//------------------------------// // 97 // Story: Yonder Wandered Fluttershy // by Darkonshadows //------------------------------// “So magic exists and it’s not always related to aliens?” Nani was a little confused, because just about anything weird that happened in Hawaii was usually Jumba’s fault. It was a fact Hawaii has never stopped being weird since then. This was the first time she was hearing of actual magic and having watched Fluttershy create a cloud out of a puddle of water, she believed it because she’s seen a lot of things. Even Soft Echo ripped off a piece of cloud and squeezed some water into her mouth like Fluttershy tended to do. “Of course it does and Earth has its own magic. Um… could you please excuse me one moment? I have to make a call.” Magically summoning the two memory stones into her hoof, Fluttershy put in a call to Katrina. “Queen Katrina is the person that is supposed to meet us in San Francisco already there?” “Not yet Fluttershy, You remember my granddaughter Felicia? She is the one I am tasking with this problem. I can only hope she has enough training to solve it.” The pony could almost hear an exasperated Katrina shaking her head. “She will be in San Francisco within the hour as soon as the ship Righteous Indignation reaches Aldebaran. How about you, how soon can you be there?” “I can get to San Francisco within minutes from where I am, I’m sitting with some friends at the moment and there’s a portal that will immediately get me there.” Hearing a gasp of panic, Fluttershy quickly added to her statement. “Don’t worry it doesn’t go through time except for time zones.” “Oh my goodness, I just about had a heart attack there.” Katrina could be heard visible sighing in half relief. “I’ll contact you when Felicia arrives in San Francisco. She has been warned that humans do not take well to aliens and will be wearing a cloak to hide her appearance, if that fails she has been told to state that she’s wearing a really good costume. If Felicia knows what’s good for her she will not wander astray or end up being captured by someone who would harm her. She is rather excited about seeing Earth and I need you to quickly meet up with her to prevent any serious trouble. How long is it until your past self goes into the past?” “Seven to six hours from now, there wasn’t a clock around to look at as I fell into the time portal; do you measure time the same way humans do? I mean it’s kind of odd that we ponies measure time in exactly the same way they do, so you should know how long that is right?” Fluttershy had wondered how many other beings measured time and it seemed the concept of seconds, minutes, hours and days was something that was partially universal. “I know enough to grasp that we have enough time to get to you to solve the issue before your past self can disrupt the time stream even further when she enters the portal.” Katrina sounded rather calm now as if she hadn’t had a panic attack a few seconds ago. “Since you have both memory stones, if she enters the portal and Felicia hasn’t solved the problem by then… well the end results of that will be rather unpleasant and will cause even further complications than what is already going to happen because you time traveled. It is best you be prepared for anything if you can’t reach Felicia in time. I wish you well Fluttershy, it seems my people owe you a greater debt for causing you so much trouble. Goodbye and may luck flock to you so nothing will go horribly wrong within the next few hours.” “Its okay; you or your people don’t owe me anything Katrina, goodbye.” With that Fluttershy cut the connection and turned back to the conversation at the table. “I still say Cookie Cat was one of the most awesome things ever! Except for the fact that he’s evil, who in the world would leave their Ohana behind like that? I mean sure there was an interstellar war, but couldn’t he have taken them with him? Aside from the commercial the ice cream cookies are actually really good.” Lilo was leading a completely whimsical life since she met Stitch and she just rolled with it and everything had gotten much better given she now had a huge family all over Hawaii. Seeing that Fluttershy was looking at her she just had to ask. “Have you met anything strange since you got to Earth? You know, as in the flesh rending monsters variety?” “Well we’ve met some friendly beings called werewolves who were a little odd and I met two different kinds of dragons and one of them was named Jake. I’m absolutely terrified of dragons, but he sounded nice enough while I was stuck with an odd affliction.” To Fluttershy Earth had a lot in common with Equus, except for all the pollution in the cities. Equus didn’t have pollution; Pegasi had a monopoly on air quality control and all ponies can honestly say they didn’t like causing pollution of any kind. “You met Jake! How is he doing? Is he still protecting magical creatures? His Grandpa and Mrs. Hasagawa the fruit vendor know each other; they even went on a date. Oh and Mrs. Hasagawa also watches out for a lot of Stitches cousins, she’s really good at it too.” Lilo took a moment to notice her older sister Nani was staring at her. “Yes, I knew about magic before Fluttershy told you and I’m sorry for not telling you about the fact that things like unicorns exist, you didn’t believe me before when I told you about strange things like Pudge the fish so I didn’t think you were interested in hearing any more weird things. So, do vampires exist?” “Jake was doing fine when I last saw him and yes he’s still doing that. I would have to think vampires exist after everything I’ve seen from killer robots to strange biological creatures beyond imaging. Then there was meeting Bonnie Jookiba or one four nine if you prefer Jumba. I haven’t personally met any vampires that drink blood, I really wouldn’t want to anyway. My home planet has changelings and they eat emotions, they aren’t really friendly about it though.” Once again Fluttershy got affectionate with Soft Echo causing her to squeak happily. “The closest thing I’ve met is a cute little filly that drinks fruits dry and she’s my precious little daughter, yes she is.” “She really is precious isn’t she, when did you have her?” The one who spoke was Mr. Wendy Pleakley. He was a three legged, two tongued, one eyed noodle of an alien wearing a long brown wig. He was also a highly effeminate male of his species who was usually the responsible adult for Lilo when Nani couldn’t be around, his cross-dressing tendencies were easy to overlook. He was a kind individual who was willing to overlook many awful things about someone else; he was friends with Jumba after all. Interestingly enough, he is considered very handsome for his species despite his obvious quirks. He was still considered handsome despite dressing as a female from a human perspective, which added further questions about his bizarre species. “A little over two and a half days ago… she was accidentally conceived through some twisted magic and my wounds while I was in the midst of being healed of all that ailed me Mr. Pleakley.” Fluttershy snuggled Soft to her chest, the filly just liked being treated like a plush toy and didn’t complain about the overly affectionate gestures. “Before you ask, I don’t regret her existence at all and I love her very much.” “Well congratulations on having a beautiful little filly then, no matter how she came about. I’ve been expecting something like that to happen to someone with Jumba around, but it hasn’t exactly occurred yet.” After Pleakley spoke, Fluttershy just received a bunch of warm smiles and happy words about her being a nice mother so far. “I am having six hundred children, why do I need more than that? I am finding that I am not able to create perfectly unstoppable evil being that can last forever, I can’t make an experiment without free will to choose to be what they want to be.” Oh how Jumba had tried. Leroy was the one possible exception; it was a good thing Fibber wasn’t around when he told ‘Little Girl’ they were having dance party on the prison asteroid. The hamster was alive, but the Leroy’s most certainly weren’t and Jumba was hoping ‘Little Girl’ would eventually forget that they had existed. Sure Leroy was evil, but he didn’t make the choice to be that way and his genetic encoding made it impossible for him to have true free will. Jumba always liked his experiments to at least have something resembling a heart. Due to the evil hamster being responsible for his genetic programming, Leroy would have nothing to do with being good. By Jumba’s calculations Leroy and his clones would continue making nothing but bad choices and would have eventually ended up committing suicide by accident or on purpose out of spite for their own existences. On all accounts Jumba just cut out the middleman on that situation and saved Leroy and his clones a lot of time and effort by euthanizing them all. As a side effect it also saved a lot of innocent lives who would have died by their increasingly volatile suicidal tendencies. Jumba couldn’t create a perfectly evil being; because ‘good’ itself had to be in part of the equation as otherwise the being in question would eventually self destruct. Evil could not exist without good in that sense, because evil was a choice and he understood that now thanks to ‘Little Girl’. “So when are you going Fluttershy?” Though she wouldn’t ask it right now, Lilo eventually wanted to ride Fluttershy. “Oh in the next ten or twenty minutes whether or not our contact is in San Francisco.” Fluttershy could see Virgil conversing easily with Jumba, Nani and Pleakley. He had a way with words and was easy to talk to as he was quite intelligent if chronically depressed sounding. “Will you continue to be our guide Virgil?” “Of course I will, I am quite intrigued by the fact that I’ve once again crossed paths with a wielder of the Cosmic Crown.” Virgil wasn’t ever going to trust himself to lead anyone unless someone else trusted him completely to make a good decision on a moments notice as he has made a lot of bad ones in his life. He really couldn’t trust himself very much, even if he did have the intellect of the Chozo Architects in his blood. Every person who became a bearer of the Cosmic Crown and had his help with it had always died horribly in some way. “I am still rather worried what meeting me could possibly mean for the two of you.” “It’s about time for us to be leaving anyway; we’ll be back later with that thing we discussed about bringing to you earlier Jumba. It’s completely fine at the moment and in stasis. I would like to make a few more statements around Fibber, which is if he doesn’t mind. I can’t promise that I won’t accidentally make another paradox statement, I’m still very much sorry about that Fibber.” Looking to the orange experiment Fluttershy could see Fibber and Belle making gestures to each other to communicate. They couldn’t talk because their abilities made it impossible for them to, they looked to be making up for that by being able to communicate silently and were working together with an open book sitting between their plates as the whole family ate at the table together. Fibber turned to her and gave her the go ahead with a thumb. “All my friends back on my home planet don’t miss me at all and have already forgotten about me.” Fibber gave off an extremely loud gargle; it shook the whole house down to its alien built foundations. Belle clapped at his incredible display, she was clearly impressed with how loud he managed to get that as she was a connoisseur of loud noises herself. “Whoa. That was certainly a statement.” Giggling at how she caused the pony to blush, Lilo turned to Fibber. “Her friends must miss her a lot.” This time Fibber gurgled once again causing a bit of confusion, Pleakley cleared his throat drawing everyone’s attention to him. He and Fibber were good friends, in fact Fibber was part of his weekly group get together of multiple Jookiba Experiments to talk about things and hug. The group was called E. A. R. W. A. X. He was the one who came up with sign language or interpretive dance as a way for some experiments to communicate because they couldn’t talk at all. Interpretive dance was for the experiments that couldn’t verbalize and didn’t have fingers for sign language, not all experiments had appendages to write things with either. Lilo’s hula lessons became a popular thing among the six hundred or so experiments living in Hawaii as anyone could dance as long as they could move their bodies. “They don’t just miss her a lot; they miss her more than anything else and have been trying to live day to day by moving forward even with her on their minds. They likely have really important jobs to do and they know Fluttershy wouldn’t want them to pine away with worry or to sit around moping. As such what you said Lilo was a complete understatement of how they currently feel about it.” The fact that Pleakley didn’t get a reaction from Fibber said a lot. He smiled and then said a statement he hoped would set off Fibber. “Everything about my previous statement wasn’t true.” That statement earned a loud gurgle from Fibber; it wasn’t hard to guess why everyone was always so tense around Fibber. The spirit of what they say could be correct, but the statement itself would be incorrect. Pleakley was good friends with Fibber and he had the little orange guy help air out grievances between many of the experiments by making statements around Fibber all the time, he understood the living lie detector very well and could work with his ability to help the experiments he met with psychologically. Fibber was a caring individual despite his powers for lie detection and recently acquired telekinetic abilities which he used to ease tensions between his other family members if they started fighting. For the next five minutes Fluttershy made statements to Fibber, the one in particular that she wanted to know was whether or not her friends would love to meet Soft Echo and she double checked by making an opposing statement like Pleakley did. She had stated things that could be related to possible future disasters, but Fibber didn’t respond to any of it at all. After failing to get anything related to the future, Fluttershy at least confirmed that Discord was still watching her even now. “Okay, we’re going to the roof. Would you please see us off? If you don’t mind that is.” They didn’t get very far when Fluttershy heard Soft Echo squeaking that she had to go potty, so they all went to the bathroom before they went to the roof. Soft needed her mother’s help to use the toilet as she didn’t entirely understand the knowledge that was now in her head about it, but the knowledge she did understand was that it was rude to go all over the floor. One quick jump through a one way swirling vortex later, Fluttershy, Soft Echo and Virgil were immediately in an alleyway in San Francisco that looked like it was a bar. It was currently filled with dogs of all kinds and they all started growling at the sudden intruders. - “Of course I’m always watching Fluttershy, why the nerve to imply that I would ever stop watching someone who attracts that much chaos to the point that’s it’s truly quite dangerous with worry for their safety.” Discord mumbled as he read a book on lip reading with one eye. His free floating eye continued to stare at the ground through the entire planet, five asteroid fields, three other planets, a nebula and a sun just coming into existence. Thankfully Discord couldn’t go blind by staring at things too hard. “Why the time travel thing alone almost threw even me off for a moment.” Reading over his shoulder were a curious Pearl and Maud, the title of the book was quite misleading and not exactly what it suggested the book was talking about. Maud idly licked her lips a bit as she looked into the book and Pearl’s face turned from white to straight full out red. Discord was secretly shipping Pearl and Maud together. Rarity, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Spike, Fluttershy’s brother and many other ponies were now relying on Discord to tell them if anything went wrong with Fluttershy and they never stopped worrying about her safety. They did have to acknowledge that Fluttershy was surprisingly the best out of all of them at taking care of herself despite the situations she got into; she had lived next to the Ever Free Forest for a quite a few years after all. The only reason Discord hadn’t told them about Fluttershy suddenly having a daughter is because he wanted it to be a surprise when Fluttershy returned and that would cause a humorous if friendly amount of chaos. Hey, he had to get his kicks in when he could! - “I think we’re getting close Sylvia.” Wander hadn’t gotten lost, he was still looking for Fluttershy’s home planet, he was however getting horribly sidetracked by hundreds of smaller problems and helping people who immediately needed it. Fluttershy could wait a few weeks longer right? “Really how can you tell?” If she were honest with herself, Sylvia didn’t know how Wander worked and only accepted that he did. She had recently learned that every part of Wander was important and had seen the small patch of helplessness inside of him. She was a little startled to learn that she was Wanders home, he said as much when she picked up his helpless aspect. Seeing Wander shed a tear over it lit a protective fire in Sylvia’s chest, she also didn’t mind the aspect of Wander that loved her a lot while hugging onto her tail. “Because we’re nearing a mighty beautiful planet Sylvia and it has a sun and moon circling it!” After traveling almost nonstop Wander had finally successfully found the planet of Equus, after stopping to help four hundred and ninety three people on the way. Wander was going to need a lot of sleep when they landed. “I’ve even got a good feeling about this one Sylvia! I mean, who knew we could run into so many geocentric planets without finding the one with the adorable and fluffy ponies on it? The eviscerating giant mantis-horse-dog people were really quite nice to give us directions.” “I still feel sorry for that Jenbun Spahging character though, it can’t be easy for the girl to have an unrepentant meat eating female predator like that fall hopelessly in love with you when you’re a prey species and an herbivore at that.” Sylvia wasn’t about to complain about weird beings, Jenbun apparently knew where Equus was at least as she had apparently had a crush on a male terrestrial rabbit named ‘Angel’ from that planet. It wasn’t quite a love triangle, but it was still quite horrible to think about. Wander and Sylvia made their way for the planet which was the forty second geocentric one that they’ve come across. As they disappeared into the atmosphere a large skull shaped ship, which was bigger on the inside, appeared coming out of nowhere heading towards the planet on the same vector. “I hope this is at least far enough away that Wander won’t interfere with our conquering of this planet.” Lord Hater wasn’t nearly that lucky. “What’s an evil guy got to do around here to be able to conquer one measly little planet without being stopped by a crazy orange goofball?” - It was approaching eleven by time zone standards in San Francisco, meaning it was almost two AM at the crystal gems house. Fluttershy had a fun time sitting in at a dinner she wasn’t eating; now she was surrounded by a gaggle of growling grungy dogs and to think she would be eating breakfast in about four hours and then she would be teaching Soft Echo how to fly. She might have spent a bit too much time making statements to Fibber. Oh right, Fluttershy couldn’t let herself be distracted, they were surrounded by a bunch of angry dogs. They had after all entered this place uninvited all of the suddenly and without asking for permission first. “Um excuse us for barging in on your homes, if you do in fact live here. It makes me feel kind of sad that you don’t have a warmer place to sleep. Anyway, we are terribly sorry about this and the inconvenience, I hope you can find it in your heart to be forgiving about our sudden intrusion.” The dogs sat there for a moment they were still growling but less aggressive at Fluttershy’s words. “Can we at least please talk this out with the current alpha here?” Soft Echo squeaked her sentiments that the doggies all looked rather grumpy; they were much scarier than the fluffy big changing doggies. A golden furred female Irish setter moved forward taking in the strangers and the little tyke cowering against her mother’s larger framed, she took in their appearances with something akin to bored amusement. “Okay, what was with the portal thing? Aside from that welcome to the Flea Bite Café and Tavern, my name is Sasha and I’m the proprietor of this establishment and no one is going to hurt anyone here while I’m around. So cut it out with the growling boys and ladies.” All the other dogs quit growling and went back to their bones with scraps of meat and or drinks, a few continued to eye Virgil because he looked like a giant chicken. Sasha turned back to the three after making sure they wouldn’t be disturbed. “Welcome to my establishment, I’m pretty sure you’re going to attract a lot of attention soon. Goodness knows with the demons we have running rampant around here recently, that’s the truth of the matter. It’s really hard for me to get a date in edgewise with my soul mate because of his job. I ask that you please don’t cause any trouble, because judging by how you appeared here you are definitely trouble with a capital T, even if you aren’t looking for it.”