The knights of Strike Team Sparkle, minus one ag worlder, milled about anxiously in the officer's lounge they had claimed for themselves. Not that the other officers weren't permitted in the bar, it's just that there was no one on board that wasn't intimidated by a living god, the woman who had single handedly crippled their battle group, the hardest drinker on the Damocles, and a raving psychotic.
Pinkie Pie whined, "Ooooh! Hurry up already! I wanna see." She put on a deep voice and a strange accent. "The Dashinator." The others just stared at her. They knew better than to ask Pinkie Pie to explain anything ever, as the answers only confused further, but they couldn't help but stare at times. She looked around in expectation. "What? Nothing to that." She ticked her tongue. "Shoot, knew I should've said Rainbow Skywalker."
Twilight levitated Pinkie into a chair beside her. "Calm down Pinkie. They're literally going to be here in three, two, one." They stared at the door in expectation, but nothing happened. The other two looked from the door to Twilight in confusion. Twilight knew what they were doing on the other side of the door. Rainbow apparently needed just a little boost of confidence before she could perform. She didn't want to intrude, but they were making it awkward. They heard in their minds, "Sometime today ladies." and levitated the door open. There stood a grinning Rainbow Dash, her knew augmetic arm shining, beside a red faced Dr. Fluttershy.
They gave a gentle applause as they strode in. Dr. Fluttershy stood to the side and readied her holographic screen. She watched and made a note every time Rainbow did some prearranged action with her robotic arm successfully. She saw Rainbow successfully shake Rarity's and Twilight's hands, she took and held a piece of cake from Pinkie Pie. After the initial wave of congratulations and explanations Rainbow finally had a moment to look about and Twilight could feel the disappointment brewing in her mind. "Where's . . . Applejack." Rainbow finally asked barely above a whisper.
Rarity trying to be delicate said, "She said she'd be here.''
"Yes! I'm sure she's just a little late." Dr Fluttershy said, in an attempt to keep her spirits up.
Rainbow stared at Twilight. The question hadn't been addressed to the group, it had been addressed to her. Rainbow knew Twilight couldn't not know where Applejack was, and her heart hung by a thread in her chest. Twilight looked her in the eye. She'd been giving Applejack the same courtesy she'd given them, but it was time to end the suspense. She telekinetically slid open the other door and a very nervous Applejack scrambled to shove the liquid courage she'd been fortifying herself with into a back pocket.
There was a heavy moment of tension in the air. The two locked eyes from across the room. Everyone held their breath as they step by step closed the distance between them. It was the first time they'd seen each other in two months and no one knew how this meeting would play out. Except Twilight. She knew both were a paper thin veneer of calm under which was an ocean of tension that the other was still mad at them. She thought to herself that if it wasn't so heartbreaking it'd be kind of romantic.
Applejack extended a hand. Rainbow Dash did nothing but look at the proffered hand for an overlong moment. Everyone watched the two in silent tension to see what she would do. She grinned and they did their complicated series of high fives as they always did. Everyone present released the breaths they'd been holding. Dr Fluttershy made one last note on her screen and smiled. "Well I've seen everything I need to see. Rainbow, I hereby certify you as recovered sufficiently to reenter military service."
Another round of applause went up and Pinkie cheered loudly. A voice cut through the air. "Not just yet." Applejack gave a predatory grin. "Ah gotta see somethin first." She sat at a table and presented an arm. Rainbow's eyes went wide. She leapt to the table and dented it slightly as she drove her elbow against it. The two locked hands, one flesh the other steel. The assembled gathered around to watch the struggle. "Now maybe you can fahnally win." Applejack teased.
The group watched the muscles in Applejack's arm tense. The robotic arm didn't move. Twilight glanced over at Dr. Fluttershy and noticed her expression, it was nervous. Not because she wanted Rainbow to win, but because she felt like this was dangerous. Twilight looked back to the contest, Rainbow gave a fake yawn as her robotic arm slowly interminably lowered towards the table. She looked at the servos in the hand and thought about what their power output might be. She suddenly shared the doctor's concern.
Applejack didn't care though. There was no such thing as a no win situation, and she was going to give it her all. Rainbow decided to put the final nail in the coffin. Only two inches remained between her hand and the table. She meant to press the hand down firmly in triumph. What occurred was she broke every finger in Applejack's hand by smashing it against the table. Applejack's eyes went from squeezed shut with effort to wide open with shock and pain. She lurched forward and squeezed at her wrist giving a silent shriek. All assembled were frozen in shock at the sudden crack of bone and trickle of blood.
Rainbow panicked. She tried to open her hand but she couldn't focus in her shock. She could see her best friend's blood oozing through her metal fingers. She could actually feel the warmth of the red ichor through her synthetic nerves. She couldn't let go. She tried as hard as she could, but she couldn't make her augmetic hand open. Applejack finally got her voice back and she screamed in agony. The scream snapped the group out of their shock and Twilight tore open Rainbow's hand with her mind.
Applejack fell to the ground screaming in pain clutching her wrist. Twilight teleported her to the med bay. Dr. Fluttershy saw a distraught Rainbow Dash just as she stormed out the door, and she ran after her calling for her to stop. Pinkie and Rarity were left in their officer's lounge. "Well I guess Rainbow won." Pinkie said uncertainly. Rarity frowned in unamusement and she slapped her playfully across the face. "Damn. I am just zero for three today."
Dr. Fluttershy caught up with Rainbow Dash just as she entered her quarters. She saw Rainbow putting deep dents into the wall with her augmetic hand. "Dash! DASH STOP IT!" She desperately called out as she clung to the arm. Rainbow shoved her away violently. She toppled backwards and hit the wall hard as she accidentally knocked the various treasures off of her nightstand. The sound of glass shattering on the floor brought Rainbow out of her rage. She saw Dr. Fluttershy sprawled out on the floor, the whiskey bottle shattered on the ground beside her.
Rainbow slowly, shakily stepped towards the fallen woman. She was at a loss for what to do. Dr Fluttershy shifted into a sitting position and Rainbow fell to her knees, grabbing her tightly. "SHY I'M SO SORRY!!!" She held her tight and broke down into sobbing the words, "I'm sorry." Over and over again.
Dr Fluttershy took Rainbow's augmetic hand in her own. Rainbow was nervous at the action, like it might suddenly lash out at her. She took it and kissed it gently. Rainbow leaned back in surprise. Her augmentic hand still had small spots of blood still on it and a little of the wall's paint had rubbed onto her steel knuckles. Dr Fluttershy inspected the hand and whispered, "A lot of people worked very hard to give you this hand. It'd be a shame for you to break it right after you got cleared to use it."
Rainbow gently pulled the hand away and sighed hard. "I think that just proved I'm not ready." Her eyes turned to the broken bottle on the floor. The whiskey had already soaked into the carpet. What would Applejack think of her now. She'd told her to fuck off after her accident, and the second she sees her again she almost rips off her hand. "No. . . I don't think I'm ready to go back to that."
Fluttershy put on a determined face. She gently pulled Rainbow's face to look at her, and stared hard into her eyes. She gave her a deep kiss. "Dash, you're just overthinking it." She stepped to the door and sighed hard before looking back intensely. She used the deep voice that she always used when she was serious. "Meet me in the launch bay in ten minutes." Then without another word she marched away. Rainbow stared at the doorway for a long while. Then it occurred to her it'd take a few minutes to walk to the launch bay so she started off at a trot.
She arrived and there was no one in the launch bay. Not a tech, not a refueler, no one. It was the quietest she'd ever heard it. It was almost ominous. All of a sudden a cargo bay door opened and a mech slowly entered the launch bay. It was massive, towering over even Applejack's monster of a mech. Then she saw it, the winged lightning of Celestia's elite shock troops painted on the side. Rainbow stood in awe as she witnessed the last of an almost extinct breed. She saw the very last Wonderbolt stride forth.
Fluttershy had spent a very busy ten minutes. She'd called Twilight over the ship's communicators and had asked a very VERY big favor. Twilight had immediately begun giggling like a cross between a giddy schoolgirl and a person intoxicated. She'd immediately teleported herself down to an obscure warehouse on Terra, teleported back with an entire last generation mech unit, ordered the void cleared for a live fire test run, and ordered Pinkie to share the popcorn Twilight knew she'd have serendipitously prepared.
Pinkie Pie was starting to grow mildly uncomfortable with the fact Twilight seemed to be starting to predict her actions, even when she couldn't. Rarity fussed like a true officer at the seemingly random orders given to her fleet without any explanation. Twilight teleported them both to an observation deck, and shook like a Roman in the colosseum about to watch their first gladiatorial combat. Twilight had known Dr. Fluttershy's reputation and service record, and couldn't believe she was going to see her in action.
Dr Fluttershy has gone back to her quarters and had spent most of the ten minutes staring in horror at her old flight suit. She could still hear the screams of her squad as they were mowed down one by one. Their screams quickly cut off by their units being destroyed. She saw the Cloudsdale medal beside her flight suit. The only one of its kind minted. She'd kept it to punish herself for what she'd done. Then she'd remembered the words of her little knight. They'd all known what they were going into when they signed up. They'd had limited objectives, and after she'd cracked the void defenses, a lengthy, costly siege had ended. For the first time since the battle she could look unashamed at herself in the mirror.
She nodded and began to slip on the flight suit. Either it had shrunk in storage, or she had gained weight since she'd gone civilian. She couldn't get it to zip up all the way past her breasts and after a few determined minutes of struggling decided to just give Rainbow Dash a scenic view. Now she was in her old cockpit, the smell of old adrenaline laden war sweat that no amount of detergent could remove filling her mind with long buried memories.
Rainbow was star struck as she and the mech unit strode slowly towards each other as in a dream. Finally they met and Dr. Fluttershy opened the canopy. Rainbow's awe turned into babbling hysterical enthusiasm. "OHMYGOSHITSTHEVALKYRIECLASSONLY200OFTHESEWEREEVERMADEHOWDIDYOU~"
"Shut up. Get in. Strap down." Fluttershy interrupted in her deep voice. Rainbow blushed as deeply as she'd made the doctor do several times, and scrambled meekly into the cockpit. She sat herself down in the copilot seat, and the restraints had barely clicked before she was lurched back by the mech's boosters firing full throttle. Rainbow yelped in terror at the sensation of being grabbed by the hand of god by the seat of her pants and thrown bodily forward.
Fluttershy took to her old suit like riding a bike. Every twist of the sticks, every button, every move and twist felt right, as if she'd never sworn to never fly again. Rainbow became suddenly concerned as sensors started indicating incoming fighters from seemingly all directions. "Umm Shy? Did you order~" Before she could finish her question she saw Fluttershy loose a volley of heat seekers that blew a hole in the net of training drones in front of her. She flipped one hundred and eighty degrees vertically and loosed a series of scatter shots into the oncoming drones that tore through them before detonating. Another wave came from her starboard side and she dove right at them.
Rainbow watched in fascination at the doctor's style of fighting. She got right in close to where the other units couldn't get a clear shot, but was never precise in her shots. Every attack was for a wide area of effect. She made it to where anytime she fired she would hit something, even if it wasn't necessarily what she was aiming at. It was tantamount to a musketeer watching an armored blunderbuss user in pike formation.
Twilight and Pinkie cheered from their observation deck over mouthfuls of popcorn. Rarity watched in horror as her ships were sprinkled with scatter shot and barked orders to double the previously designated evacuation area. Fluttershy fought with a single minded determination. Nothing else existed for her. Not the alarms blaring drone movements to her, not Rainbow's screams and cheers coming from behind her, not her own sense of levity at being back in the saddle for the first time in years. All there was in the universe was center target, pull trigger.
After the last training drone had been reduced to scrap Dr. Fluttershy released the sticks with hands stiff from crushing grips. Rainbow babbled in joy and excitement. Dr. Fluttershy didn't hear a word. She simply unbuckled her harness, shifted to the copilot seat and did something that stopped Rainbow's ramble dead in its tracks. She unzipped her flight suit all the way down. She grabbed Rainbow's augmentic hand and stuffed it roughly into her pants. "Don't think. Feel." Were the only words she said before she shoved her tongue into Rainbow's mouth.
Twilight gained a knowing smile and lifted Pinkie Pie into her arms. "Well I think that's enough excitement for one day. Steady as she goes Admiral."
With that she was about to teleport to the suite that Celestia had assigned them, but Rarity had had enough shenanigans for one day. "Excuse you?! Viceroy or not this has gone on long enough! First you order the void cleared for a random live fire test, then suddenly there's a dinosaur mech tearing up my fleet, AND NOW IT'S JUST HANGING THERE LIKE A BILIOUS PIGEON and you say STEADY AS SHE GOES?! No Twilight, I'm going to give them a piece of my mind right now!" She made to call them and the video of the cockpit suddenly filled the wall. Rarity didn't get two syllables off before she slammed the video off red faced and mortified. She decided to let sleeping dogs lie for now.
A terribly satisfied Dr Fluttershy lay naked floating in the void with an unconscious Sir Rainbow Dash clinging to her. She brought up Rainbow's chart. She smiled as she typed in. "Satisfaction on all points."