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// 39 
// Story: Yonder Wandered Fluttershy 
// by Darkonshadows 
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“Fluttershy turn left at the next intersection and go straight from there, you’ll reach the power source in no time. After that you do whatever it is you got in mind and if you’re still breathing by then, I’ll try to guide you back to Head Case or whatever it’s called. Remind me to set up an appointment with a psychologist for you when you get back or you could find one out there if it will help.” Discord had a frown as he stared off into space and the magical screen next to him showed Fluttershy jerking the floating vehicle around the corner where its back right end became more damaged then it already was by being on fire. It fishtailed after bouncing off the wall a bit before Fluttershy managed to get it under control, the corridor seemed well lit and undamaged compared to what Discord had seen already. “Oh and those two eyed flying black and purple pony beaters are about to catch up with you. They sure look well armed to me, but they aren’t going to beat you because you’ll play rough!”

For some reason Fluttershy felt like slapping Discord when she got back to Equus, his last comment sounded way too familiar. It was like a reference to a song she once heard about a monster with one long horn and one big eye… it was possibly purple or did it eat things that were purple? She just vaguely remembered Twilight having problems with one given that such a thing actually existed on Equus.

Shaking her head Fluttershy knew things were about to get hectic, she tried to get her game face on which was basically her just grimacing. So far things had been quiet since she managed to get out of the horde of metal mouths, but that didn’t mean anything as she was expecting things to get really bad. At least the fire from the back right corner of the vehicle eventually went out.

The vehicle was flying straight forward down the center of the corridor passing by several intersecting hallways and out of one of the hallways behind Fluttershy the three purple masked ones appeared riding hover boards. These hover boards were moving at a good enough speed to keep up with the armored troop transport and the humanoid machines had to have had excellent balance to stay on them like they were without falling off.

The foot soldiers started throwing metal stars and these thrown weapons were a far sight more accurate than their shots with a laser rifle. They impacted the general area around where Fluttershy was, she had to actively duck out of the way of the pointy sharp metal stars. She wouldn’t have had to move at all if they were wielding laser rifles.

Fluttershy steadied herself back into a standing as she twisted around on her left hind leg to put her back against the control panel, one of those star things they were throwing almost went into her neck. A few of the other metal stars had bounced off the controls and one sunk halfway into the armored metal next to her shoulder. They were definitely throwing those things with a very scary amount of accuracy.

Aiming steadily with the laser rifle, the pony snapped off quite a few shots which were deftly dodged by the metal throwing ninja robots as they swerved left and right weaving through the shots with the deftest of precision. They continued their barrage of throwing weapons with their aim slightly thrown off, but still far more dangerous than when they had the laser rifles.

After a moment of reflection, Fluttershy aimed a little lower and immediately destroyed all three hover boards without a fuss in the next three shots. Apparently they were good at dodging fire coming directly at them on those highly maneuverable floating boards; only they weren’t as good when it came to getting said hard to miss boards shot out from underneath them.

“Look out Fluttershy!” The warning from the voice immediately made Fluttershy duck down, it may have aggravated her broken leg but she had been missed by another masked hover board rider as it passed by the right side of the vehicle. If not for the warning Fluttershy would have been a head shorter on the principles of momentum alone not to mention that there was also extra force applied to the sword that just whiffed by.

The foot soldier sped up and jumped off the hover board and onto the back of the vehicle, lunging forward it brought its sword down in an overhead swing at Fluttershy who parried it with her rifle. The laser rifle being made of the same metals as the sword deflected the blow taking some cosmetic damage and Fluttershy was knocked down. The foot soldier had staggered backwards from its unsuccessful second attack to be shot through the chest seconds later causing it to flip backwards out of the vehicle.

Getting back up Fluttershy narrowly missed getting a metal star to the eye; it still grazed her right cheek leaving a thin line of blood flowing from her face. She obviously had more of those hover board riding robots on her. She brought her rifle up and staggered her shots in a few bursts at a time, she didn’t want the rifle to stop working after prolonged periods of shooting and especially not while she was in a situation like this one.

Ahead of the action the wall bulged slightly as Fluttershy was fighting off another foot soldier boarding the vehicle, at least this one wasn’t armed with a weapon and was just trying to bludgeon her with its fists. It managed to land a hit on her wing covered chest causing her to cough up some blood by aggravating her wounds. As soon as the rover closed in to the bulge in the wall, three mousers burst out in a shower of small chunks of silver metal.

Fluttershy was shocked when the masked one she was fighting off fell off the left side of the transport when it took a metal mouth to the face. The other two had managed to clamp onto one of the hover boards and the rider switched from attacking her to attacking them instead. Looking behind her she could see more bulges in the wall and she frowned, not to mention more hover boards riders and along with a few hover bikes. Her ears wilted in dismay as the bikes fell behind her damaged transport and started peppering it with their more powerful mounted energy weapons. 

The bike riders aim with the energy weapons was surprisingly much better then when they used the rifles, but they were still nowhere near hitting Fluttershy directly with them. That alongside the random metal mouths continuing to pop out of the walls was making things much more chaotic by the second, since they were attacking both Fluttershy and her pursuers with vicious efficiency.

At this point the pony had a hard time keeping up with everything going on at once.  She smacked a Mouser off the vehicle with her gun into the face of a foot soldier; she turned slightly to the right shooting another masked machine riding a hover board causing it to spin into another one. The two masked machines were both swarmed by Mousers bursting out of the walls after both their hover boards crashed. The pony rolled towards the back to avoid being stabbed by the thrice damned sneakier foot soldiers that came at her with a sword. She managed to dodge it in a way to take out another foot soldier bisecting it before it could completely board the vehicle. The pony then tripped up the sword wielder by hooking the end of her gun behinds its left leg and it fell off the side of the vehicle.

Fluttershy wasn’t a pony born for war, but any pony who knew their history knows that the pegasi were the most militaristic long before the joining of the three tribes. Fluttershy was currently making her long dead ancestors proud for how quickly she became a combat pragmatist, with everything constantly exploding around her it was an inevitable result.  Even if her nerves were shot, her body was slowly failing her and her mind was not enjoying the violence one bit, she was still shooting metal mouths by the bucket loads whenever they got on the vehicle and began gnawing away at it.

This was quite the battle with Fluttershy being overwhelmed from all sides, it got especially bad when the cable whipping robots finally showed up and started lashing out trying to snag the pony.  They were gouging out quite a few bits of armor from the vehicle and were much more focused on her than the ever increasing number of metal mouths and humanoid machines. At least the two factions were a little busy with each other; she kind of wished the same could be said about the ones that could kill her if they got one of their cables around her pretty little neck just once.

A jerk made the slowly standing Fluttershy gasp as she struggled with not falling over, all the tumbling around to shoot leaping maws of death was really getting to her and she noticed that two cable robots had latched onto the back end of the vehicle with their cables and were actually managing to slow it down. It was dangerous for the vehicle to get any slower while being swarmed like this, looking towards the front of the vehicle she could bulges building up in the walls ahead of it down the corridor.

Picking up her left hoof off the floor, Fluttershy tried to get a bead on the two cable throwers that had latched onto the vehicle. She had fired several shots at the cable but the damage was minimal as they were a bit thick. Switching to shooting the robots themselves she was actually doing some damage, but not nearly enough to get them to let go as they actively avoided her shots by moving left and right while staying tethered to the vehicle. Their lasers popped out to return fire forcing Fluttershy to take cover behind the damaged back wall of the vehicle.

The roaring sound of an engine was heard and it was followed by two explosions and with another jerk of the transport picking up speed again Fluttershy poked her head up over the wall as the two cables went limp, her eyes widened at the destroyed ripped in half robots and was watching Roller as he tore through a few of the hover board riders before catching up to the vehicle and leaping into it. He came to dead stop right next to her. There were also more hover bikes giving chase now and they were easily catching up.

Roller puttered softly while rubbing up next to the injured Fluttershy, the pony moved to say something while petting his carapace only for a huge crash to be heard coming from the floor behind them.

Looking up from her sitting position Fluttershy stared on in shock as ‘The Mouth’ had ripped a huge hole in the floor and if her vehicle had been moving any slower that would have been her that was in its mouth. The front and back ends fell down as a bike was crunched up in those mighty jaws as it ran after Fluttershy and her current mode of transport. It hadn’t erupted from the floor then stopped to get its bearings; it had erupted from the floor already running as if it knew exactly where she would be if Roller hadn’t interfered.

Fluttershy sat there frozen as the machine opened its mouth and started firing sphere after sphere of metal that unrolled into more metal mouths. One metal mouth had just had about had its mouth around her neck ready to chomp down on it only to be shredded in a blast of magical stardust exhausting from Roller’s four tubes. This brought Fluttershy back into action as she tried to stand and found it very hard to do before Roller got underneath her and helped her move towards the now slightly damaged control panel; she shifted her rifle onto her back once she reached them.

Behind the pony the foot soldiers were attacking the Big Mouser with all they had and were doing minimal damage at best. The ninja stars were ineffective so they went back to chucking them at Fluttershy, the lasers on the hover bikes might have been doing something and the most effective of them all was the sword users but they were always swiftly crushed or bashed to pieces before they could get in too many good hits that left small rents in the armor. The foot soldiers had had problems with a Big Mouser before and they had only taken out the previous one with the help of several Techno Rovers that were the first ground based versions all working together to put down a single Big Mouser. Needless to say most of those rovers no longer existed from that incident and what few they did have left might not have been nearly enough heavy firepower.

Fluttershy steered the vehicle while taking quick glances over her shoulder to avoid the incoming metal mouths, The Mouth was making them much faster after consuming that bike and a few of the hover board riding humanoid machines heckling it in mid run to the point that the speed it was creating the little ones was unreal.

Looking ahead trying not to think about the monstrous thing behind her, Fluttershy avoided more metal mouths bursting from the walls and almost got a few sentries dropped onto the vehicle for it. One did come close, but it was rammed away by Roller before it could really become a problem.

Roller was determined to stay right next to Fluttershy as he was worried about her state of health, he realized that his friend didn’t have an armored carapace like he did and his was slightly dented from running into these things repeatedly. His friend was not only really nice being, but also a really tough one too despite having most of her body exposed to injury.

Off from a different corridor a familiar sight rolled out ahead of Fluttershy, it was one of the tank versions of the transport Fluttershy was riding in and out of the top of the vehicle’s turret popped Alpha-one. Fluttershy didn’t know who Alpha-one was; all she knew was that he was intelligent and that whatever he just said was directed at her. Considering his deep voice and dark tone of inflection behind it, he most likely said something about wanting her dead and was going to do horrible things to her body after the fact. It wouldn’t surprise Fluttershy at this point if she was spot on because she has seen so many things like this already, which was even before she got lost in outer space. Who could have guessed that all hydras were sadists from that time she went watching them in their natural habitat?

Between a rock and a hard place Fluttershy aimed the frontal laser cannon upwards and fired. She might not have hit her target who had ducked out of sight, but it was definitely worth a shot. The tank turned it’s turret around and Fluttershy veered the vehicle out of the way of its shot which was much more powerful than the one her vehicle could produce. The back left end of her vehicle was struck and so was The Mouth behind her, that part of her vehicle exploded and it was once again caught on fire and started wobbling in the air. 

The Big Mouser too some damage to one of its eyes, it roared and fire two powerful beams into the tank as Fluttershy veered out the way. It then started spitting as many Mousers as it could get onto the tank, the hover board riders were the ones that started dealing with them since the ones inside the tank obviously couldn’t.

It was only seconds after the exchange that Fluttershy’s eyes widened as she flew high up into a large cavernous circular room, the hum of the energy source was quite apparent. They were at the core of the vessel, now Fluttershy had to make a decision about what to do before… the entire transport shuddered as it was rocked with a blast.

The frontal cannon had exploded by a hit from the tank and it was slowly falling out of the air, whatever had been keeping it in the air before was no longer working anymore and the only reason why it wasn’t falling like a dead weight was because Fluttershy likely still had some modicum of control over it. The tank was still on the floor and was using the pathway around the energy source while The Mouth gave chase to it; the turret turned and started firing on it.

“Roller can you carry me? We’re going to really need to move incredibly fast soon.” The wheelie had been at Fluttershy’s side he was getting some rest from all the fighting and that explosion didn’t make his angry disposition any brighter. He was worried that every once in a while Fluttershy would cough slightly and flecks of blood came out of her mouth, her right hind leg refused the floor and was bound with pink bands that looked to have come from the top of her head. He simply nodded, he didn’t want to fail his friend and he was not one to be slow anyway. He rolled forward to pick up Fluttershy, only she held out a hoof stalling him.

Fluttershy tilted the controls and the transport turned straight into the machines that were giving off a hum below her. Judging by how everything tend explodes around here… this was going to be pretty big. She let go of the controls and quickly draped herself over Roller before the transport started an out of control dive.

Roller didn’t need guidance; he shot into the air burst magical stardust from his tire in a mighty jump. He did it several more times bouncing through the air temporarily defying the laws of gravity each pulse, before hitting the floor he gave small pulse and landed as softly as a flying wheel could. Once on the floor he was much faster and he entered into the corridor on the far side of the vast room at a blazing speed leaving a trail of energy bursting out the back of his tire from the pressure he was putting on his body to move that fast.

“What… NO!” From inside his tank Alpha-one watched as the burning transport spiraling straight for all his hard work to get a feasible power source going. He immediately ordered all his foot soldiers to stop busying themselves with Big Mouser and gave the order to end that biological life no matter the cost. He even ordered his tank to ram the biological and that strange machine it was on if they could manage even that much. He thought the weak pathetic creature couldn’t have done much more after critically damaging her transport, but now he knew that a biological was thing that was hard to overcome. Life just found a way to ruin his aspirations after all.

Roller was booking it as a huge shock-wave erupted behind him and Fluttershy in the corridor, once it died down in the distance out of the fires following that shock-wave a heavily scorched tank and the heavily damaged eyeless Big Mouser followed. The Big Mouser still had sensors and it leaps onto the tank to rip off its turret, crawling from the damaged remains of that bite was Alpha-One who pulled out an emergency hover board followed by two other foot soldiers that had their own as well.

That was the last Fluttershy could see of The Mouth and the head honcho of the humanoid machines as Roller was humming loudly as he sped down the corridor much faster than the transport had been moving. They had escaped, but Fluttershy couldn’t help but feel she didn’t truly accomplish what she set out to do.

“You didn’t completely destroy the power source my dear, but you charged a battery in oh so many words. It’s caused the chaos field to fluctuate quite wildly and if I’m not mistaken it’s slowly growing, so we need to get back to your ship so you can heal up.” At this point Discord was stroking his chin with a claw. “Also you might want to be on the ship before that field grows to encompass everything. “Hmm… that’s no good. You might want to go faster because that chaos fields growth rate is actually picking up exponentially, if you’re not on you ship when the hits you, well… I have no idea what will happen but I don’t suppose it will be as pretty as you are. Hear me now Mr. Wheel, you better make sure she gets back safely before curfew. Speaking of its getting late, why don’t you girls go home while I hold down the fort? Unlike you I don’t need sleep.”

Fluttershy blushed, at least Discord made her feel normal and she could hear her friends deny needing sleep as they were too worried about her and her disheveled state. Well as normal as a broken and battered pony riding a biologically grown wheel creature in a giant deathtrap could be. It was kind of weird that Discord was actually worrying about the health of her friends, a little warm spot built up in her heart even if it was pumping some of that warmth out through the puncture wound in her chest. She was oh so tired but she couldn’t fall asleep yet even if her adrenaline was running out of her body quickly, is this what dying felt like? Roller was pretty fast at full speed, more so than the many dangers all around Fluttershy could keep up with and he wasn’t nearly as tired and as injured as she was.

Though the dents in the carapace she was laying on were uncomfortable, Fluttershy was actually glad Roller came along with her even if he was going to be putting himself in constant mortal danger for her sake. She had no illusions about where she might end up next being a completely peaceful friendly planet filled with lush greens for her to eat, little to no danger and it being a completely beautiful utopia on top of all that was just as unlikely.