“I would just like to point out that I’m not being forced into this Luna, I actually want to do it.” Fluttershy sat before Luna and explained what she thought was going to happen; she’d been asleep for a few hours. Janet wasn’t interfering with her dream this time and she was having a nice chat with Luna about her night flight. “Why do you think they haven’t attacked yet?”
The last bit of news Fluttershy heard was that the hornet carriers were staying behind Maurice’s body to avoid being shot down by Janet, but they were holding position and only sending a few scouting patrols out that were quickly dealt with. The hornet horde weren’t retreating from this particular area of space, their controllers were trying to find a chink in the armor that was the new threat the Rhizomians seemed to have presented.
“I’m guessing that they haven’t attacked because they know not how injured your forces are or what you can bring to meet them. You have likely shocked your enemies into a stalemate position with your tactics, you have saved many lives doing this Fluttershy and that is why they call you a hero.” From what Luna could tell of Fluttershy’s recent foray into helping an innocent race protect their home, she had helped in routing a massive invading force with a simple if devastating tactic. “If you were never there then what do you suppose would happen? What do you suppose would happen had you never used your idea?”
“Well Mira would have never been pulled out of the water, she might have survived anyway and then the situation with the hornet robots would have happened all the same if at a much later time. A lot of Rhizomians would have been hurt or much worse since they would have swarmed the city without the acid cloud making them split their forces and weakening their numbers.” Fluttershy began to brighten at the fact that she had actually done a lot for doing so little; she had caused chaos amongst those that would harm her friends and that protected them from being worse off. “If I never arrived on Janet then none of the civilians would have flight capable suits or the newly upgraded weapons, because Janet would have been asleep forever. Or everything might have turned out for the best if I hadn’t come along at all.”
“It is amazing how far you’ve recovered from witnessing the destruction of an entire planet, the fact that you still have a grand love of life is amazing after having seen so much pain and suffering. Your emotions may be slightly raw, but they are not entirely wrong. No one can tell what the future holds in perfect detail.” Luna moved over to Fluttershy and wrapped a wing around her. “Now let me tell you about how my day went. It all started when Pinkie Pie baked a pear pie and Applejack accidentally got a taste of it…”
-
Waking up, Fluttershy was in a good mood. Her friends back home couldn’t forget her no matter how hard they tried and from what Luna says they frequently visited her cottage to make sure it stayed clean and in good repair. Now that she was awake, she stretched out her two mismatched wings and put on her Rhizome spacesuit, she giggled as the petals tickled the back of her head as the suit encompassed her. She sighed sadly given her agreement to help Mira with an insane plan that was likely to work; at least Luna made her see that she was still trying to do good things in a universe full of bad situations.
It wasn’t hard for Fluttershy to say that she loved everything about her home planet, but the number of automatons out in space needed to be a teensy bit less then there were. She started prepping the Head Hunter, storing plenty of food away with Janet’s help. While she was doing this she learned a bit about Evil Emperor Zurg. He was one of the many evil overlords in the universe, on par with the likes of planet destroyer Emperor Awesome and violent whiner Lord Hater in being a dastardly thing against all that was good.
Apparently galactic scale evil beings were common and they always had minions and armies of all sorts, Zurg had Grubs and Brain Pods as minions. He also had his army of hornets nearby ready to rip the Rhizomians a new one being controlled by said minions. The only reason why the hornets weren’t back is likely what Luna came up with, they were surprised to meet such a devastating resistance that they were taking the time to analyze and regroup for another attack which could be in hours or days.
The people of Rhizome they barely held off the first assault, they only had volunteer infantry and Rhizome built spaceships didn’t sound effective in ship to ship combat in outer space. The previous few times Rhizome had been invaded pretty much without a fight says a lot as to why the controllers of the hornets had been spooked so badly.
The planets defenses before Janet was awakened would have put a nice dent in the hornets, but it wouldn’t have taken out nearly as many as Janet had. If she weren’t awake and angry at the fact that her body was being invaded once more plus the fact that her much beloved children were being hurt, then things would have been much worse.
“Are you sure about following Mira’s plan, if it fails… well you won’t be able to get help from us and those darn carriers that are sticking to the far side of my husband.” Janet had a few hang ups about Mira’s plan to infiltrate a hornet carrier while there were so many hornets in her airspace. ”None of my bloom guns in the other cities can get an angle or bend a shot around my wonderful Maurice to get at them. It makes me feel helpless and Maurice wishes he could do more for us other then intercept their communications.”
“Um, how is he doing that exactly?” Questions, always with the questions, there nearly weren’t enough answers about everything for Fluttershy.
“You know how I’m limited in my psychic abilities and have full control of my body; you know things like creating mountains or growing entire forests? Maurice has similar talents that allow him to pick up any broadcasted signal, even ones that are supposedly stealthy. He can hear communications going on all around our system; even now he’s hearing some cargo ships passing through the edge of our system heading for the planet Bathyos. Why they are carrying an order of fifteen thousand tubs of frozen Muu cream, well one can only guess what a water planet would do with that.” Janet looked at the compact dirt ceiling, being underground wasn’t exactly the best of things for her avatar. “He can only pick up signals and since he’s connected to me he can tell me what’s going on out there, helped a lot with the boredom before we decided to start a race together. At least our Rhizomians are very smart even if they are not very good at the violence thing, kind of a downside when your body keeps getting invaded huh? I wish I could protect my children better.”
“Well I think you’re doing a good job Janet, you’re a good mother. Your children are a wonderful and friendly Janet; they have space travel, they have great food and the medical advancements they’ve made alone are something that my world can’t even begin to come close to replicating.” Fluttershy smiled as she focused on the many things Janet’s people were good at, instead of what they weren’t good at and fighting was definitely the problem. “At least a lot of them are out there in the universe doing good things, making friends with so many people and spreading all kinds of good ideals around.”
“Yeah, is it any wonder that I’m so proud of them? By the way I’m moving your ship above ground right now; Mira, Pwerta, Kleptchi, Triffid and Truffle are all on their way.” The fact that her children were still willing to put themselves in harm’s made her sad, but Janet was happy that her children were willing to help others no matter the danger involved. “Your people and the many races on your planet sound just as amazing Fluttershy.”
“Um… I was just expecting Mira to come with me and Roller, are Pwerta and the others going to see us off?” Fluttershy really hoped that they weren’t insisting on coming along, Pwerta was like Aloe or Lotus the spa ponies that Rarity frequently spent time with. It was hard for Fluttershy to imagine Pwerta as wanting to be a part of a commando team; Triffid has done it to great effect before according to Mira’s story of having previously worn a Rhizomian spacesuit.
“Actually, Triffid has a good idea of how to get Mira on that damaged hornet carrier. You’ll need to ask him about it.” After that Janet’s flower sunk into the floor and Fluttershy went off to find the others. “In the mean time I have to keep up the impression that we have the firepower to deal with them, because we actually do have it. If they aren’t going to give me a shot at them, then I might as well keep them pinned in place behind Maurice. If you leave my atmosphere I won’t be in direct contact with you so I apologize in advance if you end up being vaporized by me.”
“It’s okay Janet; I’d forgive you for it if you do.” Fluttershy quickly left with Roller following along lazily, she had almost forgotten the wheel had been at her side near constantly since she got to the underground shelter. She moved along the tunnel until she reached a spot where Janet would form some stairs for her back to the surface.
The pony exited the tunnel and saw a few portions of the plant city in ruins and it was daytime, it also seemed like the plant city was regenerating swiftly from the damage that was dealt to it from all the fighting. Oddly she didn’t see any sign of debris; Janet probably took care of it already. Wings sprouted from the back of her suit and she launched herself into the air leaving behind a trail of miniature exploding spores, behind her Roller sped up to keep her in sight.
With a bit of careful control, Fluttershy slowed down and came in for a soft landing at the outskirts where Head Hunter was above ground completely unharmed. There was a ship sitting next to her personal method of travel and Mira was talking with four Rhizomians.
It looked like a small yellow yacht; it had a tall yellow stemmed green leaf poking out of the back end of the vehicle like a mast. The front of the vehicle had the same kind of see through plant matter that made up the helmets of a Rhizome suits for the windows of the boats cabin. On the sides of the vehicle there were small blue petals as if from a flower and sticking out of the bottom of this vessel were two large green leaves that looked like rudders or wings.
After a moment Fluttershy felt something tapping her side getting her attention, she looked into the kind eyes of Professor Triffid the stocky Rhizomian who was now wearing a green and brown suit that looked to be well armored.
“I see you’ve taken an interest in my ship, I grew it from a little tuber. It’s called a Rhizomian Solar Clipper. This thing won’t be detected approaching the hornet carriers, our flower power does have its advantages as I’m sure you’re very well aware of by now. We live in interesting times, not a day I thought that we would be taking an active part in protecting ourselves or taking up weapons. I guess we all have to do what we must to continue surviving.” The wise and kind Rhizomian wasn’t one to sit around living in fear; he was taking the fight to Zurg. He didn’t like the idea of the evil emperor messing with his home again. “You know me already and I’m sure you’ve gotten well acquainted with Pwerta. And these two are…”
Triffid stopped to point at the first one, Fluttershy heard him call out that he was Truffle. He was an average built silver skinned Rhizomian with brown hair and he was armed with a thorn spitting rifle, his combat suit was rather dainty looking as it was covered in small flowers and it was mostly blue and green throughout.
Truffle pointed to the tall, green haired, bronze skinned Rhizomian female next to him putting on her own Rhizomian suit. She turned to Fluttershy before activating her suit and she introduced herself as Kleptchi once she was looking Fluttershy in the eyes. Kleptchi was also armed with a plant rifle and her suit was purple and pink with small thorns poking out of it in places, it would have been kind of scary looking if it weren’t for the friendly face in the suit.
“We are endeavoring to make a point that we won’t be having any more of these robots plaguing our people since peaceful methods are not going to work here. Pwerta is going with us as our medical specialist, I’m here to make sure nothing goes wrong with the suits and I can certainly fix anything that does. You will be with us as we’re going to be in supporting positions.” As Triffid went on, Pwerta put her suit on and was now wearing a red and white suit with a Rhizome medical symbol on it and it had a large green bulging sack on the back that would be holding medical supplies. “Mira, Kleptchi and Truffle are going to take point once we are in the process of entering the damaged carrier. As for your ship, we’ll leave it in an out of the way place. If things go wrong you can fall back to it and use it to escape the area. I have no misgivings about what will happen to my Rhizomian Solar Clipper when we get close enough to board the vessel; I’m willing to sacrifice it for a good cause.”
“What if you didn’t have to make the sacrifice?” Janet popped up out of the ground and looked the ship over with her flower. “In fact I might even be able to add an autopilot to your ship, but yeah it’s still best that you have Fluttershy’s ship in reserve if you need to escape. It has weapons right?”
“Yes, but why do you ask? Doesn’t the Rhizomian Solar Clipper doesn’t have weapons?” After a moment Fluttershy smacked her helmet with a suit covered hoof when she remembered what exactly she was asking. She whimpered out her next words while lowering her head. “Oh right, I’m sorry for bringing that up.”
“How are you going to add an autopilot to the ship great mother?” Triffid was both intrigued and excited, the great mother could engineer plants to do many things better than he could. She wouldn’t do everything for him or the rest of her children and Triffid agreed with that attitude. They were their own sentient beings and needed to be able to do things for themselves and wouldn’t let Janet solve every single little problem for them.
“It might be a bit of a stretch… but what are the chances that I can still control my avatar after it’s disconnected from my body?” After that question, Janet knew that Triffid was going to find out personally and so would she for that matter. It looked like warning Fluttershy was a waste of time.
-
The Head Hunter flew through space and slowly drifted downwards and came to a stop by landing on Maurice, it landed underneath a portion of the moons peculiar humongous mustache imprint.
“Okay Fluttershy, breathe… you are just going for a little walk in the airless vacuum.” Even as Fluttershy muttered it, she really could help but think that she was glad that she learned airlock procedures from the Head Hunters computer before attempting this. She had already shunted all the oxygen out of airlock into the rest of the ship. Roller bumped into her telling her that she should get on with it already. She checked her suits saddlebags, water, two of Janet’s recovery tomatoes and the glass knife. She was just going as support and her suit did have a single grenade pod generator. “Right, here we go.”
The hatch opened above her and Fluttershy kicked off sending her shooting into air in a high arc, before she came down softly on the Maurice’s surface. She had landed on her back and was not used to the low gravity, after a moment of scuffling about she finally managed to roll onto her hooves and look around.
There was no atmosphere here in this barren rocky landscape, but her suit was providing all the air she needed for her slight panic attack. The last time she was fully exposed to space like this, she was stuck in a bubble and nearly starved to death. After a moment of breathing in some sharp breathes of completely fresh air to calm her rapidly beating heart, she tried to get into the right mindset for being in the void again. She felt something bump against her side and saw Roller floating there, after a moment his carapace pointed forwards and his four pipes shifted downwards while erupting with little sparkles of star dust. He flew off doing a good impression of a rocket while going towards the Solar Clipper as it silently flew overhead.
“Have to keep it together, come on breathe. It’s okay, I’m with friends and I’m going into a really dangerous place with them.” Closing her eyes Fluttershy ignited her thrusters and flew up and around to the top of the ship where she found Mira and the other Rhizomians waiting for her. Mira got in front of her and stared at her with caring eyes.
“Remember, I’m not allowed to let you out of my sight no matter what, now calm down, stick with me and you’ll be okay. I promise you that much and not just as a Space Ranger, but as a friend. You know, I thought it would be just the two of us going into it using your ship. You still have time to back out of this if you don’t want to do it.” Mira felt something hit her leg and she looked down at the wheel that was glaring up at her. “Sorry I meant to say it would have been just the three of us… wait a minute, how can he hear me if we’re in a vacuum? He doesn’t even have built in communications like we do in our suits. Heck how is he even alive if he’s completely biological?”
Fluttershy gave a noncommittal shrug. She wasn’t backing out of this so she wasn’t going to say anything. The likeliest answer was that Roller could feel the vibration of her voice as it moved through the suit into the ship and into his tire. She couldn’t hear much of anything aside from her own breathing and the calming voices of the Rhizomians chatting with each other as they set out. She could vaguely feel Roller trying to rev something that was lost in the vacuum of space.
Mr. Wheel was really a special creature because he didn’t need a suit to live in outer space, but he did need a ship if he was to get anywhere within his lifetime and he still needed food at the very least. It was either his species didn’t require constant intake of gaseous matter or he was doing it completely out of sheer ignorance that he shouldn’t be able to survive without breathing. His body was exposed to the vacuum and he certainly wasn’t dying. He flew a small protective orbit around Fluttershy in his rocket form; Fluttershy forced him to settle down on the deck of the Solar Clipper as it exited the moons gravitational field.
“Okay folks look alive; we have about five minutes before we get there and I would like to say this really feels weird. A part of my mind is just away from my body, I’m sure it’ll snap back if my avatar is destroyed.” Janet could not separate her avatar from her body unless it was connected to another plant, the ship worked for her even if she couldn’t leave it. She couldn’t connect her avatar and consciousness into a Rhizomian spacesuit while it was active. “If not, oh well. No psychic soil off my back if it was for a good cause.”
“Why did I agree to do this again?” Muttered Fluttershy with her eyes closed, she still thought she could do something and she wanted to help Mira. She could have withdrawn her lot in all of this once Professor Triffid said he would set out with his ship. It was like what always happened when she was with her pony friends; she got dragged into it anyway. “Right, my friends need me, even if it’s only just as moral support.”
The pony was beginning to wonder if she should have grabbed her energy rifle before she left her ship. She decided not to worry about it because in the distance she could see three block shaped ships through the windows on the Solar Cutter. They didn’t seem really too big, but they were still rather daunting. Two of the carriers had swarms of those hornet robots patrolling the general vicinity. The third carrier was missing huge portions of its hull and it had seen better days, quite a bit of its insides were exposed to vacuum and there weren’t as many hornets patrolling the area around it. There were only small groups of five or six active hornets patrolling around the heavily damaged carrier.
None of the hornets noticed the incoming ship; the scanners on all the hornet carriers weren’t made to detect anything like Rhizome technology. They were able to get close enough for Mira to start planning the destruction of one of the patrols and then they’d be inside.
Fluttershy could only wonder how many hornets were left out here; she also wondered why they were doing this when it didn’t seem likely to succeed. Was she just being a pessimist? If they succeeded they’d be saving a lot of lives and that’s why they had to.