Fluttershy was in the hangar of the ship and looking at the four pilots who were there to see her off before they went to a more dangerous place, a planet that was aptly named Venom. Even a single whiff of that planet’s atmosphere could kill a hundred ponies in seconds because it was just that poisonous. Even touching the dirt there was deadly.
“Thank you for coming to see me off and everything else you’ve done for me.” The pony gave each one a hug and a kiss on the cheek except for one who she was saving for last; she smiled up at Pep as she finished her hug with him. “I remind you of your daughter and you remind me of a good friend.”
“Glad to be of service young lady, I guess this is goodbye huh? You be okay you hear me?” Pep said with a smile, Fluttershy nodded and turned to the last target of a hug and smooch.
“What are you looking at space hippie?” Falco was as abrasive as ever leaning against the wall with his feathered arms cross and looking away.
“A friend, even if he’s a little upset that I’m leaving.” Fluttershy hugged him wrapping her hooves around his waist and after that with a flap of her wings she got up to his cheek with a quick kiss. Whereas others had leaned down for her she had to fly up to him, he didn’t try to stop her either and just blushed slightly but kept trying to play it cool just like Rainbow Dash would.
“Just get going already, we’ve got a mission to accomplish and we can’t wait hours on end for you to leave you stupid space hippie.” Falco had a slight smirk as he said this.
“Okay, Ms. Monroe do you have everything ready?” Fluttershy trotted her way up to the pink ship, the Catspaw it was slightly larger than the fighters Fox and his friend used and it was her transport to safety. It could seat two comfortably and was created to be a long range fighter that can go from planet to planet without needing a transport ship, its main purpose was to be a heavy assault bomber and Katt had gutted it slightly to be a bit roomier. She had already put her saddlebags onboard in the back of the fighter and all she needed to do was climb in.
“Yep, just got to get my last bit of cargo onboard and she’s taking her dear sweet time saying goodbye to this gaggle of idiots.” Katt didn’t look up from what she was doing and was busy running her claws over several things in her ships open cockpit and was doing last minute checks on all her systems before launch. “It’s nice to see they have the time to say goodbye to such a sweet thing like you, the universe needs more innocent people like you Fluttershy and less people who’d prey on that innocence.”
“I’m sure you’ll get home eventually Fluttershy, but until then we hope that you’ll like Corneria. Your best bet for getting there Katt is by cutting between sector X and Solaris and going to Katina for a supply stop.” Fox ruffled Fluttershy’s mane causing her to squeak adorably and he chuckled lightly at that. He hefted her up onto the ship when she could have just as easily flown up and into it. Fox’s tone got serious again and he held out a slip of paper which Katt took as Fluttershy crawled in behind her piloting seat. “They recently fought off a bunch of Venom Army invaders and had a bit of a time destroying a Venom super weapon, so it should be safe from there on out once you reach that point. If you run into any trouble once you arrive ask for my buddy Bill Grey and tell him Fox is a friend of yours, if he’s still stationed there he should help you out. If you get attacked or can’t reach Katina for some reason then launch an SOS on this frequency in that general direction and try to go for Fichina instead and ask for a Lucy Hare. She should be able to look out for Fluttershy and take her in if you can’t reach Corneria.”
“My daughter sent me a message saying that Fichina was secured after the Venom Army threatened the base there with a bomb. My daughter is a good pilot in a pinch and helped them out by defusing the bomb that the Venom Army planted.” Pep was certainly proud of his daughter saving the day, his daughter the astrophysicist, pilot and a hero. She may be able to one day find Fluttershy’s home planet.
“Got it, I don’t think any of you are going to die except maybe Slip unless he really steps up his game. See you later Falco, have fun getting your tail feathers singed and may your ego be ever so bloated since that’s how I like it.” Katt giggle at that and gave them time to clear the hangar. She closed up her ship and looked back at Fluttershy with a smile. “Did you go to the bathroom before you got in? I’m just asking because it’s going to be a long while before we come across another toilet like the ones they have onboard, they’re so freaking clean I could probably eat a three course meal on them without getting sick.”
“I’m okay Katt and thanks for the compliment.” Fluttershy received a surprised look from the pink humanoid cat. “I did a lot of cleaning for Fox and his team, it was the least I could do after they helped me get off of Aquas and after they saved all those poor sea creatures from those mean polluters.”
“I just knew it, no guy I know would ever keep a toilets that sparkling clean. This is the Catspaw, we’re heading out and we’re going to full throttle once we get out into open space to hopefully avoid any trouble.” Katt started flicking several controls and the ship lifted into the air causing Fluttershy to jump slightly with fright. It took the pony a moment to calm her nerves down before they shot out of the hangar at insane speeds causing the mare to give off a pitiful hardly audible scream.
“Stay safe and good flight to you Katt!” Fox was last heard saying over the communications as they were quickly getting out of range.
Katt and Fluttershy were safely heading away from Macbeth and there were no enemy signals on the radar. After a moment she started to work something on her controls and then she leaned back to relax.
“Well got anything you want to talk about Flutter? It’s going to be a while and this ship is now on autopilot so I’m not going to be all too busy unless something goes wrong.” Katt looked behind her seat and snickered at the poor pegasus lying on her back with her hooves in the air. “Yeah, Catspaw has kind of a kick doesn’t it? The guys who designed this ship knew what they were doing and it has quite a good cruising speed, it’s just so unfortunate that it requires me to reroute the power from the weapons to get it going this fast without compromising the shields.”
“Um… I’m not exactly the most technologically savvy pony Katt, but that all sounds very nice. My people aren’t exactly this technologically advanced, though we do technically have the ability to get into outer space at this point in time. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant experience to be the first of all pony kind to come out this far.” The more she thought about it, the paler Fluttershy got. “Oh I hope they don’t make a big deal of me being the first space traveling pony, I really don’t like large amounts of attention.”
“How come you don’t like attention? You’d be a celebrity of your entire species to be the first one to go into space, even if it was admittedly against your will that you did. You get lost and then to return home valiantly to accolades of having survived your experience with the bubble and with tales of what it’s like out here… well after you can figure out how to find your home that is.” It had been an intriguing topic of discussion and Katt was also into the idea of relatively easy space travel by magic bubble. Fluttershy hadn’t been too amused and pointed out something to Katt and the others while they were eating, while the bubble did protect her from the airless vacuum of space it didn’t help with the fact that she nearly starved to death riding in it.
“Would you believe I had a career as a supermodel? I didn’t like it very much and I prefer my nice quiet home with all my animal friends compared to all the stuff they put me through. It all started when a friend of mine named Rarity wanted me to model some dresses for her.” Thus started Fluttershy and her tale how she made her spa date partner jealous with envy. Talking about it out loud, Fluttershy let a hint of despair creep into her voice as she had probably missed several spa dates already because of how long she has been gone.
Hours later in the middle of a nap, Fluttershy was jerked awake when she felt the Catspaw shudder. She looked around blindly panicking before remember that she was on a fighter with Katt who was looking just as panicked.
“We’re close to Katina, but we may have just acquired a large problem with getting there. Now let’s see who the jerks are that messed with my catnap.” Katt quickly worked over her console and blinked confusedly at the data she was receiving. “Quick question, does that thing look familiar to you?”
“Um… no, I’ve never seen anything like it before and I’m not exactly a well traveled astro pony.” What Fluttershy was looking at was a huge green and grey colored ship that reminded her vaguely of a giant turtle. It three fin shaped masses sticking out of it, a lot of glowing orange bubble shapes dotted along its hull, the front of the ship looked like it had a head with two of those orange bubbles for eyes and it was bearing down right on them firing large beams of energy.
“I was afraid you’d say that, there have been rumors of out of system abductors and I guess we just found them. That’s just our luck huh? Well they’re not taking us without fight.” Katt immediately started off by trying to open a communications channel with Katina. “Mayday mayday, this Katt Monroe of the Catspaw, we’re currently on approach for Katina and if you can hear me, I’m under attack, please respond anyone.”
“Um… Katt…” Fluttershy from her position looked up at the massive ship opened its mouth to watch it unleash a swarm of fighters at them. The fighters were wide looking green and yellow with two red bubbles on top and each bubble held a figure in it, the side of the ships either had claws or a four barreled energy weapon cannons of some kind.
“Don’t worry I see them.” It was all Katt had to say about the approaching fighters that were starting to catch up to them along with the larger ship. “I repeat this is Katt Monroe of the Catspaw, is there anyone out there? Damn it all, if there is a Bill Grey there you better get your butt out here and help me! The carrier ship currently tailing me has launched fighters and there’s too many of them to handle on my own.”
“This is Katina defense base Catspaw; did you just say Bill Grey? He’s one of our pilots; we’re just now scrambling some ships to help you. How long can you hold out and what kind of enemy forces are you seeing? Are they from the Venom Army? We just got finished booting them out of our forward defense zone, how can they have possibly licked their wounds this fast.” The operator on the other end of the communications device sounded exasperated and Fluttershy wanted to feel sorry for him.
“I’ll see what I can do, just get your butts out here and quick! They are confirmed as not being of the Venom Army and they have unknown weapons capacity and…” The Catspaw rocked hard as a blast of energy struck its shields, Katt grunted audibly but held onto the controls. The Catspaw slowed down and Katt steered her ship around to face the fighter swarm. “Darn it, my shields just took a huge hit. I can’t outpace them and I’m going on the offensive. I’m sending you visual data now, I can only assume they are the rumored out of system abductors and are trying to take me and my passenger alive. Repeat, my fighter is about to become a can of creamed vegetable matter if I don’t get some immediate support and I don’t like the idea of anal probing.”
“We have fighter squadrons en route with an ETA five minutes, hold them off as best you can if you can’t outrun them. Katina base has the received visual recordings; we finally know what those bastards that have been blindsiding our patrols look like now. Give them hell until we can assist Catspaw! We’re now monitoring your attackers so we can know what to scan for next time, Katina defense base out.” After the voice on the other end of the communications feed went off, Katt flicked her long range communications off and immediately started firing burst of shots into the fighters while weaving deftly between them and the grasping tethered claws that some of them fired at her ship.
Fluttershy cowered down and whimpered as Katt sent the ship spiraling and twisting through the enemy formation and a wall of energy beams lancing out all around them. The Catspaw was ripping through quite a few of their ships, leaving behind several floating bubbles that started flying back towards the large ship that had spewed them out.
“Don’t worry Fluttershy; we’re going to get through this.” Katt swerved between two of the ships as they blasted each other with their grappling claws and blasted apart three more ships only to see something that made her flinch. “Or not… hold on to something!”
Why did this have to happen to them? Was it something Fluttershy did to deserve her friend being put into danger because of her? The mare grabbed the back of Katt’s seat wrapping her hooves tightly around it as the large ship hit them with a shot that sent the Catspaw spinning.
“Darn it, don’t they know how long it took me to get a ship like this? Ugh, I’m hit and I think we’re ducked, my engines are at half strength and are probably getting worse.” Even with this knowledge Katt spun the Catspaw about and lanced her lasers through several more ship when a grapple claw hit the rear of the fighter and clamped down on it.
“Katt… I don’t think we can escape.” Fluttershy noticed that for every ship Katt destroy the bubbles would always make it back to the larger ship and more enemy craft would fly out, another grapple slammed home on the struggling Catspaw forcing her to the floor. It was too damaged to try and break free anymore.
“Fluttershy get your things, once we’re brought aboard we’re going to hit the floor running because I’m going to blow up the Catspaw and we’ll try to find a place to hide once onboard.” Not needing to tell her pony friend twice, Katt pulled out her personal laser pistol from a spot above her seat, a small medical kit she clipped to her waste, a small box of her own ration bars also put at her waste and a data pad that held the information on her ship was pocketed. “This is Catspaw to Katina squad, I’m caught and I’m going to blow my ship once it’s brought aboard. We’ll try to find a safe place to squirrel for a time before trying to escape. Repeat my ship is totaled and I’m going to play groundhog with my passenger to infiltrate their ship.”
“We hear you Catspaw. We might not be able to stop them from bringing you onboard and we’re sorry for that, but we can nail quite a few of their fighters for you. If you find out where they’ve taken some of our people, get back to us in any way you can with the information, we will pay you well for it if you can manage it.” The Katina fighters had finally arrived, but the Catspaw was already being towed right into the mouth of the large unidentified carrier ship.
“Thanks, if you ever come into hear from a Fox Mccloud asking around about us. Tell him that Katt and Fluttershy got a little sidetracked by circumstances beyond their control.” Flicking off her communications with the sudden swarm of fighters from Katina that started ripping into the unknown wide two bubbled fighters, Katt turned to a whimpering Fluttershy. “Are you okay?”
“I’m so sorry about all this trouble I got you into Katt!” Fluttershy wailed at being the cause of her friend’s great loss in the now less than functional fighter that was now in the huge ship.
“Shush now, this isn’t your fault Fluttershy. So be quiet now, you couldn’t have possibly known about these guys even I didn’t see coming. Sure losing the Catspaw may hurt me emotionally for a while, but I’ll show these bastards that you don’t mess with Katt O’ Nine Hells Monroe! Now get ready to move your cute little tattooed butt cuddle toy, because this ship will explode in twenty seconds once I pop the cockpit.” Katt held her right hand over the button that would start the countdown and blow the canopy of the ship and looked at Fluttershy who nodded shyly. “When I hit this button start flying or running and don’t you dare look back. So long Catspaw, I wish our parting wasn’t so bitter and sad. At least you have one last trick left in you.”
Fluttershy had packed her saddlebags and flared out her wings waiting for Katt to hit the button that would doom her much beloved ship, Katt loved it like Rarity would love a big diamond. There was the sudden feeling of weight and the Catspaw was released from the grapple claws causing it to fall to the floor with loud thud shaking the both of them up. The pony took a look through the canopy and could see a lot of strange bipedal beings holding what appear to be elongated versions of the laser pistol Katt was now holding in her left hand.
Lifting up her right hand, Katt slapped it down harshly and the canopy exploded outwards suddenly filling the area around the Catspaw with smoke. She quickly wrapped her right hand around Fluttershy’s mane and violently threw her forward before jumping out herself.
Fluttershy hit the floor confused and started running when beams of energy lanced out at her, she started crying when one of the shots managed to go through one of her upraised wings when she tried to start flying. It splattered her blood on the floor of the hangar, not to mention tripping and falling on her face.
Despite the pain Fluttershy leapt to her hooves and galloped forwards for the opening away from the gathered bipedal creatures shooting at her, she didn’t see Katt anywhere in front of her. Looking behind her Katt was managing to keep up while firing shots at into a crowd of would be captors taking several of them down. The next thing Fluttershy knew her world exploded with pain and she was lying on her side, her vision was all blurry after the sudden bright flash and she couldn’t hear anything anymore it was all so silent. The last thing she saw was two pink arms wrapping around her body lifting her from the floor before she promptly blacked out as the pain became too much.