Iron Mountain

by computerneek

Flutterboom (Edited)

I watch as Fluttershy prances through the meadows. While the medical nanites left in her body have mostly spent themselves in the final repairs after she hopped out of the seat, they were not the only nanites inserted. After all, those crash couches are inside a troop compartment. They’re designed to hold ground troops, for deployment in infiltration operations or for independent combat assignment when the Bolo must head elsewhere. Thus, a simple heal & clean is the smallest of what they do. A set of specialized medical nanites, inserted before even the first wave of regular healers, resides on the surface of her skeleton and underneath her skin, spread throughout her body. These ‘combat medics’, in the event of an injury, will perform stopgap repairs, preventing their own burnout for the event of another injury before she can return for treatment.

There is a second set of nanites, gathered in her skeletal and muscular system, that holds no medical function whatsoever. These nanites, inserted only after all the medical nanites had entered, are normally referred to as the ‘strongarm machines’. Their job is normally to augment a soldier’s physical strength or endurance at times of need. Concordiat Marines could usually double their deadlift with these nanites, along with a runspeed increase of about thirty percent. A rather welcome side effect is that these same soldiers- now, presumably, Fluttershy as well- could withstand over six times the impact force before sustaining injury.

---

Well out in the meadows, where nopony can see her, Fluttershy launches herself into the air, reveling in the excitement. She stays low, mindful of potential watching ponies, and whips through the air with glee. Eventually, after a quick scan around for possible watchers, she rockets into the sky. After all, why can’t she impersonate her friend for her own eyes only? She rises high above the clouds, until she can see Ponyville as if it were on a map, and turns back down, allowing herself to drop. She keeps a careful watch on the atmosphere and meadow in front of her, ready to pull up as soon as she sees somepony that might witness her playtime.

In the meantime, though, it just feels so good. The wind in her mane and tail, whistling through her feathers… The energy with which her wings stroke as she pours on the speed. She spends a few seconds of her descent wondering why she doesn’t do this more often. Probably because-

---

Pinkie Pie, having heard the spreading rumors of a laughing, galloping Fluttershy, reaches Fluttershy’s home. She’d had to deny the rumors that it was one of her own parties, though she really wishes she could come up with a party that would leave her shy friend in such good spirits. Unfortunately, it seems Fluttershy isn’t at home. Pinkie spends some time asking the animals, but none of them seem to know. She zips back off to town to ask about.

Bon Bon tells Pinkie that she never saw Fluttershy from her store; Lyra Heartstrings, however, informs her that she’d seen her running past the east side of town. Pinkie continues to investigate through town, eventually correlating enough stories to suggest that Fluttershy had started somewhere near the Everfree- in particular, the demolished part. She whizzes eagerly off to explore the area, to locate whatever had her friend in such a good mood. After finding nothing in the grass or on the hill, she leaps over to the blast zone to investigate.

---

Twilight Sparkle sighs exasperatedly to the unicorn that had just reported their last few hours’ efforts. Those efforts had been utterly fruitless- aside from, she supposes, the discovery that the metal thing is at least three inches wider than they had known it has to be earlier. The rest of the efforts had been simply continued attempts to levitate, force, or cut the hatches and the smaller weapon.

Her patience with these incompetents is waning. She’s trying to be as friendly as she can, but they have yet to come up with an original idea of their own. She had been the first to try levitating, she had ordered the cutter. She had been the first to try forcing the panels. She had also been the only one so far to vent frustration on the surrounding terrain, but they already knew not to hold THAT against her. They had only actually cleared terrain, aside from accidentals, when she had ordered it.

Her power is building up in her horn again, begging to be unleashed on the poor unicorn this time. At the last second, she redirects it, slamming the brunt of the spell against the smaller weapon- which doesn’t even twitch as her power folds around it and clears more terrain behind it, revealing a few more square meters of shiny metal.

“Alright everypony,” she calls out to the team. “If we can’t move or penetrate it as-is, the least we can do is clear it off and identify it. Try the torch on anything new we find, but only once. Otherwise, let it be while we expose more of what this thing is.”

Right then, while the crew is acknowledging her orders, Pinkie Pie comes in out of nowhere. She whips along the top of the upper of the two massive weapons, inside it, and back out, to repeat on the lower, all while yapping something about Fluttershy being in a good mood at Twilight. Personally, Twilight doesn’t think someone being in a good mood warrants an investigation- but when she hears Pinkie’s accelerated vocalizations over exactly how good a mood it had been, she agrees. Yes, it warrants investigation- but only so that it can be repeated. Hopefully.

She blinks as Pinkie Pie manages to open one of the smaller hatches quite casually with a hoof, throwing it back shut again after a quick glance at the pointy tip of something underneath. Before Twilight- nor any of the crew- are able to react, however, Pinkie has already vacated the exposed regions of the metal, leaving an oddly Pinkie-shaped hole in the terrain, from which the babbling can still be heard. Shortly, there’s an excited scream and, while Pinkie explodes from the terrain several meters above where she went in, the unicorns- including Twilight- charge up to start blowing terrain away, to find what Pinkie discovered. Unnoticed by the crew, the one small weapon they’d uncovered swivels swiftly to point directly into Pinkie’s entry hole.

---

This pink pony, one Pinkie Pie, is quite interesting. While the atmosphere is responding as if she were travelling only twenty meters per second at the fastest, point-to-point analysis suggests a minimum of Mach 7- and she’s only an Earth pony. I find myself praying that she is unique. Given her present one track mind, I allow her to lift one of my Light VLS hatches, revealing the half-ton warhead underneath; I only had one quarter-ton before, and haven’t gotten around to resupplying ammunition. Everypony else’s responses to her antics seems to suggest that even they consider her to be outrageously weird; thus, I am honestly not surprised when she flashes into and through dirt and stone as if it were air. She deals no damage when she comes up hard against one of my secondary Hellbore turrets and, after she makes numerous laps around it, she lets out an excited scream and leaves a pony-shaped hole in the dirt on her way out.

I consider alternatives. While the weapon she just discovered is both inoperable and far too powerful for use with anypony unprotected on my hull, it would be nice to have the extra hull space freed; I’m still rather severely limited by power production. The investigation team has started charging their horns for terrain-clearing spells, judging by pattern analysis; however, given the time taken by previous attempts and the amount of terrain to be cleared this time, I estimate they will take almost 2.3 hours to clear the turret, assuming they take no breaks. However, a small amount of overpressure inside the tunnel Pinkie created could vent the terrain out into the woods for very little energy expense, comparatively. I aim the exposed tertiary Hellbore into her entrance, estimating the blast… And set it for full power. As I ready for the blast, timing it against the unicorn’s spells so they break up the fragments that might harm somepony, I cast a regular battlescreen over the party, including Pinkie Pie.

As a side note, I didn’t know Pegasi could travel at supersonic speeds, even when nanite-augmented. While unexpected, this development does not hamper my processing speed nor targeting accuracy. The sound of the sonic boom, however, reaches the opening 0.195 seconds before my planned firing point, and the team does not react as I did. Rather, they seem startled by it, and begin to release their spells early. I rush my shot by 82.94 milliseconds to compensate- and when the magic strikes with its own boom hardly 0.172 seconds after I liberate my 10-cm turret of some ammunition, the result is even better than I expected: All of the terrain fragments that might have threatened anypony or anything other than the forest are reduced to gravel, most of which bounces harmlessly off of my screens. Yes, I also had my main screens on for that- when wouldn’t I, when shooting at myself?

I do, however, find the light pink ring expanding from the point that Fluttershy went supersonic to be amusing. The sound of the sonic boom should have reached town almost 0.193 seconds ago; thus, right about now, I might start seeing some reactions to it. Pinkie, Twilight, and the crew are merely screaming at the moment.

---

Ba-BOOOM-boom!

Rainbow Dash instantly recognizes the first boom to be the same sound as her own Sonic Rainboom and, from where she had been trotting out from Twilight’s castle, launches into the sky before she even hears the third. “Somepony want a Rainboom Battle?” she asks the atmosphere, flipping end-for-end to produce her own Rainboom on the way back down, in front of the castle, before she uses the extra speed to whip out across Ponyville and locate this other Boomer.

Pink. The other Rainboomer’s blast ring is pink. Rainbow turns to follow the trail, determined to find out who is challenging her. Her challenger seems to be zipping around in the fields and meadows outside of town.

There’s one problem, Rainbow finds, with Rainboom speeds. While she is slightly faster than her opponent, that advantage is negated by the fact that they can both turn on a dime. If her opponent makes a sharp corner, Rainbow won’t see it in time to respond without losing her hard-earned advantage.

Eventually, there are so many Rainboom- and pinkboom- trails in the meadow that, after a particularly devious twist, Rainbow’s having trouble even finding her adversary once again. In the spirit of competition, she declines to release her Rainboom boost, and rockets into the sky, where she makes a one-eighty high enough up that she can see the entire meadow- and hopefully, find her target once again. She does find that the pinkboom trail is fading, suggesting it had been released, though a trail is visible, streaking towards the blasted part of the Everfree before it tapers off. Rainbow engages in pursuit, but can’t seem to find her opponent. After searching the area of release at Rainboom velocities, she detours towards the blast zone to find out if Twilight knows who. Speaking of the blast zone, she does notice it’s a lot larger than it was yesterday.

Meanwhile, Fluttershy had landed and galloped back to her house, to tend to her animals.

---

Rarity had been close enough to see the Flutterboom. She ignores the other two blasts, and smiles whenever Rainbow joins- before she drops her jaw at the art taking shape above her. She whips out some parchment, casting a spell for recording images. Not nearly as fast, nor pretty, as a camera, but she doesn’t have a camera.

Before the pink trails begin to fade, she’s already recorded three images. Aside from being gorgeous in and of themselves, these images would be great sources of future ideas.

---

Twilight’s scream lasts until the second Rainboom registers- and the Flutterboom spreads into their field of view. Her scream stops, alongside the entire investigation party- while Pinkie’s only redoubles for a second, before the mare in question zips off into the distance.

After a few minutes of recovery, and watching the two Rainboom shockwaves interfere with each other in the sky, Twilight looks at the newly revealed weapon for a few seconds. She has to fly up to peek down the pony-sized pipe, but confirms it to be a third size of the things, despite not being quite so shiny, inside or out. Shortly thereafter, with an appreciation for the length of the pipe on this one, they begin plowing into the terrain around the big pipes once again.

This is going to take a while, Twilight muses. If she can at least find out exactly how big the big one is, she can start estimating the size of the entire device.

---

I elect not to help them clear the main battery turret. While it would be nice to have free, both as a weapon and as solar production, such efforts would, unfortunately, vent the debris towards town. I don’t particularly wish to destroy the town I’ve only just launched my avatar towards- or that my Commander calls home.

---

Pinkie Pie rushes out into the fields below the racing Boomers and, not knowing she regularly exceeds Rainboom velocity, is left behind quite quickly. The booms are fading from the sky when she turns away- and she zips off to Applejack’s farm.

Turns out Applejack never saw anything. She’d been in the orchard at the time, and missed even the colorful shockwaves.

Author's Note:

Edited 3/17/19.

Comments

[p61blkwidow]

yes fluttershy a commander of a bolo is so sweet!this story is so good,congrats to you! this is going to be a pure pleasure to read! well done to you!

[Redlord321]

Can we stop dissing humanty

[Uncle Mike]

Liked and tracking. As I told NFire, us tankers are always up for a good Bolo story...

[computerneek]

8642986
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, and Thank you!
8643033
How am I dissing humanity...?
8643272
I appreciate the sentiment, thank you!

[Redlord321]

The suprourty of the ponies to human

[computerneek]

8643582
*Superiority
And when it comes down to it, this superiority is really just in resilience, right?
That's actually canon for MLP. Humans couldn't survive most of the things ponies simply walk away from in the film. (Rainbow's crashes in various episodes, an anvil, piano, and cart landing on Twilight's head from at least thirty feet up in Feeling Pinkie Keen, among others)
Anything else, specify or it didn't happen!

[ssokolow]

Given her present one track mind, I allow her to lift one of my Light VLS hatches, revealing the half-ton warhead underneath

The Bolo intentionally set up a Roger Rabbit moment? Nice.

Meanwhile, Fluttershy had landed and galloped back to her house, to tend to her animals.

*snicker* I get the feeling that this delightful humour you've been putting together may become a recurring theme... I wholeheartedly approve.