//------------------------------// // 10 // Story: Yonder Wandered Fluttershy // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Fluttershy stayed in her corner and watched, only after a minute did she start squirming a bit. She hadn’t gone to the bathroom in a while and hasn’t exactly seen one to use it since the Catspaw went up in a fiery explosion. She could feel her bladder filling up for a release and she started to look around in a panic. She hadn’t lost control of her bladder since she was a little filly; it was the reason why the butterfly swarm hadn’t stuck around after catching her after Rainbow knocked her off the clouds. “Oh mighty Komplex I have achieved much in your name, we have taken Warren and turned it into a paradise!” The pickle toad started off only to get an angry glare from the face on the screen that came down from the ceiling. “What of our incursion into our sister system Air Marshall, how well did they respond?” The dark and twisted voice of Komplex caused Fluttershy to cower; she had a clear view of him on screen and his polygonal face with his red plus sign shaped eyes along with his toothy looking mouth. “We managed to catch a few of their pilots, but we couldn’t get any of their ships as they were all destroyed. It’s not my fault, they are well defended and…” The pickle who was obviously called Air Marshall was going to continue making excuses for getting his butt handed to him several times, only he was stopped by Komplex. “Stop your simpering, I want results! We will ignore the other system for now. I want you to think of a way to infiltrate the main UAC planet of Genus past their defense systems. As for…” As Komplex was about to continue it stopped, then stared curiously at the sight going on behind all the other Croakers in the room. Fluttershy slowly crawled towards the door; she really needed to go to the bathroom. Standing up on her hind legs and looking back as she slowly hit the numbers trying to be quietly, she hadn’t been noticed yet. She was about to hit the last number when Komplex made itself known in a big way, it had more of a attention span then just about every toad in the room and was more aware of its surroundings. “You let a mammal get into the communications room; your incompetence knows no bounds! Capture that avian mammal creature immediately!” Komplex yelled, causing Fluttershy to relieve herself from fear alone of being caught and she had a large blush on her face from the embarrassment. The shy pony looked at the floor and then up to the Croakers with a sheepish smile. She turned and smashed a hoof over the last button as hard as she feasibly could given who she was, the door immediately shot up. Looking back the pony could see her friend Katt mouthing the word ‘go’ repeatedly and motioning to her. Despite the fact that she had already went, Fluttershy took off so fast that Rainbow Dash would have been proud. She had been barely missed by the stretching hand from the robotic Croaker as it slammed into the wall to her left given the angle it stretched its arm from. If there was one thing all ponies were good at, it was definitely running from danger. The soldier Croakers ran for the doorway as the robotic Croaker pulled his arm back, they didn’t get through the door as they had all slipped on the pee Fluttershy left on the floor and became a pile of entangled limbs at the doorway. The slightly smarter Croakers just immediately opened fire on the poor freaked out pegasus. It was one thing to pee all over the floor, but in public and in front of aliens? Fluttershy had never been so embarrassed or scared in her life, she’d probably have nightmares about this one for a while if she lived long enough to get a full nights rest again. At least she got all the liquid out of her in one go, she was also a bit parched though it mattered little in the current situation. Fluttershy squealed slightly as alarms started blaring around her as a fresh batch of Croakers started firing on her as she randomly ran down the hallways without Katt to guide her. She was causing a lot of chaos aboard the ship at this time. Tripping over her hooves Fluttershy fell down a hole that had a ladder down to the floor below, she slammed harshly to the metal flooring onto her back. It caused her to gasp and cry out as a sharp pain shot up her right wing, her left wing getting hurt was hardly noticeable in comparison. She was slightly stunned and slowly got onto her hooves; she shook her head and continued to set an impressive pace that even her chickens back home would be surprised at after taking so many bumps and bruises. Why was Fluttershy setting such a frantic pace? Well the giant robotic monster that had managed keep track of her would be one of the reasons. It was fast for something so large and it was very scary looking. She skidded around the corner and passed through some doors that opened automatically, she stopped running as she entered the doorway and paused. Every Croaker in the room was eating something or getting some food, they all slowly turned to stare at her. “Oh, um sorry to barge in like this… I’ll just be leaving if that’s okay with all of you.” Fluttershy turned around and almost ran into Toadborg, she would have been caught right there if it wasn’t for the wall of energy weapons discharging into his face blinding him and making him quite angry. She galloped between the robotic creatures legs while Croakers shouting angrily about mammals on the loose in the ship. The energy weapons fire followed her down the hallway for a few feet before one was lucky enough to shoot her in the back of the head knocking her to the floor. Fluttershy wondered why she hadn’t felt pain and then realized she could no longer understand what the Croakers were saying; her translator had been struck and damaged. Fluttershy stood up and would have continued running if one of the Croakers hadn’t struck a nearby steam pipe, sending a spray of steam at her causing to raise her hooves in front of herself reflexively. She disappeared into a cloud of steam that rose towards the high ceiling of the corridors. Toadborg thundered forward and grabbed one of the Croakers to yell something angrily at him; he didn’t seem particularly pleased to have lost his quarry. He started pointing down the hallways and the Croakers started off searching for the mammal intruder. Fluttershy felt relaxed, the steam cloud felt like a nice cozy blanket. It reminded her of the sauna back home at the spa. It was relieving her of all her of stress, aches and pains. Once it cooled down enough she was going to squeeze some water out of the cloud that had formed around her. It was a surprise to the pony that the steam cloud didn’t hurt her, instead it had struck her hooves and given how pegasus magic worked, her intentions and needing a safe place to hide generated a cloud that lifted her from the floor. The croakers didn’t know she could stand on or hide in clouds so she was safe for the moment. The reason Toadborg had lost her with his sensors was because the surrounding cloud had masked her body temperature for a short while. It was long enough to evade his sight, at least for the moment. Reaching up with her hooves, the shy pony removed her translator device and saw the back left portion of it had been blasted open causing her to frown at it. She didn’t know how to fix it, maybe Katt or someone else could. She might even get someone to make another one for her, but now she just looked at it sadly before she placed it back on her head. Fluttershy scooped up a bit of cloud that had cooled down and started squeezing fresh clean water into her mouth. After having squeezed more than half the cloud into fresh water, she wondered what Katt was doing right now and how she was going to safely get to the floor. A cloud held together or formed with magic tended to have staying power until the magic runs out or the cloud was dispersed by something else so she was stuck on the small cloud until she destroyed it and there was plenty of steam from below to continue feeding the cloud until they shut down the valve that was spewing it into the air. Deciding to stay on the cloud for a while she watched as the ship was in a state of alert and there were Croakers actively looking for her everywhere. It was just a good thing none of them looked up or above the cloud hanging near the ceiling, Fluttershy didn’t know what to do as they were armed and everywhere, she very well couldn’t ask Katt to fix her translator and she didn’t even know where Katt was. Another thing that was a problem was getting back to her saddlebags and the food in them, not to mention what would happen if she needed another bathroom break. Many would think Fluttershy to be a coward; they weren’t far off if there was no reason for her to be brave and or righteously indignant. So what would she do? She very well couldn’t turn herself in without getting shot at, there were armed Croakers everywhere and they didn’t look like they were in a talking mood. Unless you could think of something, she was going to be in a lot of trouble. After a few minutes of thinking it over, Fluttershy decided it was a good idea to put her trust into some of the nicer Croakers. There were two of them who were less violent and more likely to just capture her without putting all too much effort into figuring out what to do with her. Frix and Frax seemed like nice Croakers and didn’t particularly seem overly violent or anything, now if only she could get to them where the slaves were kept without getting caught first. Turning to her left wing she test it by extending it fully, it was bruised but she could still flap it without feeling pain. Carefully standing up, Fluttershy encased herself in cloud and broke herself off from the rest of the mass of cloud. While looking to the right she flapped her left cloud wing sideways while angling it upwards. It was a fish made out of cloud swimming lazily through the air moving slowly downward. Surprisingly the Croakers ignored the cloud fish and the obvious weirdness of it, which is for the ones who actually saw it and didn’t think much of it. They were looking for a quadruped mammal not a cloud shaped fish swimming around as if it were naturally supposed to be there. Thanks to ignorance and good steering Fluttershy managed to get back to where the slaves were being kept bypassing a vent she had crawled out of earlier. There was a reason why she wasn’t using the vents now and Fluttershy had really thought it out, if the Croakers found out that their vents were being used then they’d find Katt or their stuff lying around. Since they weren’t going to stop being alert until they caught her, then catch her they will and maybe Katt could get away. Poking her head slightly out of the cloud Fluttershy looked down the hallway to the two toads who were still sitting there as lazy as they ever were. Waving her left wing, she steered her cloud to the floor. As soon as her hooves were on the floor she gathered up the cloud from around her body and drank what little water she could condense from it and then started quietly walking towards the Croakers. She really didn’t want to spook them; even then they didn’t look like they had weapons of any kind and looked relaxed in comparison to every other Croaker on the ship that. Every croaker on the ship were thinking she was going to head towards the more important sections of the ship or would be attempting to steal a fighter to escape the ship, not one Croaker would ever suspect her of going straight to where the slaves were being held much less that she was now standing behind the two most incompetent Croakers alive. She just stood there out in the open and clearly within sight of the desk leading to the cells and waited, Fluttershy just blinked a few times as she went completely unnoticed. The two Croakers talked to each other and just focused on what was happening on the screen. “Um… excuse me.” Fluttershy intoned, even if she couldn’t be understood she could still make noise to attract attention to herself. The entire ship was out to get her except in the one place where they would put her if she was taken alive, Fluttershy kind of felt bad for being so elusive like this. The two toads said something to each other, the one on the left waved the other off and they continued to watch the screens excitedly. Apparently there was some kind of advertisement on the screen one that Fluttershy likely would never understand, the volume wasn’t even that loud so they must have heard and decided that she wasn’t important. Fluttershy just gave them a flat look with a frown on her face and just shook her head; maybe she hadn’t been loud enough. “Excuse me, but I believe I’m to be taken prisoner now.” Again Fluttershy went completely ignored as the one Croaker turned to the other and asked something, the other shrugged. Even she didn’t think she was that quiet, she knows that she can be a little shy but this was a tad ridiculous. Fluttershy decided to get their attention in a more profound way; she crawled up on top of the desk and stood there. It was about ten minutes later as far as she could guess of sitting on the desk did she frown again as the screen went to another advertisement, she laid down on the desk and wrapped her tail around her side and got comfortable. She might as well learn something about their culture while she was sitting here in plain sight behind the two watching the screens. Many would think Frix and Frax were ridiculously inattentive; they just loved television too much to do their jobs effectively after having been drafted into positions of very low importance. To miss something as clearly odd as a pony sitting right behind or in front of you in a relaxed resting position would be impossible and pushing the limits of reality as it were. They just kept eating their snacks and sitting there ignoring the pony within three feet of them even though Frax took notice of her once. After talking with Frix about something as if discussing her presence and something involving the fact that she was watching the screens with them, Frax shrugged and went back to watching the TV. Fluttershy just let her jaw drop in complete surprise, she had been spotted and they just… well at least they were nice enough to not bother her as long as she wasn’t doing anything to bother them. The three continued to watch TV and Fluttershy learned a bit off the Croakers culture; apparently they were a bit weird and tended to enjoy what appeared to be shoddily made products. Their screens were showing what appeared to be plays and or talent shows, the Croakers weren’t very inventive and the writing sounded horrible but they were still proud about it. Fluttershy could understand that they were proud of at least doing their best; because otherwise she was taking in everything with humorous thoughts running through her head about how silly these Croakers were. This was despite their violent natures whether it is because of the mind controlling machine like Rob sixty four or otherwise. Even if it was part of a mind control signal, watching it had absolutely no effect on Fluttershy and it was interesting that what was seen was something the toads had already been doing long before the mind control took place. After a while Fluttershy got bored with watching the screens and decided to take a nap. After a while she found the TV shows were a tad mind numbing after she got tired of watching it even when she could only follow things by body language, whereas it would be considered torture to any of the natives to this system. After a while Frix and Frax noticed that she was falling asleep and shrugged, they’d later put Fluttershy away in a cell with the slave and they’d be both quiet and gentle about it. They didn’t even know what it was they were putting in with the other prisoners and were the sole reason why the rest of the ship couldn’t find the pony at all. All the two toadies knew was that she was just like a mammal considering her fluffy nature and had wings like a bird making her a strange cross of avian; despite the mind control and the enforced hatred of all mammals by heavily controlled propaganda they thought Fluttershy was adorable and cute. They had no disgust with her at all and petted her without waking her up; they kind of liked her mane. They noticed one of her wings was injured and bandaged it up after getting rid of the old bandages. Having no malice for the pony they decided that since she was at least partially a mammal and all mammals were to be prisoners they would put her in with the others, they did so gently and didn’t even bother to confiscate the odd device she was wearing on her head and went back to what they were previously doing. The slaves were all surprised to see Fluttershy be brought in and with fresh bandages on her wing no less. She was sleeping so peacefully, as she was placed on the floor sleeping comfortably without a fear in the world. The fact that she was treated so gently by the two Croakers was a bit of a shock to see for all the mammals in toad captivity. The slaves all gathered around the friendly angel that had told them everything would be okay, one even took notice of the damaged device and took it off her head and looked it over and figured they could fix it once they figure out what it did. The slaves didn’t know what the device did but it did have a microphone and after a while of looking it over, the slaves figured it wasn’t a mind control device as Fluttershy had been wearing it previously when she came by to tell them all to be very cooperative. The device hadn’t been damaged then and after hearing all the alarms, it certainly was damaged now and the toads wouldn’t shoot at something that was giving them control of this creature. The pony looked the same as she had been last time if lightly bruised in several places and had obviously been capture given she was put in with them now. If what the pony had said was true there was one other person on the ship that was working on their collective freedom. The slaves could only hope that the other being could pull it off. Thanks to Fluttershy getting captured Katt’s plan went off without a hitch, though Fluttershy being captured wouldn’t initially appear to have done anything until a few days later. In those few days Frix and Frax would become friends with Fluttershy and even actively resist the mind control and hateful propaganda within her presence treating the slaves much better then they previously had. In fact the two toads were helping the mammals with their injuries and giving them more food than normal.