//------------------------------// // 89 // Story: Yonder Wandered Fluttershy // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// “We’ve almost caught up with it, seriously! Like seriously dudes, ready the grapple guns!” The mullet man in the middle of a pack of what he considered awesome weapon carrying monster trucks was preparing to attack the Head Hunter. As they closed in on the Head Hunter it continued forward at a set pace and didn’t veer off course from the road it was moving along and the encroaching pack of monster trucks started closing range. They were about to fire, when something dropped from the sky going at an incredible speed and caused a sonic boom within their pack destroying all their windows. The sonic boom also caused all the monster trucks to temporarily stall. The bright pink and yellow circles that exploded outwards and spread throughout the pack sent them all into complete disarray. - Fluttershy veered back around after her sonic boom attack and came up on the rear three monster trucks and she angled her wings in front of her face and spiraled her way through the two left tires on the monster truck on the left. She completely destroyed them by sharpening the suit wrapped around her feathers and drilling straight on through. At the speeds she was going she had the advantage of momentum and that was quickly bled off by destroying the tires using sonic speed she was going at to her advantage. Veering upwards and to the right the pony tossed down a pod grenade into the hood of the next car over that went off immediately on impact destroying the engine in a mass of vines. Then she dove into the windowless monster truck on the right and carried off the two humans that weren’t wearing their seat belts, she dropped them off on the ground as their monster truck crashed. Seeing that she had fallen behind as the other trucks, Fluttershy started picking up speed by activating the thruster on her suit. - “Can’t let Fluttershy have all the fun and that was quite amazing. Wonder how she did that.” Bonnie looked up at the camera showing the monster trucks with shattered windows and they were slowly regaining their bearings from the surprise attack from above. Checking over her options she smiled at the one that said power bombs. “Wow, Fluttershy was going so fast, I felt her release a huge pulse of magic when she did that. It felt really nice.” Foxglove had felt the shockwave and for some reason Soft Echo was giggling playfully when she felt the wave pass through the Head Hunter without incident. It was telling that magic was somehow involved in Fluttershy’s dive attack. “Her species can fly at sonic speeds with magic huh? She’s beautiful and she’s got a lot horse power underneath those delicate feathered wings of hers, her thruster wasn’t even activated when she did that.” Bonnie flicked her finger forward and activated the power bomb feature on the Head Hunter; she also put in a call to MIB. “This is Bonnie, SOPHIA the Third is a go MIB. Don’t worry, we got this.” The Head Hunter spewed hundreds of little glowing spheres out of the back of the ship in a random manner, the monster trucks only a few hundred feet behind it suddenly lost their tires in multiple highly damaging explosions went off under them. This wiped out another five monster trucks. Roller revved lazily as he slowly rolled up to the pilots chair and laid down, he was bored so he might as well get some rest before he’s needed for something. He’d let Bonnie and Fluttershy have all the fun. Soft Echo toddled over to Roller and flopped on top of him and he didn’t react to her sudden weight on top of his body. Bonnie found that the power bombs option was now grey, it needed to regenerate bomb mass and until then she had to rely on something else. Her eyes wandered over an option and she had an evil smile, the ship had an energy grapple installed, Oh there was a lot of fun to be had there! - Fluttershy toss four pod grenades into the road ahead of the monster trucks that were still gunning for Head Hunter and they had to avoid a mass of exploding vines ripping up chunks of the road. “Hey guys shoot that annoying thing up there. Like seriously, it isn’t that hard!” Several of the monster trucks popped up large cannon like devices up from their rear ends and they started glowing, several beams converged and struck Fluttershy causing her to shift slightly in midair. Fluttershy felt herself absorbing the energy from their energy cannons. She quickly figured out that she could redirect where that energy went, since she fired a smaller beam back at the monster trucks a tenth the strength that she was hit with. It was still powerful enough to cut four monster trucks in half, the front halves of those four trucks split from the rear halves when a small thin beam swept through all of them at Fluttershy’s careful behest. She didn’t want to hit anyone and seeing no blood meant she was successful in not hurting anyone. “Aw seriously dudes, what is it going to take to take out that thing up there stopping us from jacking that sweet ride! We must totally start using missiles then, seriously!” Motor Ed was probably by far the most annoying gear head to ever exist, he took his mechanical prowess seriously and that being had seriously caused his baby some damage when she destroyed all the windows on it. Then there was the minor damage from the tentacles exploding up out of the road, he was a good driver and as such he had almost avoided everything but the sonic explosion created by Fluttershy thus far. Now the beam cannons on the back of the truck started firing missiles up at Fluttershy who, while she couldn’t even panic, she was mentally concerned about her safety and took on evasive maneuvers. The missiles were thoroughly locked onto her. Urging herself to go faster she passed right by Head Hunter which angled upwards slightly and shot the missiles out of the air with several highly accurate plasma beams. “Don’t be afraid to ask for help Sweet Cheeks! I’ve got you covered. Now watch this, I have a magic trick to show you.” Bonnie’s voice was heard coming from Fluttershy’s translation device that was still around her neck. A feeling of joy leapt up through Fluttershy as she was highly relieved that the missiles chasing her hadn’t managed to hit her. She turned her head back towards the Head Hunter as it came to a sudden stop and reversed back towards the monster trucks. - The Head Hunter jumped into the air over several grappling claws fired from the monster trucks and fired a small beam of energy at one of the monster trucks while swerving to the right and returning to moving forward. It swerved around to left roughly slamming truck caught in the grappling beam into another one, following that Head Hunter quickly spun around and started rolling backwards at the exact same full speed it could go moving forwards. As it passed by another monster truck the blue beam shot out for several seconds and then reeled back in with the front axle of a monster truck causing its front half to slam into the road and send up a wave of sparks. The axle was released into the path of the other monster trucks forcing them veer around the two wheels still attached to the detached axle. Bonnie smiled as she controlled the grapple beam to separate parts of the monster truck; the unfortunate problem was that it was limited to things in front of Head Hunter within a certain wedge of range. “I’m taking theft to a whole new level!” Bonnie giggled as she stole a rear tire off of another monster truck. It took a moment for the beam to rotate it so it was held horizontally. Bonnie then sent it flying under the wheels of two different trucks toppling them onto their sides and rendering three more trucks out of the fight. She wasn’t about to fire the plasma beams, she might accidentally kill someone with that much raw firepower. She loaded up the power missiles option and saw that she currently had ten in stock. After a moment she aimed the combat cursor on the screen before her downwards slightly. “Fine tuning a grappling beam is good and all, but time to play with explosives!” “You’re kind of scaring me.” Foxglove said after a moment from her perch on the back of the pilot’s chair, the Rescue Rangers had been on the wrong side of technology a whole slew of times. This time she was on the right side of the more technologically advanced and it was kind of scary how powerful it was. “Don’t worry I’m not going to kill anyone.” As she said this Bonnie fired a missile into the road in front of two more monster trucks, the power electrical explosion flipped both the trucks away from the blast and they came back down missing tires and crackling with what they would assume to be electricity. “Yeah, like that was real survivable.” Deadpanned a frightened Foxglove, there was a little noticeable anxiousness in her voice for the safety of the people who were in those trucks. “To be honest with you I didn’t know how powerful those missiles were going to be, some little green snots said they altered them to be more defensive and disabling. This ship had a check up before it crashed into New York’s bay.” Then again now that Bonnie considered it outright, they might have meant more defensive and disabling against capital class ships. If so, that was kind of overkill in the extreme and the LGMs were awesome in that respect. She spun the Head Hunter back around. “Though I’m glad I fired that missile into the road instead of directly at the trucks.” - “Fluttershy look out!” Discords voice popped up into Fluttershy’s ears, she had her memory stone with her and as usual it in one of ears. With the barest glint of light reflecting off of something in her peripheral vision, Fluttershy immediately dove downwards avoiding a sword that would have cleanly bisected her in half. Looking over her shoulders she saw Tubbimura riding what looked like a rainbow spewing machine, it didn’t take her long to notice the Wings of Tinabi attached to the bike. “She has a good reaction time; I didn’t know humans could fly like that.” Pearl didn’t sound exactly chipper, but she didn’t sound as depressed as when the deaths of possibly hundreds of crystal gems happening on Equus was brought up. “That my poor little dear Fluttershy does, it would have been faster if her emotions were in place to drive her.” A disgruntled Discord knew that if he ever met the happy troll, even though he had helped Fluttershy with a lot of things, he would do something relatively unpleasant but not permanently scarring. The troll did give Fluttershy a cute little child to dote on after all. “Hah, it appears that I have found my prey!” Tubbimura gleefully shouted as he held his sword high in the air. “I’ve also found mine!” A green and black jet shot by and a metal claw coming from below it roughly grabbing onto the sumo ninja and his motorcycle and dragged him out of the area. Shego was obviously the pilot of it and it left a blank faced Fluttershy in its wake. “This is round two you fat bastard, no helicopters to get in the way this time!” Shrugging at the unusual sight going off into the distance, Fluttershy angled back for the Head Hunter and prepared to toss off some more pod grenades, she was steadily running out of them and there were very few monster trucks left due to her efforts. Now there was a pack of sumo ninjas on motorcycles moving alongside the six or seven monster trucks left, they were holding some kind of conversation with a blonde guy with a mullet. The blond mullet guy threw a suitcase to one of the fat ninja and he opened it and then nodded. All the sumo ninja’s raised their swords and shouted, while pointing themselves at the Head Hunter. Shego’s emotional effects had already worn off and that fact wasn’t lost on Fluttershy; hopefully hers didn’t wear off until after this mess is over with. She wasn’t exactly ready to deal with remorse or regret in the middle of a pitched fight, though she knew she was going to feel bad about all this later. She had practically showered the guys in those trucks in glass and she could see quite a few of them were still bleeding. - The police had an idea of what was going on and was slowly picking up the mess left behind by the experimental tank. It was relatively public knowledge that the tank was being tested for distance traveling; it was brightly painted and noticeable for a reason. It was following the rules of the road up and to the point it was attacked where it started doing a bunch of weird crazy stuff. The police were staying out of the way of the Hench Company men, but they were also picking up all of Motor Ed’s gang. There wasn’t a single one of the guys they picked up that wasn’t injured in some fantastical way; which is why they also had a few ambulances trailing along. They noted it had become something of a three ring circus at this point, so anything was plausibly deniable about the situation up to and including something like Cthulhu popping up out of the ground. At this point they wouldn’t put it past someone along the road to be performing some kind of dark ritual to summon the mythical beast only to get run over by all of this by accident. The Philadelphia Police Force were going to stay calm and quiet about it all, they had cleared the roads ahead of time because they just knew something like this was going to happen. The highway was going to be pretty badly damaged by the time everything was over with; the collateral damage was an unavoidable problem and at least they were going to arrest a notorious gang leader by the time it was all said and done. They of course would leave the tank and the Hench Company people well alone; at least the Hench people until they tried something and so far they hadn’t done anything worthy of note yet except observe the carnage. At least the civilians weren’t in the crossfire since they closed down the roads going south, the tank was heading somewhere in a southerly direction and they weren’t being paid to know where it was going. They were being paid to clean criminals up off the streets and that’s what they were quite literally doing at the moment. - Fluttershy flung five pod grenades at the road where they exploded and that slowed the monster trucks down, but the motorcycle riding sumo ninjas just cut small holes through the vines blocking their path. Every sumo ninja started fling stars that were flying far faster than they should be capable of, each sumo ninja in question could throw a throwing star to the point that they might as well be moving at eighty miles per hour. The air was being filled with sharp pointy metal. Not only were they after the flying plant suited creature with the Lunar Locket, they were now also after Head Hunter as well and were being paid by a guy related to someone who had previously hired them to assist in a side job that had to do with their target. Fluttershy was having problems dodging the curving arcs and random changes in trajectory as the flying pieces of metal did their best to knock her out of the sky. “Come back in Fluttershy, it’s getting a little too hot out there for you.” Bonnie was right as Fluttershy was getting a lot of tears in her suit as it couldn’t handle the seemingly magical sumo ninja objects to well, despite the fact that it was doing its job in keeping her from being perforated. Fluttershy flew for the top of Head Hunter and she saw droplets of blood fall past her, yeah she had been hit a few times and thanks to Stanley she couldn’t yelp or even show pain. She landed on the roof and the sharp knives and stars started deflecting away from Fluttershy as the roofs shielding was now protecting her. She lowered into Head Hunter while thinking of what to do next. Bonnie had Head Hunter swerving left and right to avoid popping the tires, as bits of metal found their way to the ground after being thrown by some really agile large guys who were obviously as well muscled as they were wide. “Any bright idea’s Fluttershy? I know you don’t want to kill anyone, but our options that are not lethal in any given manner are limited.” Bonnie didn’t even turn around and was watching two screens and the road in front of them when Fluttershy entered the pilot’s chamber. The screen on the left showed what was directly behind them, the screen on the right showed little red markers far behind the pack that was behind them meaning that the Hench Company still in play if they managed to deal with the problem behind them. “Okay, we have to lose all these guys like yesterday and we do not want to lead them straight to where we’re going.” “Actually I do have one.” Taking her things out of the suit, Fluttershy turned it back into its backpack form and smiled as Soft Echo slowly made her way up to her wrapped one of her legs in a hug while whining slightly. Fluttershy had several small cuts along her body; ignoring the light injuries she didn’t feel she started nudging Roller to get his attention, would her idea even really work? “Roller, I have something very important for you to do.” Roller immediately became determined to succeed at whatever Fluttershy requested, he revved questioningly as to what he could do for her. Fluttershy slipped the plant pack over Roller’s four pipes and whispered some rather precise instructions and hoped Roller wouldn’t forget any of them. This was going to be an interesting trick for the wheel to pull off and if it worked they would be able to escape having to deal with everyone Bonnie saw as a threat on the scanners. - “What’s it doing now?” The Hench Company henchman watched as the Head Hunter rose itself up slightly and lowered some kind of cargo ramp which dropped out yellow, pink and green object much like the four legged flying one. Only this one was wheel shaped. They had seen plenty of strange things, the tank was definitely a monster to tangle with and he wouldn’t relish doing so. “Also what is that thing?” It would be explained away as a little project into botany of someone named Dr. Drakken, being used as some kind of defensive apparatus for the strange tank. - Roller sped off the bottom exit of Head Hunter and continued moving quickly to catch up with the quick rolling machine; he sprouted the four wooden branch limbs. The very same limbs he used to free Fluttershy back on Planet Z and leapt up to latch onto the rear end of Head Hunter. The Head Hunter leapt and started hovering without fully retracting it’s legs and was now floating forwards on its original momentum with Roller clinging to it as well as he could. The wheel narrowed his eyes and his four pipes went erect and it started using the plant suits jet, it didn’t add much speed to the floating Head Hunter. “Okay Roller, please just do your best.” Fluttershy’s flat commanding tone made the wheel spark small magical stars out of his four tubes into the pollen jet stream from the plant suit. What happened after that was the shrinking explosive pollen became super charged with Roller’s magical exhaust and an explosion erupted behind Roller in one big sustained burst. This maneuver put the Head Hunter out of sight of all its pursuers within seconds of it happening and the ship was now going way too fast to keep track of. - “I have to wonder if we’re going fast at all, it certainly doesn’t feel like it.” It was obvious Foxglove had never been inside an alien spaceship for very long. “We’re on a Spaceship, remember? Be thankful the gravitational compensation unit isn’t offline or we would have definitely felt what Roller just did.” Laughing loudly Bonnie couldn’t believe how fast they were going and with the hover modules active, she steered the ship out over the water of a nearby river and then back onto land twenty miles later. “Speaking of, we need to slow down or we’ll overshoot our target. Hey, speed for brains, you can stop now!” Fluttershy appeared on top of the ship calmly walked down to the back of it and pulled Roller up onto the Head Hunter and then carried him inside. All the while Bonnie was trying to slowly set down the rapidly moving air hockey puck that was Head Hunter. “Good job Roller, I think we lost them.” Once again, Fluttershy was forced into only feeling a cheery disposition despite the fact that she was bleeding and had several cuts along her body. The Head Hunter had managed to cease its momentum thanks in part to gravity and some rather tough tires wrapped around the legs of the ship. The tires managed to survive hitting the road at a hundred plus miles an hour as the hover feature was slowly turned off, though there would be skid marks for miles and the tires would be heavily worn down. It didn’t matter because they didn’t have very far to go to reach Beach City.