Yonder Wandered Fluttershy

by Darkonshadows

27

Applejack watched as four of the animals had moved Fluttershy into a house and were taking turns in watching over her. The large cat and the strange hopping fish were nowhere to be seen as they had scarpered off to who knows where at the insistence of the feminine pink blob.

Now the four animals were waiting for their friends to return, the bear sized rodent and the pink blob were tending to Fluttershy and her injuries with wet rags after having stowed the apples away at the front door in a pile, the two birds stopped in a tree near the house and watched the surrounding areas.

The little green bird reminded Applejack of Rainbow Dash in its impatience, the purple owl looked wiser and much more patient then that. They were intelligent animals and Fluttershy always had a way with animals and these animals seemed to know what they were doing even though the house they were at didn’t seem to belong to them given it was a one bed home. They could see her and weren’t entirely ignoring her existence, but they weren’t doing much about her because she could just walk through the walls of the house and couldn’t do anything to help anyway.

The house they were in was small, even if it was large enough for an average sized pony it only had one bed so they either obviously knew who this house belonged to or it belonged to one of the animals. It least likely belonged to the fish, no way was that thing that hopped around on land like that was natural and Fluttershy was on a different world entirely so it made as much sense as the purple bug winged flying things that zoomed around the grassy plains.

The house was white and covered in small blue five pointed stars. The house had a small wooden sign with two stars on it out front and a fireplace judging by the chimney. There was a small bed inside where Fluttershy was brought to rest and it was sitting next to the small window Applejack was peering through sadly. There were strange star shaped objects set up around the house on the rocks and seemed to ward away every other creature from approaching it. Everything in the area seemed incredibly calm, alarmingly so for a world where a tree could attack you for just wanting some apples.

Applejack knew that Fluttershy wanted the apples as was the case that caused this incident, having seen both of Fluttershy’s fangs in her mouth one of which was slowly disappearing. Fluttershy hadn’t been shy about telling her friends the fact that she had an apple addiction that had almost got her flank blasted with a laser weapon; said laser weapons were defined by Fluttershy as really painful and could easily cause fatal wounds.

“Coo?” Applejack jumped turning around towards the hovering purple and white colored owl with black tipped wings that was giving her a sympathetic glance.

“Whoa there partner, you startled me. Is she going to be okay?” Applejack kneaded her front two hooves agitatedly only to simply get a nod and a smile from the purple owl before it went back to the tree to continue surveying the area.

It took maybe five minutes but the large cat creature was coming back and he appeared to be rolling something along while being followed by the hopping fish. Applejack stared at the large red object with what looked like a W, M or one of them fancy symbols Twilight uses in her mathematics, it was hard to tell.

In any event the large cat was rolling the large fruit along the ground towards the house with a happy grin on his face; the fish looked equally happy bouncing along and was slightly wet as was the fruit. Apparently the two had worked as a team to get whatever it was back to this place or that was what Applejack could assume given the cat was completely dry while the red fruit looked to be drying as it was being rolled towards the house through the grass.

The green bird shot off from the tree and let out a loud crow to get the attention of the ones in the strange simple looking half circle shaped house as the bear sized rodent opened the door. The cat rolled the fruit on through the door and was followed by everyone else and Applejack.

The pink blob that had a blood covered tentacle looked up from her position sitting on top of Fluttershy to hold her worst wound shut by stemming the flow with a taught tentacle pressing down on it. Upon seeing the red fruit a bright smile appeared on her face before a frown quickly crossed it.

“Chu-chu?” The pink blob pointedly asked while looking at her five male friends, they all looked between themselves and they started blushing and looking anywhere but in the blobs direction sparking her ire. “Chu!”

“What, what is it? Is that thing going to help my friend, what’s all this hoo-ha about? It’s like there’s something I’m not quite getting here.” The five more decidedly male animals blushed and looked towards Fluttershy while the pink female blob creature sat there looking rather irate with them.

The birds quickly pointed out their beaks and shaking their heads no denying something, the fish looked particularly agreeable but was shot down by the other animals including the pink blob. This left the pink blob or the two large furry animals, the cat and the other similar sized animal made denial noises based on something while pointing to their mouths and the pink blob sighed with tears poking from the edges of her eyes.

Toughening up while rolling her eyes the pink blob quickly stretched out a pink tentacle with incredible speed and swiped the large red fruit into her mouth and there was a squishing sound as her cheeks bulged outwards. The blob looked to be troubled with trying not to swallow and it gave a hop to get its face on Fluttershy, was she really going to do what Applejack thought she would?

The odd tentacle forming creature exhaled half the contents in her mouth while swallowing the other half, a rather unique food sharing technique pioneered by the being who owned this particularly odd house that he built all by himself in the most adorable of manners. The owner had help and didn’t do it entirely alone, but he did a lot of the work even if he was of a slightly infantile mindset.

Fluttershy woke up to the feeding and didn’t panic, this wasn’t the first time this has happened to her and she just swallowed what was being forced into her throat. A strange glow flowed over her body and her injuries immediately sealed up and she felt incredibly healthy within seconds.

“Thank you…” Fluttershy muttered as the pink blob hopped off her chest and smiled at her sheepishly. She sat up and patted herself with her hooves checking herself, her injuries were all gone now and she was not hungry anymore. She was still a horrifically mutated half vampire fruit bat pony, but the gnawing hunger for round red fruit had fled her completely.

“Well now, I’ve just seen about everything.” Applejack’s voice caused Fluttershy to jolt and look at her along with all the other friendly animals.

“Hey, Applejack... um… how did you get here?” Fluttershy was still pretty high off the power of what she would later learn is a Maximum Tomato.

A Maximum Tomato was one of the most powerful native foods of the dream land systems that was quite delicious and so freakishly nutritious that it magically healed injuries within seconds of swallowing even as much as half of one. Only swallowing half of one was hard enough to do given how delicious a Maximum Tomato was and eating the entire thing in one go was what usually happened, it took a lot of strength to resist temptation to swallow it all in one go. While it could heal all physically injuries to the point of possibly even up to growing new limbs, it couldn’t heal magical maladies much less the one that was still inflicted on Fluttershy.

“I’ve been here since you called me a while ago, I went to sleep at Sweet Apple Acres and I find myself here hearing you call out to me sugar cube. I’m a little confused as you are and Luna still hasn’t come back from whatever it is she had to do.” Within a moment of being mentioned by Applejack, Luna flashed in from out of nowhere yawning while looking unusually perky for a mare that was still asleep.

“Sorry, it’s just that this world makes resting and dreaming so easy, it is no wonder the living tree was angry to have its sleep disturbed. I’d be cranky too if I was having dreams like that and it was hard enough for me to break away from my own to check on you Fluttershy, it is miraculous that all of your injuries have disappeared, yet I see no medical facility.” Luna looked much brighter then Applejack for being a ghostly image, in fact she seemed quite pleased and well rested.

“These guys got some kind of strange fruit and gave it to Fluttershy, healed her up right quick too though I have no idea how it did it. Huh would you look at that… even all your scars are gone too.” Applejack was scrutinizing Fluttershy closer then she was comfortable with and she flopped out of the bed backwards and into a pair of fuzzy strong arms. Applejack backed away for spooking Fluttershy like she had.

Hearing the loud friendly sounding squeaking noise Fluttershy looked up at the friendly smiling face of the creature that had carried her back to this house, which was kind of cramped with all six animals and her inside of it. She was being held by the biggest hamster she has ever seen and she was pretty sure it was a hamster, in looking around Fluttershy was able to identify each of the six creatures. The octopus was the hard one to figure out for her, but she eventually figure it was this world’s version of an octopus. All the other animals had close resemblances to several kinds of animals that Fluttershy knew of, they were of course vastly difference in nature and were all large, round or fluffy in some form.

Luna chuckled slightly and shook her head watching as Fluttershy was set upon her hooves, she took note of the little pink octopus as it hopped by with a blood covered blanket and a slightly sticky tentacle that it used to cover up the worst of what that tree did to Fluttershy.

“Luna can you please tell me what’s going on… um, if that is okay with you?” The five male animals gathered around to stare wonderingly as Fluttershy addressed what looked like a ghost or some form of spiritual guide to them.

“Yeah, like where did you go and what did you find out, how in the hay did we eve end up here like this?” Applejack was more than a little curious as to how she went to bed one second and found herself watching Fluttershy dodge around the attacks of really dangerous tree on another planet that was really far away the next. In a sense Applejack was kind of glad her farm was a small place in a vast ocean of the universe as it added some perspective to it all, she didn’t think she’d be able to run a planet sized apple farm and especially not with sentient apple trees that bucked back.

“Yes I was getting to that; it seems Fluttershy has stumbled upon a world of great interest here. I have learned that Star Nomads have…” Pausing Luna noticed an odd reaction in the five animals seemed to look excited at the words and they were now looking at her curiously. “Do you know what a Star Nomad is?”

The two birds, the giant hamster, the large cat and the rather odd fish all started making various noises between them while looking to each other chattering in a quick and rather hard to follow conversation. While the animals were busy debating something of which Fluttershy was listening to attentively, Applejack turned to Luna.

“So about how about telling me how we ended up here? You know, while their busy getting themselves figured out.” It was an interesting reaction to say the least and if Applejack remembered correctly, Fluttershy hadn’t heard much mention of Star Nomads aside from what they were capable of. Beings who could navigate their way around universe with incredible ease to anywhere someone could want to go, Applejack would have scoffed at the existence of such a creature that could figure out their way around the universe much less one planet. She would have scoffed if not for the fact that there was mention of them again on an entirely different planet far from the one Fluttershy had heard that they had been on.

“It is the simplest to say that this world is in fact physically a world of dreams or close to being one where the borders of reality are relatively thin. In other words and a much simpler way of putting it, Fluttershy summoned our dreaming minds across the universe to where she is because this planet has an odd magical nature about it. It is because we’re currently connected to her through that gifted stone and happen to be asleep that we are here at all. The planet is almost physically alive from having so much magic in it and it seems to have the ability to spread its influence through our connection to Fluttershy.” Luna hoped she explained that well enough, because it was a headache just figuring out how it was all possible. “We’re asleep, but at the same time we’re awake. We are very distant astral projections aided by the powers of the planets magic which is the closest I can get to an idea of our current situation. This planet is called Popstar and the world here is actually appropriately called Dream Land and is the center of the worlds of good dreams.”

“So we are asleep, but… not? I’m just glad to see Fluttershy is doing okay and not being killed by a tree.” Reaching for her head with a hoof Applejack stopped when she realized she wasn’t wearing her hat, she shrugged since she couldn’t make that particular gesture without it.

“I don’t think I ever want to be a tree like that one.” Fluttershy was physically healthy, but the trauma would forever remain with her and she might never look at a tree the same way ever again. “I think they are done talking and are trying to get our attention, oh and the octopus is back.”

Turning to see what Fluttershy was looking at, the little pink octopus with the red bow was indeed back and placing clean blankets on the bed with a bright smile and patting them down with care. One of the animals had been gently tapping Fluttershy until it had her attention completely; it was the little green bird and it had garnered the immaterial Luna and Applejack’s attention as well.

It chirped something and then led Fluttershy outside, these animals were fully sentient they just didn’t have a unified language and she understood animal speak well enough already to not need the use of her translator to understand a bird when it was trying to tell her something. Luna and Applejack just followed the other animals as they all exited the house and the little pink octopus closed the door to the quaint little house following after them.

The little green bird rested on the sign out in front of the house and was chirping about the sign and pecking at it.

“So what you’re saying is that this, what was his name? I’m sorry Pitch, but your dialect is a little different from the birds I’m used to back at home.” It was no surprise that Fluttershy could understand this bird as it was the most normal looking of the six animals and the only odd thing about it was the green coloration.

The bird chirruped and continued on before it poked at the sign again.

“The home of the Star Warrior named Curbing? Is that anything like a Star Nomad? Where is he?” Receiving a negative shake Fluttershy listened as the green bird chirped in a slightly angrier tone, the tone quickly changed to a more somber one and she blinked. “Oh, his name is Kirby and he’s the Star Warrior who lives in this house and is a good friend to all of you. You also don’t know whether or not if he is a Star Nomad and he’s currently dealing with some trouble elsewhere? So who are all of you then and how long will I have to wait to meet this Kirby, he might be able to help me get home if he is a Star Nomad.”

“Chu…” The octopus sighed dreamily at hearing the name of the hero of Dream Land, after a moment she realized something and started vocalizing it to Fluttershy while hopping up and down. It seemed the octopus wanted to know more about her.

“Oh right, hello my name is Fluttershy. It’s very nice to meet all of you and Miss ChuChu too. These are my friends Applejack and Princess Luna, they’re on a planet very far away from here and aren’t exactly here with me.” Her large bat ears drooped, was this as close as Fluttershy could ever get to her friends now? It was nice to see them while she was awake at least, but the inability to touch them was disheartening. At least she had large cuddly animals to snuggle against if she felt needy. “Well in anything other than spirit at least and I’m not exactly sure what will happen to them when they wake up, but I’m hoping for the best that they end up back on Equus instead of being stuck here with me like this.”

Applejack felt like she would deserve to be stuck as a spirit from just seeing Fluttershy getting beaten up by a tree. In fact she was sorry for a lot of the things that happened to Fluttershy from the point she disappeared to when she was getting roughed up by the tree; she felt she was to blame for quite a few things that had gone wrong for the poor shy pony. She was glad that Fluttershy kept meeting animal creatures in the universe to befriend because the sentient beings tended to be more violent or volatile thus far in comparison to all the creatures Fluttershy befriended in a matter of minutes with just her own little presence and lovely personality.

Luna lamented the fact that she couldn’t trace her way back to her body, otherwise she could have just give Fluttershy a general direction back to Equus and even then that might not work as the entire universe moved and going in a straight line would mean Fluttershy would only end up somewhere else other than Equus or end up getting sidetracked on the way.

That did not mean that Luna couldn’t bring ponies metaphysically to Fluttershy… in fact Luna had wanted to speak to Katrina face to face and show other ponies what she looked like. Aside from that Luna just hoped for Fluttershy’s continued safety and mentally checked the rest of the ponies she usually linked to Fluttershy and could feel them, she could even feel the Aldebaran people as well. It was just unfortunate she couldn’t find Equus from here or she would have given Fluttershy the answer to finding her way home.

While Luna and Applejack were having their introspective moments, each of the animals came forth and introduced themselves to Fluttershy.

Their names were Chuchu a Dream Land octopus, Pitch the bird, Kine the sunfish, Coo the owl, Rick the hamster and Nago the cat. Together all six of them were the Dream Land Defenders, the menagerie that took care of smaller problems that popped up while the Star Warrior known as Kirby was away doing something or other to protect Popstar from the usual impending complete and utter destruction that tended to pop up regularly along with the dark gods that got their quickly nonexistent flanks regularly handed to them. They had no idea when Kirby was going to get back from his latest adventure, especially since he ran off with the self proclaimed king of Dream Land, an unusually active Waddle Dee that wielded a spear and another Star Warrior named Meta knight.

To Fluttershy it sounded like they were the elements of harmony for this planet, but despite the similarities of their worlds she quickly wrote it off as a silly notion. It was after a moment after their introductions that Fluttershy spotted a few succulent looking large apples sitting by the door. It didn’t take long for Applejack and Luna to connect her stare to the large apples the size of or bigger than her own head and they quickly cast a quick worried glance at their distracted friend.

Author's Note:

Fluttershy learns more about Popstar, I think she'll have some time to explore while she waits for Kirby to show up.

Maximum Tomato's heal all physical injuries, Smash Bros. versions are weaker as they are not Popstar native Maxim tomatoes.

These magical fruits should have a strange side effect of making someone incapable of eating for a while, with the exception of Kirby who always has room given his stomach contains another universe.

I have to sometimes wonder why Kirby hasn't sucked the entire planet dry of oxygen yet given how often he inhales but rarely ever exhales.

Comments

[Ugly-Duckling123]

Would of thought Pinkie would be a better Wondar partner from the ponies

[UsurperBronyZant]

What, no Magolor?