Fluttershy had not been idle. The little band of zerg, her’s and Pinkie’s, had stopped, as much to rest as to contest with boredom. Here the ground was firmer, a stretch of low hills that sidled up to the edge of the more marshy grounds before. The swarm host and impromptu cabin-on-legs, Big Bertha, had rooted herself in the deep soil for some much appreciated sleep. The T.V. and music player, and all appliances were turned off for this. Pinkie Pie, coral-growths and scales, was out on the alien grass, tumbling in a heap zerglings much the same as any dogs would do, nipping and barking playfully, though with considerably less bark and more kekekeke. Also more limbs, which made for the occasional awkward entanglement.
The meagre vegetables Fluttershy had collected in the last half-hour didn’t look much. Mostly stream washed tubers and shoots with the dirt scrubbed off best she could manage, Fluttershy had none the less brought these togethers in a small heap, arranged them fitfully into the most appeasing, or rather least displeasing, assemblage she could manage, and was applying all her effort and experience in coaxing one of the scrawnier lings, overpowered and ejected from the general horse-play to eat his greens.
She made absolutely certain to not include any of the plump, tall-standing mushrooms in the bog-salad this time despite, after what had happened with her hydralisk. Last she had checked in on him he seemed placid enough, still adrfit in a state of spiritual oneness with the universe. She had wiped the excess dribble from the gently purring creature’s maw and left it to enjoy the pretty colours.
Chin to the ground, she waved the runty zergling forward. “Come on,” she cooed. “These are good for you. That’s right.” It’s snout, for lack of a better word, snuffled. It glanced little red eyes to her, to the greens, back to her.
“Food,” she mouthed. “Foooood. That’s it. Good boy.” Runty Zergling gave a very distressed potato look-a-like a lick, shied away, crept in again. “That’s right,” she said. He looked very much just about to try a nibble when a distinctive yellow spiral formed in the air above him.
The disproportionate power the tendril-wings beat with startled Fluttershy, but she had no time for that. Going from ‘zero’ to ‘a lot’ in ‘quite fast, really’, she scooped Runty Zergling up and away from the menacing yellow swirl o’ doom.
Fluttershy touched down gently as she could, checked Runty all-over for distress (for own) and turned, wings flared, on Pinkie, all in about a second.
“No eating zerg!” she shouted.
Pinkie stamped a hoof, several hooves, all her hooves in a little dance of frustration. “But I’m huuuungrrryy,” she whined. “I was gonna share, really!”
Fluttershy wasn’t budging. The zerglings, all more or less subjects to Pinkie’s emotional states, tittered and looked about awkwardly, eyes afraid to settle on Fluttershy. She glared at each and every one of them, at Pinkie most of all. “No eating zerg. Absolutely not! You’ll just have to wait until Beebee (this being Big Bertha’s affectionately derived nickname for a nickname...a nickname squared) wakes up and she turns the power for the toaster turns back on.”
Pinkie was loosing steam; she never was one to commit to an argument if it wasn’t fun, and arguing with Fluttershy was about as fun as being savaged by a hen. Even so, she managed to eke out something about zerg eating zerg.
Fluttershy put her hoof down, literally. “That may be so out there, but not if I can help it! In this swarm we have manners. Zerg must never eat zerg!” To Fluttershy’s ears it was simple. Catchy, the sort of thing Pinkie would remember and qoute. It’d do nicely.
Meanwhile a smile full of guile, a trait quite unaccustomed to Fluttershy, made itself at home on her lips. “In the meantime, Pinkie, if you’re so hungry that you’d go for one of our own, than surely you absolutely couldn’t say no to a healthy snack...I insist.”
Looking very dejected and defeated, almost comically so, Pinkie Pie was lead to the previously gathered foodstuff’s. Fluttershy tried a bite, forced a smile. “It’s not bad.”
They were that bad, that sort of unrelenting nastiness that can only be found in very healthful things. Fluttershy made sure Pinkie ate every last no-zerg-were-harmed bite anyway.