Once upon a time, she was a little girl who hid from everything. It was even in her name – Fluttershy. It wasn’t what her parents wanted to name her; they had told her that they actually wanted to name her Flutterby, after her maternal grandmother. But the hospital had screwed up on the birth certificate and per Colorado law, what was on the birth certificate became the legal name. So, Flutterby, the daughter of Cirrus Breeze and Tearose, became Fluttershy, instead.
It was a name she’d had to live with, throughout her whole life. It defined her – sometimes too much. And it had made her do things she didn’t want to do at times. Things she’d regretted, whether it was giving in to her first boyfriend’s demand to go all the way, or having Sunset Shimmer find out and bully her over it. Or turning the tables on Sunset unfairly, after having forgiven her past…only to throw it away like it was nothing.
She regretted so much. She regretted losing her virginity to Easy Play, because as soon as she gave in, he dumped her. And in a sense, she’d done the same to Sunset, though obviously there was no romance between them. But the effect was the same: a deep, abiding friendship that she’d pissed on, stomped on, and hadn’t given a fuck about…until it was too late.
Now, she had a chance, for a change, to make things right. She had a husband who she knew loved her – and was certainly better in bed than the teenage fumbling she’d had with Easy Play. She had a career that she could be proud of; two, if she counted her previous career as a teacher – she was sure if her parents had survived Decimation, they would have been proud as well. And just as important, she could save Sunset – no, not just Sunset…she could save her fractured friendships from long ago and prove herself capable of saving the one person who needed saving the most.
Doctor, heal thyself.
All she had to do…was to do more things she regretted.
So for the first time in her life, Fluttershy took steady aim with her rifle and with the weight of the world on her shoulders, took that of another. She pulled the trigger, felt the buck of her FN SCAR loaned to her by one of the SEALs, saw the casing eject out of the corner of her eye, and practically swore she could trace the line of the bullet she fired as it crossed the path and bored right into the skull of one of the creatures, a brutish-looking female with yellow skin and long pink hair the same shade as hers. Unnatural cyan eyes, the same color as her own, fixed onto her with a brief flash of hatred, then a surprising look that seemed like relief, as a thick reddish-brown fluid spurted out from the hole in her brainpan. The creature fell back, dead and it was then that Fluttershy noted that despite how different it looked, how human its overall body frame was, too.
That, and from the distended belly…the thing was likely pregnant.
She suddenly felt violently ill, more so than her first days practicing as a medical trainee under the supervision of Dr. Suture. He had told her that even though she was vomiting because of all the blood and gore, that it was a good thing – it proved she was human and would overcome that to save her own people. In time, she had.
But this…this was different. As she retched on the ground, spewing both her breakfast and the coffee from earlier, this was a sign that she was anything but human. Humans weren’t meant to take lives, even those of the beings trying to take theirs. She had no idea how Applejack had grown from a strong but gentle girl to the woman barking orders and slaughtering these things like it was nothing.
She wondered if all of this was worth losing her soul in the long run.
“Major?” She turned to see Orderly, one of the petty officers that served as a combat medic – corpsman, in Navy parlance. She was looking at Fluttershy with concern, her gray eyes radiating worry.
“I’m okay, Petty Officer,” she lied. “I’ve seen worse.”
“I’m sure you have…but you probably never had to take a life before,” she added. “Trust me, I’ve read the old Geneva Conventions and the Yellowknife Accords. In the old days, we wouldn’t have been able to fire at the enemy unless it was to save our patients. Now, we don’t have a choice, or else those with us end up that way.”
Fluttershy, however, wasn’t convinced – it was the pacifist in her, she knew. She didn’t see the value in taking a life, even that of an insane hellbeast trying to kill them all and who would have given birth to others like it. But at the same time…what if it had been Flash out here? Applejack was out there right now, fighting for her life, as well as that of her soldiers and the scouts that had gone ahead. Was there no value in that?
Fluttershy spat the remaining bile out of her mouth, then looked at Orderly. “I’ll be fine,” she said, forcing every word. “I have to do this. For Sunset.” Before Orderly could ask any other questions, Fluttershy got back to her feet and took aim once more. After a second, she fired again, the round blowing through the kneecap of another enemy, dropping it to the ground.
She didn’t know if she had the stomach to do what she’d just done again, but she could do at least this much.
She prayed she would never find the strength to do what Applejack was doing.
Getting so close to one of the beasts that she could practically feel the heat of his breath on her face, she quickly fired a point-blank burst into hopefully what was where the monster’s heart was located. The bullets punched through the body, leaving a basketball-sized exit hole on the way out, tearing out gouts of the creature’s back. The thing fell dead, immediately, slamming Applejack to the floor.
“Get this fucker off me!” she snarled.
Tempest rushed over and helped her friend out, pushing the corpse off the woman. “Damn, Jackie, you always go for the well-built ones,” she snarked, pointing at the creature’s lower half.
Applejack gave her friend a grin as she got back up. “Well, I do like my guys well-hung…but I also like them human, Temp.”
“Well, let’s survive this and maybe there’ll be a few of the guys in Canterlot we can play with.”
Applejack began firing again, opting not to let the targets get so close this time. “Well, focus on that later. Right now we need to find out what happened to Chryssie and her folks, because I am not going to be the one to tell the Colonel that his second girl got dusted!”
The SEALs turned the air into a practical wall of ammunition, rounds flying through the air, slicing everything in their path. Squats by the dozens began to fall, torn apart by the hail of gunfire, the projectiles ripping their way through organs, sinew and anything else. Fortunately for the troops present, the enemies they currently faced weren’t armed or armored; however, they were fast and strong and more than a couple of them made their way towards the group, where they were able to inflict damage on some of the sailors present.
One such creature managed to reach out with long arms and grab one of the SEALs by the head; without batting an eye it crushed it, the decapitated body falling towards the ground and while smaller squats immediately moved towards the new food. Another large one, a female this time, grabbed one of the SEALs by the arms and the legs and with a roar of pain from the bullets tossed at her, literally ripped the woman in half.
That just enraged the humans all the more. At least two of their number were down and so likely were the Changelings; if Applejack didn’t find a way to take the rest of these creatures out, they would be next.
The blonde took a look to her right; in the distance, by the vehicles and alternating between patching up wounded troops and continuing the fight were both Orderly and Fluttershy. She saw as Fluttershy covered Orderly, aiming and firing with a professionalism she would have not have expected from the woman; she knew that Flash had trained her on how to use weapons, but even still…the girl she had known back then would have run in fear from the sound of gunfire, and she would have tried to go out to protect the “innocent, misunderstood creatures.”
How much had Fluttershy changed? And if she’d changed to the point that she went from a shy, scared girl to a doctor and now to a soldier and combat medic…what would that mean for Rarity, or Pinkie Pie, or Rainbow Dash?
What about yourself? a part of her mind self-inquired.
Another one rushed up to her, an orange-skinned female with burning yellow eyes and long, shaggy blue hair that looked as though she wanted to rip her heart out. Thinking fast, Applejack clotheslined the creature, and as it fell to the ground, she stepped on its throat and fired a burst right into the brainpan, killing it instantly. Another creature howled – likely the female’s mate, though who the hell knew how these things acted – and she took aim, dispatching it as well. The numbers were slowly, but surely beginning to turn.
An explosion came from one of the top of the buildings, and Applejack looked up to see a few of the creatures’ bodies being flung off. “Lt. Shadow!” Applejack bellowed. “Take a fireteam up there and go find out what happened to them! Make sure you have a SAW with you! Also, take one of the Docs, just in case!”
“On it, Commander!” Tempest noted, signaling for a group to follow her as she hustled across the street. She also signaled for Orderly to follow, and noting that, Applejack ran over to Fluttershy’s side. It wasn’t a good look for her not to lead her troops right now, but technically Fluttershy was their senior medical person as well as the overall technical senior officer present, so she had to be protected. Moreover, Applejack wasn’t going to let her friend die, not after they finally buried the hatchet.
She found Fluttershy barking orders to a nearby guard while she worked on a nasty wound on one of the SEALs. Without even looking at Applejack, the major replied, “One of these…things…decided to take a chunk out of her leg. She’ll heal, but she’s going to need to be patched up by my folks and she’s going to need to be out of the fight for a few. The bigger concern is going to have her blood checked for strange bacteria and other things. We don’t know what’s in the gut flora of these creatures, if they have venom or anything like that.”
“How are you holding up?”
She continued to focus on her handiwork instead of her friend. “I’m trying to save one of your people from bleeding out, AJ. What the fuck do you think I’m doing? Now go do something useful and keep those bastards off our back, okay?” The salty language coming from Fluttershy was a brief surprise, but only until Applejack remembered the woman before her wasn’t the same as the high school girl she remembered.
“I was just checking on you,” Applejack defended.
“I’ll have my mental breakdown later. For now, I need to make sure your person can get on the car okay. So go do what you gotta do. We’ll talk later.”
Applejack was about to protest, when one of her chiefs came up to her. She immediately got dragged away, leaving Fluttershy to her grisly work.
Vaulting up the stairs, Tempest practically ran ahead of her troops. The explosions from the top of the building she was now running through had to be an indicator that some of the Changelings still survived, and if so, Tempest was not going to leave them behind. Even if there were only remains, at least they would be repatriated. It was the way the US military worked – never leave a man behind and that was definitely how Tempest operated.
In the tight confines of the stairwell, the SEALs pushed their way through the technicolor beasts, gunning them down where they could and if they got too close, threw them down into the center of the stairwell, where more than a few broke their necks from the impact. From the size of the attackers, they would have been children if they had been human, and that distinctly unnerved Tempest. But she shoved it out of her mind; a lion cub could kill under the right conditions, after all. And children or not (and there was really no way to know), they clearly had the murderous mind of their species.
It’s us or them, she grimly mused as she and her forces continued to push forward, floor by floor.
Finally, grueling minutes later, as she and her forces reached the top of the building, the amount of carnage that awaited them actually surprised them. Strewn body parts, entrails and destroyed bodies of squats were everywhere, alongside copious bulletholes, heavily-damaged sections of concrete and extensive carbon scoring.
The group rushed out to find a woman built like a yak, seated almost atop a small mound of corpses, with most of her clothing shredded and covered in the muddy-colored blood of the creatures.
“Orderly!” Tempest ordered, but she didn’t need to, as the corpsman rushed over to the muscled woman.
“Get off me,” she said, firmly but not unkindly. “It’s not my blood.”
“It’s not the blood I’m worried about,” Orderly said, checking the woman for bitemarks and the like.
“Oh, that. Heh – I’ve had some clients that were rougher. At least they paid, though.”
Meanwhile, Tempest looked at her. “So, Agent…er….”
“Yona.”
“Got it. Anyway, Agent Yona, what happened?”
The woman shrugged and grinned. “Isn’t it obvious? As you Americans say, I cleaned their clocks. As to what happened to my people?” She pointed over the edge.
Tempest gave her a disbelieving look. “Call me crazy, but I don’t believe that they commi—”
“L-T?” one of the SEALs called out, looking over the edge where Yona had pointed. Tempest went over to join her and looked down. There, on a building two stories down, were the other Changelings lay, crumpled, clearly unconscious and relatively safe.
Yona limped over to them. “See? Safe. Or as safe as could be, given the circumstances.”
“Yeah, I see,” Tempest said tersely. “C’mon, we gotta get to that other building while we still have the chance.”
The SEALs continued urban warfare as only they knew how, pushing forward with their weapons against the strange creatures. Gunfire went up against tooth and fist, firepower against bestial fury. Slowly, inexorably, the battle-hardened warriors from the sea continued to push on, using tactics and skill that moved past what the basic, instinctive actions of the other creatures seemed to do. The stakes were high – victory or death – for either side, and neither side could afford to back down at this point.
In the middle of it, Applejack was a virtual war god at work, using her rifle to cut down the creatures as they continued to make their way towards the SEALs, mindless of the slaughter. The life of her people – of her friends and subordinates – hinged on her success and she couldn’t afford to give a single inch. Her face tightened in a mask of cold rage, and for a moment to an outside observer, it might have been hard to tell which creature was the more bestial. Nonetheless, the blonde continued to use every weapon, trick and skill in her arsenal to continue to hack away at the living press of rampaging creatures coming at them.
From the relative safety of the JLTV and the ad hoc barriers that had been quickly set up by the other SEALs, Fluttershy continued to fire her own weapon. Her initial self-doubt and angst had fallen by the fact that her patient had gone into shock as a result of the injuries to her leg, and had Fluttershy not slapped her up with morphine and put her in the back of the JLTV, it probably would not have gone well for the woman. As it was, it meant that she was under Fluttershy’s care and the doctor now had the requirement to keep her charge alive. And so Fluttershy would see to that grim duty, even if it meant taking more lives.
The air between the two groups burned and sizzled with dozens of rounds crossing space in one direction, while trails of blood and other fluids came towards the group from the opposing direction. Many bodies of the creatures, both male and female, adult and juvenile, continued to hurl themselves at the human combatants, seemingly insatiable in their berserker-fueled blood lust. The environs of this particular neighborhood of Canterlot, having already dealt with five years of neglect and other issues, practically fell to pieces due to the conflict between the two groups, in particular sheer ordnance being flung by the troops.
After what felt like a small eternity, a huge, muscled male creature with soft brown skin, and pine green hair and eyes that burned with an insane rage stepped atop the rusting remains of a car left behind years ago. The beast screamed into the air as if to bellow a war cry, then trained his eyes straight on Applejack, as if he somehow knew she was the one in charge. Applejack’s own bright green eyes met the creature, accepting his challenge.
She turned to one of the SEALs next to her. “Give me your knife,” she said to the nearest subordinate while handing over her rifle.
“Commander?” the woman asked.
Applejack turned to her. “Give me your KA-BAR,” she ordered as she handed over her rifle. Looking at her curiously, she said to the woman, “Let Senior Chief know she’s in charge until Lt. Shadow gets back, assuming I don’t survive this.”
To her credit, the woman didn’t argue. “Kick its ass, Commander!” she chirped.
“Fuck Six!” Applejack snarled as she rushed forward to engage the beast in single combat. The creature did so as well and as the thing rushed towards her, the woman slid underneath his open legs as he reached out to grab her. As she did, she moved fast, slicing at his hamstrings, in the hopes of crippling the monster. Unfortunately, his skin was thicker than expected and while she drew blood, she didn’t cut deep enough to do the damage she wanted. The monster turned and roared, kicking at her, though she was able to get clear in time.
She scrambled back to her feet and brought her knives back up to a fighting position. “You’re not going to live to see tomorrow,” she hissed, glad that she’d taken the time to learn knife fighting while she was working on her officer qualifications. Most SEALs generally didn’t see it as a useful trait, but her instructor, a burly Master Chief named Tanto, told her that with her looks and youth, she had to find a way to protect herself at all costs in case something ever happened to her behind enemy lines. He had taught her quite a few things and for that she was forever grateful. After he died two years back as a result of a battle in Europe, he had passed without family and had bequeathed to her his own Russian-made Storm knife, where he’d gotten from “unspecified circumstances”.
Now she wielded that knife in one hand and the borrowed KA-BAR in the other, and as her foe lunged at her, she moved with practiced fury, slashing and dodging, pushing harder to do more than just leave a small cut. She didn’t have time to kill him via a metaphorical death by a thousand papercuts and hope he just bled out. The creature would likely kill her long before then. She was going to have to close the distance, push forth and improvise, even if it was going to be extremely dangerous.
Then again, I’ve done extremely dangerous before, she thought, a dangerous grin coming over her face. I lived through that, too.
She immediately dashed forward, hoping the plan she was making up on the fly would work. If it did, great. If not, well, hopefully she wouldn’t have a prolonged, painful death. She rushed into his range, and as the creature reached out once more, she buried the KA-BAR in his arm, pulling as hard as she could, scoring a brutal blow as she punched hard into the skin and cut hard down the inside of his arm, where the skin was thinnest. A jet of brownish-red blood sprayed out as the monster bellowed in pain.
Unfortunately, at that point, he lashed out with his remaining hand, enveloping her head in his hand. She could feel the heat coming from his leathery fist as it tried to crush her head, protected only by her helmet. She could smell the fetid, musky odor coming from the appendage and it made her want to gag. But that was a reflex she couldn’t afford.
As he squeezed harder, trying to crack her head like a walnut, she had just one narrowing opportunity to make her plan work. So with her knife, she slashed at her helmet strap, cutting it away and sliding out of it just as she heard the spider-silk biopolymer of her helmet shatter into nothing. She now had fractions of a second to act before the monster knew she’d escaped and reacted accordingly.
As she landed on the ground, she immediately pounced, moving with a surety based on desperation. Taking both knives, she slammed them as hard as she could into the creature’s eyes, skewering both as they popped like small liquid-filled beads. As gore poured out of the monster’s ruined eyes, the creature roared in pain, which allowed Applejack to commit to the final part of her plan: reaching for her sidearm, she quickly unholstered it and without ceremony, slammed it into the creature’s mouth and fired, the high-powered, armor-piercing rounds tearing through the back of its neck, practically severing the top half of the head from the rest of the body. Now a corpse, the beast’s body fell back as Applejack pushed off it, quickly reloading in case she needed to fire a second magazine’s worth into the body, but it didn’t matter.
There was a high-pitched keening cry and Applejack turned to see a petite female of the species scream into the air. At her cry, the creatures began to immediately rush away, and the combat veteran immediately realized what the creature had done: she had called a retreat, and she was high enough in whatever social hierarchy that they listened. The monsters began to boil away from the SEALs and with that, the troops weren’t going to take a chance at all.
Joining her troops in seizing the initiative, Applejack briefly busied herself switching from her pistol back to her rifle, and that turned out to be a tragic distraction: she felt herself slammed into by the female from earlier, who had rammed her hard enough that the combat veteran was hammered into the wall of a nearby building. She felt the blow through her body armor, and the back of her head bounced off the concrete, stunning her. As she felt herself crumple to the floor, Applejack went back for her pistol on instinct, only to feel it swatted out of her hand.
As her green eyes blurrily focused on the creature before her, she saw something in the beast’s piercing purple eyes that she hadn’t seen in the others – this one was intelligent, smarter than the others and had figured out what a pistol did. Applejack knew that her knives were buried in the dead alpha male, and now that she was pinned to the ground with her rifle slung on her back, she had no defense. Furthermore, with the petite creature baring its teeth and snarling at her while standing atop her, Applejack also knew she was as good as dead.
She had one last card to pull – and it wasn’t going to be one she was going to survive. Reaching for her belt, she pulled a grenade, glaring at her soon-to-be-killer. “Do your worst,” Applejack hissed. “You’re not going to survive this one, you bitch!”
She reached for the pin.
“NO!”
Applejack knew that shout. Instinct told her not to pull the clip, and instead looked at her captor’s face. It was now a mask of frozen fear, looking in the direction of the scream. A second later, Applejack looked in the same direction and realized why: there, walking towards them, bathed in burning green light, was Fluttershy, her normally placid cyan eyes replaced by burning pits of jade fire, her face contorted into a mask of unquestionable authority.
It was the Stare – but now, backed up by Fluttershy’s magic.
The creature whimpered and took a step back, just as Fluttershy raised her pistol.
“Get the fuck off my friend, you bitch!” the pink-haired woman snarled as she started firing at the creature.
The first two bullets sank in deep, making the female scream. Now terrified of Fluttershy and the spell broken, it turned to run and join its fellow creatures, ignoring the wounds leaking the strange-colored blood from her side.
“AJ! Don’t let it escape!” Fluttershy shouted.
“On it!” Now freed of her captor, Applejack immediately turned the tables, hopping back to her feet, and in one smooth motion, pulling out her rifle and firing two quick bursts of fire. The rounds sank into the creature’s tendons, shredding them and making the creature collapse. As she approached, weapon in hand, she saw the creature shrink back from her, another sign of intelligence.
I have no idea what these things are, Applejack mused as she saw the creature try to crawl away, but if we need you to win the war, so be it.
It was then that she suddenly felt warm, like a flush of adrenaline was coursing through her system. She was used to that normally; battle reflexes, conditioned by long years of battle in the field, made her pretty much immune to the biochemical her body produced that gave her that extra “oomph”. But this was different. This felt more comfortable, easier to deal with.
Like it was a true part of her soul.
She looked down at her hand and saw citrine flames dancing in her palm. She didn’t know how she looked to the others but given how she’d just seen Fluttershy a few seconds ago, it was likely that she looked as otherworldly and unusual as her friend had.
But right now, she couldn’t afford to think about that. Instead, she walked over and, aware of the power coursing through her, punched the creature as softly as she could, no different than she used to slug her brother and sister when she was younger – a love tap, really.
Said “love tap” set off an explosion of golden fire that sent the creature flying back, across the street into the wall of another building, leaving a small crater. The blow likely broke a couple of bones at least, given the way the female crashed to the ground like a wet sack.
“AJ?” Fluttershy gasped. “You’re….”
“No different than you,” Applejack told her. She then glanced at the looks of shock on her troops; they had seen it, too. She had to take command of the situation, and fast. “Okay, I want two of you to take some of the 550 cord we have and hogtie that bitch like it’s no tomorrow. Tie her to the top of the vehicle.” She then pointed in the direction of where the other creatures had gone. “I want two fireteams to head in the same direction as those other fuckers. Make sure they’re out of the area, but don’t give chase. I don’t want you getting surrounded.
“As for the rest of you….” Applejack sighed. “I know many of you are all in WTFO mode, and you’ve got questions about what you just saw. Hell, I’d be surprised as shit if you didn’t. But as your OIC…no, as a fellow SEAL, I’m asking you to wait until we have everyone together and we’re in a safe location. Then I’ll go over everything. I promise.”
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, AJ?” Fluttershy asked.
“These girls follow me to hell and back,” Applejack insisted as she watched two of her SEALs head over to the stunned creature to capture and subdue it. “I owe them the truth. Besides, I’ve never been any fucking good at lying; why the hell am I going to start now?”
“AAAAAAGH, fuck me that hurt!” Chrysalis gnashed her teeth as Orderly set her arm in a sling. She’d survived the jump with a broken arm, a concussion and some other scrapes, but at least she was alive.
Standing above her, Applejack crossed her arms. “Well, good to see that you’re still alive, Chryssie. Honestly, I was worried.”
“Fuck you, Jackie,” she said, laughing off her pain. “You just wanted to do an ‘I told you so’.”
“No, that’s usually my line,” Tempest said with a grin. “But right now, Jackie’s got me beat. You seriously turned into some superwoman glowstick and punched the head off the alpha of these…what did you call them again, Chryssie?”
“We’re calling them squats. We have a formal name but that sounds stupid, so we’re going with squats.”
“Right. So anyway, you super-punched one across the street?”
“Stop making it sound like it was a big deal, Temp,” Applejack sighed. Once Tempest had come back with the surviving Changelings – which, thankfully, was all of them – Applejack explained everything that had happened, with some backing from both Fluttershy and Chrysalis. After the spymaster explained to those present that Applejack and Fluttershy’s powers were classified at the highest level possible, they all agreed to keep them a secret. Moreover, given their respect for the SEAL commander, they would have agreed to do that anyway.
“It is a big deal, Jackie! Do you know what would happen if—”
“That bastard Sombra knows, Temp, remember? Why the hell do you think I’m out here?”
Tempest ran her fingers over her short magenta hair. “Yeah, yeah, I get it. So, anyway, what are you going to do with your date? I see you already have her tied up, nice and easy.”
“We don’t know anything about them, Lieutenant.” It was Fluttershy that answered. “We need to find out exactly what these things are, besides the fact that they seem to be designed based on human forms.”
“Think the Octos are trying to create them in order to sniff us out or something, Major?”
The pink-haired woman shook her head. “No. Call it instinct, but…I think it’s something worse than that.”
MARS JUNCTION, COLORADO
241126TJUL30:
Once they arrived back at their makeshift base, Bolt was there to meet them all. “Christ, Fluttershy,” she told her friend, an exasperated look on her face. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Depends on what you mean by that,” Fluttershy responded, a wry smile on hers.
“You just captured…I don’t know! A wild animal, some kind of mutant thing, fuck, whatever you want to call it! I don’t even know what the fuck it is, much less what it eats—”
“You don’t want to know, Boltie, believe me.” The look on the older woman’s face became bleak. “We have video confirmation and I wish to God we didn’t.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” the lieutenant insisted. “That being, said, what are you going to do with that thing? I mean, we just can’t keep it tied up forever….”
“AJ’s folks are working on that. They think they might be able to put together some sort of holding cell for the thing out of one of the remaining train cars we haven’t used. As to what we’ll feed it, I don’t know. I know sure as hell we’re not going to feed it what it was eating. Maybe we can catch a rabbit or one of the other animals that are running around here.”
“I remember when you would do anything to prevent animals from being hurt,” Applejack said as she approached, with Tempest right behind her. “Weren’t you a member of PETA or something?”
“That was a long time ago,” was all she said. “In any case, what have you got?”
“My folks are building the cage, and afterwards we’ll let that thing loose in it,” Applejack explained. “Some of my folks want to spray that thing off, because it’s caked in dirt, grime and a whole bunch of other things that we don’t want to know about.”
“Not just yet; just make sure it’s placed in there safely. Afterwards, I want all your people, as well as you two, to have a medical checkup. We don’t know what kind of parasites, viruses or bacteria live on these things.”
“I really don’t think that we’re going to turn into zombies, Flutters.”
“And I’d like to keep it that way. No arguments, AJ.”
“Fine, fine. Temp, have the chiefs set up times to have their medics look after us.” She then sighed. “I guess you’re also going to want to do autopsies on my lost folks?”
“How many?”
“Ens. Pineapple Swirl, SO1 Berry Blitz and SO3 Sweet Sasparilla,” Tempest commented. “Christ, SO3 Sasparilla just joined us, too. She was straight out of SQT – didn’t even come from another SEAL Team. Just a fucking kid, and now she’s gone.”
“We’re getting old, Temp,” Applejack mused.
“Don’t remind me.”
“I think we should,” Fluttershy stated. “I’ll take care of that personally, and that should give you time to prepare a decent burial for them.”
“I appreciate that, Flutters,” Applejack told her, while Tempest silently nodded. The blonde then turned to Bolt. “Send a Priority message to Splash 6 and Spacebase and update them on everything. Additionally, inform Spacebase…that we’re going to need personnel replacements.”
“Roger that, Commander,” Bolt said simply, departing to do her duties.
The three remaining women were silent for all this time, before Tempest spoke: “I just hope to hell Cpt. Sentry’s folks had an easier time of it, or else this is going to get real fucking messy.”
“Same,” Fluttershy agreed.