BattlePasture 2142

by HazardFacts

Meeting Fluttershy

"Um... Hello?" a timid and hollow voice comes from behind you. Your worst fears about to be confirmed, you turn around.

You now face a yellow pony, assault class, flowing pink hair covering the right side of her face with a a slight pink shave on the left side. A SCAR 11 held clumsily in her arms with a medical pack on her back, and a defibrillator on her right hip, P33 holstered on her left. Her knees are knocking together and she stares at you with a scared expression fixed in her light blue eyes.

You're not keeping your facial expression in check so you assume whatever face your making must be scaring her. You open your mouth in order to initiate a greeting, but before any actual words escape your mouth and explosion tears into a building about a dozen meters above you. You instinctively place your hand on your head and duck slightly, looking up at the smoke cloud left in its wake. You look back at your pony squad mate only to see her cowering and whimpering on the ground, hands on her head.

The text box in the bottom left of your HUD buzzes with a message from whoever misfired that explosive round.
In all caps it read -SORRY-

Forget levels, this is a new dimension of pathetic.

Even so, you take a knee and lean in close. Hey, what did you say your name was?

"hmrshh" she utters what might as well be a foreign language for all you know. You decide to try again.

"Okay, listen. I can't learn your name unless you speak up... Looking at me would probably help too."
With that she takes her hands off of her head and looks up at you, still whimpering with her eyes wide and glossed over with tears..

"I'm Flutter-rshy." she stutters squeakily, but intelligibly this time. You stand up and take out your PDA, seeing heavy friendly activity around the vehicle yard, probably everyone on your team, save for a few white dots scattered around the ice covered city.

"Must be the others." Your obvious doubt in the rest of your squad's capability resonating in your voice.
You set an MGP on the map by the boot camp-escue movement of friendly white blips.

You stash you PDA in your hip pouch and look back down at... Whatsherface, with her face once more shoved in the pavement and her forelegs over her head.
Feeling sorry for the poor sap, you pick up her rifle and call her out, "Hey, Fluttershy?"
She looks up at you, more tears noticeable than before. Jeez, she was scared to death. Why was she here?
"Your friends are waiting on us. I think we should get going." You shoulder your own weapon and kneel down closer to her, offering your hand. After what seemed like an eternity of her staring at you and then your hand and back again at you, she takes the offer. You pull her up gingerly, now used to her character, and hand her her rifle.

She takes the weapon clumsily as if it were five times her size, fiddling with it until she finds a comfortable way of holding it.
"Come on, Shy, let's go." You order, pulling back out your rifle.

"Oh! Okay..." she says drearily, realizing she has no choice but to follow you.

You begin off running but after several trips and stumbles from Fluttershy, usually resulting in you picking up your supplies, you decide to walk to the vehicle yard.

Gonna be a long road. One heck of a long road indeed. You get the crummy feeling that you're going to be the only useful player in your squad, and that you alone will have to pull its weight.