It was always the little things that evil overlords, emperors or conquerors tend to miss. It’s always the smallest detail that goes unnoticed until it’s too late. Oh, that rebel won’t be able to bring down my empire on their own, let them go. Then the rebel proceeds to do that by sheer force of will and possibly alone if she or he has to. In this case Bonnie wasn’t alone and she had found a relatively big oversight in Zurg’s security that she hadn’t actually seen before until she went looking for a backdoor.
The security systems of Zurg’s computer network were airtight. Lead Affront might have been able to hack it if given time, but she was preparing with Absolute Resolve to cause problems for Zurg’s forces. Lucky would stay behind to watch the ship as he didn’t have a shield generator and would be better suited for operating the two turrets in the Boojiboo, mostly in case Zurg tried to have the ship taken.
Zurg’s security was mostly an enclosed system, so well enclosed that an outside source trying to hack into it would be found and terminated with extreme prejudice. There was one big flaw with the system in that it doesn’t respond well to hacking it from the inside.
One disabled hornet later and a bit of time jury rigging the robot to enter the system for her was much easier for Bonnie. She was not an expert hacker and despite the fact that she was made to steal, Bonnie wasn’t good at stealing things that weren’t physically there like data or information.
The oversight of hornets already being in the system let a devilishly smiling experiment with a predilection for petty criminal offenses send out the signal to begin bringing the empire to a low point it won’t likely recover from any time soon. The empire would be hard pressed to mess with anyone for a while after this. That is provided that Bonnie allowed Zurg to live through what she was about to pull, she just had to redirect everyone in on the plan slightly as to not seriously hurt them.
The first thing Bonnie did was expose all of Zurg’s secret operatives throughout the Galatic Alliance to the Galactic Guardians and the Space Rangers. She would get progressively worse from there, especially when she started setting red alerts in factories before setting them to self destruct. She didn’t have the ability to take control over the hornets nor could she get control of them from where she was, but what she could do was quite crippling to Zurg’s ability to terrorize anyone much less Fluttershy.
Bonnie stopped and her eyes changed to blue when Fluttershy came to mind, she quickly found a way to overload the power to the building with the torture room to make it impossible to continue whatever it was they were doing to her. After hopefully sparing Fluttershy some pain, her eyes switched back to a blood red color and then she began aggressively dismantling the empire the best she could.
The signal was sent, the empire was going down.
-
Fluttershy squeaked when the lights went out in the room a few minutes after the brain thing left, she looked around and then a bunch of glowing lights from the hornets three horizontal slits lit her up on the table. She hadn’t escaped, so they weren’t going to start shooting her yet as she was still under prisoner status instead of fugitive status in the hornets scanners.
At least it wasn’t completely dark in the room and she could still see the robots shining their lights in her eyes. She did start hyperventilating a bit because of how scary the room looking without its lights on, she was quivering and being strapped to a table covered in the dried blood of the previous occupants didn’t make for a good mental condition.
An explosion was heard and Fluttershy ears went straight and her body stiffened in fright. She started looking around and tried to discern where that explosion came from. She couldn’t see anything being destroyed in the range of her echo sight.
“Discord… what was that?” Fluttershy neighed quietly trying not to be shot by a bunch of robots in the room.
“Well Fluttershy it seems Equestria has a bit of unusual company from an unknown source. Whatever it is, it seems to have appeared at the tree of harmony and it really looks out of place. Maybe it can be a new friend or maybe it will be something that has destructive potential. All I know for sure is that I have a new ‘special’ friend to play with either way!” A moment Discord stopped and then there was a scuffling. “I hope you don’t mind if I investigate this phenomenon, while the chaos you’re causing is more than enough for my daily recommended needs. I need to see to this; I will try to stay in touch with you while I do so. The visitor is strange and looks like one of Lyra’s humans, yet she has a magical aura that surrounds a particular object on her forehead where her life force is focused, better not let Spike or any dragon near her then. Oh who am I kidding; I’m going to teleport Spike there for the fun of it!”
“Discord, does she look like a giant cat that walks on two legs?” Hopefully it wasn’t who Fluttershy thought it was; she knew that it would have been her fault somehow if that happened.
“No it’s not one of your Aldebaran friends; it’s something much stranger... it appears to be feminine despite not exactly having a true gender.” Discord then went silent. “Sorry if you don’t hear from me in a while Fluttershy, but this is a pressing matter. Just know that I will always be watching you my dear, take care while I go investigate a possible threat.”
Apparently Discord left to investigate whatever caused that explosion in Equestria. She just laid there in the dark surrounded by a bunch of robots that were prepared to shoot her at a moment’s notice at the orders of a madman who was afraid of her. Fluttershy hadn’t meant to scare Zurg, the fact that she had managed to spook him so horribly made her sad. Sure he was evil, but Fluttershy didn’t like anything being afraid of her.
After a while, Fluttershy’s ear twitched and she heard him coming. Then she saw him coming in her echo sight, he looked slightly bigger than usual and since when did he have extra limbs? Her question was quickly answered when Roller rammed into the closed sliding door. The destroyed chunks of the door flew through the air and took out several hornets before they could even react, the other twenty or so hornets in the room immediately started moving forward and opening fire.
Roller, as fast as he ever was, shot by several hornets stabbing them clean through with the two brown spider leg shaped roots come from the top of his carapace. His carapace itself was covered in a large singular pink petal, he had a green pack at his back between his four green cover pipes and his entire wheel was wreathed in a circle of forward pointing sharpened yellow petals.
The yellow petals on Roller’s wheel acted like a chainsaw when he leapt at a hornet and sawed straight through it without stopping. He was wearing Fluttershy’s rhizome suit only resized and shaped to his form and Roller was using it with a vicious efficiency having the suit reworked to his needs, but still in Fluttershy’s colors.
The hornets continued to try and march on Roller, who swerved around their shots and then he stopped at the side of the remaining few hornets that weren’t stabbed, shredded or mercilessly eviscerated in the last few seconds. All four of the robots stood in a row and turned to witness a bright yellow glow coalescing in front of Roller; apparently he had just gained new adaptation after being shot at so much. A five pointed spiraling star shaped blast of energy shot out of Roller and punctured through all four remaining hornets destroying each one contact.
While the short ranged star shaped energy bullet dissipated quickly, it had been powerful enough to completely decimate each hornet it struck leaving little behind but a meager pile of scrap metal and a slightly winded Roller. Mr. Wheel followed that up by rolling up to Fluttershy whining pitiably and with worry in his revving noises, how something so small and powerful could go from brave to sad in seconds was not beyond Fluttershy’s understanding.
“It’s okay Roller, I’m okay… though it is a little dark in here without their lights and I don’t like the dark very much.” A second after Fluttershy said that a small star sparked into existence hovering above Roller’s body, lighting up the darkness around him as he rolled up to the table she was still trapped on. “That’s much better Roller, thank you very much. Now if you could please, that is if you don’t mind very much, cut through the bindings holding me down and preventing me from moving?”
It took a moment to walk Roller through how to free her and when the barely elastic binding straps were finally removed, Fluttershy sat up and felt how sore her body really was. The electric shocking had causing some numbness in her body, which was to be expected, what wasn’t expected was that moving too much was quite agonizing.
The toxic substance they injected her with was still in her body and making any big movements hurt, it made her wonder how she could still feel pain if her whole body was so numb and stiff. Sitting still had made the effects seem like nothing, moving around was completely and rather vastly different affair. This was really bad since it made her smash muzzle first into the floor trying to get off the table, pain flared throughout her whole body.
Roller rolled up to Fluttershy and rubbed against her gently and revved questioningly about whether or not she was truly okay, he really didn’t want her to stop moving forever. She was his best friend.
“I’m… okay, I’m not fine. I hurt everywhere Roller. Can you please give me the suit? It might help me a bit, at least it’ll offer me some form of protection.” Trying not to show her pain as she cringed on the floor Fluttershy watched as Roller smacked himself with one of his tree root appendages. A second later the growth retracted back into the backpack on his pipes. The wheel turned about and lowered the pipes to slide the backpack into Fluttershy’s extended hoof from where she lay on the floor.
The living wheel had to watch the pony struggle to put the backpack on and then the suit sprang up around her, she weakly pulled out the universal translator and put it on her head and activated a new feature that hadn’t been on it before. A small microphone popped out at the side of Fluttershy’s mouth and she inhaled to speak into it, hoping she wasn’t making a big mistake here.
“This is Fluttershy. I’m in a lot of pain, but I’ll be okay. I’m sure whatever they injected me with will go away eventually and the lightning shocks weren’t so bad. What’s going on, is anyone there?” Fluttershy tried to stand only to flop onto her belly as her legs went out from under her after wobbling like a blob of jelly. “I might be a bit incapable of walking at the moment after what they did to me.”
“Yeah, we read you loud and clear Fluttershy, Bonnie has really messed up Zurg’s communications network to give us a secure channel. I think she’s currently wrecking the planetary defenses… yep they just went down, try to find a way out of there if you can little darling. We are starting our air raid now.” Peppy sounded ready for the raid on Zurg’s planet. “Slippy form up and please pay attention to your six for once!”
“After that find a safe spot Fluttershy and hold out until we can get Fox and Falco a safe landing zone down there to drop the Land Masters. The streets are currently swarming with those robots, so be careful. While most of them are being distracted by the two DOKs and Bonnie, but they still might go after you.” Slippy was sounding as chipper as usual. “Don’t worry about us. If we can survive Venom, then we can survive this easily. This planet isn’t nearly as bad as Venom was. Whoa would you look at those DOKs go, they are really impressive machines.”
“Slippy… you’ve got bogeys on your tail already, pay attention and do your job already!” Several shots were heard firing after Peppy shouted at Slippy.
“Sorry Peppy, I’ll get right on it. Thanks for the save by the way.” Slippy’s voice sounded properly cowed.
“Right, get out of the building and find a safe place to stay until Fox or Falco can pick me up...” Fluttershy muttered to herself as she stumbled trying to get into a standing position and horribly failing to do that because the pain made her legs go limp. “Roller, can I ride on you?”
Roller revved that he would be glad to carry her as long as she needed to be. He moved closer to Fluttershy and waited patiently for her to slowly position her body on top of him, while she was doing so he reoriented the star shaped energy to in front of himself.
“Okay, um… do you know the way out?” As Fluttershy pointed to the ragged gaping hole in the door Roller left behind in his recent rampage, the wheel quickly set off to wherever she wanted to go since she obviously can’t go by herself at the moment.
-
Fluttershy and Roller were almost outside when her ears twitched in alert. She saw something large in her echo sight and her eyes widen
“Oh no, stop right now!” The wheelie did so just in time as a plasma blast ripped a large hole in the wall in front of them and to the left. What stepped through the hole was one of the hyper hornets, Roller charged up the star he had been holding onto for light and launched it at the hyper hornet.
The bulky yellow machine rocked slightly with the star blast and the end result was a one foot wide dent about a half a millimeter deep. The machine scratched idly at the dent with its left claw and then lifted its right plasma cannon and fired.
Roller quickly zipped forward and to the side around the shot and then went straight for and through the hyper hornets legs with Fluttershy hunkering down to avoid getting hit by the robots pelvic region.
The machine was too slow to react to the maneuver and started to turn around; its bulky armor was a bit too much for Roller’s new offensive based adaptation to really deal with. It was about to give chase when it stomped down on something small, green and round. Red vines erupted throughout its armored legs covering its lower torso and ended up causing it to topple over. After a moment the vines glowed brightly doing their best to damage the armored behemoth, the hyper hornet slowly stood up with the armor plating on its legs slightly damaged and ripped away the vines before it stomped off to search for targets.
Fluttershy hoped the pod grenade slowed it down enough, they continued out into the open wasteland streets of Planet Z. This planet was horrible with its red skies full of electrical storms, there were a lot of factories everywhere and the color of this massive labyrinth she was in the middle of was a dull grays, browns and dirty reds. It didn’t seem like there was much life on this planet, given the roads were mostly gravel or metal.
The pony didn’t get much time to take in the sights when they came under attack by a group of flying hornets, Roller immediately set off down the robot infested streets while trying to avoid all the shots being fired their way from all angles. A yelp elicited from Fluttershy’s mouth when a shot struck her suit in the right flank. Despite the suit not being penetrated by the constant laser fire, every hit hurt like she was being set on fire.
“Come, this way!” A waving mechanical hand from a nearby alleyway called out. Deciding to trust a strange Fluttershy directed Roller to turn into the alleyway of the massive cityscape and they saw one of the brains in a robot thing. “Follow me quickly… oh of course you’ll be able to, you’re riding that strange machine.”
“He’s actually biological and of a highly adaptive species.” It was a wonder that Fluttershy had to point this out so often. She watched as the robot suit rolled up to a wall and the two mechanical arms started manipulating something, a loud clanking noise was hard and the robotic suit with the brain in a dome backed up. A ramp leading downwards opened up in the wall.
“While that is a very interesting thing to know, please follow me. I promise I mean you no harm.” The brain thing looked at Fluttershy pleadingly as she looked at the ramp then at him, she looked him in the eyes thoroughly.
“Okay, Roller down the ramp.” Her instructions immediately obeyed, Fluttershy was carried downwards into the room.
The brain thing looked left and right before ducking into the entrance and it closed. Fifteen hornets came into view of the alleyway only to find that they have lost track of their quarry and left to go join the fight against the two shielded machines that were decimating hornets left and right.
-
“If you don’t mind me asking, who or what are you? Did Zurg rip your brain out of your body?” Though she was squeamish to think it and didn’t like the idea at all, Fluttershy wanted to get her questions out the way while she could.
“Zurg knows me as Brain Pod number eighty six, but my name is Styg Glip and I am a Cerebrian. Given the fact that you can now understand what I’m saying, that thing you’re wearing must be a translator. Zurg is going to be so mad if he ever finds out the reason why you weren’t scared of all his torture plans for you. Welcome to planet Z by the way, heck of a place… quite literally at that. At least the lower atmospheres aren’t poisonous like the upper atmosphere has become like almost everything else on this world, small miracle that.” The robot on three wheels paused and the brain retracted from the head in the robot as it sunk into the robots body. The water drained from the dome, after a moment the robot opened up and out popped what looked like an octopus like alien with six tentacles. “Just for your information we naturally look like this; the reason for the robot bodies is because we’re of fairly frail constitutions. We make up for it by being incredibly intelligent.”
Fluttershy just stared at the brain, the two short eyes on stalks that stuck close to it; leading down the stem like body to where a mouth was found and further down was a spread of six tentacles. Somewhere under the tentacles was likely an orifice for going to the bathroom. He spoke in an open manner and didn’t seem particularly deceitful; he didn’t even come off as haughty or thought himself above others, but he did seem a bit off in his own little world.
“I can tell that you’re a little overwhelmed, most people are when they see us pop out of our shells for a bit. We do prefer wet places; as such those liquid receptacle domes are perfect for us. I’m exposing myself to you immediately like this as a sign of trust and with a hope that you are not anywhere near as bad as Zurg is.” Styg Glip extended a long thin tendril and Fluttershy took it in her hoof and blankly shook it while still staring at distractedly at the fact that he was a living brain. She didn’t even notice the pain shooting up her leg. “Yeah we have that kind of effect on people, this planet has just been one wreck after another, but the Cerebrian’s and Grub’s call this our home. Just know that things went way downhill long before Zurg was a thing on this planet. Word of warning for your species, don’t go too heavily into industrialization as that is what became the biggest problem for good old planet Z here.”
“I’m Fluttershy, why are you helping me again Mr. Glip?” Fluttershy was trying very hard not to stare at his large seemingly exposed brain.
Roller wasn’t staring and was idly looking around the room at the various stores of things on the shelves; he was far more interested in how fast the robotic body was.
“Why do you think? I want to ask you’re for help in getting off this planet safely! Zurg treats us Cerebrian’s okay enough, but we’re basically slaves that just build things for him. The Grubs… they are not quite so lucky on that front given their usefulness to Zurg is always on the lower end of things and relatively short lived at that if they fail him too often. I’m sure you’ve seen those little bug fellows around, they are almost as meek as we are at times.” The brain had been walking around on its tentacles pacing in front of the quiet pony; he turned to her with a determined look in his eyes. “You scared Zurg and I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Sure he’s fled a few times after a setback or acted like a sissy at times, but outright total and complete fear of something? While I’m curious as to what you exactly did to get such a reaction, that’s not quite important right now. So, what’s the plan and will you help me?”
“I’m waiting for my friends to drop their vehicles off and they are going to help escort me back to the cargo ship I arrived on safely. They are currently preparing to do just that Mr. Glip.” After a moment Fluttershy decided to swallow her apprehension and she pulled the Cerebrian into a soft hug, he seemed like he needed it. Sure it may have hurt a lot to do given the toxins having a nasty effect on her body, but she felt the effort was worth it as Styg relaxed in her hooves. “Also yes, I will be glad to help you since we’re friends.”