• Published 8th Aug 2014
  • 2,789 Views, 271 Comments

Yonder Wandered Fluttershy - Darkonshadows



Fluttershy is a long way from home; will she survive the harsh and crazy universe while exploring its many wonders? She loves everything after all, now she has to prove that she does and it may just keep her alive.

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36

Fluttershy exited the sectioned off cell block, not a ceiling clinging machine to be seen except down the corridor at about twenty doors. The hallway was littered with scorch marks from energy weapons. She only needed to count off four doors on her left as she limped.

If those cable tossing robots ever got a cable around her neck… Fluttershy shuddered as her back right leg was damaged enough in the few seconds that she had been electrocuted. She was already mourning the loss of a large chunk of her mane; just because she could heal the damage done to her body later didn’t mean it didn’t hurt a lot right now. If only she had the foresight to pack a maximum tomato chunk, she already assumed she was going to feel like a living callus after all this.

She reared up and smacked the button on the doorway and entered, the upper floors of the place she was in were at least recently repaired or had less damage than the lower portions of the vessel. Some of the damage Fluttershy saw was likely being caused by the two legged metal maws; she had to wonder how this place ended up like this with all the killer robots. Who had previously lived here?

The room Discord directed Fluttershy to check out did not look to be in disrepair and was quite frankly more awe inspiring then the swimming pool or the two person bedroom a few floors down. It was like there was sunlight in the room, well at least the lamp lighting the entire room gave off muted ultraviolet rays like a sun.

Closing her eyes Fluttershy gave a wistful smile at the warmth of the lamplight, the sound of trickling water could be heard in this room slowly flowing throughout and there were bonsai tree’s slightly larger than one would normally see. It was a very nice room and the smell in the air almost made her forget she was trapped in a dangerous place for a moment.

Fluttershy inhaled through her nostrils again as she noticed an unmistakable familiar smell, it was almost the same as a smell back home if only slightly alien. Given where it was growing, Fluttershy would forgive it for its slightly odd small variation in scent alone. Moving closer to a collection of smaller plants around the long since unattended bonsai plants, taking a huge whiff Fluttershy came to a conclusion that Discord likely thought this would help her calm her nerves for the bumpy road ahead.

Tea leaves, oh if only Fluttershy had a way to boil water at the moment. She wouldn’t say no to gathering seeds and quite a few leaves for later soothing drinks, these plants looked to have been perfectly pest free and that was once again understandable given their current location.

“Discord…” Stopping because she didn’t know what to say, Fluttershy just pulled out her surprisingly undamaged knife to start gathering some of these rather unique resources to use for later, she also refilled her water container from the small streams that were constantly being pumped into the room from somewhere. The bonsai trees weren’t big enough to help with creating a good splint for her leg so she left them alone.

“I figured it would be a pleasure my dear little wounded butterfly.” Discord and Rarity were still on the horn watching through the chaos lord’s vision as the shy pony collected a few recognizable plants known for their herbal uses. “Because the situation you’re in is rather bleak to say the least, and very upsetting.”

“I really don’t like breaking things, but I have little choice in the matter. My choices are to do something to break that chaotic energy field or the power source to that field.” Fluttershy had a moment of reprieve in this room, but she couldn’t stay in the bonsai garden forever even if it was a really nice garden. She did not like being trapped on a generally spherical place surrounded by machines intent on ending her life; she wasn’t safe anywhere she went while she was here. “Neither one sounds like a good option. I don’t even entirely understand what I’m exactly trying to accomplish or what will happen when I finally do accomplish it.”

“Well Fluttershy, you’re not the only one there trapped in that place. Your friend is also there with you and you are kind of responsible for his life and he is an animal is he not?” Rarity questioned before she took a sip of tea. She was trying not to let her nerves get the best of her with worries about her friend’s safety, especially with all those dangerous machinations moving about that place. “What was your special talent again dear?”

“I know what you’re trying to say to me Rarity, but I’m not exactly in a good position here and I don’t even know where to start.” If only Fluttershy could just curl up into a ball and have a good long cry. She couldn’t afford to because she needed to be proactive. “How am I supposed to break them? What do I break them with and in what way? Discord can lead me to the chaos field or the power source easily enough, but when I get there then what? It’s still dangerous and I really don’t think the Head Hunter would survive this place exploding even if I could get to it.”

“Wherever there is or was life, there is chaos Fluttershy. There are a vast number of options before you; you just have to find them.” Putting a claw to his scraggly little beard Discord gave it some thought. “My advice would be, do some thinking outside the box. Do something random!”

“Discord, that’s the same advice you give every pony.” Rarity stated dryly from her spot on a picnic blankets on a planet far away and safe from the situation her friend was in. “Although I do admit at times when making a dress it does have some merit.”

“Um, well… that is… okay.” Painstakingly standing up from her resting spot in the warm sun lamp grown garden, Fluttershy had an idea as to what she would do and it would be a little awkward. She’d have to go looking for one of those humanoid figures. She gave one last look around this nice relaxing place and then limped off to do the one thing not many ponies would expect of her, she was going on the offensive!

A shy, little, meek, rather repeatedly injured and traumatized pony was going to raise a stink and start putting up a huge fight. It’s something Fluttershy would rather not do, but it was her best option to just destroy all the lifeless machines which would give her plenty of time to figure a way off this place. Now how was she going to find one of those humanoid figures by itself? She needed to take something from one of them without it exploding violently; just like every single other machine here has done when they are heavily damaged. It was a rather common feature that she was beginning to greatly dislike about them.

Fluttershy decided to unleash her more assertive side, just a tiny smidgen, enough so that she’d be capable of being somewhat violent to non living entities. This is why she was now cowering in a cloud hanging four feet above the floor outside the door to the bonsai garden room trying to shore up some confidence. All she had to do was sit there waiting for some humanoid machines to pass by beneath her cloud, otherwise she was comparing corridor and vent sizes to the previous vessels she’s been on to keep herself entertained while she waited.

“Look alive, two gaunt masked pinheads are coming towards your little cloud nine Fluttershy.” It was a not so amused Discord announcing this for her sake. “Whatever you’re planning, your cloud better have some silver lining it.”

“I’ll be okay Discord, or at least I think I will be eventually.” Waiting patiently, Fluttershy shifted her sitting position on the cloud and waited with her glass knife held in her left hoof. Trying to balance on two hooves while using a knife trying not to put too much pressure on her back right leg would have been difficult, thanks to Rainbow Dash she knew a thing or two about how to use clouds as a tactical advantage when she couldn’t fly otherwise. “Could you tell Rainbow Dash thanks again for teaching me how to make clouds when we were younger? It’s been a real big help and I forgot to the last time I saw her.”

“I’ll be sure to darling, even if Discord is going to be busy later this evening with rearranging all of Twilight’s books while she isn’t looking. Since you’re in trouble I doubt he will put too much effort into it and would rather stick to watching you.” Rarity didn’t care what Discord planned to do, things haven’t been nearly as exciting without Fluttershy around and they all missed her dearly. “You may stop a lord of chaos from hurting others, but you can’t stop him from being who he is. Who am I to tell him not to be himself? I’d be a hypocrite then dear.”

Fluttershy giggled wanly and then her nerves came back in full force at the two purple and black figures running down the corridor. They weren’t paying any attention to her little cloud; obviously they didn’t have the same abilities as those little metal maws seemed to with being able to find her anywhere she went. At least that was what she could infer by their ignorance of the visibly unnatural floating cloud as they got closer.

Fluttershy felt like yelling something about cows when she made her move and for some odd reason things smelled like turtles for a second. She ignored both these random ideas and quickly acted to the best of her ability when the first of the two machines passed right by her position.

The second passing machine stopped when a flash of yellow from what was assumed a normal atmospheric phenomenon appeared in front of it snatching the rifle out of its hands. It promptly exploded outwards seconds later when the knife that was jammed into its head was swiftly pulled free, its parts thankfully didn’t explode upward into the cloud.

The other humanoid machine turned around looking for the disturbance that just destroyed its fellow machine pointing the rifle it had in that general direction. It hadn’t seen the intruder or the reason why its fellow machine had just terminated all of the sudden. The tip of a rifle poked its way out of the cloud, not being able to compute the idea of a cloud being able to wield a rifle; it promptly froze up at the impossibility of weather phenomenon suddenly wielding a rifle. Without input from the leader it didn’t know how to act in this situation.

Five shots were fired from the cloud, the first two going wide striking the floor creating fresh scorch marks, the third struck it in the left shoulder making it stumble back a bit. The fourth shot went between its left arm and torso. The last shot blew its head off in what would be a rather lucky shot on the part of Fluttershy who was still getting used to holding the middle of the weapon in her left hoof to adjust her aim and pulling the trigger with the end of her bat wing.

The machine felt to the floor with a smoking stump for a neck and like everything else tended to do in this place, it exploded. Fluttershy was getting tired of her ears ringing from all the explosions. She was sure Rainbow Dash might have appreciated the adrenaline and action better; because she personally didn’t have a taste for what she just did. Furthermore Fluttershy now had a bit of a problem, she had to use her left wing to steer the cloud and it was now also needed to even fire the weapon she went through the trouble of confiscating.

Slinging the energy rifle over onto her back while tightening the strap, Fluttershy sighed as she made her way for the floor with her hooves trembling. She could aim and fire the rifle with her wing alone given it had no recoil and the strap would prevent her from accidentally dropping it, but if she wanted more accurate shots she’d have to use her front left hoof to steady her aim.

“You know I’m not exactly surprised to see you do that Fluttershy. I must admit that you certainly took care of those nasty brutes, shooting a lady then imprisoning her without medical help. Why the nerve of those heartless machines for what they made you do to your mane!” Sighing as she caused the shy pony to jump in fright, Rarity just shook her head in disbelief at Fluttershy given what she had managed to do a few seconds ago. “We’re still here for you darling, though now what are you going to do?”


“I guess I’ll find a power source and do something to it, I wouldn’t know the first thing about handling a chaotic energy field. Discord, where’s the nearest elevator shaft?” Fluttershy slowly trudged down the corridor and stopped to blast the sentry drones on the ceiling. One was destroyed while it was still on the ceiling; two more went after they fell to the floor and were sprouting their legs and head. The last one managed to get its spiraling shot off, but Fluttershy ducked that and a few shots from her rifle put it out of commission. The laser rifle was thankfully not as loud as a bullet spewing weapon would be and it wasn’t overly cumbersome, just a tad heavy given all its main components were metallic judging by the silver coloring of the rifle.

“Just a bit further down the corridor on your right, keep going and I’ll tell you before you pass ‘GO’ to collect your two hundred bits. By the way Rarity I’m calling the horseshoe.” It sounded like Discord was preparing to play a board game. “No one is going to be as lucky as me in a game of chance.”

“OH OH, can I join in, I call the bowler hat!” Pinkie Pork Pie said arriving on the scene. “Wow Fluttershy, what happened to your pretty mane? My back just went all achy, you might want to duck!”

Fluttershy listened to Pinkie immediately and the humanoid figure that managed to sneak up on her had narrowly missed slicing off her head with a sword. Fluttershy spun around to fire several shots into its chest without hesitation. It was knocked onto its back where it did what every other machine here did when heavily damaged. That had been a bit too close for comfort, how did that thing even sneak up on her?

“Wow that thing was so ninja! It was awesome… well, except for the part where it tried to kill you Fluttershy.” Rainbow was curious as to what Discord, Pinkie Pie and Rarity were all doing on a blanket and found them watching Fluttershy on a magical screen. At least her friends were watching, Discord was just staring off into space. “What is that thing? It looks like a ray gun; please tell me that’s a ray gun! All those comics about aliens were right! Hey, did you do something with your mane?”

“Are we going to have a Fluttershy survived dying party?!” Gleefully asked Pinkie as she waved her hoof at Rainbow to come join them on the blanket where a tea set once was. Now there was plenty of empty space and Discord was picking at his teeth with a toothpick for a few seconds before eating it too.

“It’s a little early to be celebrating Pinkie; she’s still in grave danger.” At least Rarity was sticking to the severity of the situation Fluttershy was now in.

Fluttershy sighed; her friends would always be her friends. Even if they were currently being distracting, especially when there was an injured and limping mare that almost died seconds ago because of them. She already forgave them for it before it even became a problem. If Pinkie hadn’t warned her about that thing, that would have been it. She shuddered while rubbing at the back of her neck in a sad manner, just reminding herself of the shortened mane.

“Can everyone please be quiet?” Thankfully for Fluttershy her, friends heard her plea and were immediately quiet. Even in the upper parts of this spherical vessel, it was hard to tell from inside that it was round at all. Fluttershy’s ears twitched back and forth as she waited for Discord to tell her where the elevator is as she slowly trudged forward.

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news… hmm the elements of chaos, element of bad news.” Discord chuckled amusedly at the thought of having something similar to the elements of harmony, but only to keep things interesting. “Anyway, you got some of those tall purple boogers about to come sneezing their way down the corridor for you and there are a lot of them. I advise picking up the pace as you’re almost there; the elevator is three doors down.”

Fluttershy didn’t manage to get far when twelve humanoid figures came at her firing deadly beams of energy everywhere. Though these machines were relatively highly inaccurate, the pure quantity of the shots that were being fired was more than making up for it.

Opening a nearby room to her right Fluttershy ducked out the way of a wall of suppressing fire. She leaned out of the doorway and fired ten shots. She wasn’t doing as well as she was before with hitting anything more than a single glancing blow on the leg of one of the twelve shooters leaving some wires exposed. Apparently panicking and getting pinned down in a room didn’t help her aim any; she ducked out of the doorway and took a deep breath. Leaning back out four of the tall machines had charged forward firing their rifles only to get taken out within the next twenty shots Fluttershy fired before ducking back into the room.

Fluttershy pulled the memory stone from her wing and stuffed it away in her saddlebags; she followed this action by slowly walked out into the middle of the corridor while returning fire. While the remaining robots weren’t very good shots, they had at least grazed Fluttershy a few times as she carefully moved forward trying to avoid being hit. A few doors down from her the machines had taken cover and were almost constantly shooting at her.

A few shots that managed to graze Fluttershy just scorched a bit of her fur; the worst was when she lost a bit of fluff from the tip of her left ear by the time she reached the elevator door. Fluttershy stopped firing and stood up on her hind legs and hit the button to summon the lift while the walls around her were being randomly scorched with laser fire. She kept moving left to right while returning fire a bit more accurately then what she was receiving while she was desperately awaiting the elevator, being a smaller target helped a lot even if she was too slow to really dodge effectively.

The door to the elevator opened and Fluttershy had only taken down one more of those humanoid machines in that time. She tried to take a step backwards into the open doorway and noticed a glaring problem that stopped her from doing so. The platform for this elevator was completely missing.

Sure the parts that moved the platform up and down were still there, otherwise it was nothing but a vast black void leading downwards and Fluttershy was slightly disheartened to learn of this fact. She snapped her head back in time to see a red beam pass by her eyes; she snapped off a shot and nailed the hip of the machine that had shot at her. It had exploded and damaged another one which lost its rifle in the explosion. Having lost its rifle to shoot with, the freshly disarmed machine with a damaged leg looked at the rifle Fluttershy held and charged her even while its five armed compatriots were still firing.

The bipedal machine charging Fluttershy was being struck by multiple beams of energy; it managed to get surprisingly close to Fluttershy before it exploded at almost point blank range. This launched the poor mare into the shaft behind her where she bounced off the walls several times. All of her friends held their breaths as they watched Fluttershy plummet into the open void, after a few second the three watching ponies screamed out her name fearing for her life.

Fluttershy felt a sharp blow to her head and back after she got caught up in the blast and everything was spiraling out of control, she could hear the air whistling by her ears. It didn’t take her long to figure out she was falling down the shaft. What could she do? Her head was swimming at the moment and she could vaguely make out the sound of her friends screaming her name. She needed something, something that wouldn’t kill her like the sudden stop at the bottom would. A cloud, she needed to make a cloud!

Being completely dizzy, Fluttershy didn’t know which way was up and after ten seconds she managed to orient herself into a stable upright falling position which wasn’t easy in the darkness of the shaft. She shook her head and focused, she managed to get out the water container and pry the lid off. Tightly holding onto the container in her right hoof which was swiftly losing water, Fluttershy slung the water in it downwards as hard as she could and held her left hoof below her with her eyes clenched shut in a slight prayer to any deity that would listen.

The pony felt a cloud envelope her and thought it would slow her fall towards the light at the end of the tunnel. It was only five seconds later that her world erupted in agonizing pain when something punctured her chest.

Author's Note:

~Super mutant magic mare. Cutest hero with two fangs, apple powered!~

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