//------------------------------// // 66 // Story: Yonder Wandered Fluttershy // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// Bonnie looked at Fluttershy’s hoof and took it in her hand, she felt herself be pulled into a standing position and she looked to the other being. She was beginning to piece together some things about the stranger in front of her. “Let me guess, you’re both real and inside my head.” At the moment Bonnie took on a studying look as she took in Luna’s form. “We are technically in your dreams, but how did you know this without being told?” Sometimes the dreamer would be more freaked out and awaken immediately; it was odd to Luna that Bonnie took a more thoughtful approach to this. “One of my brothers has the ability to get into your head quite literally, he is experiment two seven six and his name is Remmy. His special ability is dream eating. He attacks you at the height of your happiest dreams and turns them into complete nightmares. Oh and if you wake up while he’s in your head, he gets kind of stuck up in there. Dad likes to imply that it’s permanent, but it isn’t really. All waking up will do is make it exponentially harder to get him out of your head. I easily found out how dad knew Remmy had that problem.” After a moment Bonnie looked at the horrified gazes of the two ponies, the one with the horns and wings was worth asking about. After a moment she tapped her foot and dream version of Remmy appeared. “Yeah, my dear old dad got Remmy here stuck in his head once and yes he does look like this. It took my father a while to figure out how to stop getting nightmares and get Remmy out of his head safely without hurting him. He’s done causing nightmares and is much friendlier nowadays. So, I’m guessing you saw some things then? Also who’s the dame Sweet Cheeks?” “You’re taking our invasion of your privacy better than I thought you would.” Fluttershy blushed and was a little perplexed by Bonnie’s sudden laid back attitude at the moment. “I was just curious as to why you were having nightmares. This is Princess Luna; she can visit the dreams of ponies and the dreams of others that I happen to be sleeping right next to. She’s an alicorn and controls the moon of my world to usher in the night.” “Wait, you’re sleeping right next to me? Huh, well that’s something. Sharing dreams is nothing new to me. My privacy being invaded is something I can actually live with; I’ve actually had an all out fight for a bathroom once with fifty of my sisters. That certainly didn’t end well for me and that was definitely a full scale invasion of privacy.” Bonnie frowned in thought for a moment with her arms crossed and after a moment she smiled a bit, the image of Remmy disappeared. A few images of experiments with the names associated to them appeared, Fluttershy read the names above their heads as Angel, Belle and Carmine appeared behind Bonnie and just as quickly vanished. Fluttershy thought the gooey looking Carmine was a little odd. “What I couldn’t live with is what happened after Clyde got Remmy stuck in his head for a week, I swear he wouldn’t leave me alone by myself for a month after that! Remmy sometimes has control issues when it comes to not causing nightmares. To this day he still likes to sleep inside people’s heads and watching them dream, at least that’s what Clyde told me.” It was true, for Bonnie spent an entire month where there was no such thing as privacy when her little brother couldn’t take a hint that she needed some alone time. “How I wish my sister paid that much attention to me before I turned into a literal existing nightmare, what you have with your brother is special and should not be so callously tossed aside.” Luna noticed it was a bit of a bad move to talk about siblings with Bonnie considering her sudden glare. “Don’t you think I know that? I mean you have seen my dreams or at least some of my memories right?” Two hooves wrapped around Bonnie bringing her into a hug and two more joined in. “I swear you ponies are all hugs and kisses. Also your princess is really beautiful and all, but can we move on to a different castle?” “Well, I know you have a plan to rescue your brother or else you wouldn’t have wanted the DOKs so badly. They are rather friendly and helpful, well for machines built for hurting others.” At least Fluttershy hoped Bonnie had a plan and a good one at that. “Do you have a plan? Fluttershy is really dear to us back home and it was only an accident that has ripped her away from all that she knew and tossed her into a universe we’re not exactly prepared for. We wish that she would find our planet again so she can return to her mostly carefree life of tending to and regulating woodland animals.” After a moment Luna decided to add. “We would like her back mostly in one piece as well, it is bad enough she has undergone an unwarranted horrific magical mutation and has witnessed a planet exploding as the worst of what has happened to her thus far.” “I do have a plan, but it’s a freaking crapshoot and a long shot from even going entirely right even with all the DOKs operational. It puts Fluttershy at risk of getting hurt badly and knowing Zurg he’ll give me about five minutes to retrieve my brother before he has his hornets come at me with lethal intent. You can’t trust a guy who emphasizes the word ‘evil’ in his name to really do what you want him to; much less trust him at all and I certainly don’t.” At least Bonnie knew she could be honest with Fluttershy about how well her plan would go. Bonnie just couldn’t trust the pony with all the details of what the plan exactly entailed even if she trusted her to succeed. “I really need a way to stack the deck in my favor, but I’m just not seeing it. I’d just be happy if I could see my brother one last time, the guy torturing him is not one to play nice or even take it easy on someone.” “Let us tell you of our history as we have already seen some of yours. It all started when I and Celestia took control of the sun and moon in our apparently one planet system…” It was still hard for Luna to believe a lot of solar systems could have as many planets as four up to sixteen planets depending on how well their orbits worked. - Bonnie yawned and opened her eyes, she was lying in bed and felt extremely comfortable, at her back she felt a soft cushion of fluff and around her body were two hooves wrapped her as if she were a stuffed toy. Normally she didn’t like being captured, incarcerated or held against her will, in this situation it was different. She trusted Fluttershy a little better now. It was still a scary thought that she just made a friend she could truly expect to be what they were, a friendly and overall nice being that had little to no alternative motives in dealing with her. Sweet Cheeks really should have stopped worming into her heart like she did. It was amazing to hear of a world where two ponies controlled the orbit of such important objects that kept their planet alive; Bonnie knew finding something like that would take a while or a lifetime. It was a big universe and there were infinite directions one could go in. She thought Luna was a real strange piece of work, controlled the moon of Fluttershy’s home planet and had the ability to walk into dreams. She had asked if Celestia was the one to enter pony’s daydreams and got a laugh out of Luna as it had not occurred to her to go looking for dreams in the sunlit hours. “Oh um, sorry, you can get up now Bonnie.” Fluttershy had woken up as quickly as Bonnie had and released Bonnie from her hooves. “I like you’re princess, she’s got some moxie in her.” Of course Bonnie would like Luna, though she could stand to try to talk about her problems without jumping straight to planet annihilation mode. Even Jumba is taking forever in getting to planet annihilation experiments. She had to mention that she only had three brothers that were considered world ending calamities, but they never quite ended anything. When asked for an example of one of her world ending brothers, Bonnie had to explain how experiment six zero seven, Launch, was made to collapse the entire universe into itself by ripping apart the fabric of time and space. Truth of the matter, Launch could only jump through space; luckily he couldn’t actually jump through time and he could not actually cause the collapse of an entire universe. She had to talk about Launch quite a bit considering all the implications behind what his abilities were supposed to be and what they actually were, he could go anywhere in space within a certain distance. Apparently his maximum jump range was between the planet of earth and its moon which is how he earned his name. It took a while to find him on earth’s moon when he thought it was made out of cheese at the time due to a bit of miscommunication by a certain little girl. It was surprising to find out that Luna herself and only certain types of pony could do a similar thing by teleporting. “Um, there is one little thing I wanted to ask you, but I didn’t want to ask it in front of Luna so could I do it now if I’m not being too much of a bother?” It was something Fluttershy wanted to air out in her head, on a go ahead gesture and a breath later. “Did your father ever hurt you? He sounds not so nice, even if your memories make him out to be friendly and maybe even likeable.” “Okay look, he’s not exactly the greatest guy in the universe, but he’d never knowingly cause permanent injury to one of his experiments nor did he ever hurt us intentionally or even badly. He did however create us to be evil though, so you might want to excuse him for that one as it is his favorite thing to do even if he’s not really all that evil himself. He just likes push the boundaries of the definition, a lot.” It wasn’t like she hated her father, but bonnie could find plenty of reasons to not be around him for extended periods of time. He was veritable chaos maker and magnet at the same time, but at least life was never boring. “He just really likes creating life with a chip already stuck in its shoulder, sometimes excessively big ones. Builds character really and I certainly have lots of that Sweet Cheeks.” Lucky Day floated into the room and projected something for Bonnie to read. “Are we already at Bathyos?” Fluttershy hopped off the bed and went to put on her Rhizome suit. “Yep, we’re above Bathyos and Lucky here is getting cute because he’s calling you Captain Shy and claiming that becoming pirates wouldn’t be hard for us to do at this rate. I’d have to agree with him, except I don’t like pillaging and I prefer the more quiet approach to stealing things.” Taking a moment to watch the suit wrap around the ponies form and then generate the adorable flowery petals, Bonnie turned to the DOK and wondered what kind of supplies they could get. “Okay Lucky, you have things to do after delivering the ice cream. We need parts to repair the big guy tend to every other need you and Lead might need. We’re also going to need a bit of food, preferably vegetables and fruit since we both can eat that easily enough. Also get some water and fruit juice while you’re at it. After that you and Lead can do anything you want.” After Lucky gave an affirmative that he had his orders, he quickly left to go fulfill it immediately so he could take some time to acquire the parts he needed for himself and the other DOKs. Then he’d get some food and drink for the ones with more biological needs of sustenance, the DOKs could easily charge themselves off the ships power source. “I almost expected you to ask for something alcoholic.” Booze was a universal thing that Fluttershy didn’t like; intoxication was in fact capable everywhere there was a civilization. Even Rhizomian’s had beer, even an alcoholic variety of root that could inebriate and was glad that she had asked about that drink before ingesting it. “Nope, I don’t drink. It only numbs the pain; it won’t make it go away. I’m a little surprised you know what alcohol is considering you seem to come from a world of sunshine and hippies.” Bonnie quirked an eye at Fluttershy as if asking for an explanation, she didn’t believe for a second that Fluttershy drank or imbibed. “Oh my world isn’t perfect, what with the large carnivorous creature living near my hometown. My friend Rainbow Dash back home has a small problem when it comes to drinking apple cider; she like regular and sometimes she gets into the hard stuff from time to time. Though it does make her act in an adorable manner and she neighs a lot when she starts stumbling around.” It was one thing to Fluttershy to be addicted Applejack’s apples; it was another thing to be completely addicted to cider of varying levels of intoxication. “She always needs me to fly her home after she’s had enough. She never goes drinking without a designated flyer; I wonder who she’s been getting to do that for her now?” The ship shifted slightly and Fluttershy looked questioningly to the door of the room and Bonnie hopped off the bed. “Guess we’re landing and just hit the atmosphere. I’ve been on and stolen enough ships to know that particular feeling that likely just passed through you. Bathyos is home to all kind of sapient aquatic lives who have somehow mastered space travel without the ability to ignite things on fire.” It was one of the greater mysteries to Bonnie. How you could create an amphibious ship to go from moving through water to flying in space with an equal amount of ability for doing both? They were some really tough space ships because of how much pressure they could take. “Is it okay if I stretch my wings? I want to look around and see some of the native life here.” All the alien did was make a shooing gesture and Fluttershy trotted out of the room taking it as a go ahead to get some fresh air. - Bathyos wasn’t a resort planet; above water the planet was either two things, calm or stormy. They landed next to a calm beach with quite a few other ships and an island with a small city and Fluttershy was happy to breath in some salty air of the beach they landed next to, she always enjoyed going to the beach and it was some nice sunny noon time hour where they landed on the planet. The island wasn’t very big, but it did have some local aliens around. Fluttershy didn’t go near them or try to attract attention to herself since she was supposed to be kidnapped and acting like a fugitive would have been weird considering she was wanted safely back by the Galactic Alliance. After a while of playing in the sand and letting her suit soak up some water, Fluttershy became curious and started following around a small nine legged crustacean like alien. Wildlife on other planets was always something Fluttershy was curious about, the nine legged crustacean almost looked like a clam at first until Fluttershy saw its legs moving it across the beach. After some time befriended some of the more intelligent creatures in the nearby waters, Fluttershy looked down the beach and saw Bonnie staring out at the ocean. Didn’t she say her entire family was on an island like this one? The prospect didn’t seem as bad given they learned something about themselves and became friendly instead of dangerous. Fluttershy left Bonnie to have some alone time while she frolicked with the strange lizards crawling around on the beach that looked like an odd version of a turtle with its finned legs. Having tired of seeing and talking to so many wondrous animals that liked her back, Fluttershy decided to start building a sand castle. It looked more like a sand pyramid with a moat by the time she was done, but Fluttershy was proud to have accomplished that much without a bucket. She still had a lot of other things to look into, like helping Roller who kept getting stuck in the sand and helping him figure out that he had to hop around instead of roll. Roller would continue to whine about how loose all the sand was, it was definitely not a wheelie’s favorite place to be. Other than that he was enjoying spending some time with Fluttershy, he made a mound of sand too and had wondered where Fluttershy went as soon as he did. A plant covered hoof stuck up out of the sand at an awkward angle. It was moments like these that made all the bad stuff not seem so horrible, Fluttershy really was enjoying her day at the beach and seeing all kinds of strange wildlife. Curious, she called out to Roller and went to check on the ship to see what Lead and Lucky were doing. The two DOKs were moving packets loaded with ice cream down the ramp and one of the DOKs was getting a confirmation for the ice cream order from an adorable looking sapient bipedal shark. Fluttershy sat by knowing that after all their business here was done; they’d be heading straight into danger. She thought on Bonnie’s nightmares and family, beings made to be evil from the start yet gained the ability to go beyond what they were. Whatever happened she was going to stick to her promise to be Bonnie’s friend, she wanted to at least settle the conditions of the temporary part of the Pinkie Pie promise. - “Okay the DOKs are just about done with their shopping around here, so what are you doing Sweet Cheeks?” Bonnie came and sat by Fluttershy and stared at what she was looking at before, the horizon where the sun was setting. “Just something that reminds me of home, Celestia would lower the sun and then with Luna the moon would rise. This sun isn’t like the one at home, but it does paint a really pretty picture.” It was good to be calm before a trying situation; at least Fluttershy would like to think she was calm when she got pushed up a mountain towards a dragon and inevitable doom. Dragons had tough skin, were resilient to magic up to a certain degree and unlike Spike, the bigger more adult dragons wouldn’t think twice about killing and eating a pony. “Yeah it is a pretty sight I guess, now let’s go get you killed Fluttershy!” Bonnie said in a jovial joking tone. “So are you going to tell me exactly what the plan is?” Fluttershy was a little worried about what Bonnie would do or what she planned on trying to achieve. “Might as well, I’m actually going to give you to Zurg, the DOKs are going to try and sabotage one of his factories and draw attention to themselves while I’m busy getting Clyde. As for you, how high exactly is your total pain tolerance? I mean spiritual, physical, emotional and possibly even metaphysical.” Even the pony could see that Bonnie was grimacing at the idea that someone would even consider the idea of torturing her. “It’s pretty high really. I’ve been shot at least once or twice and have been scratched, scraped and battered since I left my home planet. Survived some alien sickness thanks to the Etecoons and Dachora I met on a planet that exploded and that kind of sent me into a deeply depressed state. Not to mention I ended up, waking up on that planet looking like this, then got shot by these crustaceous beings called Space Pirates. Oh and the Dachora had such an adorable little chick, I think I’m its godmother and I know they are okay because they were being moved to a preservation. At least I hope they were after that planet exploded, they were quite intelligent for animals. I never knew something so young and adorable could be so powerful, I actually got to witness it being born...” After a moment Fluttershy realized she was being glared at as she started to monologue into talking about animals. “Oh sorry, I must be annoying you by going off tangent.” “How exactly did you get off the exploding planet?” Actually it sounded like an interesting story to Bonnie, a race named ‘Space Pirates’ sounded familiar. “The Etecoons and Dachora started this ship that was previously owned by this race called the Chozo.” For the life of her Fluttershy could not understand why Bonnie looked scared. “Did you just say Chozo, as in the LGMs idea of The Claw, The Architects and The Warriors? Do you mean those Chozo?” Bonnie just slapped her left hand to her face and groaned as she finally remembered why she heard of Space Pirates as a race before. “Well crap, that explains a lot.” “What’s wrong? Was it something I said? What does it explain?” Fluttershy was a bit confused. “Have you been to a section of space that has something called the Galactic Federation?” Pausing to receive a nod Bonnie continued on. “It is very far away from the Galactic Alliance and dad is likely the only person from within Galactic Alliance borders to have been to that section of the universe and back. He snuck off on his vacation time and then stole a lot of information and got some genetic material from there, it’s probably what led to my zany family’s existence. If you see a white furred, red eyed talking gerbil… you know what? Don’t even mention seeing a Chozo ever again period, unless you can absolutely trust the person you’re talking to implicitly. Now come on, sunset watching is done and we’re going to Planet Z!” Somehow, Fluttershy didn’t think Bonnie’s frantic change in mood was entirely normal and how did Bonnie even know she saw a Chozo? She never once mentioned seeing one in her dreams.