“Ah, she’s currently feeding some old friends of yours Fluttershy. You’d recognize them if you saw them, you know those birds look like some of the ones from my chaos dimension. Anyway, I can see where her ship is hanging out from here.” Discord was being helpful in spotting for Fluttershy again; Virgil would be able to find the ship easily enough as he told her which direction the chicken man had to go in. A number of explosions sounded off behind the lord of chaos, but he just smirked and continued to revel in the feeling of chaos even if he wasn’t causing it. “Anyway, things are going okay here. I assure you, no ‘ponies’ are coming to harm on my watch and things have been positively chaotic otherwise. Why I’m having a good time, I’m having quite a ball, so don’t stop me now.”
“Are you sure things are okay Discord? It sounds like someone is in a lot of pain over there and there are explosions.” Sometime Fluttershy wondered if Discord actually needed to cause chaos to be truly happy, he was always rather happy just when it came to talking with her.
“Aside from the Star Nomad, you’re barrel shaped friends have also arrived and they started playing badminton with some ponies. They are really quite good at it and what you’re hearing is just the sound of the shuttlecock going over the net, that Absolute Resolve fellow certainly has a problem with going overboard though.” What Discord wasn’t telling Fluttershy was that the shuttlecock was someone’s head; he looked over his shoulder and giggled at the sight.
Those robots were really good too, Lucky Day was doing particularly well as he was fast, Absolute Resolve wouldn’t tone it down with the literally explosive hits and Lead Affront was putting up some pretty good support. Pinkie Pie was leading her team quite well too; Rainbow Dash had a hard time keeping up with the screaming shuttlecock after Absolute hit it and Rarity was being a dainty support for their team.
“Well thanks for the help Discord; I hope to have tea with you real soon.” Even if she was going home, Fluttershy still had to revive Clyde first and before that she had to settle some of her past actions with some good people. “Virgil I know where you have to go, you can leave as soon as Bonnie can assure us that Atomic Betty is coming over.”
-
“This is not what I expected you to call me for.” Kim Possible could do anything, including go into outer space to pick up the slack for her cousin Betty Barrett who was going on what sounded like a goodwill mission to the east coast.
“Oh yeah, I’m not going to get tired of this any time soon, Wing of Tinabi!” Shego shot by in the air and Kim Possible sighed in defeat at the fact that her once upon a time nemesis could now fly, in fact Shego took to installing hooks into the back of her black and green suits so that she could use the mystical object to fly.
Kim Possible had met the Xiaolin Dragons a few days ago and had gotten involved in a fight over the mystical objects collectively called Fancy Feet a day later. She was glad that she had won the showdown to earn them. At least the Fancy Feet didn’t have the same drawback the technological version of the mystical objects did.
“Look, it’ll only be for a short while. If you run into Maximus, don’t worry he’s not exactly great at taking a hit.” Betty was a lot younger than Kim, but she was also a three times tougher due in part to her hybrid alien genetics. She switched into her battle suit and got on her wrist communicator. “Okay Sparky, let’s get going!”
Betty beamed up to the sky leaving behind Kim, Shego and Ron to do her job while she was busy with something else.
“Oh come on!” Ron Stoppable had lost his pants again, this time to the tractor beam that pulled Betty into the sky. Luckily Rufus had abandoned pocket before it zipped too high into the sky.
Shego caught Rufus and just hovered above Ron with a rainbow flowing off of her back, all while pointing at him and laughing.
-
Virgil had managed to get Samus to agree to a meeting, on her terms. Of the things Virgil noted of the hunter was that she acted very weird around him, most likely because of his heritage given she was infused with Chozo genetics.
The meeting would take place later this evening, around six and right now it was four. Thursday had been pretty quiet overall for Fluttershy and Bonnie, they were expecting anything to happen. So until then Virgil dropped some of the knowledge he had of the Chozo as a people since he could still remember them. Samus was probably one of the few people to see last see a living Chozo in recent times, Virgil hadn’t seen one in thousands of years.
The Chozo were a wide spread species, perhaps they had spread themselves too thin throughout the entire universe, all while leaving behind many things on a grand number of planets. Most of what was left behind was the offshoots of their race, such as the Lemurians or some of the Griffons in existence on planet Equus. He remembered them fondly as being one with nature and quite friendly, their technology was advanced beyond any other civilization that he knew of and then suddenly they were all gone.
Among one of the things Virgil remembered, one was the mention of the Void Wars from when he last saw the Chozo before they had left the planet. It was only a few years later after they left that Atlantis fell. It was unknown whether Atlantis had any survivors, but it was feasible as it was really hard to make anything totally extinct and Virgil himself was constant proof of it.
The Void Wars were started with darkness spreading and infecting being. A grand army made of the people who were of the stars themselves started forming up and eventually they possibly succeeded in fighting the void itself to a standstill. The Chozo that Virgil saw had left the planet to join the war. Virgil surmised that they succeeded, but at a heavy price given that they had never returned to find that the fruits of their labor had sunk beneath the sea.
Fluttershy, being knowledgeable on the subject, interjected with what she heard. She went on about the Star Warriors and how they fought the being behind the Void Wars. The being only known as Nightmare which was possibly the void itself, Nightmare still existed and would probably do so forever. Since she has heard and seen several signs of Nightmares continued existence, even long after the Elements of Harmony took care of the bit of it that had infected Princess Luna. Nightmare was an ancient immortal god like being of malevolence, one that was obviously existed to keep the balance of things by making sure no one in the universe ever got complacent.
“Well that’s all fine and dandy theory Sweet Cheeks, but it’s almost time to get going. So are you wearing the suit or what?” Bonnie would prefer that Fluttershy have the suit on her for protection.
“I won’t be, but my little Soft Echo will. I’m not leaving anything up to chance after the last three days, some of which I spent extra hours on.” As she said this Fluttershy strapped the backpack form of the Rhizome suit to Soft Echo and it immediately encased her in a suit exactly like her mothers, if only thicker because she was smaller. “I don’t want my little filly to get hurt again after that mean old demon shattered her wing.”
“Hey where’s the… did you put it on her? Really, but you can use that to deflect Samus’s beam weaponry if she shoots at you!” It was rather easy for Bonnie to get more and more upset at the fact that Fluttershy didn’t seem to care at all about her own safety.
“If it comes to that, I want to have no regrets before hoof. I’m going to apologize to the both of them as I am, whether or not it gets me killed is to be seen.” This was said by a solemn sounding Fluttershy who was just looking out for Soft Echo. It sounded like every single last one of the Chozo were heroes from every angle in Fluttershy’s perspective, everywhere they traveled they always ended up helping people Just like she tried to do. She slapped her old saddlebags on, the ones that she had from the start of this adventure and put her last maximum tomato in the saddlebag along with the glass knife and some water in a container. “I will also be taking my last maximum tomato out of storage for this. If anyone nearly gets killed, a bite of that tomato might save a life. I think it’s a good idea to be proactive considering what’s been happened to the both of us over the past few days.”
“Are you really sure you should be doing this? I mean I know you stole the spaceship, but I can’t help but think what your doing is a little dangerous.” Even Foxglove was wary after hearing the story of the time travel and not to mention that she had personally seen how haggard Bonnie and Roller looked after they got back from evading Samus. Roller’s carapace had repaired itself and looked to be that much harder to break now.
“I’ve been in worse situations than this and I’m sure they’ll listen to reason. Now excuse me, I want to spend some time with Soft before I go to this meeting.” Fluttershy flew away from where Head Hunter was stashed carrying a happily squealing Soft Echo and Foxglove quickly followed after her at a distance leaving behind a slightly sour Bonnie.
Bonnie shook her head and went to see if Steven had any marshmallows, crackers and chocolate, it would certainly hit the spot and she was feeling like a snack right about now.
-
Donnabelle yawned as she waited at the spot and she concentrated her angelic energy between her paws, for some reason she had problems grasping both demonic and angelic energies at the same time. Then again she was kind of born yesterday, Virgil was a big help in teaching her how to manipulate her own energy as she waited.
“Better look alive chicken man, I think we’ve got company. Fluttershy should arrive soon; she decided the tick needed some flight practice.” Donnabelle’s ponytail twitched a bit as she saw Virgil walk up to her.
Soon they saw a pillar of light come down from the sky and three people appeared a redhead with ponytail and a suit, a green guy in a similar suit and a rectangular robot. Soon after a speeding Samus ran by leaving afterimages of her form, Samus eventually came back at a more normal if impressive speed.
Samus was scanning everything she was seeing; the Lemurian was definitely a surprise. A remnant of Chozo kind just sitting on some backwater planet, then again that was the kind of planet Chozo liked. The puppy she scanned was filled with both light and dark energies, but it was strange in how it undulated. When she got to the other three figures who had arrived moments prior she was a little surprise to find a human native with alien genetics mixed into her body, now she didn’t feel so alone or freakish with someone like her around. The green alien was like a living garbage disposal and the robot actually had a spirit in it.
“I’m Atomic Betty of the Galactic Guardians; I hope we won’t be having any problems here. So keep your weapons down unless it’s in the case of an emergency. Am I understood Sparky?” Atomic Betty took a look around the beach they were meeting at, it was near the gem temple and she could see it in the distance. She could also see the reason for her presence was needed; it was first contact ambassador Fluttershy. She was the very same ambassador that paid for Bonnie Jookiba’s release, most likely in the hopes that the galactic class thief could be reformed in some way or at least Betty hoped that’s why she freed her. She was carrying cargo it seemed, a little filly that instantly melted her heart at the sight of its adorable spacesuit. “Oh would you look that, isn’t she precious.”
“Oh yes, my daughter Soft Echo is precious to me. Hello, I want you all to read these before we begin. My name is Fluttershy and I wanted to say I’m sorry for the trouble I’ve caused Ms. Aran was it? I’m the one that stole your ship Head Hunter, but I would like to say that doing so caused me a lot of stress.” She started hoofing out pamphlets of her story to everyone who didn’t know it, Fluttershy was thankful to find a printer store in Beach City before this meeting.
It would be several minutes before anyone spoke up after looking the pamphlets over.
“Um did a little kid draw some of this stuff?” Betty was curious about the crayon art.
“Actually yes, my daughter and a boy named Steven wanted to help with making the pamphlets.” Fluttershy was still a bit sheepish about having fooled Betty previously.
“Betty, I must immediately inform you that Fluttershy is captain Sweet Cheeks. Am I to ascertain that you were captaining the ship Boojiboo which headed to Bathyos to offload cargo and then went straight to Planet Z?” The robot named X Five was a bit of an odd duck, he acted like he didn’t have emotions a lot of the time when he truly did. He was trying to find a reason to bring Fluttershy in, but she was absolved of all the laws that she unknowingly broke because she didn’t know any better at the time and was a first contact ambassador that had been kidnapped. He couldn’t even bring her in on the charge of falsifying her name as Sweet Cheeks was a nickname and she was technically legally captain of the Boojiboo at the time.
“I’m really sorry about that Ms. Betty. I was helping to… well I’m still trying to help save a life, but I’ve just been getting caught up in so many disasters.” Fluttershy’s ears wilted and she felt Soft Echo cuddling her. “Just recently I accidentally did something that led to the deaths of so many humans… page ten in the pamphlet.”
“You are absolved of that as you did not personally do those humans harm. It was the demons that killed them… although I find it illogical that demons exist. You are not to blame for those who perished.” X Five felt something small snap in him as he processed Fluttershy’s appearance and saved a copy of the image for whatever reason.
“Not as illogical as you think, I’m living proof that demons and angels exist. I’m half of both.” It was rather nice of Donnabelle to stand up for her little tick’s mother; she considered her actions and continued on as she finally managed a swirling ball of green fire in her left paw and a small white soft shining pillar light in her right. Her concentration was getting quite a workout. “She wasn’t responsible for the demons appearing or attacking innocent people, well if you can consider some insane people in an insane asylum innocent. I might not have been there personally, but my mommy was and she died in that incident.”
It was a little strange that the puppy could talk about death so coolly, it kind of made Atomic Betty feel odd to see a talking dog or that the dog was so indifferent about losing her mother. Much less hear that angels and demons were real if this was to be believed and she was clearly seeing the power the puppy held in both paws and her feathered wings.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Atomic Betty stated amiably.
“I exist because she died, so I’m not.” Donnabelle wondered why Betty had a horrified look on her face and shrugged. If Betty wanted to take it as her mother dying giving birth to her, then so be it as she wasn’t about to disavow her of the slightly correct notion. The only problem was the exact method of how she came into existence.
“Can you tell me exactly why you stole my ship or where it is so I could download some data from it?” Samus caused everyone to jump when she spoke up; her voice was soft and very hard sounding.
“Of course, everyone right this way. Oh please don’t get mad, but the ship has undergone a few changes since you last had it. I think the LGM’s went a little overboard with modifying it and they really like the Chozo since their race was rescued by them a long time ago.” Hopefully nothing would happen, at least Fluttershy could only hope as she knew that the sumo ninja and that Motor Ed man were still on the loose. Not only were they after her and the Lunar Locket, but they wanted Head Hunter now too and knowing her life as it was, they were bound to show up at some point. “Um, I would like to ask that you try to keep things nonlethal if we get attacked by sumo ninja or a strange man with a mullet.”
“No problem, I’m good at making takedowns without killing anyone.” Betty always took a peaceful option to things whenever she could.
“I won’t fail to kill something if I think it is a big enough threat to me. I’ve seen way too many things to hold back, since most of the things that I’ve fought were aiming to kill. Sometimes they were three to ten times my size.” Samus noted that Fluttershy looked a little uneasy around her and she should be. At least the pony was willing to admit that she was the one who had stolen the ship.
-
Coming into view of what became of the Head Hunter, Samus just stood there for a few minutes while gaping at it. Bonnie could be seen roasting marshmallows with Steven, Garnet and Amethyst next to the Head Hunter.
“Well I’m not being immediately shot at, so are things actually calm here?” Bonnie didn’t like the looks she was getting from Samus or Betty, but Lion walked up and stared at them making them look away from her.
“We’ll see.” Samus tried to access Head Hunter, but it denied her entrance. “I’m going to find out what happened to this ship in full.”
“Oh right, Head Hunter include her in having full access to the ship.” After that Fluttershy watched Samus enter the Head Hunter.
-
Samus put her gun into a slot left in the design and started downloading data, what she saw surprised her. It was her as the X was slowly killing her; she watched the screen as the two ships tied to the asteroid crashed to the deck. The bottom one was destroyed and after watching the scene, she rewound it and had to pause it on a moment where she saw something.
She could see Fluttershy being thrown across the bay by the force of a great impact and her trajectory had her coming from the destroyed Stiletto that had rescued her, so the people of the GFS Valhalla people likely didn’t know that she was the one piloting it and had saved her life. She had to watch as the twisted form of Fluttershy slam into the wall, the pony then rolled onto her chest to slowly crawl her way into a nearby vent.
She started placing a different scene in her helmet and found that the ship her friends had escaped the now destroyed planet on was the same one that crashed into the GFS Valhalla; she cross referenced it to the escape pod that had the signs that the animals had been inside that came from that escaping ship. For a moment Samus blinked and called up her friend.
“Adam, bring the ship around. If I’m right, our friends are about to meet an old friend of theirs.” Samus was connecting the dots quite quickly and her mind rapidly worked out how everything occurred. A curious alien who had never left her planet before suddenly ends up on a universe spanning trip, she’d eventually want to learn how to pilot a ship and a stiletto was not exactly the best first choice.
She disconnected her arm cannon from the ship for the last time, she wasn’t keeping it and she already had Adam and her new vessel. Maybe she could get Fluttershy to do her a favor in trade for her keeping this ship; it all depended on how her animal friends reacted to Fluttershy. If she was right they’d recognize her immediately.
-
Fluttershy was surprised when Samus had her other ship come in to drop off several familiar animals that immediately made a beeline straight for her upon sight. They all tackled her to the ground.
The little Dachora chick that was Fluttershy’s godchild got of the pony and looked at Soft Echo and Soft Echo looked back. Moments later Soft Echo was squealing as the little Dachora gave her a ride around the beach at a blazing fast pace. The Etecoons took to playing in the sand much to everyone’s amusement.
Fluttershy would never forgive herself for the deaths she had cause by accident, but she could at least live with herself after seeing Soft Echo ride around on the bird that had gotten so big in her absence. The older Dachora nudged her towards Samus and then gave off a cooing noise at seeing their children interact.
Samus turned to Fluttershy who tried to shy away from her until she felt Samus gently grab her.
“It’s okay; I’m not going to hurt you because you stole my ship. In fact I should be thanking you for saving my life. I’m willing to forgive the theft, however if you want to keep the ship I need you to do me a favor.” Samus wasn’t about to tell Fluttershy she doomed an entire research laboratory to be systematically killed off by a really dangerous parasite or that it led to her blowing up another planet. “Can you find a safe place for those guys, one where they can live in peace? I can’t keep dragging them around forever; they really need a new home.”