Chapter 1: To Talk To The Animals
One of the decidely-stranger benefits of becoming a world-saving heroine, which Fluttershy supposed some assumed she now was -- although she didn't feel that she was anypony really different, after that long strange dream-like ordeal in the Everfree -- was that she got to talk to a baby Dragon. This was not something she would have imagined possible -- nor something she would have imagined that she would have wanted -- just a short month ago. But it was something that she very much valued, now that it had become part of her life.
Fluttershy knew that she was a very strange Pegasus -- one who didn't measure up very well to the model of a Pegasus mare, very much unlike her best friend and frequent protector Rainbow Dash, who was in pretty much everything the model of a Pegasus of either sex. Pegasi were supposed to be brave, forthright, high-flying warriors; Fluttershy was cowadly and sneaky and much preferred the depths of the forest, safely concealed under the canopy of leafy cover to the terrifyingly-open blue expanses of the sky.
As for being a warrior, Fluttershy hated violence; something about even a hoof-fight nauseated her, even when she wasn't one of the combatants. Fights meant hatred, and Hate repulsed her: she much preferred being around Love.
Which sounded like a decent Equestian attitude, an appeciation of the Harmony -- if expressed somewhat pacifistically for a Pegasus. In the heroic sagas of the Time of Thrones that she and Rainbow Dash had loved to share when they had been fillies, a Pegasus warrior often appreciated the Harmony by declaiming a poem regarding the beauty of life, before flying off to war, bathing her wingblades in the blood of the foe, and falling in glorious battle. In these peaceful modern days, Pegasi were more apt to brawl or compete in dangerous aerobatic sports, but the same fundamental heroic principles applied.
Except that it was no such thing, in Fluttershy's case. She was frightened of violence because she did not want to get hurt; she was repulsed by hate and attracted by love because she could taste and feed on Love, and the reason she could do that had everything to do with the secret and shameful circumstances of her siring, and the shocking claims made to her by a creature that lived in the Wastes, far to the southwest, a female monster that called herself 'Chrysalis.' If what she said was true, Fluttershy wasn't even fully a Pegasus at all, but a scion of the black buzzing monsters that dwelt in a tunnel-riddled mesa, near a hill crowned by menhirs older than this whole Age of the World.
Which went a long way toward explaning why Fluttershy was such a failure as a Pegasus.
She knew she should change, and sometimes she felt that she should die; but she found change to be difficult, and she was too much of a coward to take her own life. And there was something buried deep in her that stubbornly wanted to live, and refused to change to meet the standards of others. Something that said "I am Fluttershy. And I am free."
So she was herself, and lived -- a strange misfit in life, but herself was all that she was, or really wanted to be.
In all her life, there was one thing of which she could be truly proud, and that was her Talent with animals.
She had first discovered this Talent when she was falling to her death from Flight Camp, when she was only ten years old. Which was an abnormal circumstance for a ten-year-old Pegasus to find herself in, let alone one in which she might discover her Talent and win her Cutie Mark. But then, Fluttershy was in many ways a very abnormal Pegasus.
The first odd thing about her situation was that she'd been falling in the first place. She hadn't actually been injured or unconscious or anything of the sort, just accidentally knocked off a cloud by Rainbow Dash and two rather mean colts Dash had challenged to a race -- ironically-enough, in defense of Fluttershy's own honor. The two colts had been making fun of Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash had noticed and intervened; Dashie had done things like that rather a lot during their early years together, because Fluttershy had been even shyer and weaker then than she was now, and Rainbow Dash had made it her own business to protect her.
Hurting Fluttershy, of course, was quite the opposite of what Rainbow Dash had meant to do; but it is unlikely that the eight-year-old Rainbow Dash had even suspected at that moment that Fluttershy was in any particular danger. Pegasi, after all, can fly -- and while Fluttershy was a weak flyer, she was no cripple. She could fly, and most of the time, she would have simply fluttered back onto the cloud on which she had been standing, or some other cloud nearby.
Most of the time.
One of Fluttershy's many weaknesses -- one of the reasons she was such a laughably-defective excuse for a Pegasus, as her Uncle Windvane used to frequently put it -- was that sometimes, when under too much emotional stress, she would panic, and her wings would lock up, freeze in place, often folded against her side. Or move in the wrong way, as if she were trying to buzz them like a bee or flutter them like a butterfly, instead of delivering either the broad firm motion a Pegasus employed to hover, or the stronger, faster power stroke used in forward flight. And, a lot of the time, when this would happen she would panic even more, and then her flight-field -- the thaumomagnetic levitation, shaped lifting body and defensive force field that a Pegasus projected through her wings and flight feathers -- would just shut down.
Which meant, when that happened, that she couldn't fly. Or even hover in place. She could only fall, like any lesser sort of being. And, when she hit the ground, she would have no flight field to cushion the impact.
She would, simply, die.
She was aware of this even at ten, which was why she had cried out as she plummeted. No, to be truthful to herself, she had shrieked and screamed and bawled like a small foal, fluttering her wings uselessly, upside down, too terrified to even right herself in midair, even though tumbling into a horizontal or vertical orientation was one of the first and simplest aerobatic techniques taught to every child. And she began the long fall of more than a mile straight down toward -- as she would later learn -- the northwestern Everfree Forest, southeastern White Tail Woods, Ponyville and Ghastly Gorge, the vagaries of the wind controlling her descent more than could the terrified Pegasus filly herself.
Many Ponies who did not understand Pegasi would have been shocked that none of the colts and fillies who had assembled to watch the race bothered to dive after her. But the truth was that they didn't realize that she was in any serious danger, any more than had Rainbow Dash or the two colts she was racing. The sky was the natural home of a Pegasus, and the very fact that Fluttershy was making noises and moving her wings told them that she was neither unconscious nor crippled; they wanted to watch the race, not break away to play with some silly filly who was just being a drama queen.
The camp counselors might have done something different. But they weren't on the scene, a dereliction of duty which was to have some serious personal consequences for some of them. And the children gathered there were just children, content to let adults take the initiative in all really-important decisions.
So it was that nopony noticed any need to intervene, and thus nopony intervened, and therefore the young Fluttershy fell through the thickening air toward her destruction. Though she couldn't actually see her fast-approaching doom, as she was falling upside down, and her attention was riveted on the mockingly-comforting clouds of Summer Flight Camp, rapidly-receding as the merciless force of gravity dashed her downward.
Her wings worked randomly, emitting nothing like a coherent flightfield. Her legs thrashed about, her hooves reaching for puchase on a nonexistent surface. Her screams were almost constant, with pauses only to draw breath to resume screaming.
She was making other sorts of distress calls as well, but she was not -- at the time -- aware of this.
She was more than half the way down when -- in her frantic flailing -- she became fully-aware of the existence of the ground, toward which she was falling and which therefore constituted the principal threat to her life. It was in a position where she could not see it without extending her neck toward it, which was at least marginally more terrifying than the general horror of her position.
This fear impelled her to action, and without even really thinking about it, she performed an inside inverted half-loop, rolling to put her hooves under her.
Immediately, Fluttershy's situation seemed slightly less terrifying. She was still falling at terminal velocity, yes, but now she was falling hooves downward, in something like a normal level-flight attitude. And though she was a poor flyer, she was still a flyer, with a flyer's fundamental instincts and experience.
So, Fluttershy began to recover her wits. She started trying to bring up her flightfield.
It still wasn't working. So she continued falling, and flailing and screaming as she fell.
But she was now sufficiently rational to notice something strange.
Her flightfield was now actually on. It simply didn't seem to be functioning as a lifting body or generating any levitation or thrust. Instead, it had assumed some strange four-lobed shape, and was emitting something in rhythm to her distress calls. And she could feel a return from something -- something emanating from on or near the ground, especially in the greener patches. A lot of somethings. They were alive -- and beautiful!
Their loveliness was almost overwhelming, to the point that Fluttershy almost forgot that she was still plummeting to her doom. She felt as if she was becoming part of something wonderful. It was too bad, though, that unless she managed to slow her descent, and soon, she wouldn't be enjoying this feeling for very much longer.
A moment later, she caught sight of the pastel-pink cloud below.
The first thing she noticed about it, of course, was its unusual color. As a Pegasus she was, of course, very familiar with clouds and their types and natures, and pink clouds were hardly unknown -- but usually at sunrise or sunset, and right now it was neither. As a falling Pegasus, any cloud beneath her was of interest to her as a potential platform against which she might slow or even stop her fall.
The second thing she noticed was that the cloud was moving -- specifically, it was rising on a course which seemed calculated to intercept her own fall. This was welcome information, and the obvious reason for it would be that one or more Pegasi, noticing her plight, were pushing the cloud over to try to catch her. Though it was a bit curious that she couldn't see any Pegasi down there. Were they pushing the cloud from underneath?
The important point, though, was this. She was saved!'
With the joy of that thought, her fear lifted, and then she noticed a third thing.
The pink cloud was alive.
Or rather, she realized with the strange new lifesense she seemed to be channeling through her malfunctioning flightfield, the cloud was cmposed of a myriad little lives, each of them a creature considerably smaller than any one of her hooves. As they approached, she could feel their many, tiny little minds -- each extremely simple, but all motivated, oddly enough, by the desire to help her.
As she and the cloud of what (she learned later) were pink cabbage butterflies (pieras rapae rosea, to use the Old Amareican scientific terminology) met, her formerly-frozen flightfield extended to link with the cloud, so that each butterfly bore a miniscule fraction of her weight. a burden that even its little wings could carry with relative ease. She slowed almost to a stop in midair, and then was borne slowly down on a living magic carpet of cabbage butterflies.
The butterflies lowered her gently down into a land of magic.
As she was to later discover, it wasn't literally a land of magic, save in the sense that all Equestria was such in general. It was the southeastern White Tail Woods, just southwest of Ponyville and across the Avalon from the Everfree Forest -- a bit farther into the woods than the parkland west of Ponyville. It was a fairly normal forest, which is to say that it was full of life, and all that life exploded into the view of the shiny new senses of the filly Fluttershy.
Young Pegasi in general, if they are raised in a cloud-city such as Cloudsdale, do not venture often to the ground. This is a cultural legacy left behind from more violent times, when safety lay in the clouds, patrolled by the forces of the city-state; on the ground awaited foes, monsters and slavers. The ground was a place of peril for young Pegasi.
Of course, those anarchic times ended many centuries ago. Few modern Pegasi feared the ground so much as to never let their children play down there.
One who did was Sweetwing Wind, Fluttershy's mother. She was both very fearful, and in her own eccentric way very traditional. And her Uncle Windvane despised Fluttershy too much to want to take her with his family on their terrestrial excursions.
Thus, unusually for even a Cloudsdale Pegasus, Fluttershy had never set her hooves on the ground before.
Now she was, standing in a beautiful forest glade, hooves planted firmly on the warm grass, her frogs feeling the soft earth beneath. surrounded by verdant woods on all sides. Even an ordinary Pegasus, unfamiliar with a forest, would have found the numerous novel sights, smells and sounds surrounding her to be extremely enchanting.
For Fluttershy, who had just discovered that she could deploy her flightfield -- still in that curious, four-lobed configuration -- to directly sense the life all around her, her new environment was utterly-overwhelming. She stood entranced, eyes wide open, ears aquiver, and mouth widening in full-flehmen as she attempted to drink in every last detail of her surroundings. And her wings were flared full out, and fluttering slowly in time with the pulsations of energy emitted by her strange, four-lobed flightfield.
The joy of the glade flowed through her, and she burst into full heartsong, serenading the forest and the life all around her in a spontaneous expression of her love for everything in this wonderful new world. She broadcast her love, and the forest returned it, filling her with energy and happiness.
She rose again, this time under her own power, working her wings to flit around the forest and look at all the new wonders around her. Now her flightfield was working well, though still not normally for a Pegasus: her feathery, avian wings were the wrong-shape to efficiently generate the four-lobed field necessary for her lifesense.
She strained a bit, wanting to change her wing posture in some impossible way, but she could not. So she accepted the shape that she was, without attempting something of which nopony was capable. She was not even sure why, momentarily, she had imagined her form malleable. She was after all a Pony, nothing less and nothing more.
But it was good enough for slow flight close to the ground; what was more, in this new configuration she was very agile, able to easily maneuver around the many obstacles of the woods. It was as if her flightfield had always been meant to function in this sort of environment, rather than the thin and windy world of the upper skies.
So she explored, happily singing, seeing all the creatures around her. She had seen birds before, but only the high flyers that made it up as far as Cloudsdale, not the many low-dwelling passerines that flitted between the trees. The other creatures she beheld that day -- rabbits, squirrels, and other small furred beasts -- she knew not the names of in Equestrian, but somehow she knew what they were when she saw them, and she serenaded them with their True Names, and they frisked about her fearlessly.
They were all drawn to her -- they followed her -- in a great swarm that acknowledged her their mistress, their Queen, and adored her. They seemed to desire some sort of leadership or direction from her, and she did not know any better than to simply bound and flit and fly about slowly enough to permit them to follow. As their numbers swelled, so did the Love they felt for her, and she eagerly drank it in, feeling happier and stronger than she ever had felt before.
This is my place! she thought in ecstasy. This is where I am meant to be, what I am meant to do, who I really am! She realized that in a way Uncle Windvane was right -- she was not a normal Pegasus; instead, she was something else, something which was meant not for the high skies and the upper airs, but rather for the forests and the creatures within them, though she had neither concept nor name for that kind of Pony. She only knew that she was herself -- and here, she felt free.
Suddenly, her reverie was shattered by a bright polychromatic flash of light, as if a rainbow had somehow exploded, from somewhere far above to the Northwest, from roughly the direction of Flight Camp. It was an immense wash of red light expanding from a brilliant yellow-white core, with tinges of blue and green in between, followed rather swiftly by an immense basso vibration. Raised a true Pegasus, despite her oddities, Fluttershy automatically timed the interval betwen flash and roar, as if she had been ranging a thunderstorm by the intervaal between lightning-bolt and thunder-clap. And she reached the correct conclusion: That came from the race!
She might reasonably have been worried regarding the fate of Rainbow Dash, but she was immediately distracted by the reactions of the animals around her to this tremendous explosion. The birds shot away, making for the trees; the various furry quadrupeds scampered for cover; some very strange green and brown furless creatures, which she learned later were frogs, dived for safety in the nearby lake.
She could feel their fear, and she realized something. They were far from mindless, but they were far less intelligent than herself. She could judge the intensity of the light and the loudness of the explosion, and conclude that it posed her no peril. But they could not -- all they knew was that it was big and scary and perhaps it would come after them and harm them.
They're scared, she thought to herself. Someone should comfort them. And then, with a shock, she thought: I should comfort them.
For the first time in her life, Fluttershy wasn't the one who was the most afraid. For the first time, she would be able to give, rather than need, comfort from fear.
For the first time in her life, Fluttershy could be useful.
She saw a group of long-eared furry creatures -- rabbits, she would later learn -- run past her hooves, making for the bushes. Resolve filled her heart. She softly stepped over to the bushes and peered under their lush foliage.
Small, terrified brown and black eyes stared apprehensively into her own.
Something clicked into place within her mind. It was a part of her that she had never known was there before, never used before, never even known was possible before. But it was there, and she used it. Flawlessly, the very first time.
"Shhh ..." she said to the furry creatures, sensing the shape of the fear in their minds, and automatically, effortlessly moderating her tone and expression and body language. I'm a friend. We're in no danger, she said in some strange way without speaking, picking up on their reactions as she did so, refining her responses via what she would later understand was a feedback loop. "It's okay." The danger has passed. It's safe to come out now, she communicated by a dozen subtle signs.
She knocked on a hollow tree, very precisely, in a pattern that seemed right, and several small, bushy-tailed furry things knew no fear of the huge equid who had intruded herself into their world, and instead of hiding even more deeply within their refuge poked their heads out to listen to her, as if she had been a dominant member of their own species. "You can come out," she told them. And they did as she suggested.
"Everything's okay," she said to the slimy green and brown long-legged hoppers in the water, speaking in some wise that was no longer even remotely Equestrian, Pony or mammalian; not even using her normal vocal organs at all. From this day on, she would have the power to communicate with all tetrapods and -- with greater difficulty -- with some even more alien life-forms. Frogs, she would later understand, were not cladistically all that far from mammals.
Then, fearlessly exercising her wings, for at this moment she was no longer Fluttershy the Coward, but rather Fluttershy, the Protector of the Animals, she took to the skies, and gathered the frightened birds around her. "There's nothing to be afraid of," she told them, and they understood and believed her.
They twittered, and to her happy surprise, Fluttershy realized that she could understand them as well. She had heard birdsong before, and loved it, and now she coul grasp its meanings. These meanings were not overly complex: birds were not Ponies. But it was there.
Safe, the birds said. Pony is friend. Pony is fun. Look at Pony. Follow Pony.
And so they did, and as Fluttershy descended to the ground, she found herself the center of attention, not only of birds but also of numerous kinds of beasts, none of which she then recognized. And all were speaking to her. All named her 'friend.'
For the very first time in her life, Fluttershy was popular.
This Fluttershy is a lot less happy than the one we see now. This is because this is Early Season One Fluttershy. This is the Fluttershy who is afraid to even speak her name to a stranger, who very obviously feels that she cannot even claim equality with other Ponies.
Yes, she's been on the Quest of the Elements. But that was just a couple of weeks ago. She has barely begun her climb to self-confidence.
Pieras rabae (the cabbage butterfly) is real. Pieras rabae rosea, the pink cabbage butterfly, is as far as I know purely fictional.
Fluttershy doesn't think of the obvious analogy between her problems and Scootaloo's because she doesn't yet know Scootaloo, save as "that orange and purple Pegasus filly who hangs out with Sweetie Belle." She does know Sweetie, as the little sister of her own good friend Rarity.
Oh, and this being the Shadow Wars Story Verse, she's half-Changeling. And doesn't even really understand yet what Changelings are. All she knows is that she's partly some kind of monster.
Of course, Fluttershy's wing-locking problem is in part because she is sometimes calling upon Changeling or Old Flutterpony, rather than Pegasus, flight reflexes. This shouldn't be possible, because she has been in Pegasus form from birth on and her nerve net has grown to serve that form. But it's made worse by the fact that she's unknowingly sometimes tuning in to Changeling telepathic transmissions, and when that happens she sometimes subconsciously attempts to micro-Shift -- in midair, and without having the slightest idea what she's doing.
The day will come when the ability to Micro-Shift between three different flight systems, in midair, will make her a very deadly combatant. But this will come long after she attains adulthood. Right now, all it does is messes her up, badly.
I've had water survival training, and the nice thing about being in water is that humans are buoyant. In calm water it's very hard to drown if you even remotely keep your head. I imagine that Pegasus children get "flight survival training," with the added bonus that Pegasi can breathe the air just fine at most altitudes to which they can fly.
There of course is a "concept" and "name" for that Kind of Pony.
Fluttershy just hasn't yet learned the truth.
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A story that focuses on Spike's relationship with someone other than Twilight or Rarity? Sign me up for that!
Not that I dislike Twilight or Rarity, far from it. It's just nice to see some variety. Spike has four other friends. What do they mean to him? What does he mean to them? Let's find out.
Well, this should be interesting. Seeing what Fluttershy was up to beyond the bunny census, and how Spike gets involved, should make for a very engaging read, especially with this added biographical depth.
And yeah, Fluttershy's cutie mark realization was definitely one of the most beautiful and surreal moments of her life, regardless of the continuity where it took place. Excellent explanation for the butterfly cloud and portayal of her Flutterpony atavism.
A friendship between Fluttershy and Spike is something seriously unexplored in the show, which is a real shame, because that would have been great to see. I'm glad to see that you're giving some attention to it.
8242496 Hopefully more than just four more -- remember Moondancer, and the Crusaders. But still!
8243142
Point taken. There are a lot of stories where Spike is closer to the CMC, but so few good ones. I'd like to read a few.
I love your characterization of Fluttershy in this story.
And, I'm very curious to see where the story leads with Spike.
8243901
Filly Fluttershy is of course very innocent: she's only 10 in the flashback. Though Season 1 Fluttershy explicitly said that she used to be more "shy," Season 1 Fluttershy (a young mare of 20) is actually more fearful in some ways than she was at age 10, as she's by age 20 had some unpleasant life experiences.
Of course, Fluttershy's victories over real threats such as Nightmare Moon and Discord, and her increasing acceptance by her friends (especially Rainbow Dash and Rarity) lead to her slowly gaining confidence, to a degree she does not wholly grasp until fairly later. Fluttershy still imagines herself timid when she's routinely doing things that would terrify most Ponies, not the least of which, ultimately, is taming Discord.
8242496
Yes ... I've always realized that while the two most important Ponies in Spike's life are Twilight Sparkle and Rarity Belle, he's quite a gregarious Dragon and makes many other friends. Of these others, the four best would be the the four other members of the Mane Six.
There are ample signs of this in canon. It's obvious that the early bond Fluttershy forms with in Friendship Is Magic is strengthened by later experiences: there are a couple of episodes where Fluttershy is either physically-affectionate to Spike or clings to him as a source of emotional strength (in the case of my Fluttershy, quite literally). Pinkie Pie sometims plays with Spike, as they were doing with the little wedding-cake figures in A Canterlot Wedding; Spike is both often still childlike and highly intelligent, points of similiarity he has with her. Applejack likes and respects him, and Rainbow Dash clearly considers him cool.
Other Ponies Spike canonically befriends are the Cutie Mark Crusaders (I would guess especially Sweetie Belle, as he's around her a lot), and Big Mac (with whom he watches games with and roleplays),. There's also the old Canterlot set, including Moon Dancer, Lemon Hearts, Minuette, Twinkleshine and Lyra -- he was once accepted among them, and he's sitting with Moon Dancer watching Twilight's presentation at the start of The Cutie Re-Mark.
He was also presumably close to the other Ponies of his adoptive family -- Twilight Velvet, Night Light and Shining Armor. And, of course, he had a special relationship with Celestia, and in the IDW Comics becomes quite friendly with Luna as well.
Generally speaking, Spike is very charismatic. He's intelligent, gentlemanly and honorable, and makes a very good impression on Ponies. Writers who try to depict him as a lonely misfit miss the point -- he often feels a bit lost as a Dragon who lives in a Pony culture and has only a limited concept of how Dragon culture works, but he is very much accepted by that Pony culture -- and not just by Twilight Sparkle and Rarity.
8242723
Fluttershy and Spike are canonically friends, and were since Friendship Is Magic. If it weren't for the obvious point that Fluttershy loves Discord and Spike loves Rarity, I wouldn't even consider romance between them all that improbable -- though he and Pinkie are probably closer "types," as Spike is something of a party archosaur, when he's off-work.
8242715
Even more so than is normal for a Cutie Mark discovery, Fluttershy's Mark-Finding set the model for the whole rest of her life. Fluttershy can not only talk to animals, she finds them utterly fascinating and is unhappy living anywhere but in an environment where she can be around a wide variety of animals.
In the SWSV, she instinctively forms them into a combination Hive and Love-Source, and learns with them how to safely harvest Love from others without harming them, which is something a Changeling Royal would normally have to be explicitly taught. Being Fluttershy, of course, she finds the thought of even inadvertently harming anyone who feels Love for her horrifying -- she is in many respects the Anti-Chrysalis, just as Chrysalis is the Anti-Rosedust.
In the actual Show from an external-cause POV, I think that Fluttershy is half-inspired by G1 Posey and half by the G1 Flutterponies. The Flutterponies were canonically creatures who lived among Nature, and (though the show didn't say that they were) may well have been some sort of guardians of the ecosystem.
I see them as one of the Five Kinds (Earth Ponies, Unicorns, Pegasi, Sea Ponies and Flutter Ponies) originally created by the Eldren from the Primal Ponies, and having been created as eco-warriors, able in peacetime to maintain the environment, and in time of crisis to fight using the Utter Flutter. The Flutter Ponies were later twisted into the Changelings, but there are Flutter Pony atavistic traits in the other Kinds, which sometimes manifest (Tree Hugger is an example of an Earth Pony with such atavistic traits), and Sweetwing Wind (Fluttershy's mother in the SWSV) had such in her.
The combination of Sweetwing's and Chrysalis' genes produced a restoration of Flutter Pony capabilities in Fluttershy -- but she first has to learn how to Shift into her Flutter Pony form in order to use them at their full potential. She presumably won't learn this during the course of the Show, though she does learn to micro-Shift by the end of Season 3 (due to her third encounter with Chrysalis, in the IDW Return of Chrysalis arc) -- this goes a long way toward explaining how and why Fluttershy starts to become increasingly capable of physical heroism, and also why she's vulnerable to shapeshifting in "Bats!" (Twilight inadvertently geased her to Shift into a more batlike form).
After the events of Windvane's Rebellion in YOH 1512 (twelve years after the Return of Luna), Alicorn Fluttershy has full control over her Shifting powers, and is capable of initiating an Utter Flutter by herself. Though hers is still not as strong of that of a whole Flutter-Pony Swarm.
Is this an AU?
8245010
In which respect? The main one I think that applies to this story is that Fluttershy's mother is Sweetwing (implying, though I don't go into it, that the other family shown for her is adoptive, I have them be her cousins). I of course had her mother be Sweetwing Wind in stories written years before "Flutter Brutter."
8245038
Flutter Brutter is garbage and if you let me, I'll rant about it for ten minutes.
8245136
I was annoyed that they gave Fluttershy a much more mundane familial background than I gave her, and one which didn't answer some important questions about her, such as "What is her means of support when we first meet her?"
While later on Fluttershy is essentially a major security asset to the Realm, and as such might plausibly be getting a Royal subsidy, when we first meet her Fluttershy owns a good-sized, comfortable well-furnished home and does not seem to be doing any work other than tending to wild and semi-wild animals. She not only is not short of food and other supplies, but has enough to help support her animal friends (though they also hunt and gather on their own), including a BIG MALE BROWN BEAR.
She is clearly not poor.
Fluttershy also, from the beginning, speaks with considerable gentility. She has upper-class manners, and she's not the sort of Pony who would learn them to impress others.
Plus, she very much does NOT exemplify traditional Pegasus ideals. A lot of Pegasi would be ashamed to count her kin -- at least, before she becomes a national heroine with a history of doing badass deeds.
I put this all together and got "remittance mare." Her closest kin pay her a stipend to stay away from them and not mention the connection. And thus, Fluttershy Is Free (link on title). She's the bastard child of the highest-born possible Pegasus mare, who both by birth and by behavior embarrasses her kin.
Who are Zephyr Breeze and his family, then? They're her cousins; specifically, the set of cousins among whom she was happiest after her mother Sweetwing was committed and she was bounced from cousins to cousins. They're the ones who are the closest she's ever had to a "normal" family, and -- annoying as is Zephyr Breeze, he's a sweetie compared to her evil uncle Windvane (future leader of the New Pegasus Mandate rebellion) and her equally-evil cousin Ill Wind (the future Dr. Atmosfear, Windvane's minion and inventor of the Pegasus Device).
So, what annoyed you about "Flutter Brutter."
This story looks cute so far