The icy feeling of horror welled up in Twilight’s stomach as she swatted the alien dust cloud that the Yamato had kicked up when being pulled under. Immediately, she was on her hooves, blasting her way across the clearing to find Rainbow and Pinkie already peering over the edge, mouths agape, with Applejack and Rarity closing in.
Skidding to a halt, the unicorn peered over the edge to the freshly cracked chasm in the surface of Eden. A distant, monstrous groan sounded from deep within the hole, the sound of metal screeching against rock still audible.
“What,”- Twilight gulped, still not quite comprehending what she had just seen, “what was- Tentacles, the Yamato...” She trailed off, mind churning.
“I- I don’t,” she stuttered, before Applejack spoke up.
“What in the name of all under the sun was that!”
“We need to get down there! Princess Celestia is in danger!” Twilight suddenly shouted.
“We can’t go down there! Whatever that was, just took out the Yamato. The Yamato!” Rainbow said, for once, being the voice of caution.
“But there are ponies on that ship! They could be hurt! Or what about us?! What if the ship is gone? We’re stranded!” Twilight wailed, balancing on the razor edge of a full on breakdown.
“Twilight! Calm yourself! You’ve been at the helm of that vessel, you know just how tough it is! We can’t needlessly go and risk our lives for it when our friend is still out there!” Rarity spoke sternly, casting a hoof towards the dense shrubbery.
“What good will finding Fluttershy do us if we are all stuck here anyway!?” Twilight cried, looking down into the pit, hoping to see the iconic muzzle of the Yamato come flying out to greet them.
“Look Twilight, Rarity’s right. There are a good three hundred ponies on that ship, I’m sure they can work something out. The real question is, if that is on this planet, what else might there be? We all know Fluttershy wouldn’t last a day out here with that kind of wildlife,” Applejack said softly, moving to put a hoof around Twilight, to which the rest of her friends soon joined.
“The Yamato is one tough nut, I don’t reckon even a giant octopus could so much as dent that big wagon,” the orange mare smiled, soothing her friend. “We’re gonna get outta here Twi... But not without Shy,” she finished, breaking away from the hug.
“I- Okay,” Twilight sighed, before looking up at her friends.
“Let’s go find us an AWOL pegasus.”
“Now then, let’s see...this might a good spot.” Fluttershy noted absently to herself as she hopped from tree branch to tree branch with a single flap of her wings at the height of the jumps, something any pegasus could do even before entering Flight School.
She was glad for the survival training camps that all pegasus schools had. As she landed on a branch and listened carefully through the sounds of alien wilderness, Fluttershy’s left ear twitched as she heard the important sound she was seeking.
Hopping across the branches and gliding to a lower one, the butter-yellow pegasus smiled as she saw a decently sized stream cutting through the impenetrable jungle that covered this planet. Hopefully the water didn’t have any strange chemicals that would need a filter, but Fluttershy was confident boiling it would take care of germs and parasites.
With water hopefully taken care of, Fluttershy moved to the next priority, food. With the ever-present tree cover, shelter was a low priority, so finding something safe to eat would be a necessity.
With all the trees, perhaps some of them were fruit-bearing? They wouldn’t have apples or oranges, but having a breathable atmosphere meant that any fruit should be similar to Equestria, right? Fluttershy certainly hoped so as her stomach growled.
Moving upstream along the river, Fluttershy noted that some of the trees did in fact have fruit on them, at least she thought they were fruit, but her expectations were dashed as one particularly fruit-like object hanging off a branch suddenly speared a flying critter and revealed itself to be a massive arachnid-like creature that climbed higher up the tree it was on.
Fluttershy noticed a lot more of the same objects on the tree and wisely stayed away, giving it a large berth, seeking something that was edible. The main problem with that plan however, was that anything that looked like a fruit was either a very hostile predatory animal or insect or a very large predatory plant, as Fluttershy found out as she jerked her hoof back Just before receiving a sudden stabbing of large spines.
The red innards of the plant shuddered as it retracted is venom-dripping spines back inside of itself. The mare sighed, stomach still talking angrily. Turning her head over her shoulder, she looked to see if the thundering mass of the Yamato was behind her. She wouldn’t have been surprised if they had been tailing her.
Retracting into her long bangs, she sat down. She knew that her friends were probably worried sick about her, and this in turn made her conscious weigh heavily with guilt, but there was no way she was going back to that horrific ship, and all the nasty ponies aboard. Another sigh, the kind that comes just before breaking into tears escaped her. Resting her head on her forehooves, she looked out over the alien wilderness, into the soupy, green fog.
She just wasn’t cut out for space travel.
“What was the princess thinking?” Fluttershy asked to an errant stick before her.
Receiving nothing in reply, Fluttershy sighed before kicking it with a forehoof, sending it spinning into a plant growing on the ground and Fluttershy watched it, half-expecting it to explode or spray poison everywhere, but the stick simply bounced off what looked like a large pod with bright fleshy growths.
Curious, Fluttershy picked up another stick and threw it, harder this time, into the same plant, but the large pod didn’t react as the wooden projectile struck it. Feeling slightly more hopeful, Fluttershy watched as a snake-like critter slithered out of some nearby undergrowth and approached the pod.
It coiled up and lifted it’s head to one of the growths, which squirmed and moved as if alive, and simply plucked it off the pod before swallowing it whole and slithering away. Fluttershy felt a smile come to her muzzle as she softly placed her forehoof against her head, “Silly Fluttershy, alien planet, alien food.”
Carefully flitting over to the pod, Fluttershy watched as a new growth started to be pushed out of the pod, tiny squirming nubs already waving on it’s pale flesh before she turned her attention to the fully grown ones.
It certainly was alien. Fluttershy could never have imagined a fruit that looked more like a wet ball made of clear rubber with squirming fleshy tendrils as an actual fruit, let alone one that came from a giant cucumber-like pod the size of Applejack’s dog.
Reaching out, her hoof tentatively grasped the strange food. No strange bugs or paralyzing goo seeped from it, and it didn’t do anything as she gently tugged it from its stem. Taking this as a good sign, she brought it up before her face to sniff at it.
It wasn’t a bad smell, yet it didn’t make it terribly appealing either. It smelt more of dish-washing liquid than a fruit. Shrugging it off, she placed the strange pale ball in her bag, waiting until she could deem it was truly safe to eat.
Memorizing the spot where the strange plant was, she took off.
“Fluttershy!” Pinkie called aloud, her tone surprisingly cheerful, despite recent events. The five mares were trudging through the dense undergrowth of Eden’s forests. Without the intervention of industry, the plants had thrived, meaning that very little light managed to penetrate this far down into the earth.
“Yuck,” Rarity said from the rear of the group, shaking the mud she had collected on her hoof from stepping into a slimy puddle. The lack of sunlight also meaning there was a lack of grass, allowing the ground to only be scattered with mud, sticks and rotting plant matter.
Applejack gagged as they passed the carcass of a felled tree. The stench of rotting plant matter steaming into the air around them making her stomach threaten to purge itself. The occasional speckle of light that did manage to filter its way through the canopy was usually being crowded with as many plants that could fit in whatever space the rays touched.
“Have we got any plans to find her, or are we just wandering around hopin’?” She asked.
“Unfortunately, that’s the way it seems AJ,” Twilight sighed. “Until we get into clearer areas, I can’t even use any spells to hunt her down.”
“What do ya mean?”
“Our best bet is to use a scenting spell. A bit like how a dog can sniff a pony out. I could cast on on myself, but with all these other smells around there’s no way i’d be able to pick her out.”
“That’s assuming we’re anywhere near where she is anyway,” Rainbow Dash huffed, lazily flying beside Twilight at the head of the group. “I can’t believe this! How could she do this to us? Doesn’t she know we’re her friends!” The pegasus shouted angrily.
“Calm down dash, you know how Shy is. Whatever this Mayhem character did obviously spooked her bad enough into runnin’ away. Can’t say it’s not the first time she’s turned tail and ran,” Applejack responded.
“Yeah fair enough, but that was when we were at home! We’re not safe here AJ, this is an alien planet! What if she dies out here?” Rainbow said, voicing the one thought they all had, yet none wished to say.
“What if she’s already dead?”
“Rainbow!” Rarity shouted, completely aghast. “Don’t say things like that! We’re going to find her and she’s going to be fine!”
“Oh come on Rares, lets get real a minute! Look at this place! Look at whatever took the Yamato, or those bat things! Do you think that ‘Wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly-Fluttershy’ would last against one of them?!” the pegasus shouted, voice rising to almost painful levels.
“That’s enough! Rainbow what in the name of Luna is your problem?!” Applejack said, temperature fraying. The blue pegasus looked over from her position before Rarity, before fixing Applejack with a cold stare and flying over.
“My problem? My problem is that one of our friends is M.I.A! Probably dead! And were all wandering around just hoping we might find her! And even then! What if we do? What then, huh? Take her back to the ship? The ship filled with backstabbers and m-murderers!?” She wailed, her voice cracking at the end as painful memories that had been plaguing her for the past few weeks resurfaced.
The feel of Skyline’s cold blood on her fur returned, the image of Apollo’s emotionally dead stare returned to her. The sickness she felt in her gut when she saw the mare’s chest blow open came back to her, forcing the proud athlete to the muddy forest floor.
The small herd stopped dead in the tracks as one of their members struggled with her inner emotions. Applejack’s harsh glare quickly morphed into one of understanding, as Rainbow fought as losing battle at keeping her tears in line.
Moving up slowly on the almost weeping mare, she wrapped a hoof around Rainbow’s shoulders. “Come on Dash... You know Apollo had to do what he did. He was protecting you after all,” Applejack said softly, gently rubbing her friends back in an effort to sooth her.
“H-he didn’t have to kill her!” Rainbow sniffed, “She didn’t have to die! W-we could have put her in the b-brig.”
“Dash, you know that what Vista did was high treason. That’s a death sentence anyway. You’re the element of Loyalty, Skyline was everything that you’re against,” Applejack reasoned, still basing her claims on Skylines disloyalty being the cause of Dash’s pain.
“It’s not that! It’s- it’s...” Rainbow struggled before sighing, speaking in a low tone. “It was Apollo..”
“Beg pardon, Dash?” Applejack asked.
“He- It was just- He looked so cold. He didn’t even try to help her, he just... stood there,” the pegasus shuddered.
“Oh...” Applejack said, finally realizing what was going on.
“I’ve never seen something so... Violent happen, and he never even batted an eyelid. He was just so... Cold.”
Applejack sighed, motion the two unicorns to finally come over. “If this was eating you up so bad why didn’t you come to any of us? You know we’re always here to look after you, sugarcube,” Applejack said, with a sense of true emotion behind her words.
“We’re always here for you, Dash,” Twilight said, moving to hug the pegasus.
“You can always tell your friends what’s wrong,” Rarity smiled, also joining the hug.
“I- Thanks girls,” Rainbow finally said after a few silent moments, “When we get back I wanna have a little chat with a certain stallion.”
Before anything more could be said however, the bushes rustled, and the five mares turned towards the sound as the rustling became more pronounced, leaves and other low-growing plants shaking as something approached.
“F-fluttershy?” Twilight called out cocking her head curiously at the noise. The bushes soon parted slightly to reveal a long pair of black, spindly-looking feelers that waved in the air as the plants were pushed aside to further reveal a huge, nearly twice as large as a pony, black creature that looked like…
“An ant?” Rarity muttered incredulously, “Eeugh, keep that filthy thing away from me!” She shifted and the feelers twitched towards her and the ant began to approach her, “Oh...girls, I think it wants to taste me!”
“Hold on there Rarity!” Applejack shouted, charging up to the ant’s side as it stalked towards Rarity, large mandibles clashing with an audible snap as the feelers came close to touching the white unicorn, “Back off, ya varmint!”
Years of Apple bucking allowed her to quickly spin, launching her powerful legs into the side of the giant ant with a tooth jangling crack that caused it to stagger slightly, before it turned to snap at her, “Woah Nelly!” She cried as she rolled away from the jaws, “That thing’s tougher than it looks girls! Be careful!”
The large insect began to chitter angrily, mandibles snapping angrily as it approached the mares menacingly.
Looking around the impromptu battleground, Twilight spotted a large, and hopefully heavy, log and immediately levitated it into the air, “Girls! Get clear!” Rarity and Applejack immediate dove clear as Twilight hurled the log at the ant, flattening it under the wood.
“Nice going Twi! You flattened that creep!” Rainbow shouted from above, managing to regain a measure of her confidence, before she blinked in shock, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding!”sShe shouted in disbelief.
Sure enough, the log easily rolled off the giant ant as it suddenly made a loud hissing noise, before rearing up to aim it’s abdomen at the pegasus, who yelped and dove out of the way. A jet of boiling liquid sprayed out and struck the tree behind where Rainbow had been hovering, wood and moss smoking and bubbling into mushy sludge.
“Watch out! That thing has acid!” Twilight cried as she looked for another heavy object to levitate as Applejack bucked it again, causing it to fall on it’s back, chittering angrily. Watching as it flailed and struggled to right itself, an idea came to her. Searching for a large enough rock, she came up with hurried plan. She just hoped it worked.
She turned towards Applejack and Rarity, “You two try and keep it on it’s back!” Looking up, Twilight spotted Rainbow trying to keep out of the line of fire, “Keep flying Rainbow, I need it distracted!”
“You got it!” Twilight didn’t know who responded first, the voices blurred together as she ran towards a collection of vines wrapped around a dead tree and peered through them. She thought she saw…”Ah Ha!”
There was a large boulder she had idly noticed before the fight started, cracked into three equally large pieces by the plantlife and Twilight immediately seized the sharpest-looking of them in her magic, pulling at it with all her might.
The plants resisted with their deeply entrenched roots, but Twilight quickly showed just why she was Princess Celestia’s personal student as with a cry she heaved the piece of rock out from under the vines. ‘This should be sharp enough,’ she noted in her head clinically.
She raised the rock up high and called out, “Girls! Get clear!” Taking one look at the large piece of rock being suspended in the air, Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow Dash didn’t hesitate to run as moments later the rock slammed down into the ant’s underbelly.
It screeched as Twilight lifted the rock, trying to roll back onto it’s feet, before the rock slammed into it again, and again, over and over, until with a final earth-shaking slam, the creature stopped moving as Twilight released her hold over the rock, breathing heavily.
The rock fell to the side, and as the one with the clearest view, Applejack let off a low whistle, “Well I’ll be. I had a feeling this critter was a tough one, but dang…” Moving to where she was standing, the others saw what she meant.
Even though the rock had slammed into it enough times to nearly split it’s thorax in half, there was barely any damage to the rest of it’s body as ichor stained the rock and chitin. Walking over to it, Twilight suddenly recoiled, “Ack!” She sputtered, scrubbing at her eyes with a hoof as she stumbled back.
“Twilight, are you alright!” Rarity shouted, galloping over, before stopping much further away from the corpse, “Oh my! Look!” She pointed with a forehoof and the group, even the watery-eyed Twilight, looked at the rock to see the ichor on it smoking slightly.
“Dang.” Rainbow said as she landed, crinkling her nose before placing a hoof over it, “Smells like some of the stuff they use over in the weather factory to process the rainbows.”
“You think it smells bad, Rainbow, my eyes are still watering!” Twilight snapped slightly as she rubbed her eyes, “Must be some kind of chemical in the blood reacting to the air, to dissuade any predators.”
“What in the world could prey on something so...large?” Rarity asked as she grimaced at the smell, “Ugh, if anything, the smell is worse the further away you get from it.” She gagged.
“Yeah, I reckon it’s time we put some distance between us and it. Where there’s one ant, there’s bound to be more.” Applejack cautioned and the others nodded as she turned in a different direction, “Let’s head this way, maybe we can find a river or something to wash Twilight’s eyes.”
“No. No, I’m fine.” Twilight replied, smiling despite the red in her eyes, “I just need to get some distance from it and I should be fine. At least none of us were hit with the stuff when I smashed it, who knows what it could have done.”
Applejack was about to reply when their ears flicked towards the sound of rustling, a lot more rustling, and eyes widened as Applejack said in a low voice, “Girls, I think its time for us to high-tail it outta here!”
There were no arguments as they ran into the undergrowth in the opposite direction of the rustling while Rainbow took to the air to watch for danger or anything following them. As they moved away, she turned for a moment just in time to see more of the giant ants skitter out of the bushes to swarm their fallen comrade.
She didn’t bother to stay and see what they did, Rainbow just kept her eyes firmly on her friends and path they were blazing. Wherever one ant is, there’s always bound to be more.
Fluttershy sighed absently as she toyed with the strange fruit in her hooves. Even though she had seen the snake creature eat it, but she still had no idea if she could safely consume it. Rolling it around as she inspected it, she began to cough gently. She hadn’t yet had anything to drink. The humidity and lack of sunlight had meant that very little ground scatter was dry enough to start a fire, and she wasn’t about to risk illness by drinking the alien water. The small bag she had been carrying with her only contained a few morsels of food. She hadn’t been planning on running off so they didn’t last as long as they should have.
Rubbing her dry throat, she looked around the measly excuse for a campsite she had erected. Little more than a few vines spanning from the top of one giant root to another acted as her roof, and that was about it.
Despite survival skills being a mandatory course in Flight school, she never was any good at it. “What am I doing?” she asked quietly to herself. She couldn’t believe how foolish she’d been, running off just because she wasn’t getting on well aboard the Yamato.
Everypony was feeling downtrodden after the mutiny. Running off like that and most likely making everypony sick with worry? How could she have been so selfish? She was scared, a wimpling, reverting back into the pony she didn’t want to be. All because some alien that was likely going to attack her was killed.
Sure it was a shock to see a creature die before her eyes, but Fluttershy had seen death plenty of times. Working as Ponyville’s unofficial vet was not all sunshine and happy families. She even had to put down savage dogs once or twice, and although it was hard for her, it was the same scenario that she had just been in.
The creature had to be put down, and she had run off. She had seen foals come to collect their pet’s body with their parents and they hadn’t run away! She was worse than a foal.
This sudden realization began to burn the back of her eyes as tears began to well. Yet before they had a chance to start flowing, a nearby bush began to rustle. Startling her from her thoughts, Fluttershy flicked an ear. “Hello?”
Upon speaking, the rustling suddenly intensified, the sound of strange chittering filling the air. The clacking of some unknown entity filled the air, sounding as if two planks of wood were snapping together. The mare shrunk into her shelter, hoping that whatever it was would go away.
Finally, the bush gave way to a huge, black chattering ant creature. And it was looking straight at her, mandibles snapping.