Rows of teeth. A gaping abyss beyond. A piercing shriek that escaped Fluttershy’s mouth without any conscious intention. All things that passed through her head in a split second, as the monstrous shark bore down on her. Its jaw began to jut forward, extending out of its mouth in a gruesome twist of evolutionary development. Like it was reaching out of it to clutch the small yellow craft between teeth the size of tree stumps.
But Fluttershy's reactions were quick. She slammed down on the thruster lever. Wonderbird Four jumped forward like a bullet fired from a gun, racing to meet its foe head on. At the last possible second she twisted her yoke to the left, sending the submarine into a barrel roll. The mighty jaws slammed shut out of view from the right hand side of the windscreen, and a terrifying jolt erupted through the ship. The yoke grew heavier in her hoof as Fluttershy felt Wonderbird Four try to pull itself out of the roll, but she held it firm. Warning lights flashed across the control console, but Fluttershy’s attention was elsewhere. Huge grey fins shot past the windscreen, then a tail as tall as a building, and then only pitch blackness as the creature passed by.
Pulling herself out of the roll, Fluttershy looked to the rear cameras. The shark was turning to pursue, the enormous tail whipping around as it twisted. She groaned as she watched the tail impact the side of Deepsea Echo. The lab module she had been in moments before seemed to leap upwards as it imploded. It had been pushed beyond breaking point from sustaining so much damage. Neatly it detached itself from its neighbouring modules, and the perfect sphere shrank down to a shrivelled husk in a fraction of a second. All the air was pulled out of it in a violent burst of bubbles. No longer able to maintain buoyancy, it dropped like a stone to the ocean floor.
With another twist of her yoke, Fluttershy dove down and right to skim the sand below her. But the movement surprised her. It was sharper than usual, more sudden, less controlled. She dared a glance at the controls, where the warning lights indicated structural damage. Another glance to the cameras that faced outwards from amidships. Where she might have expected to see the starboard control fin stretching out into the gloom, there was instead only half of the fin. It ended at a grim break of twisted metal and dangling wires.
She allowed herself a few precious seconds to process the image. Wonderbird Four’s onboard computers were very similar to the fly-by-wire systems on her airborne sisters. They would partly be able to compensate for the difference in handling the loss of the control fin would cause. At least, it would stop it from being uncontrollable. But Fluttershy could feel the difference in how it felt. It was a subtle pull to the right, which would make left turns more sluggish and right turns feel sharper. She’d trained for this. She could handle it.
Looking back to the main rear camera, she could see the shark still giving chase. Its jaws gnashed and flailed, shooting forward out of its mouth with each attempt to bite down. But as she’d hoped, her little submarine was generating a turbulent current of wake as it raced mere feet from the sand on the ocean floor. The sand rushed upwards as the submarine passed over, creating a cloud that grew ever murkier as Wonderbird Four accelerated faster and faster.
Relief flooded through Fluttershy as the shark gradually became a smaller and smaller image on her screen. She was faster than it, even with a damaged fin. It was only when it disappeared completely from her screens that she realised she’d been hyperventilating. She took a few long, deep breaths as she eased back on her thrusters. Then, she checked the radar screen. It had given up the chase, and was turning back away from her.
“B-b-b… base from ‘Four. Do you read me?” she said, feeling a tear drip down her cheek.
“We hear you ‘Four. Are you okay?” Twilight’s voice replied, taking on the gentle and mothering tone she usually reserved strictly for princess duties.
“Y-yeah. I’m okay. Just a little, um… spooked.”
“I think under the circumstances, spooked is an entirely understandable reaction. Now, as ‘One said earlier, you’re more familiar with marine biology than any of us. Can you tell us what that was?”
Fluttershy took one more deep, calming breath, and then explained. “It’s a goblin shark. Some researchers call it a living fossil, the last known living species of a genus that goes back hundreds of millennia, maybe even older. They’re very rare and only live in deep water, but they’ve never been found this deep before. I didn’t even know they could survive this deep.”
“And I’m guessing they aren’t supposed to be that big?”
“No. If theramine causes abnormal growth, then we’ve just seen proof of it. But I guess there is some good news, juveniles tend to be found in shallower water. So if it’s down here in the deepest part of the ocean, it’s a fully grown adult. That means it won’t get any bigger… at least I hope it won’t.”
“Where is it now?”
“It gave up chasing me once I started to outrun it,” Fluttershy explained, expanding the view on her radar screen to show her a wider area. “There’s no point in wasting energy hunting down something that can go faster than you.”
But something nagged at the back of Fluttershy’s mind as she watched the shark’s shape move across the radar. It had turned tail completely after abandoning its hunt, and turned around to retrace the path they’d taken away from Deepsea Echo. It was heading back towards the lab. Back to the source of the noise and vibration that had drawn it close in the first place. The noise made when Wonderbird Two had accidentally dragged the escape pod across the hull of the lab.
As realisation dawned on Fluttershy, she near-enough felt her heart drop into her stomach.
“It’s going for the pod!” she shouted into her microphone as she fired up her submarine’s thrusters again, turning one-eighty to pursue the shark.
“What? How do you know?”
“Sharks hone in on noise and vibration. It couldn’t catch Wonderbird Four, so it’s going for the next loudest thing. That cable is attached to Wonderbird Two. The vibrations from the vertical thrusters… it must be deafening!”
“Copy that, ‘Four,” Applejack’s voice interjected, sounding panicked. “Performin’ emergency ascent.”
Seven miles above, Fluttershy knew Wonderbird Two would be rising upwards into the sky as Applejack pushed the vertical thrusters to full power. She’d been on board the craft during training manoeuvres, and it wasn’t a comfortable experience. Onboard Wonderbird Two, Applejack would be pushed down hard into her seat, and the ponies in the escape pod were in for a wild ride too. But it was very effective. Despite its immense size, Wonderbird Two could accelerate upwards at incredible speeds.
“What are you going to do, ‘Four?” Twilight asked.
”Give it a better target,” Fluttershy said, her voice quivering slightly.
Once again, Wonderbird Four accelerated forward. Fluttershy pulled back on the yoke, climbing upwards as she followed the radar pings of the enormous shark. It was rising fast, bearing down on the tiny escape pod that dangled at the end of Wonderbird Two’s cable. While Applejack’s manoeuvre would indeed get the pod out of the water quicker, it had its own drawbacks. With its engines going full blast, the vibrations of the cable would have increased tenfold. This, and the pod would be thrashing around as it dragged through the water. It had just turned into prey that would have been ten times as inviting as before. There was no way of knowing whether the shark would give up the chase now as it did before.
Tense moments passed as Fluttershy drew nearer and nearer to the shape on radar. Following its trajectory, she kept pulling further back on her control yoke. Very soon she found herself pressed hard back into her seat. The nose of Wonderbird Four rose at a near-vertical trajectory. Swishing back and forth, the tail of the shark drew into view of her floodlights. The submarine began to sway left and right as it rose. She was starting to ride the turbulent water caused by the thrashing tail.
“Firing sonic charge,” she said, lifting her hoof from the thruster lever to flick a switch on her overhead panel.
A small missile rocketed out of the nose of Wonderbird Four. Fluttershy allowed it a couple of seconds to draw alongside the shark, before she hit the manual detonation switch.
The sonic charges onboard the Wonderbird machines were similar in appearance to an explosive charge. But rather than using incendiaries, they released huge amounts of energy in the form of a wave of air pressure. They had been Twilight’s invention, and had proved very useful in controlled demolitions as they didn’t release shrapnel or debris. The rocket that held the charge could even be re-used, if it could be recovered.
For the effect that the charge had on the shark, Fluttershy could have been forgiven for thinking she’d accidentally fired an explosive charge. It lurched to the side, writhing and thrashing as the powerful pressure wave sent its senses into overdrive. Fluttershy eased back on her thrusters. The shark seemed too pre-occupied by its own pain to continue giving chase to the escape pod. The leviathan continued its frenzied dance, with Wonderbird Four’s floodlights giving Fluttershy a clear view. She whimpered as she watched. Her basic morals and instincts were in conflict with the sight of a wounded creature in front of her.
Then, slowly, it stopped. It hung there in the murk, as far as Fluttershy could tell seeming more dazed and confused than anything. Occasionally it twitched and spasmed, its gills fluttering as it seemed to regain its senses. Fluttershy could hear her own pulse drumming loud and fast in her ears as she looked into its eyes. Like all shark eyes, there was no colour, and no white either. Just solid orbs of pitch black, betraying no thoughts and no emotions. Eyes that reflected the primal nature of their owners. Remnants of a time before civilisation, a time of carnage and monsters.
The shark became deathly still. Then, with a flick of its fins, it turned to face Wonderbird Four head-on.
As before, Fluttershy’s reactions were like lightning. She pushed forward on her yoke and sent the submarine into a dive, setting her thrusters to full power. The shark, either too slow or too dazed, missed by a wide margin as it tried to bite down on Wonderbird Four. Its teeth found only empty water, but it whipped around to give pursuit. Fluttershy saw a flash of grey in her peripheral vision. Time seemed to slow down as the tail fin whipped towards the submarine. But as milliseconds dragged by, Fluttershy found herself unable to react in time.
An almighty boom rocked Wonderbird Four. The entire craft lurched hard to the right, spinning out of control. Fluttershy felt the wind knocked out of her lungs as she was thrown around in her seat. Red lights danced across the control panel. Warning alerts pinged in a twisted symphony of chimes and tones. Through sheer willpower, Fluttershy kept her hooves firmly on the controls. She winced as she steered herself out of the spin, maintaining her vertical dive. She was still alive, but the shark had gotten its own back for the shot she’d fired.
“Uuurrrggghhh…” Fluttershy groaned as she struggled to find the air to form words. “‘Four to ‘Two… do you read me?” she asked between gasps.
“Loud ‘n clear,” Applejack replied. “Hang in there, sugarcube, ‘yer doing jus’ fine.”
“How long… until you get that… pod clear?” Fluttershy asked, her breath coming back to her.
“Five more minutes. Jus’ five more minutes, ya’ can do this.”
“Copy… that.”
Gritting her teeth as she looked to her rear camera, she saw the same horrific view as earlier. The gigantic head, jaws snapping over and over as the shark gave chase. Fluttershy’s hooves danced on the controls. She balanced the thrusters, maintaining the distance between Wonderbird Four and its gargantuan pursuer. She had to hold its attention long enough for Applejack to get the escape pod clear.
For a few moments, Fluttershy dared to look down at the warnings on her console. On top of the damage done to her starboard control fin, the port side had taken a serious hit from the impact with the tail fin. There were error messages flooding across the screens. The camera feed showing the port side was only displaying static. While she couldn’t see if the port fin was damaged or not, the feeling of the controls didn’t seem to suggest it. If she was lucky, the shark’s tail had only impacted the hull, and missed any control surfaces.
Suddenly a wall of beige filled her windscreen. Fluttershy yelped as she pulled backwards on the joystick, avoiding barrelling into the sea floor with inches to spare. She felt Wonderbird Four’s port fin brush against the sandy bottom. At least, she realised, that meant it was still intact. Her eyes darted up towards the rear camera feed, where she saw the shark follow her trajectory. As it had been travelling full-speed, it struggled to slow down. It managed to pull itself out of the dive, but the momentum carried it down and it impacted the sand in an almighty belly flop. Plumes of sand billowed out in every direction. Fluttershy eased off on her thrusters as it vanished in the cloud it had kicked up.
The respite was short lived though, and the pointed snout emerged from the cloud of sand. The creature's movements seemed slower, like it was winded. Fluttershy winced again, not through her own pain but out of sympathy. With so much of her life she’d dedicated herself to the care of animals, it seemed like an awful twist of fate that she should be here. Trading blows with a creature that knew no better. Her chest ached as she pushed forward on the thrusters again, and Wonderbird Four raced away. The shark shook itself away from the cloud of sand, gnashing its jaws as it sought out the yellow submarine that seemed hell-bent on taunting it.
“Base from ‘Four, come in base,” Fluttershy said.
”Go ahead ‘Four, you’re doing great. Keep it up for a few more minutes,” Twilight replied.
“I need to know something about this theramine stuff. You told me there was an incident involving alligators. Tell me what happened.”
There was a long pause before Twilight spoke. “It happened in South Amareica. There was a research station based in a river delta, the theramine was released into the water supply by mistake. It was meant to be circulated through the pipes that water the crops, but it ended up in the waste water. The local alligator population got a heavy dose, then they attacked and destroyed the station. Nopony was hurt, they all managed to evacuate in time.”
”And what happened to the alligators?”
“Look, Fluttershy…”
”Tell me.”
“...the alligators had to be euthanised. They were too big and too aggressive. They posed too great a risk to the local ecosystem, and if they’d roamed to any nearby towns… the UNEQ couldn’t take that risk, so they did what they had to.”
Thoughts reeled through Fluttershy’s head so fast, she found herself caught by surprise as the Deepsea Echo loomed in front of her again. This time she was approaching it from the side. From her positioning, she guessed it to be the portion of the lab to the rear of the module that had imploded earlier.
Wonderbird Four passed below it at speed, zipping between the spindly legs. The chance to wiggle the yoke as Fluttershy steered herself through a clear course re-affirmed the damage to the control surfaces. Alternating between a left and right turn, the yoke went from sluggish to sharp. Her hoof tightened around it.
Fluttershy watched the rear cameras in a mixture of fascination and horror as the shark charged at the lab. It careened through the joint between two modules like a knife cutting through sand. The two modules imploded in a violent shower of bubbles much like the one Fluttershy had seen earlier, triggering a chain reaction. All the remaining modules in that section imploded one by one, as they were dragged along in the sharks wake.
“Base,” she said as she felt butterflies dance in her stomach. “If this shark escapes the trench, how bad will it be?”
“It… um… er,” Twilight stuttered. “If it… if it gets out of the trench… ‘Four, if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, you don’t have to do this.”
“Please…” Fluttershy’s resolve finally broke, her sentence interrupted as she let out an audible sob. “Just tell me, yes or no. If it gets out of the trench, will anypony get hurt?”
“I think so, yes.”
Tears streamed down Fluttershy’s cheek as she formed a course of action in her head. It went against everything she stood for, but she’d made an oath when she joined Equestrial Rescue. The safeguarding of pony lives, at any cost. The shark, still chomping its jaws at Wonderbird Four, was a victim. An innocent creature, mutated and deformed by thoughtless ponies. If they hadn’t been performing illegal experiments, it wouldn’t have grown to its humongous size. It wouldn’t be in a frenzied, bloodthirsty state. Nothing about the situation was fair.
Fluttershy took a steadying breath. Resignation. That was the word, she thought. It was resignation to the task at hoof. She really didn’t want to do it, but she had to. She grimaced, her ears falling limply at either side of her head. Pulling back slightly on the thruster, she allowed the gap to the shark to reduce. Fluttershy watched it grow slightly larger on the camera feed as she nudged the yoke to the left. Wonderbird Four shifted its bearing very slightly, banking left as the shark followed.
Then, quick as a whippet, she threw the yoke hard to the right. Using the sharpened steering to her advantage, she caught the shark by surprise with the leftward feint. With a determined push of the throttle, she applied full power. Wonderbird Four darted to starboard, the shark still turning left. The rear camera showed Fluttershy exactly what she needed to see: the shark stopping, writhing around in confusion. Its senses caught up mere moments later, as it located its target and bore down on it. As she’d hoped, Fluttershy had managed to double back on herself while maintaining a safe distance between her and the shark’s teeth.
Delicately, Fluttershy began to ease off the throttle in short bursts. Not enough to stop her dead in the water. But just enough to slowly bring the distance down between her and the shark’s head. Her senses were going haywire: red lights still flashed on her console, warning alerts still sounded through the cockpit. Wonderbird Four’s turbines hummed away. But Fluttershy tuned it all out, solely focused on this one task.
She held her breath as, like she’d planned, the remaining modules of Deepsea Echo appeared from the gloom. Instead of passing under it, she had positioned herself to be on a collision course directly with the joint between modules. She lifted off the throttles once. Twice. And a third time, bringing the tailfin of Wonderbird Four within inches of the tip of the shark’s snout. The huge jaws had stopped snapping wildly. It seemed to realise that the prey was almost within biting distance.
Time slowed down. The massive spheres of the laboratory grew larger in her windscreen. Closer and closer she drew. Every instinct in her body screamed at her to abort, to pull up, to turn away. She kept her hooves on the controls, not daring to move an inch. She could distinguish different markings on the side of laboratory modules now. A flash of red lights through a porthole. The reflections of her own floodlights pointed back at her.
She pulled back on the throttle again. The jaw of the mighty shark, now entirely taking up her rear camera, twitched. Fluttershy pushed her yoke down and right, and felt the port fin of Wonderbird Four clip the outer hull of the lab as the wall of teeth opened up behind her. It leapt forwards with the intent of closing around the little submarine. True to Fluttershy’s plan though, the jaw instead found itself attempting to close around a large, metallic object. An object that impacted the jawline of the shark at a speed exceeding sixty miles per hour.
The entire world seemed to explode around Fluttershy as she pulled back on the yoke, too little too late as Wonderbird Four landed hard on the sea floor. It skidded along the sand on its belly for what felt like forever. The view outside her windshield was dominated by waves and waves of bubbles. She felt the accompanying booms of laboratory modules imploding one by one. The submarine lurched as it bumped across sand and rocks. Fluttershy would never need to visit Tartarus, if there was indeed a hell then it could only be exactly like this. When the submarine finally drew to a stop, the noises outside continued unabated. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut. She kept herself braced in her seat. For a minute. An hour. A day. Time was meaningless as a nightmare raged around her.
And then, as quick as it had started, it stopped. All was silent. Fluttershy opened her eyes in time to see the shrunken remains of the lab modules, no longer linked together, fall one by one to the seabed in front of her. Gulping, she tested her thrusters. Wonderbird Four stirred. She pulled back on the yoke and pushed the throttle forwards, lifting up off the sand. Fluttershy turned the submarine to the left. The illuminated area in front of her was darker than it had been before. She realised she had lost some of her floodlights as she’d crashed down onto the sand.
To Twilight’s credit, Wonderbird Four had taken a beating today, but hadn’t broken down.
As Fluttershy spun around further, the remaining floodlights lit up a dark shape resting on the sand. She didn’t need to get a closer look, she could see it from where she was. Fins lay motionless. Eyes, still dark and devoid of any emotion, but somehow more vacant and empty. The lower jaw, limp and lifeless. The surrounding water starting to develop a red hue. She’d succeeded at her task.
Grief and exhaustion finally overwhelmed the adrenaline that had been keeping Fluttershy alert. She leant back in her chair as tears flooded her cheeks. She sobbed, her cries loud and unrestrained. She felt as cold and as dark as the water that surrounded her and the poor creature she had condemned to this fate.
Twilight Sparkle watched the sun inch ever closer to the horizon. Applejack was sat next to Rainbow Dash, the other side of Twilight’s desk, the two of them recounting the events of the day as they had witnessed them. But the alicorn’s focus was drawn out the window. The sky was turning a beautiful shade of orange, one of Twilight’s favourite things about this tropical region of the world. The weather around Harmony Island was almost always warm and beautiful. And even when a storm did strike, it was brief.
Twilight considered this as her eyes flicked to the lone figure on the balcony. Much like the weather, Fluttershy almost always radiated warmth and beauty. But what had happened in the Mareiana Trench didn’t bear thinking about. A dark cloud hung over Fluttershy’s gentle spirit. They had to make sure she could see herself through to sunny skies again.
“An’ thas when we got the escape pod reeled outta’ the water,” Applejack concluded.
“Problem was,” Rainbow Dash interjected. “To get them out quickly, we had to pull them up too fast. The eggheads inside, all came out with the bends.”
Applejack cocked her head. “The whut now?”
“The bends. Y’know, decompression sickness. Happens to divers sometimes.”
Twilight shifted her attention back. “And were the Navy able to deal with them?”
“Well, they got ‘em all sorted out al’rite, medicinally speakin’,” Applejack said. “As for legally speakin’? Well that’s a mite more complicated.”
“Those dopes were dumb enough to bring bottles of that thera-stuff into the escape pod with them,” Rainbow Dash guffawed. “Caught them red hoofed, pants down, guilty as charged!"
“It’s not uncommon for scientists to value their work over their well-being,” Twilight said, nodding her head. “But the main thing, there’s nopony hurt or missing. Correct?”
“Affirmative,” Applejack said.
“Yessiree,” Rainbow Dash agreed.
“Excellent. Another successful mission. I’m going to reach out to my Naval contacts tomorrow, see if we can’t smooth relations over after Rainbow Dash’s little altercation with Captain Jetstream.”
Dash’s cheeks flushed as her ears folded back in indignation. “H-hey, that’s not exactly all my fault! If that prissy featherhead had just told us what we were dealing with, we could have come up with a different plan. She almost got Fluttershy killed!”
The three pairs of heads turned towards the window in unison. The yellow pegasus still hadn’t moved from her spot. Her short pink mane danced in the gentle breeze. Feathers on her wings bristled. She twitched slightly, and for a moment Twilight was sure Fluttershy knew she was being watched, and maybe she might turn around to face them all. But she stayed there, unmoving, watching the sunset. She’d walked to the spot and sat down the moment Wonderbird Two had landed back at the island.
Twilight took a deep breath, and turned to Applejack. “Right. First thing’s first. How is Wonderbird Four?”
“Beat up purdy bad,” Applejack replied. “Missin’ half a control fin, port side’s got a wicked dent in it. Few broken lights, and her belly got scratched up somethin’ fierce. Ah’ reckon ‘bout a weeks work to get her pristine again.”
“We can handle that,” Twilight said with a nod. “We’ll start in the morning. Dash, did you get any word on if the Navy will be able to clear any theramine spillage?”
“Yeah, actually. North Star radioed me to explain just after I left. Turns out the owners of Deepsea Echo were on board the Seaquestria. The lab was running a whole bunch of legit experiments for the UNEQ, they think the theramine was a side project by a few rogue scientists. It being a private company financing a military operation, the chain of command was just a mess. That’s probably why Jetstream wasn’t sure how much she could tell me.”
“Too many cooks?” Applejack asked with a grin.
”Something like that,” Rainbow Dash laughed. “The Navy put a cordon on the area, and the company that owns… well, owned the lab are deploying special sweeping drones to clean the whole area. It’s gonna be a big operation, but it looks like they’re gonna sink all the money they can into it.”
“Good. And most importantly… tell me about Fluttershy.”
“Erm…” Applejack bit her lip, eyes darting towards the window. “Not good. She’s shaken up real bad, Twi. I gave her a full scan when we were flyin’ back, ‘mah ships computer reckons she ain’t seriously hurt. Bumps ‘n bruises mostly, ‘specially on her chest ‘n shoulders. Big impact, her safety harness kept her safe but it dug in purdy bad.”
“But we saw what happened down there,” Rainbow Dash added. “I was scared out of my mind just watching. Can’t imagine how she must feel right now. It’s nothing like the Fluttershy I grew up with could have dealt with.”
Twilight felt her eyes glisten as she looked over to Fluttershy again. “Because she’s not the pony you grew up with,” she pointed out. “This Fluttershy has been through so much more and come out stronger. And she’ll do so again.”
“’Ah reckon so too.”
“How?”
“Because of us,” Twilight explained. “We give her time, we give her space to come to terms with what she’s been through. We offer her all of our support while she processes things. If she needs it, we’ll arrange for some further help for her. You should know, Dash, mental trauma can require as much nurturing as physical trauma.”
Rainbow Dash didn’t respond. Instead she looked back over her shoulders. Where, for most of her life, her wings had been. The things that gave meaning to her existence. Her links to her love and livelihood. Now instead, only a pair of long scars hidden by her fur.
“We’ll look after her, Twi,” Applejack said, breaking the silence.
Twilight nodded. “She knows we’re here for her. We always have been and always will be. Now, you two have had a long day. Spike should have dinner ready soon, you go and get yourselves fed, okay?”
“What about you?” Rainbow Dash asked, as she and Applejack rose to their hooves.
“You are dismissed,” Twilight said, a smile creasing the edge of her lips as she exercised a privilege she rarely allowed herself: pulling rank.
She turned back towards the window as Rainbow Dash and Applejack made their way in the direction of the kitchen. While Fluttershy had still yet to move from her spot, Twilight could see distinctly her posture had relaxed slightly. The tension had ebbed away from her shoulders. She sat with her legs spread slightly further apart. Her spine wasn’t arched so rigidly any more. Fluttershy could be permitted a further period of solitude.
With a deep sigh, Twilight sat on her own haunches. Days like this she questioned the morality of asking her friends to endanger themselves to attempt to save the lives of other ponies. The number of lives they’d saved by this point was staggering, and they’d all given up counting. But each of them had paid a price in their own way, taken their own trauma. Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity. Each of them had gone through their own agonies, but still made it out the other side without any waver in their commitment. They were, despite everything, volunteers.
Today, Fluttershy had defied her own morals, her very nature. To save a small group of ponies who had dabbled in an evil science project that brought pain and destruction down on their heads. The UNEQ courts would see them punished appropriately. But the damage their actions had inflicted on Fluttershy could not be measured, nor could any punishment do it justice.
Resting a hoof against the glass, Twilight sighed again. Fluttershy raised a hoof of her own to scratch at her nose, her gaze still unwaveringly focused on the horizon beyond. Soon, the sun would set. But it would rise again. Wonderbird Four was damaged, but it could be fixed. Fluttershy had walked into a nightmare, and emerged the other side. Yes, she had emerged with a great weight on her heart. But Twilight knew that with the friends she had, Fluttershy would never have to carry that weight alone.