Yonder Wandered Fluttershy

by Darkonshadows

34

Being quite prepared for the incoming attack, Fluttershy quickly stepped backwards out of a lunge that would have had left her missing half her throat. She also swiftly avoided the second bite before it tried leaping at her again; she dived underneath its high springing lunge getting behind it.

The machine was like a wingless chicken or turkey in body, but its head was different because it was round like an egg and opened into a maw of deadly sharp metallic teeth. How deadly were these teeth? Well the machine had lost sight of Fluttershy and turned about looking for the pony and then it scanned for the pony and tracked her through the nearby wall, so it quickly ran up to the nearest closed sliding door with its mouth wide open and bit into it. It easily tore a chunk of metal out of the door with a painful screeching noise and began chewing; it was quickly on its way to making a hole that was big enough for it to fit through.

Fluttershy gripping at her ears in pain was surprised that she had been found so fast. She had ducked out of its sight into a nearby room with the express idea that it would be more like the ceiling clinging machines and had a limited operation range. This was not like the sentry machines that clung to the ceiling and somehow despite moving out of its sight, it almost immediately knew where she was despite her being stealthy, so it didn’t track by sound like the sentries. The light on the top of its head was some kind of scanner and the fact that it changed from yellow to red after giving her a once over meant bad news, plus it could somehow see her through walls.

At least Fluttershy now knew why there was a large hole in the doorway one floor down on the elevator. Whatever this thing was it likely could eat through just about anything and it was just seconds away from tearing a large enough hole into the darkened room. She tried to keep breathing calmly and pulled her glass knife made from alien materials out of her saddlebags, she tightly gripped it in her left hoof holding it in front of herself. She had to try and remind herself that this thing was not alive and did not have anything resembling a soul. The beating of her heart and the noises from metal being torn and shredded rung through her ears, the room was empty and the only way out was past that little monstrosity.

The current crisis on hoof wasn’t the only thing bothering Fluttershy; she still needed to find a method to safely dislodge the Head Hunter from the bowels of this place and learn more about it while doing so. On the bright side of things, at least the little metallic monster swiftly eating its way through the door didn’t seem to be summoning the other sentry robots to assist with ending her faster. She couldn’t let that thing get even a single inch of herself into its mouth or else she’d be in for another agonizing experience in massive amounts of blood loss, that is assuming it didn’t get it’s maw on her head and immediately bite out a piece of her skull.

Experiences as painful as being shot by space pirates or being tossed for a loop by an explosion were the kind of things Fluttershy was actively trying to avoid. She didn’t exactly immediately recover from crashing the stiletto fighter and she got badly roughed up by a tree not to long after that with very little medical aid between those two moments. Her body needed rest and if this thing was going to be relentless, then there was no point in running and she had to face it head on.

Fluttershy shuddered at the thought of having to destroy a strange machine that was quite simplistic looking for a technological marvel; it almost felt like she would be stabbing one of Twilight’s books and ruining the words on the pages. From experience enchanted books could do nasty things, like what happened to Rarity with that cursed book that had her creating things out of control that would have eventually destabilized the balance of the world if it went on long enough. So in essence, it would be like Spike destroying the book by eating it and not letting things get worse because she was still too much of a coward to actually kill something that was not even remotely close to looking alive to begin with.

Speaking of looking alive, the machine finally got through the door and Fluttershy cringed. She shoved her knife out in front of her and backed away from the charging mouth on two backwards bending legs. Why did it have to remind her so much of her friendly chickens back home? It was just making it harder on focusing her need to destroy it before it killed her, survival instincts came first when there was no one else around that needed help. A fighter Fluttershy most definitely wasn’t which is why she went with the flight option and dodged around the machines attempts to bite and rip her legs off. Being a lot faster than the machine, she managed to evade around it easily enough and duck underneath the remaining upper half of the eaten door and back out into the corridor.

The pony upon leaving the room quickly stuffed the glass knifes hair wrapped handle into her mouth. If there was one thing a pony was good at, it was definitely running a marathon when they were panicked and Fluttershy went away from the direction the Head Hunter was in. She was not leading that thing back to the ship where it could destroy something important, she was much faster than it was and would likely be able to outrun it. Outlasting the mouthy machine was a different story as Fluttershy wasn’t running on endless energy here and she assumed it was a tireless automaton. She’d rather find out if it was actually tireless or if it would eventually get bored with her first before she did anything like attack it.

In her haste to escape the single dangerous machine Fluttershy had temporarily forgot the ceiling sentries, they quickly made themselves known. Four of them dropped down around her causing her to skid into a halt between all of them. They made clinking noises as they hit the floor and popped out their small legs and T shaped heads pointing their circular lights directly at her, a soft humming noised could be heard emanating from them which obviously meant imminent pain. Fluttershy didn’t really like how common energy weapons were in the universe.

Fluttershy jumped forward as high as she could manage and over the sentry that had dropped directly into her path. Four powerful spiraling beams of vibrant orange energy shot out, one had passing beneath her mid leap before they all crossed paths heading for each sentry. Upon landing on the other side of the sentry, Fluttershy turned her head back and watched as four orbs of spiraling light slammed home into the four machines. The spiraling beams of energy wrapped the machines in rings of chaotic sparking light and they began convulsing for a bit, after a moment they all exploded violently.

Sharp pieces of metal flew everywhere and one of the bits of shrapnel ripped into the left side of Fluttershy’s muzzle causing her to back away whimpering in pain as a splatter of blood flew off of her face. Reaching up with her right hoof, Fluttershy tried to knock the bit of metal out of her face only to yelp in pain as it had become quite wedged into her flesh. Taking the knife from her mouth into her left hoof she sat down and carefully maneuvered the knife to dig out the piece of metal from her face trying not to injure herself further. She successfully got the chunk of metal out and wiped of the blood from her knife with a hoof while draping her long mane over the wound, then she tossed it into her saddlebags and was galloping away once again. The metal maw was still coming for her and it was already literally snapping its sharp metal rending teeth at her heels, she made a mental note to not be hit by those spiraling beams of energy from the ceiling sentries in the future.

Running through a sparsely lit hallway in the dark being chased by a large metal oval headed chicken bodied monstrosity, being as fast as she was she had gained ground once again and was looking around for a place to hide. She was also trying to keep track of how far she was going so she could remember the way back to the Head Hunter, there were so many closed doors and none of them looked thick enough to stop the thing pursuing her.

Fluttershy was passing by a spot of exposed damaged wiring on the wall and faulty blinking ceiling lights and slowed down, the symbol on the walls here wasn’t as faded as the previous time she saw it. It was a red bent oval and had a few dots above it, she looked down at her muzzle that was still bleeding and causing her a lot of pain. She once again started to move faster seeing that symbol several more times; it vaguely reminded her of an animal’s footprint.

Shaking her head as she ran, Fluttershy was going slightly deaf from all the loud noises as her ears were ringing painfully and she was constantly on the lookout from every direction getting more paranoid as she went. Hopefully her wound would scab over quickly, but she’d need to find a way to disinfect it or cover it with medical supplies eventually. She managed to slowly bypass another set of sentries without activating them, which let the metallic mouth catch up with her and by then she was already running past a large opening into an equally large room with what looked to be several fighter ships in various states of disrepair.

The pony stopped running to make sure the door to this room shut behind her, the control panel for it was still luckily active and it slammed shut with a loud clang. How much more abuse could her ears take? One of them even felt like it was bleeding. She turned around and spotted movement from one of the small metallic looking ships. A bipedal figure at least several feet in height looked up from its position of messing with something on the wing of one of the bulky looking space shuttle style fighter ships.

It looked human, but it clearly wasn’t given its elongated head. Yellow glowing eyes of were the only thing visible of its face. The rest of its head was covered in a purple mask with what looked to be angry frowning face motif as a central appearance that spread out to its shoulders, chest and back. It had a tight black shirt that covered the upper half of its body that the purple mask didn’t cover all the way to its waist where a short purple sash was wrapped tightly around it. The sleeves of the shirt went down its gangly looking arms until it reached the uncovered flesh colored hands and the arms also had two metallic bracers strapped to them that had dulled, worn or broken spikes. The five fingered hands were the only visible thing representing the hint that it might have been alive, had there not been distinct bit of sparking electric wiring poking out one of its hands that had two broken fingers proving that it wasn’t a biological being and was just as mechanical as everything else Fluttershy had seen so far. It’s slightly loose pants were the same shade of purple as the sash and mask it wore, leading to a pair of uncomfortably tight looking black boots covered in bindings.

Fluttershy shivered as it stared blankly at her, the expression beneath the mask unchanging. It tilted its head curiously. She was distracted when she could faintly hear the clanking noises of the voracious mouth coming up behind her, it was a surprise she wasn’t completely deaf at this point from being in close proximity to so many loud noises. She turned halfway around and backed away from the direction she came and the figure standing on the ship, she was intent on trying to keep this new active possible threat in her sight. What started ripping the door open was not one metallic mouth on two legs, because now there were three of them. If they were this relentless Fluttershy was likely to perish because she couldn’t run forever and they were already slowly making short work of eating through the thick metal door.

Looking fully back to where the tall being was, it had disappeared after Fluttershy had taken her eyes off it fully. This caused her to look around in a panic, she decided to go for the doors on the far side of the hangar before the three mouths could get her and she had to move now as they were already through the door.

As the pony fled the room into another corridor, a pair of curious yellow eyes watched from the shadows of an entirely different ship that was more decrepit then the one it had been standing on. It silently faded into the shadows as it watched the pony ran blindly into another corridor. The three dangerous metal mouths still giving chase began eating through the second heavy metal door the pony shut behind herself.

This part of the vessel was much different than the previous; it was well more lit and a little less dilapidated. Fluttershy was fortunate enough to be able to see where she was going in this well lit hallway and her bleeding facial wound had finally staunched thanks to her mane as she galloped for her life. She was busy dodging around the turtle shell shaped sentries as they fell from the ceiling from time to time and then stopped chasing her after a while. They were much faster than the two legged things and luckily needed to stop moving to fire their spiraling energy beams, by that point she was always out of their firing range. All she was trying to do right now was put distance between her and those metal mouths, she had no clue where she was or where she was going and was much more lost then she had ever been. She mentally lamented the fact that every doorway in these corridors looked too much alike, how did anything get around in this place previously?

Checking around for a place to rest Fluttershy opened and darted into a nearby room. She instantly wished that she hadn’t done so. There were thousands of what looked to be dead turtles everywhere or at least the remains of their shells and skeletons lying all over the floor with completely destroyed habitats that looked to have been well kept at one time. She was a bit sick to her stomach at the sight and she hoped that they were in a better place now, because she certainly wasn’t at the moment. She slowly trotted through the room to give her body time to recover, she needed to rest her tired legs, her aching ears and her throbbing face.

Fluttershy was nearly finished catching her breath when the floor started shaking. She wondered what it was now and already knew this vessel she was trapped on was bad news all around, not to mention a complete deathtrap from what she has come across so far. One could only wonder what she did to deserve crossing paths with this place.

Two drills popped up and started spewing the dirt outwards in a wide arc, then out of the ground two roughly round T shaped machines popped up and landed on the floor in front of her solidly. They crushed a few of the shells and scattered the remains of the dead turtles about, this upset Fluttershy a bit. The drills, once they stopped spinning, receded into the top of their heads and were covered by domes. Each one had one large wheel and looked like fully operational versions of the machine Fluttershy had seen earlier that was slashed in half. They made a noise that sounded like attempts at communication; whatever they were trying to communicate was stated in a horribly dull monotone.

Today was just not in the cards for the pony that was backing away towards the door she just came through. When she started her retreat, the lower half of the machines that drilled up from the floor lowered some kind of hatch located above the wheel on the lower half of their bodies. Out of these hatches unfolded a metallic arm that each ended in a pointed glowing tip that reminded Fluttershy of a unicorn’s horn.

Oh look, more energy weapons and they were pointed directly at her. At least Fluttershy was noticing a recurring trend with the design aesthetics of all the more immediately threatening machines she was seeing. They were all rather gray and seemed to always have some easily recognizable offensive capability. The odd one out of all of them was the more alive and intelligent looking black and purple one she just saw in the hangar, even then all this technology seemed less advanced in places in comparison to some of the other things she witnessed before mysteriously ending up here.

Ducking, two red beams shot over her head; Fluttershy turned around and ran for the door. She managed to hit the button to open the door only to feel something wrap around her back right leg and start electrocuting her as if she had ran into a cloud full of lightning, all this concentrated electricity caused her body to spasm and fall to the floor. With a glance back, she saw a relatively thick cable wrapped around her now scorched leg leading to one of the two robots. She struggled to her hooves and roughly pulled her hind hoof out of cable and got into an uneven three legged run avoiding a second lashing cable from wrapping around her other leg launched by the other robot.

The second Fluttershy tried to put pressure on her right hind leg as soon as she got out the door to the dead turtle farm, she felt pain. She forced herself into a full gallop as she now saw seven metal mouths coming at her and the two robots rolled out of the room after her slowly reeling in their cables. She wasn’t going to be able to take much more of this; she opened the nearest door and entered and quickly closed it behind herself.

Tearing up Fluttershy lifted her pegasus wing and reached into her saddlebags, it was time for desperate measures as she couldn’t keep going like this. She pulled out her snack from the bag; a large apple chunk covered in syrup and wrapped in relatively edible leaves and sunk her fangs into it. Her lone pegasus wing quickly started morphing before her eyes into a second bat wing. When she was done sucking the juices out of it she ate the remains of her snack chewing and swallowing it as quickly as she could get away with.

Spreading her two bat wings, Fluttershy started flapping them slowly to lift into the air carefully. She had to stay in control and she’d have to get somewhere fast, her ability to fly would only last for so long with so little an apple boost. She kicked the button to open the door with her good back hoof and then flew forwards before swerving around to go zooming straight towards the opening door. Two red beams lanced into the room below her and the seven metallic maws which were just starting to gnaw at the door fell to the floor on their backs.

The pony wasn’t going to bother with finding out why there were more of the metal maws or how their numbers seem to be multiplying like parasprites. She’d rather not know and had more pressing things to concentrate on at the moment, like controlling her flying speed and momentum.

Fluttershy flew out through the open upper portion of the door past the two machines that folded up their lasers and lashed out at her with their round ended electrocuting cables; she twisted her body between the two of them and sharply turned to head down the corridor. She picked up speed as she flew trying to figure out to get out of this situation; she knew the metallic mouths would never be able to keep up with her now. The laser toting and cable launching robots were a different story; she still managed to outpace them if only for a little while.

Eventually Fluttershy flew into a vast room at the end of the corridor with a large fluctuating wall of energy below her; before she could fly much further she saw the purple and black figure from before pointing at her. It was with a slightly different looking purple and black figure, its head was more bulbous and round and its face was exposed showing what was underneath the mask. Its mouth was a triangular metallic grill, with two glowing diamond shaped yellow eyes above it and two strange tubes sticking out of its enlarged forehead. At the top of its head above the ripped open face portion of the purple mask there was a familiar yellow curved oval symbol with several dots above it.

This new bulbous headed purple and black wearing humanoid machine was leveling what looked to be a laser rifle at Fluttershy, without a second thought it fired a single well aimed shot at her.

The shot struck Fluttershy in the right wing searing a painfully large hole through the membrane. She shrieked in agony as she spiraled out of control towards the floor where she summarily crashed and bounced twice before coming to an unmoving halt. A pair of feet walked towards the fallen angel and the smears of blood she left on the floor.

Author's Note:

Yeah, I've given enough hints, it's the (***********) and a classic place at that. More then nine hundred rooms worth of space and it's size tends to vary at times, most likely due to its dimensional transportation instability and in general being a really inefficiently designed super fortress.

Several of the notable machines are seen in the series overall, well maybe not the sentry drones which are from a good and popular 'beat them up' with catchy music.

Mind you the place is in the state it's in now because it's been abandoned for a while. Also one wouldn't expect the purple and black guys to normally hit the broad side of a barn, unless they were a lot smarter such as the bulbous headed one.

Comments

[Acacia Sgt]

Man, poor Fluttershy. I guess it'll be Mr. Wheel to the rescue then since I do not see her being able to get out of this one alone unless a third party gets involved.

Hmm, yeah, now I see that ship and whatever work it's from is something I don't know, and trying to search it up proved fruitless. Ah well, I'll wait for the reveal, heh.

[Skulljack17]

Mmm, I had some flashes from the previous chapter of where they might be when I saw the metal monster...but now I'm certain I know where we are. Should be loads of fun!