Yonder Wandered Fluttershy

by Darkonshadows

21

Fluttershy was awoken from her dreams about ice cream and chocolate rabbits by the sound of something humming in the vents and smacked her head against the ceiling. She grunted slightly as she rolled her bruised and battered body into an upright position began to twitch her ears to hear what the problem was.

“What’s that noise?” Rubbing her tender head Fluttershy had forgotten where she had gone to sleep. She was in the corner of a small vent in the middle of a giant space fortress of some kind, one that was full of armed bipeds that would shoot her the very second that they saw her, assuming they weren’t too shocked by her appearance to pull out a weapon that is. She crawled forward twitching her mutated bat ears listening for what was causing that humming noise.

After a moment she saw something that took up the entire vent ahead of her, turning around and not wanting to be near something that was possibly dangerous Fluttershy crawled in the other direction. She was still looking for a little pony’s room even as she slowly crawled away.

Once Fluttershy came to a junction she crawled off to the side and watched as the machine went past her cleaning up the entirety of the vent, which answered her question on how they were kept so clean. She would learn to avoid those boxlike machines in the future, they didn’t seem particularly friendly with their sweeping lights.

An hour later Fluttershy had managed to hit jackpot with a toilet, what she assumed was a shower and a faucet. It certainly took a while to find a room that was easily accessible by vent; she crawled out and looked towards the door. She went about pulling off her saddlebags and her damaged translator; she planted her rear end on the easily recognizable toilet. The seat was rather warm and didn’t feel cold at all. There was probably some technology that was made to make sure the toilet stayed nice and warm, she sighed softly as she released her wastes into the toilet.

The lid had been down to start with so no one has used it recently, Fluttershy remembered to put it back down after flushing it. After finishing her business while hoping no one noticed she used some toilet paper, it took Fluttershy some time to figure out how to get the soap out of the dispenser at the faucet so she could wash her hooves. She flicked her ears at the door and heard no movement on the other side; she heard a lot of movement beyond that with the tapping of feet against the floor as people moved along the winding corridors.

Well as long as she was relatively safe, Fluttershy figured she could use the shower without too much trouble. She sniffed the bottles of various chemicals in the small rather vertical rectangular stall after learning how to open them and tried to mentally figure out what was what. They certainly seemed to be shampoo judging by the sweet scents. Another problem for the pony was that she didn’t know how to turn on the shower or if it would alert anything to her presence, she was already pushing it bad enough by using the toilet and she didn’t think anyone would hold it against her for seeking the comfort of familiarity.

Why did all aliens seem to have toilets anyway? Not that Fluttershy was going to question anything in the universe anymore after seeing toilets in so many other places. It seemed like bathrooms were a completely universal thing which she was completely thankful for, even if the bathrooms were all unique to their owner's biology.

Fluttershy made a mental note that she would have to make sure she didn’t come across something that only looked like a toilet and was actually a sacred spring of an ancient people who would lynch her for using it as a toilet. It would be a completely honest mistake at this point; it even made Fluttershy wonder if there was a race of sentient toilets and she shuddered at the horrible thoughts and images that popped up because of it.

Speaking of toiletries and the like, Fluttershy peeled the sticky leaves off of her injuries carefully and placed them on the floor outside the shower. The slightly swollen wounds still looked generally bad and were oozing slightly. At least she wasn’t bleeding from them profusely, she sighed at the damaged shoulder and the now slightly recovered hole in her torso. Her body bruised and battered, breathing sometimes hurt and her mutations were messing with her head. Overall this pony was not having a good time of being the first equine in space; she preferred the magical dangers of her home world where her friends currently were.

There didn’t seem to be handles in this shower, just three buttons colored blue, grey and red. She closed the sliding door to the shower behind her and continued listening for anyone who would catch her; thinking once again that she did not fancy the idea of being cut open and having her organs played with.

Fluttershy lifted a hoof and carefully pressed the grey button, she guessed red was for hot and blue was cold. So by process of elimination the grey button turned it on and she wasn’t disappointed, but the water that suddenly started spraying her was room temperature and neither hot nor cold. It stung painfully, though not nearly enough to make her pass out as it hit her exposed wounds. It seemed that Fluttershy needed to adjust the temperature by pressing the other buttons; the middle button was basically to turn it on and off.

While she hadn’t felt particularly grimy, what with the mother Dachora bathing and caring for her all the time, she felt that she had to take every opportunity to stay clean. Fluttershy knew that if she were to survive to make a headway into getting home it mean that she need to have less scruples about how things were, but that didn’t mean she was going to be wasteful and she cleansed her body as quickly as she could. Coming out of the shower minutes later she was feeling completely refreshed, the warm water and the combination of shampoo had her feeling nice even if her body ached in protest to the scrubbing she just gave herself. Now if only she knew how the aliens dried off, apparently these beings didn’t use or seem to need towels.

Sighing to herself Fluttershy decided to drip dry, until she could put on her saddlebags and be on her way back into the vents which she now knew were clean or at least were cleaner then the Croakers vents were. Right now Fluttershy wished she could be home using a hairbrush and a comb on herself because she always liked taking care of her mane, she felt just awful knowing that she couldn’t do a thing with it at the moment. Shaking off any leftover excess water, the shy pony got her stuff and crawled back into the vents while making sure she didn’t forget anything.

Exploring the ventilation systems was fun and all, but Fluttershy really wanted to find a way off this spaceship soon and she really didn’t think the beings that lived on it were going to be highly accommodating good hosts. That thought was mostly because of her general freakish appearance, one that Discord apparently liked. Getting off the ship with control of where she was going would have been the best possible scenario; Fluttershy knew it was not likely to happen.

Being of ambiguously sound mind, Fluttershy knew something bad was going to happen to her here and she’d have to live with the trauma of whatever it was this time. So far she was safe and she was becoming very wary of losing a leg or one of her wings even if she couldn’t fly with them as they were. So far she had been lucky that she was even healing from the injuries she’s been dealt, then again having a small hole shot through her torso without it hitting anything vital was pushing the boundaries of how lucky she thought she should be.

Optimistically speaking, the bat mutations probably saved Fluttershy from dying of blood loss somehow. As a pegasus pony she wasn’t a master of magic, though she has a pretty good knowledge of all forms of animal anatomy not to mention the anatomy of ponies. Her mutations had to have shifted her insides around and would probably account for why she was still alive. That or those space pirate things that shot her were really bad shots given how close to her they were when they fired on her.

As Fluttershy crawled forward her ears twitched and picked up something from her translator, given her advanced hearing range her translator could pick up languages at a much safer distance.

“…sending them to the BSL Research Station, the galactic federation data shows them as being semi sentient creatures known as Dachoras and Etecoons.” Fluttershy’s ears were immediately erect and sharpened in the direction of the voice, she turned and crawled in that direction while listening in. “They were the only ones found in the escape pod. They were all quite healthy too, but they seemed greatly agitated by something. They are normally not known to be highly aggressive and I think they were just trying to protect the older Dachora’s chick. At least I know they’ll be okay where they’re going. As for the ship that crashed into us, it was too damaged for us to figure out who previously owned it. We did manage to mine some information from the alien computers that proves something very wrong is going on in the Galactic Federation. It is some rather disturbing news and we’ll look into it to see if we can verify this information, GFS Valhalla signing out.”

Well at least Fluttershy knew her friends were safe, relatively speaking. It didn’t sound like they were going to be mutilated and she could only hope they would be safe wherever they were being sent, it was good to know that they were all doing okay. Crawling forwards she looked through the grating and saw a bunch of bipeds sitting at desks typing away at computers with one male overseeing them.

Said male overseeing everyone was looking at someone on the really big screen. The screen was much bigger than the movie projectors screens back home, with that idle thought Fluttershy watched as it winked out and turned into a map that showed the sections of the universe the Galactic Federation inhabited and protected.

“Captain, how goes the testing on the new Vic Viper? Will we need to decommission all of our stiletto fighters?” One of the people at the desk asked, female judging by her voice and appearance.

“It’s costly to even make one of them; the stilettos will still be in use for quite a while as they are still cost effective. Project: Gradius is still in its experimental stages; our Vic Viper M.A.X. unit may be costing a fortune, but it is said that even just one is designed to wipe out an entire flotilla of space pirates on its own. The most costly thing is greasing the wheels so that the F-Zero racer parts manufacturers stick to the military contracts, can you imagine what would happen if they sold us out to the space pirates? Do you have any more questions, you may speak freely if you have concerns you need to share with the rest of us.” Fluttershy could see the female bite her lips as if questioning whether or not she should speak, she obviously chose to speak freely.

“After the Federation has had so many problems with Artificial Intelligences captain, do you really think it’s a good idea to put one on a fighter that can feasibly do the job of a battleship? Especially after what happened to the previous GFS Valhalla?” Fluttershy had little clue as to what they were talking about, but she had no other place to be at the moment.

“That is what the pilot interface is for; it can’t use its weapons without pilot authorization and they’ve taken every precaution to make sure that it can’t possibly go rogue or be stolen. If the Space Pirates even think of stealing it like they did Aurora Unit Three One Three, they’ll be in for a huge surprise. We’ve got everything completely under control.” Fluttershy was getting bored and started crawling away, nothing she heard here would be helpful for getting off the ship. They weren’t talking about her alien animal friends anymore and they found out about what some of the federation was doing to intelligent beings, so Fluttershy hoped that things would turn for the better in the Galactic Federation.

Fluttershy had no idea where she was going in the vents, she wish she had a handheld computer like the one Katt had for hacking into things to tell her where she was going. She eventually popped out in what looked to be the kitchens she had passed by before. Looking around, it seemed to be deserted except for a few beings loitering around. They weren’t really attentive looking and she was near what looked like a refrigerator, her hunger for apples was slowly breaking her mental strength and it might eventually drive her to do something she wouldn’t like very much.

Shaking her head Fluttershy realized that she had crawled out of the vents, something was niggling at her to look for something red and juicy. Being as quiet as and small as she was, she wasn’t likely to be seen.

Fluttershy didn’t hear anyone coming towards her or any energy weapons discharging in her general direction. She knew she was lucky to have survived being shot at quite a few times and the pain of getting hit was always excruciating, Fluttershy was just not a naturally violent pony and didn’t like having violence directed at her either.

Looking to the nearest thing that resembled a very large refrigerator, Fluttershy looked over her right shoulder and flicked her ears. She was still getting used to her new sense of hearing. Neither hearing nor seeing anyone approaching via echolocation sight, she lifted her left hoof and carefully pried at the door to the refrigeration unit. Under normal circumstances Fluttershy wouldn’t even consider stealing, if not for the gnawing hunger that the food she was carrying wouldn’t satisfy. That and the second fang that sprouted from her mouth within seconds of seeing a label with a familiar piece of fruit on a four gallon bottle of brown liquid. She had been searching for apples; she had hit a jackpot with the first fridge given it had a variety of fruit drinks stored away in it.

The entire world faded from Fluttershy’s mind as she licked her lips and moved her head forward, she tilted her head and opened her mouth in an unnatural manner. She bit down at base of the container creating a loud crunching noise and the sweet flow of fruit juice started to fill her mouth. A part of her knew that what she was doing was wrong, that she was stealing all this lovely poorly guarded fruit juice from some highly advanced bipedal aliens and that she should be feeling bad about doing so.

Knowing that there would be no way to justify her actions later and that she currently didn’t care about what she was doing in the present, Fluttershy dropped all her precautions and mentally let go of all her worries. This was a moment of weakness where she started slurping down the fluids like no tomorrow not caring if she was heard or even caught, the taste that entered her mouth was fulfilling her every desire in oh so many words that she lost all sense of her surroundings as she chugged her way through half of the bottle. Her boundless thirst just couldn’t be quenched well enough.

“What the hell!” Fluttershy slowed down in her frenzied cider drinking, she pulled her fangs from the bottle with a loud audible popping noise while tilting it so it didn’t spill. She turned to the uniformed human who was just staring at her blankly. She hissed in defiance and clutched the bottle to herself protectively as it still had some of that stuff in it that called to her. The man immediately pulled out a device that Fluttershy instantly recognized as a weapon.

It was about this point that Fluttershy came to her senses and looked at her bat wings, then to the bottle she cradled like it was a little baby bird and her pupils shrunk to tiny dots. She had really lost control of herself and now she was going to die if she didn’t move and fast.

“Oh Celestia…” Fluttershy exclaimed before throwing herself to the side. The gun discharged several times nearly blowing her head off; it instead hit the bottle she threw splattering its remaining contents all over the person who shot at her temporarily blinding him. Natural instinct made Fluttershy take to the air and despite having her eyes closed due to fear of how fast she was moving, she could clearly hear where she was going.

Fluttershy slammed head first into the wall above the vent at a high velocity and fell to the floor. Dazedly she opened her eyes and stumbled around a bit, she quickly crawled into the vent being chased by several blasts that scorched the floor around her as she scurried to safety.

Fluttershy was in full control of her body, which was now fully mutated into bat form except there was no vampire fruit bat consciousness. The pony currently crawling away from the mess wished the vampire fruit bat side of her was in control, because she had been moving way too fast when she started flying and didn’t know how to handle that kind of speed. The bright side of this situation is that she had at least escaped without needing another shower and with only painfully bruised forehead to show for it.

Fluttershy reached up and touched her other fang with a hoof, she spread out and looked over her wings and checked her three pink bats cutie mark. So this is what she looked like when she went full on bat.

Fluttershy whimpered sadly as she felt like a real monster now and was almost completely ashamed of her actions. Did her survival really mean she had to stop being who she was? The beings all throughout this ship would certainly be much more alert now because of her not being entirely in control of her faculties. She at least knew they weren’t as inattentive as the Croakers, she had been caught red hoofed so easily. Fluttershy thought she had only been drinking from that large bottle for about ten seconds.

The little pony was shy of meeting anyone else on the ship given she was in hostile territory and all alone. Even her friends in her dreams couldn’t help her escape from this waking nightmare where she would be hunted down and killed if she was spotted again. Physically turning into a monster was the least of her worries, just because she looked like one didn’t mean she had to be one.

Author's Note:

I think I've simply stopped caring about writing entirely... that and I got back into playing Monster Hunter again. I've also been perusing Hyrule Warriors and there's also Smash Bros. that will cause further delays.

Not many people are reading this story anyway.

Comments

[UsurperBronyZant]

I'm still here. THE. CYBERPONY. LEGION. WILL. STAND. BY. YOU. ALWAYS.

[Raelgil]

I too am still here.

[Skulljack17]

Ages later I have found this story and am enjoying it immensely. So hopefully this will spur you forward in the future in whatever drives you, my good chum.