Fluttershy watched as Donnabelle was being snuggled on both sides by a small green bird and Soft Echo; it was adorable even if Donna was struggling against being snuggled by the two sleepy kids.
“Roller, please stay here and make sure nothing happens to them, I have to finish talking with the others. Are you feeling better Steven?” Fluttershy liked Steven since he seemed to take each day with his brightest smile. He was a very friendly child, if a bit awkward and she was glad to be a help in getting his aunt or surrogate mother home.
“Of course I am!” Steven said from up in his upstairs loft that was his bedroom, he was just happy to know Pearl was coming home. He turned his eyes towards the ceiling. “Are you okay up there Foxglove?”
“I’m fine; your roof is really comfortable and really clean. No cobwebs whatsoever.” Foxglove yawned and closed her eyes; she had fun making sure the kids didn’t hurt themselves and wondered what it would be like to have some little red nosed chipmunks with bat wings of her own as she drifted off.
Roller revved nominally even as he settled in the middle of the living room and watched as Fluttershy set off for Head Hunter armed with the Rhizome suit once more and the Lunar Locket around her neck. She still didn’t trust that nothing would happen as Thursday wasn’t over quite yet.
“I too will watch the young ones; do not stay out too late Ms. Shy.” Virgil was studying his scroll; there weren’t many portals in the area that led directly to Hawaii like the one in England. Also Bonnie was in a discussion about how Head hunter couldn’t fly before he had departed for the gem temple; it was nice to see that Rose Quartz had left behind a rather intriguing legacy. He wasn’t a fighter, but he was able to think his way out of most of the situations he got himself into.
Walking back up to the campfire, Fluttershy saw Samus looking towards the ship as Bonnie talked with her and the older Dachora crowed at her and stomped lightly at a spot next to her body near the fire. Taking the invitation the pony sat down next to the large green bird. It was a bit concerning that she didn’t see the Etecoons anywhere, where could those mischievous aliens have gone? In any case, they had quickly become friends with Bonnie given they could tell she had those shared genetics inside of her.
The pony saw that the two gems were enjoying themselves, about as much as three alien rocks could seem to enjoy themselves really. Three since Garnet counted as two. They seemed particularly worried about something, most likely their friend Pearl who was going to be returning with Wander when he came to pick the pony up. It was nice to know that the Star Nomad had found the pony planet and was alright, if sleepy when he got there.
“So the gravity pulse means that thing needs to be completely worked over, my dad has the capability to fix it given enough time.” It was a bit disheartening for Bonnie to hear that Samus couldn’t fix the problem with Head Hunter. She joined the others at the campfire with Samus following along. “Even if he specializes in genetic engineering, dad is a genius at many other things too.”
“I’m sure I can give you a lift to this Hawaii place, either that or the Galactic Guardians can considering they seem like a generally alright bunch.” Samus had to shudder at the mental images of the Galactic Federation getting hold of someone like Jumba; she had scanned Bonnie and had seen the Etecoon genetics along with several other species of various creatures inside her. Such a cocktail almost seemed impossible to cobble together and create a living being, but Bonnie’s father obviously managed it somehow. She actually felt something resembling a kinship with a lot of the beings here, to think she was just going to blast Bonnie first and ask questions later.
“You know chief; it’s pretty good to get a break every now and then. I mean when we came here I thought we would have to do something crazy. Instead I get a lot of free snacks!” Sparky the green elf like alien with blue hair seemed to always think with his bottomless stomach, possibly stomachs as his internal physiology changed quite often. His species outward appearance barely changes throughout their lives though. “I love your planets marshmallows.”
“We are on a mission Sparky; it would be wise for you to be aware of your surroundings as danger is imminent judging by the pamphlet Fluttershy gave us to read.” X Five said dully, he was making sure no one around him became aggressive. He wasn’t exactly a combat model robot, but he did have plenty of defensive protocols and he was taking this mission seriously. He was mostly useful for his mechanical expertise and encyclopedic knowledge of aliens and their weaknesses. “We are here to help ambassador Fluttershy in her troubles while she is on Earth. Protecting a first contact ambassador is top priority even if she has already successfully negotiated peace for her race with the Grand Councilwoman.”
“So what, it’s not like anything dangerous is about to…” Sparky started off.
“No, don’t!” Fluttershy, Bonnie, Betty and surprisingly Samus screamed while leaping for Sparky who jumped back and out of the way while looking confused at the pile of bodies before him.
“What I was just going to say that nothing bad is going to happen.” Sparky immediately found himself pushed out of the way of a bladed star of metal that would have struck him in the back if it hadn’t been for Bonnie. The star sunk into the sand a bit and Sparky looked around in a panic.
“Damn it, I hoping no one would say something that stupid! Especially around us, you just don’t ever say things like that around trouble magnets!” Bonnie pulled both of her freshly stolen Valkyrian blasters with faces painted on them. She gave twirling flourish of the one in her right hand before she blasted a kunai knife out of the air while looking up towards the ridge it had come from. “Now we’ve got to deal with the sumo ninjas that just found us, which is just great by the way. I guess it was our fault for yelling though!”
Samus groaned and scanned the ridge and gained some bit of disbelief as several large rather wide humans skillfully tumbled their way down the cliff at an insane speed. They stopped at the bottom without injury where they pulled out large swords and charged for them and Head Hunter. For fat guys, the incoming ninja were fast and there were more of them coming from the sides coming along the beach, turning around she even saw a few of them surfing in while playing musical instruments that looked like they doubled as weapons.
One had to wonder how these fat guys could sneak up anyone, but one thing was for certain they were quite stealthy up to the point they were discovered. The surfing sumo squad was the most ridiculous thing about the oncoming fight. Then Motor Ed reared his ugly head at the top of the ridge in his monster truck, where he multiple missiles down at them. They were highly inaccurate, but they were quite destructive and had knocked Fluttershy onto her side.
“Fluttershy, take the bird and try to disable mullet heads weapons; we’ll protect the Head Hunter as that’s obviously one of their objectives.” Shooting quick flying metal out of the air even as she dodged weapons that suddenly changed direction mid flight, despite their rather generous girths the sumo ninja were swift, strong and ridiculously skilled with throwing weapons.
Fluttershy nodded and hopped onto the Dachora and directed her towards the ridge. The bird managed to hit full speed within ten feet of the rock wall before stopping and squatting down to jump straight up the ridge at a blazing speed.
“Adam, we need aerial support like yesterday. I’m authorizing the use of cannons and missiles against all aggressors I’ve already painted the friendly targets so you don’t hit them. Try not to be lethal, please.” Dodging a glowing sword strike as she called in her newer ship, Samus lift her cannon and a beep sounded off before she swung out.
A bright focused jet of flame erupted from Samus’s cannon destroying the sword that came around for another swing with a hot plasma burst that also blinded the huge ninja. She slammed her knee into his belly before launching a suit thruster assisted flying roundhouse to the head knocking him down and out. She quickly morphed into a ball to roll away, avoiding the sudden mass of metal that struck the ground around her.
Atomic Betty immediately leapt into action along with her two friends and coworkers; she was smart enough to not let the faintly glowing swords hit her as she went hand to hand with one of the big ninja that were attacking them. Though she thought this situation was absurd, she was already put on the defensive by how fast these guys could move. She had thus far managed to disable three and not without trouble as their sumo sized bodies were quite tough to injure. At least concussions took them out of the fight quickly enough.
She looked away to see how Sparky and X Five were doing, X Five of course wasn’t actively fighting very much and had managed to electrocute one of the ninja into unconsciousness. Sparky however was quite competent when it came to fighting and he already had two men on the ground. Nodding to herself as she weaved her way around a chain and sickle, she turned back to the fight. She launched a wrist mounted grappling hook and used it to tear the chain weapon from the ninja’s hands, following that she started to use it with seemingly effortless efficiency.
“Give me some cover I’m going for Head Hunter to give us some real firepower.” Bonnie immediately turned and continued to blast metal out of the air; it seemed they were dead set on hitting her highly swift rear end. Samus did as she asked even as she was taking down four sumo ninja at the same time.
“This is crazy nuts, I kind of like it!”Amethyst was quite capable of dealing with the ninja problem. It was a little odd for the gems to see humans this big or strong. Amethyst was pretty hard for the ninja to keep up with as she wildly attacked at random.
Garnet just punched her way through every ninja available; she was the only other one aside from Samus capable of doing some real damage to sumo ninja in any other place aside from their heads or joints.
At some point Bonnie tripped over a kunai that hit the ground before her and she avoided the follow up with a bout of high speed evasion while moving towards Head Hunter.
-
Fluttershy let out a soft yelp as the Dachora landed and charged straight for the nearest monster truck, there were only five on the ridge. The bird sped forward rammed bodily through one destroying its wheels and axles immediately upon impact through its insane speed alone.
Looking behind her, a shivering Fluttershy could see a bird shape impression ripped straight through the monster truck, Dachora as a species were very dangerous. The two people who had been in the monster truck immediately jumped out of the truck and ran for it, it eventually exploded.
“What, not another one of my rides! You two are so going to pay for that you big chicken and little horse thing riding it, seriously!” Motor Ed turned his weapons on the Fluttershy and Dachora.
He fired a laser cannon and Fluttershy immediately leapt from the Dachora’s back into the path of the beam and redirected the contained energy into destroying the laser cannons on all the monster trucks with one sweep of her hooves as she flew. She really didn’t like wielding that kind of power, but it had been useful back when she couldn’t feel emotionally distraught about it.
The trucks all suddenly turned to her and launched a bunch of missiles at her she quickly tried to fly away from them and threw a pod grenade into the missiles once they closed in on her. That ended up causing a chain reaction of explosions that buffeted Fluttershy about a bit. While she was doing this the Dachora was already ripping into another truck with her powerful talons, the same ones she once used to rip a space pirate to shreds despite the fact that their suits were supposed to be armored. The bird didn’t kill the humans once they started running and was ready to move on to one of the last few monster trucks left that were trying to focus their collective firepower on Fluttershy.
Fluttershy’s hoof filled with a pod grenade and she sent it into the hood of the nearest monster truck, the two people already jumped and started running away since they knew what the grenades she threw did. She really didn’t relish having to fight at all, not once can she say she ever fought without having a very good reason to do so. At least she could safely say she wasn’t trying to hurt anyone.
“You guys are totally a bunch of wimps, seriously!” The people abandoned the monster truck next to Motor Ed’s and seconds later it blew up when a beam ripped through it, looking up Motor Ed could see a purple ship flying overhead. “Seriously, you’re not scratching the paint on my baby!”
Samus’s air support had arrived and immediately started targeting Motor Ed’s vehicle which was armed with all kinds of neat things like flamethrowers, grenade launchers and he was already nearly out of missiles from firing the first salvo.
Instead of focusing on Fluttershy and the Dachora, Motor Ed started to drive defensively to fight off the aerial opponent.
“Okay I think that’s enough, let’s try to help out the others.” Fluttershy had barely settled down back on the ground before she found herself being lifted onto the Dachora’s back and before she could say anything the bird was already jumping off the edge of the ridge.
-
When the Dachora slammed a tubby ninja halfway into the sand with a solid impact and opened her beak to let out a roar. This was followed by a shockwave taking down five ninja in one blast, every ninja in the area turned to an angry looking red chinchilla flexing her ears and they started backing away quickly. Cobra Bubbles pulled out a tiny gun that also created powerful sonic shockwaves while making cricket noises and gunned down two more Sumo Ninja who would likely survive their injuries.
That was when the ninja started with attempts at gathering their fallen and any equipment they could in the form a rather hasty retreat. They were being viciously caught and thrown around by Bonnie wielding the grapple beam on Head Hunter and their tactical advantage in a surprise attack hadn’t been much of one.
“Since when could my old ship do that!?” Samus said in a rather upset tone, her old ship hadn’t been too terribly altered as it still had all its previous components. Except for the missing stuff from the Federation’s attempts on her life, it still riled Samus that they had tried to plant powerful explosives on her previous ship and was happy that the Chozo technology had prevented a premature death on her part. She knew it had viable deployable grapple beam point, she just didn’t know that it had a grapple beam of its own and it was currently incarcerating at least ten of the aggressors at the moment.
“Lady I think I’ve got the ring leader of this operation in my custody, who should we hand him over to?” Looking up Samus gave a hold signal to Adam.
“Now what should we do?” Samus asked of everyone as Adam dropped the battered, bruised and mangled Motor Ed before them.
“I believe I can answer that.” Cobra walked up to them. “I’m head authority of all aliens’ activity on this planet; we’re a bit backwater so you’ll have to forgive us for our bureaucracy of keeping a lid on things like invasions. Shush don’t eat those, those aren’t cookies! Any we were alerted to this area by some people yelling about monsters, a few of my men have them in custody and we’ll be taking the instigator of this attack personally.”
“It is within your jurisdiction to decide that Agent CB.” Nodding to the tall mass of muscle, Betty went over to see how Sparky was doing. He took a nasty hit during the fight and they were all a bit battered, those ninja were a lot tougher than some alien ninjas that Betty has faced.
“My men will work on catching any of the stragglers from Motor Ed’s gang. I however doubt we’ll catch all the summon ninjas.” Cobra walked over to Fluttershy who had the helmet of her suit down. “They won’t bother you much for a while after that.”
“I don’t know about you guys, but I need some sleep. It’s been a long day of jumping at shadows for me and I’m ready for it to end. Thursday didn’t end so horribly at least.” At least Bonnie had fun fighting the widest ninjas she had ever seen.
“Sleep would be nice, hopefully without a crisis to worry about tomorrow.” Fluttershy looked at all the people around her and she smiled slightly in a strained way, it was nice to have friends. Even new ones you might have slighted a bit in the past. The Dachora nuzzled Fluttershy, likely having felt her downward swerving mood. “I’m thankful to have so many wonderful friends like all of you to protect me.”
When she got back to the gem house from the short battle to see Donnabelle actively snuggling Soft Echo, Fluttershy smiled brightly at the adorable sight. A pony and her familiar snuggled together. She slowly lay with them and the older Dachora followed curling around her and the children.
-
The next day started on a harried note with everyone waking up to a shout. Fluttershy was quickly on her hooves and then she stumbled and fell back to the floor.
“What’s going on?” Fluttershy said dizzily as everyone was woken up by Bonnie.
“Where is he, where is he? Where’s my brother!” This earned Bonnie a few strange looks from the ones who didn’t know what she was talking about.
Fluttershy quickly pulled Bonnie into a hug and slowly Bonnie calmed down in her grasp, feeling the comforting hug.
“Better?” Fluttershy asked softly, Bonnie nodded into the snuggly soft fur that Fluttershy had. “When did you last have him?”
“I’ve always had him on me since we’ve arrived on Earth, you know that! I’m sorry Fluttershy; I didn’t mean to snap at you.” Taking on a thinking pose Bonnie went through everything she did yesterday, she even had him when she was on the beach. “The last I saw was last night… during the ninja attack. Oh for the love of, I swear one of these days…”
“We’re going straight to the moon to have a picnic?” Fluttershy said with a chipper tone.
“Cute, anyway I think we can find out the truth by looking through Head Hunter’s recordings of last night. Samus activated the ship and she didn’t bother to shut down the systems after she accessed the ship.” Speaking of the bounty hunter and the Galactic Guardian bodyguards, Bonnie looked around as she blushed at the suggestion of a picnic with her favorite alien pony. “Where are the guardians and the hunter? I’m pretty sure they didn’t sleep here with us.”
“I think they took accommodations in their ships as to not burden Steven’s family, I think that was rather nice of them.” Fluttershy stood up and stretched out, it was followed by seeing Donnabelle nudging a yawning Soft Echo awake.
-
“Yep, my brother was taken by one of the guys that escaped last night.” Bonnie looked rather depressed, they were in Head Hunter looking over last night’s visual feed.
“Don’t worry we’ll rescue him… again.” Fluttershy shuddered at being strapped to a table and somewhat tortured again. “Hopefully this time it won’t be nearly as painful.”
“I think he might have been mistaken for a smoke bomb, if so then that’s a lucky break at least. It means they don’t know what they have.” Bonnie got up and gave Fluttershy a rub on the back. “I’m not about to do that to you again Fluttershy. So, no time like the present.”
As soon as Jumba popped up on the screen, he had a blank look on his face as he saw Fluttershy and Bonnie staring at him from a familiar seat.
“I am happy to hear you are back together again. Anyway I am finding that location of one five zero is of interest to you yes?” Jumba got a nod from the pair; he sighed and rubbed his head. “He is being in Japan, within Nerima region. Please to be getting him to me sometime this year and to stop being sidetracked by crazy chaotic situations that keep popping up, meet up with one five eight there to help you find him. Hopefully you’ll be able to avoid the sidetracking.”
“We can be there with the next thirty minutes, how soon can we expect Finder to arrive in Japan?” Not that Bonnie was getting tired of seeing her sister Shush; it was just that her sister so airheaded at times and kept trying to eat the sharp pointy metal stars.
“Is being good news on that front, he is already in Japan for a convention. He is being the good tour guide, able to find just about anything is very useful to anyone who is looking for something in particular.” Jumba gave a jovial chuckle. “Now to just be getting one five zero back to me without trouble. Which I’m guessing is very hard for you one four nine.”
“Oh how I do so love a heaping steaming pile of… trouble.” Stated Bonnie flatly, knowing that she was living in interesting times with Fluttershy around. She wouldn’t have it any other way. “At least knowing Finder will be there is good news, we’ll have someone drop off Head Hunter you so you can fix the problem while we head directly for Japan.”
“Who knows, maybe Saturday will go better for us.” It had to, because Friday was already starting to look iffy to Fluttershy and it was just starting.