The idea was simple. Create a formula that would enhance a soldier to the peak of physical perfection. Make them stronger, faster, and more agile without the side effects one would find in steroids or other drugs. While the overall concept sounded simple, its creation was anything but.
It took several of Equestria's brightest minds to come up with a serum that was even close to achieving the desired result.
Fluttershy was the head of those minds.
With the help of the others, she created a serum which bonded with a host's cells and pushed their body to perfection in a matter of months.
It was revolutionary. It was incredible. It wasn't enough.
Shining Armor, captain of the Protective Pony Platoon (the most elite wing of the Royal Guard) and leader of the project, didn't want to wait several months to get his super soldiers. He wanted an immediate change, and ordered Fluttershy and her comrades back to the drawing boards.
That's when the idea of using radiation to speed up the process came in. By introducing the serum to gamma radiation, one could theoretically speed up the bonding process and get the same effects in less than a fraction of the time. It was a daring undertaking, as radiation was still a very new science, but with no other options, Fluttershy and her team began testing the effects of radiation.
It should have stopped there. The fact that the serum would change color upon it's exposure to radiation was a clear sign of something gone wrong. But the experiments were far from over.
Shining Armor ruthlessly pushed the project. He visited the laboratory every day and screamed at the team for results, saying he would destroy their entire scientific reputation should they not succeed.
That's when it happened.
Something in Fluttershy snapped. She was tired of watching her companions be bullied by someone who had no idea what he was talking about. She couldn't take the pushing, the screaming, the pressure, one second longer.
"You want results? I'll give you results!" she yelled back at the Captain, picking up and loading a syringe with the serum.
Before anyone could stop her, Fluttershy jammed the needle into her foreleg and pushed the plunger. Everyone in the room went dead silent. Had a world renowned scientist really just injected herself with an irradiated formula, the side effects of which were still unknown?
Fluttershy pulled the syringe from her leg and dropped it to the ground.
"...Uh-oh..." was all she could manage.
The rest was a blur to her. All she knew was that for the next half hour or so, she rampaged through Hoofington University, causing hundreds of thousands of bits in damage to equipment and the campus alike.
The only thing she remembered was rage... Uncontrollable rage.
Fluttershy trotted through the small town of Trottingham, a smile on her face.
Though she lived life as a fugitive, she didn't let that stop her from enjoying the small things in life. Things like the smell of freshly made bread from the bakery on the other side of the road. The beautiful blue sky. The sound of wind chimes hanging from a nearby window.
During her first days on the run, she spent every waking moment in constant fear of being found or worse, captured. As time went on, however, she slowly acclimated and came to appreciate life's simple pleasures.
Finally, she came to a stop in front of a small flower shop near the center of town. Pushing the door open caused a bell hanging over to ring. The pony behind the counter turned to face her.
"Good morning, JuneBug." greeted Fluttershy.
"Morning, Fluttershy. What can I do for you, today?"
"Oh, I hope I'm not being a bother, but I was wondering if maybe you had those...um... Special flowers I ordered?"
Junebug smiled and reached under the table, pulling up a long, thin item neatly wrapped in a black cloth.
"Right here!" she said, passing it over the counter.
"Oh, thank you so very much."
Fluttershy took the wrapped flowers in her hooves.
"Gotta admit, I've never raised a flower that only grew in the moonlight. Mind if I ask what it's for?"
Fluttershy reached into her saddlebag and dropped two silver bits on the table.
"If you don't mind, I'd rather not say. Hope you understand."
With that, Fluttershy turned and made her way out of the flower shop.
Down the road she went. Past the stores and through the town plaza. Eventually, she turned a corner and came to a stop in front of a small house between two larger buildings. She climbed the stairs and unlocked the door, stepping inside and shutting it behind her before locking both the knob and deadbolt. She set the wrapped flowers down on a nearby wooden table and quickly walked over to each window, closing the blinds until the room was dark.
Fluttershy trotted back to the table and unwrapped the flowers. She examined them for a moment before reaching under the table, and pulling out a small laptop, which she then opened.
It was an old machine, from a time before computers were made available to the general public. Nothing like the more advanced and modern DashCo models, which could even recognize individual voice commands. In fact, this one could barely connect to the Equestrian Online Network without starting to overheat.
Fluttershy flipped a switch on the side, causing the machine to whir to life. The monitor flicked on, as green text ran across the screen.
"Welcome"
She waited a moment as the computer settled. After a few minutes, a pair of words flashed on screen.
"Initiate chat?" the machine asked.
Fluttershy typed in "yes" and waited once again.
"Connecting... Please wait..."
A few commands later, Fluttershy came to a white screen with a small text box at the bottom.
"I've got the flowers now. I hope this isn't a bad time." she typed.
"Not at all" was the reply that ran across the bottom of the screen. "Now, I trust you have enough, yes?"
"I've got eleven."
"That should do it. Now pick each petal carefully and drop them into the mixture we made."
Fluttershy reached under the table again and pulled up a beaker filled with a pink liquid, setting it down next to the flowers. She opened a drawer and picked out a small pair of scissors. With great care, she brought the blades up to the flower and snipped off the first petal, which fell into the beaker with a sizzling sound. Within a few seconds, the petal had completely dissolved in the liquid.
She continued to cut off the petals and drop them in, each one dissolving until the compound was a dark shade of purple.
Once she was done, she turned to the computer and typed "Finished."
"Good job." replied her mysterious helper "Now take a drop of blood and introduce a small amount of the chemical into it."
Fluttershy gulped. She had never been fond of needles.
"Well..." she sighed. "I suppose it has to be done..."
With that, Fluttershy trotted over to the other side of the room, opened a closet and, after a bit of digging, pulled out a medical kit.
Living on the run meant that visits to the Doctor were no longer an option, forcing Fluttershy to treat most wounds she received herself with said medical kit. She dug through the bright red bag, finally producing a small needle, the kind used to draw a blood sample from fillies and colts.
Carefully, Fluttershy pricked the tip of her hoof with the needle, causing a droplet of blood to form at the wound. She moved her hoof over to a microscope slide and pressed gently down on the glass, spreading the droplet around before pulling away. She moved the slide under a microscope and turned it on. Using a dropper, Fluttershy took a small bit of the solution she had mixed and introduced a drop to her blood.
She peered through the eyepiece and watched as her blood cells reacted to the chemical. A moment later, her cells grew in size, turning a greenish tint as they continued to expand.
Fluttershy quickly turned off the microscope and sat down on her rump. She sighed and shut her eyes before turning back to the computer.
"Didn't work out so well..." she typed.
"That's very odd. I'll need you to send me a blood sample." came the reply.
"What for?"
"So I can try to figure out the exact problem. I can't tell much based on what you've told me, meaning I'll need to examine it for myself."
Fluttershy blew a strand of hair out of her face and glanced over at the medical kit.
Another needle...
Shining Armor sat behind a large wooden desk in his office, examining a map of Equestria laid out in front of him. There were several X's drawn over several spots on the map, indicating places he had searched in the past.
There was a knock on the door.
"What?" he barked, never once taking his eyes off the map.
The door opened to reveal a light purple Pegasus mare with a darker shaded mane. This was Clear Skies.
It was generally odd to find pegasi in any military branch other than the Wonderbolts, but Clear Skies was never an exceptional flier, and had failed to meet Wonderbolt standards. However, she still wished to serve in Equestria's armed forces, and eventually joined the Royal Guard, rising through the ranks to become Shining Armor's second-in-command. Loyal to a fault, she was always relating information she found to him.
"Sorry to bother you, sir, but I've got something that might interest you." she said, raising a file she held in her hoof.
"Show me."
Clear Skies moved over to the desk and opened the file before placing it down on the wooden surface to reveal a photograph of a certain yellow, pink-maned Pegasus standing among a group of dogs and cats.
Shining Armor finally looked away from his map and slowly stood up from his chair.
"Where was this taken?" he said, picking the photo up in a field of glowing energy cast from his horn.
"A newspaper reporter took this picture about a week ago at an animal shelter in a town called Trottingham. They were celebrating a local pony's contributions to the shelter. She got her own article in the paper and everything."
He set the picture down on his desk and looked at Clear Skies.
"Tell all our nearby agents to move to Trottingham and keep an eye out for her. Keep it quiet, and once they see her, report directly to me. Put together a team of the best ponies you can find. We're leaving tomorrow."
"Right, sir." she said, turning around and trotting out of the office, closing the door behind her.
Shining Armor looked down at the photo on his desk.
"Even on the run, you couldn't help yourself." he whispered.
Fluttershy merely smiled at the animals surrounding her.