Yonder Wandered Fluttershy

by Darkonshadows

46

“No way, I’m not supposed to let you put yourself in danger! You’re obviously frightened to the point of being unable to do anything and we’ve yet to see even one hornet!” It was obvious Mira would rather Fluttershy be safe then in the middle of a firefight and the pony wasn’t exactly presenting herself as one of the greatest warriors ever. “Speaking of, how long until they get here.”

“It will be a few hours after we launch the first strike.” Janet turned her flower towards the sky. “I’m coordinating with my dear Maurice right now for it, should slow them down long enough for us to come up with a plan to deal with their numbers.”

“First strike, what are you talking about Janet? And I do have an idea of what to do.” Looking out over the city Fluttershy saw a large flower bloom at the center on top of a tall building. It was glowing with ethereal light and it was beautiful as the entire building had veins of vines in various colors lit up leading to that flower. There were six other smaller giant flowers on other buildings around the biggest one that were also glowing and she was getting a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Oh it’s just a little payback, nothing to worry about Fluttershy and it’s a good thing that someone around here has a plan.” The avatar of Janet had an evil grin and it did not look pretty on the red flower. “Besides there’s no one in the way at this moment, well at least nothing that happens to be alive anyway and I’ve got a clear shot. Maurice is up there spotting for me so I figured, why not take this as the perfect opportunity to make it clearly known that I don’t like being invaded.”

There were a lot of things that Fluttershy had learned about the existence of life in the universe and there were still rules she was learning about. Nothing was perfectly safe or harmless. Fluttershy herself wasn’t perfectly harmless because she now had a plan to deal with the robots, one that would be given time to be put into place after seeing what Janet had done.

A bright beam fired from the giant glowing flower with six other smaller beams conjoining into the big one in the center and fired from the city in a vibrant yellow beam of imminent death, to Mira it oddly looked like a hyper death ray. It even caused a twitch in Mira’s lips to the point that she was smiling slightly. The beam made a sweeping motion from right to left and after a moment the beam died down.

“Those bloom guns used a ton of energy. It’ll be a few hours of sunlight or a lot of moonlight before I can fire this cities bloom guns again. Worth it though, wish I could have seen the looks on their faces after that… Maurice said I atomized two carriers and crippled one severely. They still have two carriers left though.” Janet had a smug smirk on her flower, it didn’t have eyes but you can just feel the sense of satisfaction as the flower pointed its bulb towards space. “They don’t have much range, but I’d like to see someone say my children aren’t well defended now. I can only hit anything up to three planets away, they’re not that great. So, what was your idea Fluttershy? I believe we have a lot more preparation time now, though I highly doubt they are going to just let us fire our bloomers again.”

In outer space two carriers with loaded robots being sent to kill Ranger Mira Nova suddenly ceased to exist, the ranger had been off on the numbers by ten thousand hornets. There were approximately sixty three thousand hornet robots; however Janet had just about effectively cut their operational strength in half as a first strike. Following the first strike a good number of active hornets maintaining the ships blue screened becoming completely inoperable.

The sudden malfunctions dropped their fighting effectiveness even further, leaving around eighteen thousand hornets still active. The yellow triangular headed robots flew around trying to make repairs to the third carrier as they slowed down in their approach; it slowed them down by about two hours and fifteen minutes. Plenty of time for Fluttershy to literally get her plan off the ground.

Many wouldn’t consider Fluttershy dangerous; personally Fluttershy knew she had something that her friends always kept forgetting about her that made more dangerous than most ponies.

Rainbow Dash could create powerful shockwaves that could be used as an attack. Applejack could throw boulders and buck her rear hooves through solid steel. Twilight is one of the most powerful magic users on the planet and that was before she gained the power of the two other main pony races. Rarity was a master of fine control and could likely do horrific things with needles and thread if given the chance; she even took part of the fight with the changelings, so even she would dirty her hooves in a time of need. Pinkie Pie could teleport, pull anything that she may need from her mane and she was entirely unpredictable.

To think that all their powers of harmony combined created a large rainbow beam that could deal with the most dangerous of foes in a peaceable manner, but Fluttershy was a little different in how she was dangerous. All her friends frequently forgot that she wasn’t stupid. In fact it was quite the opposite; Fluttershy was a really quite the clever pony and had a little bit more in the common sense department.

Rarity and Twilight were quite easy to panic; Rainbow Dash could get performance anxiety and might buckle under enough pressure, Pinkie was easy to depress and all you needed to do to take the fighting spirit out of Applejack was destroy her orchards or injure her family. Hurting Fluttershy’s friends just plain pissed her off; an angry Fluttershy was quite the sight to behold.

Fluttershy may be a tad quiet and reclusive, but she definitely wasn’t a pushover where it counted. This was a mare that could wrestle a bear to the ground while getting a nice workout in helping the bear with his back problems, got a dragon and a cockatrice to back off by staring them down, defeated Discord at his own game twice and she didn’t even have to pay Iron Will for his assertiveness lessons.

This was a mare that understood chaos better than her friends and she even showed her truly angry side when she got frustrated at the gala a long time ago. She understood life and death as she knew her animals couldn’t live forever, she just eased their paths in life by a lot until they perished and then she would take care of a new generation of adorable little bunnies that would pop up. That’s what she wanted to get back to, a peaceful life.

The pony had decided to let her cruel side out a bit. There were small sides of her and her friends that they all tried to ignore as existing; the grey sides that Discord had shown them that was there. Her plan as the second line of defense would be carried out to great effect. Mira was in charge of the third line where Janet would begin actively destroying every robot that made it through the second line of defense being personally crafted by Fluttershy.

The ones ordering the hornet robots around were a bit shocked that Rhizome had beam weaponry that could take their ships at such an impressive range. In fact, the robots controllers were wary of sending the rest of the hornets in after Mira Nova with that kind of response to their incoming assault. The evil emperor behind this faltering assault wasn’t paying much attention to the operation that was quickly going south; he was quite assured that his hornets could handle a bunch of pansy pacifists with wimpy plant based technology to get at an injured Mira Nova. The evil emperor was too busy distracting Star Command in other places.

Of the initial sixty three thousand plus hornets, only around eighteen thousand were left operational and were all riding the remaining three hornet carriers. The vast swarm of robots had been more than cut in half by their own programming errors and the beam attack, then they lost six thousand more units when they started sending every hornet at the place where the large beam had originated from.

It didn’t take long for the hornet operators, who were on a different planet entirely, to notice that the hornets weren’t making it through the sickly looking purple cloud layer hanging above the area where the massive beam fired from. In fact, it took holding the remaining twelve thousand or so hornets back to realize that the cloud layer was doing something. One of the hornets was sent in to test the cloud and they caught sight of the problem. The robots were being dissolved by what appeared to be a massive cloud made of acid and then they caught sight of a being in the clouds; the hornets were ordered to fire immediately. They missed the being as it disappeared into the purple haze.

The robots split their forces, they sent six streams of one thousand hornets each to go around the cloud and start their assault. The remaining six thousand plus hornets were sent back to the carriers to fix the malfunctioning hornets as fast as they could. The operators didn’t think this initial attack was going to go so well after what they’ve seen, but they were ordered to carry it out by their evil emperor and they didn’t want to fail him to end up facing his wrath.

Fluttershy slipped below the clouds and flew towards the outskirts of the city. She had Janet create a large pool of the same metal eating acid that was new to the thorn shooting applications of Rhizome weaponry, it was only slightly harmful for a biological being to breathe in and it was entirely disastrous to anything completely made out of metal. It didn’t affect a Rhizome spacesuit though; Fluttershy was able to watch her plan cut down the massive force even further before they spotted her.

All adult Rhizomian civilians were all wearing protective suits that were manufactured quickly thanks to Janet; they were at the center of the city and underground as the last line of defense. The people that would fight for Rhizome were awaiting Mira’s orders and were armed appropriately. The hornets would have to go around the cloud and when they did, it would have them coming either from all sides or one direction. Either way the people of Rhizome had a huge tactical advantage.

“They’re coming Janet, they figured it out and are going to go around!” Fluttershy had likely saved many lives with the acid cloud she helped make, as she flew towards the city from twenty miles out. It wouldn’t take the hornets long to get around the huge cloud to give chase to her and she was right. “They are spreading out, not coming from a single direction! Have Mira prepare her part of the plan, if it’s needed that is. I’m about to come under fire and I’m heading for safety like I promised!”

After only flying for a mile, a few green blasts of energy blurred past Fluttershy who rolled out of the way and flew closer to the ground along the road leading into the city. The first group of hornets had caught up to her. The lazy looking streetlamps made out of plants suddenly turned their heads skyward and blew out blasts of purple energy shredding quite a few of the hornets behind Fluttershy forcing them to deal with the defenses.

Janet was holding back until Fluttershy got into the city as her plan was still in play. There were some things not many knew about pegasus ponies. It involved how their magic affects clouds and Fluttershy had a good idea as to what suddenly removing her magic from the cloud of acid hanging above the city would do.

Flutter flew slowly on purpose trying to acquire as many hornets on her rear end as she could, any hornets that managed to avoid the trap would be taken out by Mira’s offensive. Ten miles out and several more of those hornet robots had caught up with her.

Fluttershy took evasive maneuvers and avoided being shot down. They were slightly better than the previous killer robots that she met when it came to their aim and they were definitely bigger in size then the purple and black sword wielding machines. The hornets were barely all that much smarter though, as there was no intelligence behind their programmed actions. She felt her suit shudder as one of her fake wings was clipped causing her to dip towards the ground; she righted herself and looked towards the sky while the wing of her suit regenerated.

The purple cloud of acid was quickly losing cohesion and it was just about ready to start raining its payload all over the hornets behind her. The only reason why the acid cloud held together before was because Fluttershy was in contact with it. There was a little known fact about Cloudsdale; if it weren’t for the ponies living there at all times then the sky bound city would have fallen a long time ago.

Smiling to herself, Fluttershy knew she didn’t have enough pegasus magic to keep a permanent cloud of acid hanging over the city at all times. She only had enough to hold it together for a limited amount of time until it fell out of the sky and it would all fall back down on top of the robots.

Five miles out was when it started raining and hundreds of black and yellow humanoid robots started practically melting in the downpour of acid rain. Hundreds were falling out of the sky, but there would still be hundreds left after the acid spent itself wiping out most of the invading force. The nature of weather magic was a harsh mistress.

“Fluttershy, Maurice caught another transmission that not all of them are a part of the attack, they’re holding some in reserve and sending them back to fix some malfunctioning robots.” Janet paused for a moment. “We’re going to be in trouble if they come back with more and the bloom guns can’t fire again for a while and they may be ready for them the next time they can. At least we wiped out a lot of them without any casualties to my children yet.”

“I’m coming into the city, we’ll think of something. Maybe the city defenses can take them all down. We’ll have Mira and your people open fire on the next wave if they give you enough time to regenerate the cities defenses.” Fluttershy rolled into the path of some rain that still fell from the large purple cloud. The cloud was quickly breaking up leaving her exposed in shafts of moonlight to the robots giving chase.

She was quickly within the city itself and then the defenses started picking off any chaser on her rear end. Vines erupted from the ground behind her cutting off some low flying hornets from getting any more shots at her and any of the higher flying ones were promptly taken down by the street lights that fired short ranged bursts of energy. The buildings were spraying thorns in huge blasts in areas where there were a lot of hornets.

There were just so many of them, far more than the ones that were trying to kill Fluttershy on that vessel. These were the things that were after her new friend Mira? How did Mira not have a mental breakdown with the thought that everyone around her was going to be hurt by these things because she was here? She must have nerves of steel in wanting to face these things head on; they all fired really fast volleys of energy and speed was the only factor that kept Fluttershy from being hit.

After a moment and flying around a street corner in the safety the purple rain allotted her, Fluttershy came in for a landing on the street and tapped her helmet twice. She could see black and yellow dots lighting up the darkness in the distance getting closer as the rain was petering out at a rapid pace.

“I’m here Janet. The sky is clearing up over me and I really don’t want to be out here anymore.” A portion of the ground formed into a staircase leading down into a tunnel that led beneath the city for the scared pony that did something brave.

Fluttershy quickly trotted down the stairs where Roller was immediately at her side, the staircase closed up behind her returning the street to how it normally looked. She was safely below the city, for the time being at least. She could already hear the explosions as Mira led a force to fight back against the robots in the streets of the city; she crawled into a corner and was promptly surrounded by civilians and children as she curled up there whimpering.

-

It was a few hours later and after a successfully led counter attack led by Mira that found Fluttershy being hailed as a hero. Her plan wiped out a huge swath of the robots on its own aside from Janet’s opening shot. Unfortunately, they knew that the robots hadn’t been completely wiped out and the city was still repairing its damaged defenses from the hornets that didn’t go down as easily as the rest of them did.

“I really didn’t do all that much, all I did was make a cloud and then held it in position as long as I could. You should really be thanking Ms. Nova instead of me.” The truth was that Fluttershy was understating her accomplishment; she actually believed Rainbow Dash could have done better than what she had.

The defending forces had taken a lot of injuries; medical supplies were also in abundance on Rhizome. Fluttershy was still being thanked by many a Rhizome native as she made her way to where the injured were being tended to.

“Is everything okay here Pwerta?” Fluttershy asked as she looked the Rhizomian in the eye, Pwerta and her friends from the spa were apparently highly trained medics in times of duress.

“Nothing permanent, thank the great mother. Speaking of, I can feel her anger directed at the ones who attacked us from here. I would like some assistance, could you pick up that rolled up plant and wrap it around that patients arm?” At her request Pwerta was astounded by how tenderly and quickly Fluttershy could work with her hooves to help heal the wounded. For a creature without fingers, Fluttershy did some amazing work when it came to making others feel better and it was much more Fluttershy’s speed then taking an active part in combat operations. While the pony needed help learning what a few things did, Pwerta had found a really good assistant in the emergency medical corps.

Fluttershy spent the next thirty minutes wrapping up injured Rhizomians, they weren’t much for battle and their suits took heavy beatings. The suits held up much better than the bodies filling them did.

“Ugh, there was just so many of them. I swear if this suit wasn’t as good as it is now...” Mira stumbled into the room and was quickly peeled out of her Vega-suit by a happy Fluttershy, whom immediately began apply rubs to her sore body. “Good to see you’re in a good mood Fluttershy.”

“Well, I was something of a healer back home and a lot of the people that helped you got hurt badly tonight.” Of the Rhizomians that went into battle, Fluttershy noted that over three fourths of them were wounded badly to varying degrees, none of which were mortal, lethal or even permanent. The next attack wouldn’t be held back so easily with so few people left to fight the hornets off with and they definitely weren’t veterans in combat like Mira was. “They aren’t very good in a fight are they?”

“Why do you think I have the job that I do Fluttershy? Rhizomians aren’t fighters; they are mostly healers and scholars. The next wave is going to be much worse; I’m surprised they haven’t hit us again yet already.” She didn’t sugar coat it at all, Mira personally accounted for five hundred and forty seven hornets destroyed. Any injured Rhizomian could only account for about twenty hornets each. “Let’s face it, someone is going to die in the next wave and it’s lucky that no one was captured or killed in the first one. Unless we can come up with something else we really need help. I think it’s about time I got off this planet before these people get hurt any further. They’re after me and I’m not going to surrender given that it’s Zurg who’s behind all this.”

“What if this Zurg has those robots attack the Rhizomians again even if you do leave?” It was rather important to Fluttershy to hear an answer to this one, she didn’t like seeing so many innocent people hurt or being forced to fight. At least the suits held up to all stress as they took what would be lethal damage for their wearers and her suit personally was doing perfectly fine after having lost a bit of a fake wing when she came under fire. She stared deeply into Mira’s eyes waiting for a response

“Yeah, he’d do that.” It was something Mira knew he’d do to get revenge for all the losses anyway; he just lost a large chunk of his cheaply manufactured army thanks to Janet and Fluttershy. She felt like she hadn’t pitched in nearly enough. “Fine, I’m going to give the hornets exactly what they want. Janet said one of those ships was crippled right? I have an idea, but it requires me getting onboard that hornet carrier. I’m going to need a ride after I’m done resting, will you help me with it Fluttershy?”

“Of course I will, but I don’t think I will like what you have in mind at all.” Quietly stated Fluttershy, who had a really good guess at what was coming next. There were sayings about kicking a nest loaded with hornets.

Comments

[Acacia Sgt]

"Beware the nice ones" has never been so true right now, heh. Then again, when one develops a dislike to mindless robots with orders to kill...

Well, good to see some action again, and despite having "Technodrome vibes", so to speak, from the incoming incursion to Zurg's ships... well, I tend to think that the worst could happen more than I should, heh...