Yonder Wandered Fluttershy

by Darkonshadows

67

Fluttershy cowered in the copilot’s seat with her hooves over her eyes as the cargo vessel shook from being struck.

“I just got to wonder how you attract so much trouble, I’d swear you were one of my brothers or sisters if I didn’t know you had an entire naturally existing race.” Bonnie was steering the ship like mad, swerving swooping and pulling all kind of crazy maneuvers in space. “I’m starting to think that kidnapping you has jinxed me and I wouldn’t put it past the universe to do something like that to me.”

“I’m sorry…” Fluttershy mumbled from behind her hooves she was holding up to her face in an adorable manner by trying to hide behind them.

“You got nothing to be sorry about; it’s just that I’ve had a slight run of bad luck since I’ve met you.” It was what Bonnie thought to be true since there was Torque finding them at the train station, the compu-kill guard robots and then this happened when they were halfway to planet Z on a route no one would possibly be near. “I mean getting attacked by Valkyrans couldn’t have possibly been your idea. Lucky Day, Lead Affront, please tell me you guys are at least dealing with their fighters?”

A whirring clicking noise was heard and a few buzzes, it sounded particularly angry to Fluttershy and it was likely Lucky making the noises. Then another series of chirps and warbles that sounded higher in pitch were heard, meaning that it was Ms. Affront who was less angry and more determined sounding. The DOKs were both working the turrets, Lucky had been in the middle of finishing some repairs on Absolute Resolve when the attack came and was immediately moving to man one of the turrets, as Lead had quickly instructed him that they were under attack in under millisecond it took for the Valkyrans to appear in their colorful grinning ships.

“Well that’s bad, they have disabler’s. At least Lucky Day is good at precision shooting, so far they haven’t been able to come close enough to hit us with one of those. Lead is doing a better job of keeping them off us, but the DOKs can’t deflect laser fire and our shields are going to eventually overload if too much stress is put on them.” Though they’ve taken a few hits Bonnie knew they could make an escape with minimal damage to the ship, she needed it in good condition to get through the atmosphere of Zurg’s planet when it came time to escape.

Fluttershy looked at the visuals on the monitors coming from their aft section and could see how each DOK worked their turret in a unique way. Lucky was making quick and well focused shots on any particular threat that got near them, he usually hit with dangerous efficiency. Lead would fire in bursts while only aiming in a general direction to suppress the fighters trying to jockey into position to hit them easily with rockets that would disable the Boojiboo entirely. Lead seemed to be aiming to get the other fighters to fly into the shots from Lucky’s turret.

The pony was learning what Valkyran culture was like in a very quick manner, they were not very nice to say the least. Their ships were painted in bright colors with evil grinning faces on the front. They always had at least four fighters coming at them at any given time and the carrier which was much bigger than their ship trying to keep on their tails, anytime a fighter was damaged a new one would come out to replace the one that returned to the ship. They had to run out eventually right? They couldn’t just keep sending them out of the carrier that looked to be the same general design of the smaller ships only larger in scale.

The first few minutes into the chase, Bonnie told Fluttershy that the Valkyrans were raiders and were a less friendly version of what she does. Bonnie rarely used anything remotely close to excessive violence to steal when subtlety was much easier; the Valkyrans had no subtlety except for their technological cloaking devices that allows them to sneak up on you. They still had to drop their cloaking fields to attack which gave Lead time to prevent them from getting caught off guard.

It was easy to see this situation rankled Bonnie somewhat to run into space raiders who were nowhere near the normal shipping routes they should have been watching for easy targets. She was flying evasive maneuvers at random and the DOKs were doing an excellent job at compensating for it. The ship was kept mostly on course for planet Z and the Valkyrans weren’t about to stop Bonnie from getting there now.

The Valkyran ships had problems hitting the cargo ship, in fact the longer it took to even get a single hit in the angrier they seemed to be getting with their flying. Of course they could not have known Bonnie was not only made for evading physically getting shot by projectiles, but her evasion abilities translated into her piloting skills and it was taking everything they had to even have shot it five times up to this point and the shields prevented any real damage from occurring.

“Um… Bonnie… what does this mean?” Fluttershy was looking at several things lighting up on the console in front of her.

“It means we’re being hailed and not just by laser fire and missiles, they are trying to call us. Could you try talking them into giving up already? This is getting very annoying.” The ship jukes left and right out of the way of laser fire and Bonnie grunted in the effort as her mind worked to keep up with everything that was going on. “Damn this ship has a fat ass, thankfully that ass is armor plated on top of having shields. I got to remember to thank dad for all the evasion skills he gave me.”

Fluttershy looked at the console and hit the glowing button with a hoof and an angry female face popped up on the screen.

“So you finally show your… what are you? You look like a cyclocentaurian, only smaller and less arms.” The anger quickly faded away and the figure just stared at Fluttershy in complete confusion. She was a tall, bulky with muscles feminine humanoid woman that had a thick long red braid hanging down her back. She was wearing what looked to be an advanced form of Viking armor and was holding a glowing mace in one hand.

“I’m a pony; could I ask you to please stop attacking us?” Fluttershy gave a hopeful smile that this could be resolved as peacefully as possible.

“No, you will cease your running cowards! Give us your ship and maybe we’ll even bother with sparing your lives… pony.” The woman waved her mace at the pony in a threatening manner on the screen. “We might just throw you out the airlock anyway after ripping off some of your limbs.”

“Well now, that doesn’t sound very nice.” At this moment Fluttershy thought that she might as well try to keep this Valkyran distracted.

“Of course it’s not, we’re Valkyrans! We will capture you, it’s only a matter of time before your gunners tire and your captain will be whining to us to spare the lives of their crew.” This woman didn’t seem to be able to feel any other emotion than haughty and victorious.

“Hi my name is Captain Sweet Cheeks. What’s your name? I hope we can become friends.” Of course Fluttershy knew it was unlikely to happen; if it did then that would have been a very pleasant and unexpected surprise. She was going to stick with her captain name just in case something bad happened if she used her real name. “Why, I think we’re having a pleasant conversation so far already.”

“Do you even live in the same reality as I the mighty Captain Herja of the Bloody Retaliation? We will destroy you!” The red headed lady known as Herja didn’t seem to have any sense of what was adorable; therefore she was not affected by Fluttershy smiling at her.

“But if you destroy us, doesn’t that mean you’ll get less in the end if you can’t catch us?” It didn’t sound challenging, but Fluttershy already knew she would take it the wrong way.

“You do not think Herja can catch you? We will show you by taking you alive for your impudence!” it sounded like Herja wasn’t the smartest Valkyran around.

“Didn’t you want to destroy us a second ago? Oh I know, you want to take use alive because you don’t like killing. Oh that’s so wonderful, so we can actually be friends!” At the moment Fluttershy thought she was a pretty good distraction for the other captain. “It’s so nice of you to not want to kill us, I’m sure we can all talk about our feelings over some tea and cookies.”

“Captain Herja has no need for friends, we are the mighty Valkyrans! We all hate tea and eat the flesh of beasts! You insult us with your mannerisms.” The more the other captain heard the angrier she kept getting and that just meant things were going well.

“I’m sure you’re entire race is strong and all, but I think you need a bit of anger management before we can really be friends. I think you also need to smile more, it’d make you look prettier.” Fluttershy would giggle at the glowing red with anger face, but she didn’t want to give up the act quite yet.

“I will only smile when I can drink freely of the blood spewing from your neck after I have pulled your head off!” Herja was definitely not a happy camper at the moment.

“Do you really think you should be antagonizing her like that Sweet Cheeks?” Another blast rocked the ship, it had only been struck a total of six times and the shields were still going strong. Bonnie and the DOKs were doing an impressive job of keeping the ship relatively intact and strong, the shields hadn’t even dropped below eighty percent yet and always kept reaching full again after every shot that had hit thus far.

“Why would you think I’m doing that? I think we’re making good progress, now she just wants to kill me and not the entire crew.” It was a sad universe they lived in when the nicest pony in the world was being sarcastic, but Fluttershy was going to keep on trying to be kind and friendly despite this person making a lot of promises of pain and suffering. “So Captain Herja, did your mother hit you a lot when you were younger? Was your father a nice man?”

“My father, the weakling that he was, died before I Herja was born! My mother is a great warrior, like all mothers of the Valkyran race!” Herja was still being overly hammy, but there was a slight crack in her voice and Fluttershy hadn’t missed it.

“So you have issues with your mother and you’ve never had a father figure in your life, so therefore you’re following a job your mother forced upon you. Your life must be really sad that you’re not your own person and you are overcompensating for it by being outrageously violent.” At this point Fluttershy could hear Bonnie snickering; she couldn’t even begin to understand why that was. “I’m guessing you’ll never have a child of your own because you don’t want to be like your mother, despite the fact that you already are by doing things like this. It’s time to stop being what others want you to be and be what you want to be.”

“I loathe you right now… because you’re right. I always wanted to be a bounty hunter, but mother said I had to be a raider instead.” After a moment she glared at Fluttershy through the screen and then gave a wicked grin. “It’s a good thing I love being a raider, it keeps me away from my mother and allows me to be as violent as I want to annoying ship captains like you!”

“I’m sensing a lot of hostility from you, so have you given up on taking my ship and crew? That’s rather nice of you.” Giving a cheery smile Fluttershy wanted to keep going, but she and Bonnie have place to be.

“Hostility is the most of what you will get from me and no I haven’t given up on you!” The other captain’s mace smashed into something and caused it to start sparking and smoking.

“Why thank you, I like you too and I haven’t given up on you either.” It took a moment, but Fluttershy could see that Herja took a while to figure out what she meant. After that Herja gained an exceedingly angry look and started spluttering nonsensical expletives.

“We’re approaching the system planet Z is in, looks like we’re going be dragging them along since they won’t leave us alone.” At this point the raiders should have given up by now or at least that’s what Bonnie thought they should do considering they’ve already lost fifteen fighters and the carrier only looked like it could carry twenty four as a full compliment. “Lucky, Lead, please tell me that you two at least have an idea.”

The sound of two robots sending negative sounding noises back made Bonnie frown. She looked to Fluttershy who was smiling to her about something. Roller was still sleeping in the back corner of the bridge and didn’t particularly seem like he was going to wake up anytime soon. Okay what was wrong with this situation?

“Okay, what is it that’s got you so happy?” Bonnie continued to outperform five ships at the same time even as she looked to Fluttershy without really paying attention to where they were going.

“Oh, just that the scanners picked up five ships coming at us.” Seeing the experiment rolling her eyes, Fluttershy smiled brightly. “Could I get a little help here guys? The ones chasing us aren’t very nice, but don’t hurt them too much.”

“Well of course there are five ships coming at us, they’ve been … oh… that’s who you were talking to.” Bonnie turned her head back to look forward and they were getting close to being a quarter of the way into the system Planet Z occupied. It was seconds later when four ships shot by at impressive speeds along with a large white ship firing heavily damaging blasts of energy into the carrier behind them.

“This is Rob Sixty Four; we are willing to comply with your request for assistance. It is nice to see that you are okay.” Despite his bland mechanical voice, Rob had somehow put a bit of emotion into it when he appeared on Fluttershy’s screen.

“Gee saved by us again space hippie, don’t make it a habit of us coming to your rescue.” Now Falco appeared on Fluttershy’s screen and he gave an insufferable smirk to meet Fluttershy’s genuine small smile.

“Can it Falco, concentrate on taking out the bogey’s on that cargo ship.” Fox Mccloud popped up and he looked serious. “We can take them down without killing them; that’ll be no problem for us. How’s the ship you’re on doing?”

“Oh it’s doing perfectly fine Mr. Mccloud, thank you for asking. The pilot is a bit tense, but I think she’s okay.” Closing her eyes and sitting back Fluttershy waited for the situation to resolve itself. “I need to talk after you’re done disabling their ships though; as this isn’t the only thing we need your help with. Lead, Lucky, the new ships are friends of mine, so please don’t shoot at them.”

-

“Ah I see you’ve arrived. It’s about time little Bonnie.” Zurg sat on his throne with his constant frowning mask looking at the image of Bonnie with a tied up Fluttershy behind her. Said tied up pony was struggling quite a bit to get out of the bindings, but it seemed rather futile.

“Yeah, no thanks to you… you just have to make everything so hard don’t you? So am I going to be let through or what? I got what you want; now give me a chance at what I want.” Bonnie did not just fly all the way across such a wide expanse of space while being chased by Valkyrans to just up and quit now.

“Hmmm… fine, let her through the planetary defense grid. All anti-air defenses are to be focused on the spot she’s coming through, nothing else but the ship she is on comes in or gets out.” Having finished giving orders to his rather pathetic minions, Zurg turned backed to Bonnie and stared at her on the monitor. “Once you have given her to me, I’ll give you some time to at least see your brother. I’m quite sure the reunion will be a deliciously short lived. Whether you can get out with him or not is on your own ability, I doubt you can surprise me as I have every eventuality planned for. Since I know Team Lightyear is still busy with bringing Torque in, I know that I’ll at least have some fun with my newest toy for quite a while.”

Bonnie didn’t say anything and flew down through the hole that had opened up in the roiling atmosphere. The skies on planet Z were always dark and or blood red in color with dark lightning arcing through the clouds, the planet was known for its factories and generally creepy air about it. She shivered as the ship passed through and started to make its way for the ground once she was giving the coordinates on where to land the ship, at the landing site she could see some huge robots that made her gulp slightly.

“Oh great he’s got hyper hornets waiting to escort me to his palace, those things are big, dangerous and just as dumb as the rest of them. The biggest difference is that they are better armored and can take a lot to put down.” After a moment Bonnie started dragging a sullen looking Fluttershy towards the ramp, she continued talking even though the pony couldn’t understand her without the translation device. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry. Even if you can’t understand me, I know you can understand my emotions clearly.”

Fluttershy tried to give Bonnie her best reassuring glance she could possibly make while her mouth was gagged and with all her limbs tied up. Roller sat by Lead and Lucky whining sadly, but Lead started petting him making him feel a bit better about all this. He almost understood what was happening, his basic understanding of the situation was that Fluttershy was going to be temporarily given to a predator that likes to play with its food and quite roughly at that.

The pony gave a few muffled squeaks of reassurance as Bonnie opened the ramp. She only had one side arm, two hastily cobbled together thermal grenades and a communication device in her other holster.

Lucky and Lead didn’t like the plan either, but they were about as ready as could be given Fluttershy was going to be in the most danger. After the ramp closed up a third figure floated out of the shadows, it stayed silent while both Lucky and Lead gave him the thumbs up gesture.

Absolute Resolve returned their gestures and Lucky placed the straps of the Rhizome suits dormant form of a backpack over Roller’s pipes. Hopefully Roller could get the suit to Fluttershy in time to be of use. He was small and fast enough to go unnoticed in comparison to the three DOKs larger profiles. Of course he wasn’t entirely bright, but hopefully he could find the pony on his own without getting sidetracked.

Things were about ready to start and the DOKs were doing this for Bonnie as much as they were Fluttershy, their lives mattered little in the grand scheme of things as they never wanted to live forever. Since they were repaired and were in a serviceable condition, they may as well help to the best of their abilities. They were now simply waiting for Bonnie’s signal to let Mr. Wheel loose on planet Z and then they’d begin their own distraction operations a few minutes afterwards.

Bonnie had to wonder if Zurg really did have a plan for every occasion as she was led towards the palace with two of the hornets carrying Fluttershy. There were very few things Zurg tended to miss when he planned, usually his plans were against other evil beings and he was quite a manipulative bastard. He could sometimes even manipulate the heroes accurately; at least Bonnie thought she knew his weakness from that.

It kind of came to Bonnie as to what Zurg was incapable of seeing, he had his minions, brains and a robot army. He had a lot of power and influence based around Galactic Alliance space in the criminal underworld, but there was something out of all that that Bonnie knew he couldn’t have possibly understood.

“I hope you’re right about this Fluttershy.” The experiment mumbled as she looked to the whimpering pony held by the two hornets. “I never quite understood what the rest of my family saw in it, I guess Clyde could see it given he always catches what I easily miss. Here’s hoping the power of friendship is not just a load of hooey.”

-

“Grub, have you identified the prisoner?” Zurg didn’t see a frown or a smirk on Bonnie’s face; it was completely flat and placid which gave him a distinct sense that she had something planned. Then again all evil doers at any level had a plan, just how good of a plan was it that she could be so calm?

“Yes you’re evilness; she is the one who was confirmed as sighted on Rhizome having led to our humiliating defeat Evil Emperor.” The grub was continually wringing his hands in utter fear of the emperor.

“You have ten minutes to go find your brother before I tell my hornets to attack you; now I’ll be just taking my new prisoner straight to the torture chamber if you don’t mind.” Zurg smirked as he watched Bonnie run off with a determined look on her face, once he was sure she was far enough away he turned to the grub. “Give the hornets the command to start hunting her down in four minutes, I’m feeling generous today.”

Author's Note:

Bonnie getting to see her brother, Fluttershy being tortured and a rescue team made of DOKs and a biological wheel monster.

What could possibly go horribly right?

Comments

[Acacia Sgt]

Oh man, that part talking with the talking...

You know, I had actually forgotten about the Star Fox team being around. Uh, yeah...

Hmm, looks like what I suspected way back is gonna be true. Honor the promise to the letter but exploit the loopholes, eeyup. But man, now I kinda dread reading the next chapter... which yes, I'm aware I could right now. But as quite noticed, for a while I've withold reading the newest chapter until it stops being the newest. Just because.