be pretty versatile," Luna said. "What kind of gun can you mount on that hardpoint?"
"Pretty much anything," Fluttershy said with a shrug. "You recovered all the modules, and they're fixable, so our options are wide open. Of course, if we put too much weight on it we'll slow the Zoid down. Electrical requirements are also an issue, but if you're willing to cut power to a few things I can load it with any weapon we have."
"Geez, I should've given this more thought." Sunset tapped her chin as she stared at the turret hardpoint. "Applejack has mid-range rapid fire and heavy punch, Pinkie can do indirect and saturation fire over long distances. Rarity should go for close-to-mid range shock assault. Do we still have that hundred-fifteen millimeter pulse laser?"
"I haven't sold it," Luna said. "It's with the other heavy weapons."
"I can load it on there, no problem." Fluttershy said. "Powering it will be an issue, though, at least at its standard fire rate."
"Pulse lasers do tend to eat electricity once they get big," Sunset agreed. "Since we don't have a Multisensor handy, can you rig a less demanding sensor suite? That'll eat a little less power."
"The Multisensor incorporates a radome, installing one without the rest of the set should be easy. That won't save us enough power though."
"What if we dropped the strike laser claws?" Sunset asked. "Rarity's no fan of melee combat anyway. Keep the electron fangs just in case she has to bite something, but no power to the claws."
Fluttershy tilted her head slightly, mathing out electrical requirements. "I think that will work, and give it power to spare, in fact, giving me room to tweak its performance. I can machine solid claws that don't have the electronics and other internal parts so she's not running on hollow claws for no reason."
"Fluttershy, you're amazing! Won't this take a while, though?"
Fluttershy performed more mental calculations. "A week, give or take, for the cleaning and repairs. The claws and weapons maybe longer. Do we need to keep it a secret from Rarity the whole time?"
"That won't be a problem, we just got another challenge from Vinyl Scratch," Sunset replied. "The battlefield's pretty far away, we'll be gone at least a week. Save the claws for last, it can do without them for a while if it has to."
"Oh dear. I'm not sure I should stay here while the Zoids are out fighting. What if they need me?"
"We can handle armor replacements, stocking ammo, and basic maintenance," Sunset assured. "And it's just one match."
Luna squeezed Fluttershy's shoulder. "Don't worry about a thing, kid. Let's get this fox up and running."
Fluttershy gave Luna a determined look and nodded.



"So, uh, Vinyl Scratch has a Shield Liger now. That's, y'know. It's a thing." Sunset hadn't been sure how to launch into her briefing, so she decided to start with the bad news. "She's tuned up its shield generator, too. Other than that it's stock, weirdly for a Scratched variant, but… It's a Shield Liger."
"Got'cha nervous, don't it?" Applejack asked.
"A little, yes. She's got pop-out missile turrets on armatures built into the sides of the Shield Liger. Four tubes, one missile each. Standard shock cannon on the chest as a last resort, and a double-barreled thirty-mil laser turret up top. Not much firepower for a Zoid that big, but it's brutal in melee. Cats like this were the close-quarters counterpart to the Command Wolf AC, the Helic Republic used them as heavy line and shock assault machines for generations."
"So, we're gonna have to gun her down before she gets close, huh?" Pinkie asked.
"It'll be tough, because of the shield, but it's our only option. As soon as she's in your sights, open fire. Don't stop until the Shield Liger collapses. She's going to be able to rush through the Dibison's bombardment, but if you can put her on the defensive AJ should be able to chew through her shield. In my dreams, Vinyl holds still long enough for Applejack to line up a railgun shot, but don't count on it. The other problem is her teammates. Both of them are in airborne Zoids."
"Aw yeah! Time for Rainbow Dash to fly!" Rainbow said gleefully.
"Here's a twist for the gossip writers," Sunset said. "Sonata Dusk ditched her team to join the Metal Thrashing Madwomen, they have her in a Redler Interceptor."
"I have read something about that, now that you mention it," Rarity said. Rarity, of course, chewed through gossip columns at a terrifying pace, though she rarely admitted it.
"It was a major blow for the Dazzlings. Blaze and Dazzle might never admit it, but Sonata Dusk was probably their top pilot. Anyway, she can hassle our Zoids if we let her, but mostly she'll be trying to protect Vinyl's other new teammate: Amethyst Star, who's flying a Pteras Bomber."
"Ooh, yeah, that could be a problem," Applejack said, remembering the last time she'd been up against a Madwoman with a Pteras Bomber.
"And that's where Rainbow Dash comes in." Sunset nodded to Rainbow. "You can easily deal with both Zoids. Take a chunk out of the Pteras Bomber's wing and Amethyst will have to ground it. Then you can deal with Sonata."
"Aw yeah, I'll cut 'em both out of the sky! Couple quick slices and down they go!"
"Just stick to the plan, and do it fast. You have got to drop Amethyst before she opens fire. And whatever you do, don't go after Vinyl with your blades, that shield will stop you cold."
"Heh, you worry too much."
"Do I, Rainbow Dash?"



"Darn it darn it darn it what in space are they even doing out there?!" Sunset demanded, mostly to herself but a bit to Celestia. "Dash, why in Tartarus are you chasing Sonata?! Amethyst is still airborne!"
"Look what she did to my Storm Sworder! I can't let that slide!" Rainbow Dash replied.
"Scorched paint isn't anything to hold a grudge over! Get Amethyst dealt with before she starts shooting!"
"It's fine! I only need a minute!"
"You have about twenty seconds before-!"
"Sweet burning Tartarus, Sunset! For once just stop acting like an insufferable know-it-all who has all the answers! I got this!"
Applejack rolled her eyes, watching Pinkie shell the approaching Shield Liger. "Better start movin', Pink. Bad times a-comin'."
"Yeah, this is gonna get rough," Pinkie agreed, ceasing fire. The two of them split up, sweeping away from both Amethyst and Vinyl at full speed. Applejack fired sporadic laser Gatling bursts at Vinyl, but they didn't break through her shield. Vinyl angled towards Applejack.
"Sonata's down!" Dash shouted gleefully.
"Too freaking late!" Sunset groaned as the first missiles struck the Pinkamena D. Bison.
"Remember last time when it took some creative misuse of air-to-air missiles to bring me down?" Pinkie asked. "Amethyst just creatively misused her air-to-air missiles."
"No no no no nonono!" Sunset buried her face in her hands. "For crying out loud, Dash, did you learn nothing from the Gojulas?!" More explosions shook the battlefield.
"It's fine!" Dash insisted, carving most of Amethyst's right wing off.
"I hate to be a downer, but it really isn't." Pinkie interrupted. "I'm kinda out of the fight."
"Consarn it!" Applejack, now running directly away from the Shield Liger, spun her turret backwards and sent a railgun slug straight into the center of Vinyl's shield, overloading it. "Heh, gonna run straight at me, I'm gonna line up shots real easy. Oh dang!" Applejack's amusement turned to worry as Vinyl deployed her turret and missile launchers. She sprayed laser beams from her Gatling as the missiles shot towards her.
Three missiles exploded in the air, but the fourth hit the Dark Horn's rear just as Applejack fired her railgun, causing the slug to punch through the Shield Liger's mane and rip off its turret instead of tearing through its shoulder as Applejack intended.
"Oh for pity's sake!" Applejack slammed a front foot into the ground, whirling her Dark Horn in a half-circle spin that ripped curving divots into the earth as her shield powered on. The Dark Horn braced itself as Vinyl's shield reactivated. Then the force fields collided.
The Shield Liger, being in motion, was launched into the air by the feedback, while the Dark Horn remained almost stationary, but shuddered wildly. Gritting her teeth, Applejack tried to swing her nose horn upward in a last-ditch melee attack, but was unable to reach the Shield Liger as it twisted in the air and landed on its paws to Applejack's left. Wasting no time, Vinyl lunged forward and tempered, razor-sharp claws tore deep rents into the Dark Horn's armor. Another swing ripped off the Dark Horn's front left leg.
"Zoid pilot Applejack has been eliminated!" The Judge proclaimed. Vinyl's energy shield reactivated.
"Sunset, is it me or did that shield recover more quickly this time?" Celestia asked, dissonantly calm despite the situation.
"On-the-fly power rerouting would be my guess," Sunset mused. "Full Ogranoid Systems can be taught to do that. She's probably siphoning power allocated to the laser turret to supercharge the shield generator's cooling system and accelerate its subsystem reboot process."
"Yeah yeah, whatever!" Rainbow Dash interrupted, dropping altitude rapidly.
"Dash, pull up! I think we can still finagle a win!" Sunset ordered.
"Of course we can, all I need is one slice!"
"Wh- Dash! You can't cut through that shield, I told you!"
"Sure I can! Have a little faith, Sunset!"
"Rainbow Dash, it is a scientific fact that your blades will not penetrate that shield! You're going to have to wear her down with your pulse lasers! Energy shields can only draw so much power from the Zoid Core, they have their own dedicated power cells! You just-"
"Look, Sunset, unlike you, I believe in myself, and in my Storm Sworder!"
"Believe in- Rainbow Dash! Gas-dynamic lasing thermal cutting edges are not powered by self-esteem! Pull! Up!"
"I know what I'm doing! All I have to do is take the head off! One cut! I'm lined up perfectly!" Dash was now skimming above the ground, tilted almost ninety degrees off level, left wingtip mere feet above the grass. Vinyl swung her Shield Liger's head to face the Storm Sworder, shield glowing in the midday sun. Clearly she and Sunset were of the same mind on Rainbow's tactic.
"You're going to hit that shield and go flipping into the ground!" Sunset struggled to keep herself from screaming. "We're going to lose and it will be all your fault!"
"NO! I'm winning this!"
The Storm Sworder's left wing blade hit the Shield Liger's energy shield and, for a fraction of a second, just stopped. The Sworder flipped into the air, spinning over the Liger, desperately flapping its wings and screeching. The back of its left wing hit the ground, momentum sinking it deep into the earth, where it stuck. The rest of the Storm Sworder kept right on going, leaving its wing behind in a spectacular display of screaming metal and shattering machinery. More or less righted, the Storm Sworder hit the ground again, this time chin first. Sunset missed the part about the chin, as her face had already hit her control console, forehead first.
"That, well, could have gone better," Celestia allowed.
"You know who this is really awful for?" Sunset asked, forehead firmly in place.
"Fluttershy?"
"Fluttershy."
"I'll try to talk her into taking a break before she gets started."
To this, Sunset merely shrugged, then dragged herself to her feet.
"Going somewhere?" Celestia asked, knowing full well the answer.
"Rainbow Dash needs a good talking to. I'm going to give it to her."
"Try not to be too hard on her."
"I'll do my best."



Rainbow Dash pulled herself out of her Storm Sworder’s cockpit and sighed, looking glumly at its ruined wing, lost in thought. A roofless all-terrain truck with Empyrean Team’s logo on the doors pulled up. To her chagrin, Rainbow realized that Sunset Shimmer was behind the wheel before Sunset looked up at her. No one could mistake that mane of red-and-yellow hair.
“Get in,” Sunset said. It was not an invitation.
“I’d rather just wait for the Hover Cargo.”
“Get. In.”
Rainbow sighed again. “All right, all right.” She climbed down from the Storm Sworder’s head and sat in the truck’s passenger seat. Sunset waited for Rainbow to buckle her seat belt before calmly turning the vehicle in a wide arc and starting back towards the Hover Cargo.
“Rainbow Dash, what’s my job on this team?” Sunset asked. Her voice was calm and even, but she was squeezing the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were snow-white.
“Oh, geez, here we-”
“Answer the question.” Sunset demanded, clenching her teeth.
“You’re our strategist.”
“Say it how you said it earlier.”
“Sunset-”
“Say it!”
“Ugh, fine,” Rainbow rolled her eyes. “You’re an insufferable know-it-all who has all the answers.”
“Exactly. My job is to know everything there is to know about the opposing team, and tell you girls everything you need to know to defeat them. My whole purpose here is to be an insufferable know-it-all who has all the answers. Emphasis on 'has all the answers!'”
“Look, I’m sorry I called you that-”
“That’s not what I’m mad about. I mean, okay, it wasn’t the nicest way to describe my job, but it was accurate enough.” Rainbow remained silent, unsure how to react. Sunset continued, “what I’m really mad about is how totally unwilling you were to use the strategy I created. It was simple. Effective. Like freaking clockwork!”
“Sunset-”
“And just like clockwork, if one piece screws up, everything else fails.”
“I-”
“You. Screwed. Up! You flat-out ignored Amethyst Star on a complete whim, so she had a clear shot to take out Pinkie! The Dark Horn couldn’t take the Shield Liger out on its own, so down went Applejack!”
“I didn’t-”
“And then! And then! I tell you we can salvage this if you attack the Shield Liger with your pulse lasers! But that wouldn’t work for you, would it? No, you were gonna cut down Vinyl’s Shield Liger with one swoop, despite me telling you the shield could stop your blades! I told you! But what do I know? I’m just the one whose job it is to know things like that!”
“I’m-”
“Do you know how much work I put into our battle plans?” Sunset removed a hand from the steering wheel, and her knuckles popped as she massaged a temple with it. “Do you have any idea at all? I spent hours studying those Zoids and their pilots. I read the Commission-released specs on all of them, I watched interviews and battle footage. I know the power draw of that Liger’s shield generator to the watt, and I can tell you the Redler Interceptor’s maximum airspeed in millimeters per second!”
“Look-”
“All I'm trying to say is, none of my strategies are any use if no one follows them. Understand?”
“Yes,” Rainbow grumbled, giving another sigh.
“Are you going to listen to me when I give you instructions from now on?”
“Yes,” Rainbow said sheepishly.
“Good. Sorry for unloading on you like that, I just had to get that off my chest.” Sunset switched hands on the wheel, flexing her now-free hand and causing more popping noises. “Now, do you know if we have any steaks or burgers or anything on the Hover Cargo?”
“Uh, Luna loaded up a bunch of steaks, but I don’t think anyone’s gotten to them yet.”
“Good, we’re having steak for dinner. Or, well, late lunch? It’s only three.” Sunset hunched forward and growled through her again-clenched teeth, “every time we lose, I really need to eat something that used to be an animal.”
“I feel like that after every match, to be honest,” Rainbow admitted.
Sunset chuckled and patted Rainbow’s shoulder, grinning. “Even when you pull stunts like this, I'm still glad to have you around."
“Does that mean you’ll back me up when Fluttershy sees what I did to my Storm Sworder?”
“I never signed up to be your human shield,” Sunset replied, her grin widening, “you’re on your own there.”
“Oh man, she’s gonna gnaw my face off!” Rainbow slumped back in her seat.
“I’ll try to stop myself from recording a video. Or at least I’ll stop myself from uploading it to any web sites.”
“That’s cold, Sunset Shimmer.”
“I am a monster who walks like a woman.”
“And somehow you’re one of my best friends.”
“I… Thanks, Rainbow, it means a lot to hear you say that.”
“You’re never gonna get used to having friends, are you? So, I’m cooking. How do you want your steak?”
“Bleeding and screaming. Failing that, medium well.”
Rainbow Dash and Sunset Shimmer burst out laughing as they reached the Empyrean Team’s Hover Cargo.



Sunset pulled open the human-sized door set into the main hangar door, leading the team as they sought Fluttershy in her natural element. They were greeted by a Shadow Fox with minor but obvious armor alterations and a paint job of matte white with just the slightest hint of blue; with edging and details picked out in a metallic, golden color. Fluttershy sat on one its claws, clearly waiting for her teammates and brimming with pride. Said teammates, Sunset included, were momentarily stunned. Rarity, never one to remain silent in the face of unrestrained snazziness, recovered first.
"Fluttershy, darling, what is that?!" Rarity asked.
"This is a Shadow Fox Arctic Operations Type: Snow Fox," Fluttershy said, hopping to the floor. "It features redesigned armor for better thermal signature reduction, a modified drive train and locomotion system to improve traction on snow and ice, and probably the best cockpit climate control in anything smaller than an Ultrasaurus." She started walking towards the group. "Its smoke dischargers generate a white fog to hide it despite its snow-white armor, and it retains the Shadow Fox's modular omnidirectional turret."
"Is it a Zoid or a work of art?" Rarity asked flatteringly.
"Snow Foxes are pretty enough that I'd say both. Anyway, it's yours now."
"What?! I -but -this gorgeous Zoid is mine?!"
"When I said I wanted to stay behind to work on a special project, this was what I meant."
"Why, Fluttershy! I hardly know what to say! Thank you ever so much!" Rarity wiped away a tear.
"Well, it wasn't just me. Luna brought it here, and helped a lot with the refit. Sunset helped, too."
"Hey, all I did was request the weapon loadout and then make Fluttershy and Luna  do the part that took effort." Sunset deflected.
"Can… Can I take it out for a test run?" Rarity failed to keep the undignified degree of enthusiasm from her voice. Or her face, for that matter, as she grinned widely.
"Of course. Now, I should warn you that the Strike Laser Claws don't work. We had to route power from them for the pulse laser. I'm in the process of making some solid claws, but for now they're full of high-tech electronics that don't do anything."
"It's a unique variant, so try to think of a name while you're out here." Sunset patted Rarity in the shoulder, grinning. As Rarity made for the Snow Fox's cockpit, Sunset raised her arm suddenly. "I see you trying to sneak away, Rainbow Dash!" Sunset pointed at the offending teammate, who she had apparently caught in the very edge of her peripheral vision. "You get to show Fluttershy her next project!"
Rainbow Dash, caught mid-sneak, sighed. "Oh heterochromia," she moaned, accidentally making everyone wonder if she knew what that word meant. Except Sunset, who knew what it meant and felt quite sure that Rainbow did not.
"Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy's voice took on an eerie tone. "What did you do?"
"You'd better come take a look."



Fluttershy made her way into the Hover Cargo's Zoid bay, Rainbow Dash trailing nervously behind her. She stopped short at the sight of the Storm Sworder, gasped, then ran over to the crippled Zoid. Fluttershy began an intense examination of the severed wing joint. Dash followed reluctantly.
"Rainbow Dash." Fluttershy's voice was even more quiet than usual, and had an icy tone to it. She turned slowly to face her teammate.
"Yes?" Dash's voice quavered slightly. Some might wonder how a person like Rainbow Dash could be afraid of a person like Fluttershy. These people are known as 'people who have never made Fluttershy angry,' and it was a group Rainbow Dash had been ejected from in the fourth grade.
"Would you like to explain to me how this happened?" Fluttershy asked in a distressing monotone.
"I, uh, might have tried to chop a Shield Liger's head off." Few of her fans would've believed Rainbow could be so submissive.
"And?"
"And its shield stopped my blade."
"Where, Rainbow Dash, did you get the idea that a Storm Sworder could decapitate a Shield Liger through its energy shield?"
"Uh..."
"Did Sunset tell you to do it?"
"Do we really-"
"Answer. The question."
"No, okay?! She told me it wouldn't work but I tried anyway because I'm a big dumb idiot!" Rainbow could never stay submissive for long, but this was the wrong thing to say.
"Rainbow Dash, you need to be more careful."
"Yeah, yeah, I know."
"I don't think you understand." Fluttershy suddenly grabbed Rainbow Dash by the shirt collar and pulled her forward until their noses were half an inch apart. Fluttershy's eyes shone with a cold intensity Dash had hoped to never see again.
"Rainbow Dash, you need to take care of your Zoid because I know where you sleep. Do you understand me?"
"Yes."
"Good." Fluttershy released Dash's collar and started towards the crane controls. "Now get out of here and let me get to work."



Sunset Shimmer, upon hearing Rainbow Dash's story, decided to give Fluttershy a day to cool off before paying the hangar a visit. Despite the rain pounding on the roof, the hangar interior was surprisingly quiet. Sunset briefly pondered, then discarded, the idea that Fluttershy produced some kind of mystical aura that suppressed ambient noise. She found Fluttershy preparing to reshape a warped armor panel in one of her inscrutable (at least to Sunset) machines.
"So, what's our situation?" Sunset asked.
"Not as bad as it looks, really," Fluttershy replied. "A few power couplings and all the actuators need to be replaced, the rest is just bending and welding. She sustained only minimal damage to the Magnessor equipment, and that's always the hardest to fix. For ripping a wing off at almost the speed of sound, it could have been a lot worse."
"You gave Dash a scare, you know."
"I was so angry I almost short-sheeted her bed."
"Wait, is that what you meant when you said you know where she sleeps?"
"Of course." Fluttershy gave Sunset a confused look. "What did she think I meant?"
"I think she was afraid you were planning to sneak in while she was asleep and do something really awful."
"Like moving her shoes across the room, or rearranging her sock drawer?"
"Um, worse than that."
"The only worse thing I can think of would be leaving a picture of my brother on her nightstand, but I'm not a monster, Sunset."
"So, uh, did you end up actually doing anything with all that anger?"
"I took all of Rainbow's favorite candies from the Secret Candy Stash and ate about half of them. Then I put the rest in the Clandestine Sweets Repository."
"You stole from Pinkie's candy stash?" Sunset couldn't believe that Fluttershy of all people would gank candy.
"Sunset, the entire point of the Secret Candy Stash is for Rainbow to sneak things from it because she enjoys feeling like she's gotten away with something. Of course Rainbow told everyone, so now the whole team knows she's doing it. Celestia and Luna have the Clandestine Sweets Repository for when they want a treat after lecturing us about how important a proper diet is, but the rest of us have the Secret Candy Stash."
"Wh- how do you know all this?"
"Pinkie told me. Applejack, too. We're too nice to take things we don't think we're allowed to have, but Pinkie didn't want us to miss out."
"I- I think I need to lie down. And I don't know if I should feel better or worse about all the candy I've taken now that I know this."
"I would suggest 'better.'"
"Why would Pinkie set something like this up in the first place?" Sunset couldn't stop herself from trying to work out Pinkie Pie's eldritch reasoning.
"Sunset, you're going down the rabbit hole again," Fluttershy chided gently. "Remember what happened last time?" 'Last time,' of course, was an oblique reference to when Fluttershy had found Sunset on the roof of Canterlot High School with her skirt on inside-out, clutching an aluminum baseball bat to her chest and staring distrustfully at some nearby pigeons, which had done nothing to deserve such animosity.
Sunset's eyelid twitched. It always did when she was reminded of this incident. "Does Pinkie have any other secret stashes we're all supposed to simultaneously know about and not know about?"
"She probably has one that she actually doesn't want us to know about, but I couldn't guess at where it would be. Fluttershy said with a shrug. "She always seems to have something really nice for me when I'm feeling sad."
"Come to think of it, I have no idea where she gets those fantastic lollipops she gives me whenever we lose to Vinyl Scratch."
"Pinkie's always so thoughtful, isn't she?"
Sunset's reply was interrupted by the door swinging open, revealing Celestia, who wielded an umbrella against the pouring rain.
"Hello, girls. I've been looking for you, Sunset." Celestia said, approaching the pair. "I tried the roof, but no luck."
"Why the roof?" Sunset asked.
"Well, um, you do like to, um, brood, a little, every time we lose to Vinyl Scratch." Fluttershy was clearly unsure how forward to be.
"And it is perfect brooding weather," Celestia added with a gentle, if slightly sardonic, smile as she shook the rain from her umbrella.
"It wasn't my fault this time," Sunset said, shrugging. "We could've won if Rainbow Dash had taken her ego down a notch. I don't think she'll do something this crazy again, so it's fine."
"I'm glad you're willing to give her another chance," Celestia said. "Rainbow asked me yesterday if you wanted me to remove her from the team."
"That's not on the table," Sunset replied flatly. "I hadn't even considered it, in fact." Sunset paused, brow furrowed. "Wait, why was she considering it? I thought we'd pretty much reconciled. I better go track her down."



As it happened, Rainbow Dash had borrowed Sunset's preferred brooding spot. She was staring up at the cloud-darkened sky, her expression appropriately gloomy. She didn't notice Sunset's approach until the strategist spoke.
"What's this nonsense about kicking you off the team?!" Sunset demanded. She carried an umbrella in one hand, and the other was on her hip.
Rainbow Dash started, almost falling off the table. "Holy dang! I didn't hear you coming!"
"Fluttershy must be rubbing off on me," Sunset half-joked. "Seriously though, why were you asking Celestia if I wanted to get rid of you?"
"She told you, huh?" Rainbow asked, blushing. "I just… Look, every now and then I start to think -and this'll be hard to believe- that maybe, just maybe, I'm not as awesome as I think I am."
Sunset said nothing, but raised an eyebrow.
"And then I start worrying," Rainbow continued. "I worry that I'm not cool, that my friends don't want me around, that you all just pity me, and it just kind of gets out of control." Rainbow paused to watch Sunset's other eyebrow rise to meet the first. "Heh, bet you never thought I'd worry about stuff like that, but that's the way it is."
"I genuinely didn't consider the possibility of you worrying about anything," Sunset admitted. "In my mind, Fluttershy's the worrier."
"Oh don't get me wrong, she worries about basically everything," Rainbow said. "I gotta admire her, though. I could never be that open with my insecurities."
"Well, let me put your mind at ease," Sunset replied, putting her free hand on Rainbow's shoulder. "You're an Empyrean girl, even more so than I am. Everyone makes mistakes, Dash. I'll admit this one was pretty spectacular, but that's your style, you know? Everything you do is larger than life." Sunset paused as a peal of thunder rumbled above them. "Now let's get inside before the lightning gets any closer."
"Good idea," Rainbow said, hopping off the table.
Neither of them spoke until they were safely in the stairwell, at which point Sunset asked, "remember that time I forgot to set my alarm and didn't wake up until the battle had started?"
"Oh geez, yeah! AJ and Pinkie out trying to fake it, everyone else banging on your door," Rainbow said with a laugh. "Except Fluttershy, who was afraid we'd wake you up! You almost led us to a comeback once you finally heard us."
"Almost," Sunset emphasized.
"Remember when Rarity almost had a panic attack because she wasn't sure if she packed the dress she wanted to wear to an interview?" Rainbow asked.
"Talk about weird priorities." Sunset rolled her eyes. "Those König Wolves would've toasted her if Fluttershy hadn't talked her down."
"Doesn't matter who was in the Zoids, Fluttershy was MVP for that match." Rainbow nodded sagely.
"She's the backbone of our team."



Fluttershy, hearing voices approach, looked up from the refrigerator. Sunset and Rainbow had come into the galley, but had not yet entered the kitchen. The dining hall was large, but empty, so Fluttershy could hear them clearly.
"-Fluttershy is our top member, no two ways about it." Sunset said, clearly continuing an ongoing conversation. "Our Zoids would never fight as well as they do if someone else was working on them."
"She's an angel with a wrench, I'm telling you," Rainbow agreed. "She was literally my very first friend, too, and honestly? Meeting her was the best thing that's ever happened to me."
"Have you ever told her that?"
"I was gonna, but if I did now she'd think I was just trying to butter her up."
"Come on, she's not like that."
"Yeah, but she knows I am. Fluttershy deserves all the props we can give her, but I don't want her thinking any of that's fake."
Quieter than a particularly reticent mouse, Fluttershy closed the fridge. Clutching her prize -a can of cola- to her like a bar of gold, Fluttershy silently retreated out the kitchen's side entrance. Her face displayed what would've been the most textbook blush anyone had ever seen, had anyone seen her, but she also bore a wide, almost Pinkie-esque smile. Blush and smile alike were with her for the next hour as she dodged the thunderstorm using the underground passage connecting the residential building to the main hangar, quietly enjoyed her drink while double-checking the itinerary she'd made for the next day's work, and curled up in her nest for the night.