RIP: Redshirt In Peace
Oh, how everything had gone just right!
After the triumphal battle for Canterlot, Roseluck had been inspired to go and travel the galaxy under the flag of the United Federation of Planets. Almost immediately after Equestria allied itself with the Federation, Roseluck had giddily signed up for Starfleet Academy.
She was, apparently, an excellent student and her grades were at the head of her class. While her standard phaser training could have gone better, she could at least hit the broad side of a barn with a banana. She focused her studies on xenobotany and the other related scientist, excited at the thought of studying, and perhaps growing, extraterrestrial flora!
That would be her, standing proud on the deck of a Constitution-Class starship, blue uniform on her chest and a scanner around her neck, finding new life, new civilizations...
And now, the moment had come. She was about to graduate, take the oath, and have the Starfleet Insignia placed on her uniform. The officer on stage had just given his final salute to the last cadet before her in line and waved him off the stage. Rose was practically shaking in her boots with sheer excitement.
"Cadet Roseluck!" the officer finally called.
With an excessively wide grin, Rose practically pranced onto stage, caught between bursting out into thrilled laughter and nervous vomiting. The officer lowered down onto his knees and took Roseluck's hoof shake squinty-eye-to-much-more-normally-sized-eye. He took up a Starfleet manual, asking her to place her hoof on the book and repeat the Mission Statement of Starfleet right after him.
After a few "to boldly go"s later, the officer took a small, hardwood box and opened it, revealing the triangle-shaped badge that all fully-fledged Starfleet ensigns wore. He took the pin and placed it right on its place on her proud, but still grey, uniform, saluting her as he stood back up.
She returned with a smart salute of her own. Next was the part where the officer would assign her role in Starfleet as well as her assignment abroad, whether aboard starbase or starship (but more likely the later, at least Rose hoped so).
'Please say science division, please say science division, please say science division...' Roseluck chanted internally, keeping her head high for what she could only hope was an informed placement by Starfleet Command.
Now was the moment. The officer turned to her again after a short address to the ceremony's audience, smiling proudly, "Now, Roseluck of the planet Equus, I hereby declare you a fully fledged member of the Starfleet Redshirt Corps!"
The audience applauded loudly as Roseluck's pupils shrunk to pinpricks.
'Wait... No, this can't be right.... Wait, no, please Sweet Celestia on a Unicycle no.... Nononononononononononono!'
"Thank you, Ensign Roseluck, for your service to Starfleet, you are dismissed!" the officer gestured towards the exit side of the stage.
Dumbfounded and horrified, Roseluck plodded her way of the stage, trotting down the stairs with a distraught look on her face.
She had seen some things. When the Enterprise had first visited Canterlot, the Redshirt Corps had been the first into the fight against the Changelings. Roseluck had seen how quickly they had all died. Roseluck had seen just how quickly Shining Armour had died. Those shirts of red were hexed, she reckoned, hexed!
As she walked out of the ceremony hall and plopped herself down on the edge of a decorative fountain, she could already see her own future. Lying in the bottom of some cold, forgotten crevasse, killed off by some cruel, unforgiving android. Gobbled up by a gigantic alien rose. Vaporized, dying dramatically, screaming as a Klingon hit her square in the chest (or maybe even just a glancing blow) with a disruptor.
"THE HORROR! THE HORROR!" she screamed out to the heavens, swooning and throwing her head back.
"Is that you, Rose?" a nasally voice called from somewhere far, far away.
Roseluck removed her foreleg from across her eyes, glancing around the mostly empty courtyard. Her eyes landed on two ponies, who were making their way towards her. Daisy and Lily Valley, the other two ponies in her old career as a florist... oh how much she would give to be anything but a Redshirt right about now...
"I'm really sorry we couldn't make it to the ceremony, Rose!" Daisy said as they approached, "We were having soooo much trouble with this "Jim Kirk" and his, like, twelfth order for a bouquet of flowers... probably to seduce yet another extraterrestrial female. Seriously, what is up with that guy?"
"Eh, at least his orders are always quick and cheap," Lily finished with a shrug.
"Sooo... did'ya get your job as a super-duper alien plant scientist or what?" Daisy pushed up, her nose pressing against the cool metal of the Starfleet insignia.
Roseluck shook her head sadly, "No... of all the things that could possibly happen to me... this is the. Worst. Possible. Thing."
The other flower fillies gasped loudly.
"This is a disaster!" Daisy screamed.
Lily almost fainted, "The horror... the horror..."
The flower trio gathered around each other, gasping and quivering, even though Rose hadn't even informed them of her predicament. A small sparkle of hope entered her heart as she enjoyed panicking along with her best friends.
'Good to know that I'll always have friends to come back and freak out with...'
Rose bit her lip as she spared a short glance in the direction of the deck's alarm light. She took a deep breath as she assured herself once again, there was no red alert... yet. But there would be eventually. And that would be the day she would wave the world goodbye... because she had seen how it worked. She had met the captain just a little while ago and actually held a small, yet trivial conversation with him... which meant it was only a matter of time until she was horribly murdered.
She looked down on herself, at the red monstrosity clothing her chest and most of barrel. It was like she had a death warrant stapled to herself. And the phaser strapped to her belt wouldn't help the manner, why with the inherent misfortune now imbued within her, odds were it would just blow up in her face the first time she pulled the trigger. It didn't help that she had to hold the strange little thing in her mouth.
When she was at the stardock with a platoon of fresh corpses right alongside her, she thought she recognized the starship she was being assigned to. And lo and behold: it was the Enterprise. While her life expectancy was already fairly low as a Redshirt, Rose believed it dropped another few points when she signed on under Captain Kirk and his unintelligent first officer (pointy ears should be on the top of your head!).
Now, she was stuck with her fellow red-shirted Ensigns playing Uno until fate decided to rear its ugly head and gobble her whole.
"Uno." she mumbled as she threw her second-to-last card on the pile.
"Well, I know you don't have any yellow, so draw some cards there horsey." the Redshirt named Bob to her left chortled, throwing a yellow reverse card down on the pile.
She threw her final card onto the pile, a blue reverse card, glumly, winning the game, her impending doom still breathing over her shoulder. The other security officers groaned as they dropped their cards.
"Hey, buddy, why so blue?" the Redshirt to her right, Mark, asked, shuffling the deck back in for another round.
Roseluck looked at him wordlessly, her face a canvas of despair, and she glanced over at the red alert lights once again. "Wouldn't you be sad if you were about to die?" she mumbled.
"Die? Who's dying here?" the Redshirt opposite her, Wade, asked before shoving another long stick of constituted food in his mouth.
Rose just glared at him, before sighing and looking back to the alert light.
*BRAAAHP! BRAAAHP!*
"Figures." Roseluck groaned as the lights began to flash all around the ship.
The other Redshirts snapped to attention, seemingly unaware of what was about to happen to them. Like a lamb to the slaughter they ran out of the mess hall and out into the hallways.
Roseluck teared up as she looked up at the red alert lights, lip quivering ever so slightly. 'Daisy, Lily Valley, and all my other friends in Ponyville... I'll miss you all.' she wiped a few of her tears from her eyes and started for the doorway.
Well, it could be worse, she could have been called up for an Away Mission.
Rose paused in place, biting her lip and looking around in fear of the jinx. Half a minute passed by with no incident, and Rose took a deep breath of relief, making her way out the door to man her station...
"Ensign Roseluck, Ensign Leroy, Ensign Ricky, and Ensign Jury, please report to the transporter room for an away mission." the intercom read her sentence.
Roseluck's screams echoed through the halls. But in space, nopony can hear you scream.
As an earth pony, and not a unicorn with knowledge of teleportation spells, Roseluck would never get used to having her constituent atoms disintegrated and reformed in the process of transport.
With a whine and a sparkle, the shortest member of the away team appeared on the surface of some Celestia-forsaken-planet-that-she-had-already-forgotten-the-name-of. She gazed around the environment, noting that many of the rocks looked like they were made out of plastic... eh, so did many of the things in the Federation. Better than crayon-colored assets any day.
For some reason, it seemed that the entirety of the Enterprise's ranking officers were down on the planet, doing random scans and observations of flora and soil. What they're objective was? Roseluck hadn't bothered remembering. It wasn't like she was going to survive to complete it, anyway.
"Captain, there is a strange thing over there!" Side-eared Spock gestured towards a small cave in the side of the mountain suddenly.
Captain Kirk nodded, "Let's go... check out that strange... thing... over... there! Roseluck... take point!"
Rose gulped, this was it then. Roseluck: 2010-2019. Rest in Pieces. She could only hope her death was quick as she took her phaser in her mouth and took the front of the line.
After a small climb up the side of the rocky hill, she arrived at the mouth of the dark, dark cave. The rest of the landing party arrived right behind her, Spock the Stupid coming up right next to her and gazing down into the dark, dark cave.
"Captain, my scans verify that this is a strange thing," Spock said, pointing down into the pit of despair.
"Yes... Spock... I agree... this is a... strange thing." the Captain repeated.
Suddenly, everyone's gaze turned onto Rose. Expectant, ready. Like the audience at a bloody gladiatorial match. Ready to see her head fly.
Rose closed her eyes, tip-hoofing her way into the cavern, when, all of a sudden, a booming voice came from behind her.
"LEEEROOY JENKINS!" it said, just as Ensign Leroy charged past Rose into the cavern, waving around his phaser with gay abandon.
Rose winced as she heard the sounds of a blade slicing through a red, red shirt somewhere down in the dark, dark cave.
Her eyes began to water and she sniffled slightly. 'That other Redshirt... he sacrificed himself just so that I could live a little bit longer.' she sobbed just a tiny bit, what a noble sacrifice, she would be sure to honor his death by dying in the most epic way possible when her turn finally came.
"Captain, maybe I should have used my convenient, state of the art, flashlight to brighten up the dark, dark cave before exploring!" Spock said intelligently, pulling out a small, plastic-looking cylinder and shining it into the now dim, dim cave.
A blood-stained red shirt was all that was left of Ensign Leroy as he had triggered what appeared to be gigantic, spiked hydraulic jaws of death just a few steps in from the entrance of the dim, dim cave. His body was nowhere to be seen.
"Oh no... I'm sure... Ensign Leroy... will be honored..." the Captain turned his head slowly to Rose, eyes staring into her soul.
Rose gulped as, once again, the entirety of the landing party's eyes were upon her. With cautious steps, she walked out into the tunnel, making sure to avoid the pressure plate that Leroy had stepped on to trigger the Jaws of Death. Her phaser still firmly gripped in her mouth, she gingerly picked up the ragged remains of her fellow Redshirt's red shirt and placed it delicately on her back.
"Captain, my scans confirm that this is a deadly trap." Spock said as he advanced into the cavern, stepping over the pressure plate with ease and pointing at the spiked pistons of doom.
The Captain and the other two Redshirts that had come with the landing party, probably just to pad out the D-Class. Rose felt a small twinge of comfort as her fellow Redshirts grouped around her, also staring at the bloody smear that was Ensign Leroy. At least here there was a small chance that whatever disaster might befall them next would hit one of her comrades and not her.
"Spock... what do you... suggest... we do about this... big deadly trap... that is in our way?" the Captain asked his foolish first officer.
Spock said nothing, but stared at the trap really, really hard.
Rose raised an eyebrow as she glanced between Spock and the trap, before gasping as the spike trap exploded, the spikes sinking into the floor and being covered in rubble from the ceiling.
"Vulcan Spike Trap Disarming ability." Spock stated plainly, before turning his head slowly to look back over at Roseluck.
Rose sighed as, once again, she felt the eyes of everyone in the away team on her. Grumbling something around the phaser in her mouth, she wandered deeper into the cavern. She ducked under a few stalactites and dodged a couple of stalagmites, a strange throbbing, electrical rhythm echoing from deeper in the cavern. Spock's hyper-advanced flashlight made the dark, dark cave up ahead into a dim, dim cave.
She sucked in a deep breath as the cavernous ceiling above her opened up into a much larger chamber of the strange cave. Boulders were littered around a strange carving in the ground, covered in runic symbols of some long-forgotten alien race.
"Wow! Hey, look! A strange thing!" Ensign Ricky exclaimed, running out past Roseluck and straight into the center of the carving.
Rose gasped in horror, nearly dropping her mouth-held phaser as her fellow Redshirt was lifted up into the air in a beam of white, holy light. He shouted in agony, dropping his phaser as he squirmed in midair.
An atmospheric choir shouted something about "unworthy" before shadows formed tendrils and reached for the poor, poor ensign. The rest of the away team stared in mild curiosity and perhaps the slightest hint of concern as the shadows tore apart Ensign Ricky midair, his torn, red shirt fluttering to the ground.
"Captain... this is a strange thing." Spock murmured, fascinated.
A few moments later, it all stopped, the Ensign's stripped skeleton falling to the ground as the tendrils fell back, only for a wall of darkness to begin to form around the away team, closing in as the chanting grew louder.
The four remaining crew members of the Enterprise huddled back-to-back in the center of the room as shadow creatures formed out of the swirling abyss around them. While the rest of the crew seemed to be taken by indecisiveness, Roseluck was in no way about to allow any of the swirly shadow monsters rip out her soul.
Gritting her teeth around her phaser, she followed her Starfleet training, craning out her neck and dramatically aiming it at the enemy, squeezing the trigger with her tongue. A long beam of red shot from the muzzle of the phaser, striking at one of the beings, vaporizing it.
Roseluck began firing wildly as more and more entities started to form around them. When one fell or was vaporized, two more took its place.
"Captain! I just had a brilliant idea about how we shall defeat these strange entities!" Spock shouted over the din of Roseluck's phaser and the roars of the monsters.
"What... is it?" the Captain asked his trusty officer.
"We should shoot them!" Spock exclaimed.
"Good... idea!" the Captain responded, finally drawing his phaser and beginning to fire at the encroaching darkness.
While only a few shadow beasts formed around the Captain and Spock's side, the entire horde seemed to be right around the side with Rose and Ensign Jury. Out of the blue, Ricky shouted something about his mother, throwing his phaser to the ground and charging at the monsters with nothing about his fists.
Rose spared only a moment to gaze in horror as the final Redshirt, aside from herself of course, was horribly eviscerated right in front of her eyes.
She swallowed as the group formation reduced itself to a threesome and the horde began to close in around them. Well, this was it. No more friends to take the fall for her. Phaser beginning to run out of ammunition... Goodbye family, goodbye Lily and Daisy... Goodbye cruel, cruel world.
She looked around at the ranking officers. Spock was staring at the creatures really, really hard. Kirk's uniform was mostly torn off and... he was somehow engaging in a fist fight with one or two of the viscous creatures of darkness.
Somehow.
Her phaser clicked empty as it ran out of charge, and Roseluck closed her eyes as she let herself fall into the clutches of impending doom. Something dug into her hind legs as she was pulled into the ground, the gnashing mouths of the beasts roaring over her head.
'Whelp, what a way to go, Rose. Not a xenobotanist or a science officer, that might've actually guaranteed your survival on an away mission. Nope, got assigned as a disposable security officer... Goodbye world...' Rose accepted her fate.
Suddenly, a pair of hands grabbed onto her forelegs, pulling her just out grasp of the shadow creatures' teeth and claws, yet not enough to fully free her from the shadow's grasp. She opened her eyes and looked up, only to meet the eyes of Captain Kirk, valiantly pulling against the eternal grasp of the shadow creatures.
"Captain?" Rose asked incredulously, before crying out in pain as she felt something bite into her right hind leg.
"Ensign... Rose... I've always wanted to... tell you something..." the Captain murmured romantically.
"What." all of Rose's pains and fears were crushed under a pile of confusion.
In the background, she heard Spock cry out something.
The Captain looked over at Spock, before shrugging and letting go of Rose, "Coming, Mr Spock!"
"Hey! Wait! What!?" Rose cried out, being dragged back into the swirling darkness as her forelegs grappled for something to hold onto.
She finally found a hold on a protruding rock, keeping her just out of the point of no return. On the opposite side of the cavern, Kirk helped his best friend out from a few shadow creatures while Rose fought tooth and nail against a couple thousand.
She gritted her teeth. This was ridiculous. Her fellow Redshirts deserved better than to have their last remaining comrade be dispatched like this!
She searched around for some kind of a weapon, when something glinted at her out of the darkness. Ensign Jury's phaser... Rose reached out with a free hoof and tossed the metallic weapon into her open mouth, wrapping her tongue around the trigger.
Screaming war cries inside of her head, Rose fired away at the shadows holding her, only to have the monsters resist her struggle as they clamped down hard on her hind legs. The pressure in her joints increased from "straining" to "intensely painful" as she heard some of them pop out of place.
Rose spared a small glance up at her superior officers, who were setting up some kind of makeshift bamboo cannon in the center of the glyph circle and aiming it at the ceiling, seemingly pretending she and her struggles were non-existent. An explosion rocked through the dim, dim cave as a hole got blown through the ceiling by the cannon, murky sunlight pouring into the cavern.
Rose brightened up. Great idea! The shadows wouldn't be able to resist the sunlight coming into the cavern! Now, if they would just help her out, they could wait in the light for backup to arri- Wait, was that a communicator the Captain had open? Was that the sound of a transporter powering up? They started to sparkle, but Rose wasn't sparkling... WHAT!?
"HEY! WHAT ABOUT ME!?" Rose screamed in horror and frustration.
The Captain looked dolefully up at Roseluck, "I'm... so sorry... Ensign. Transporting you... would only bring the shadows... up with us to the... Enterprise..."
He became silent as his constituent atoms began to dissolve.
No. Way. Hosea. No way in fresh Tartarus was Rose about to let him get away with that.
Utilizing a mixture of her newfound fury, earth pony strength, and adrenaline, she heaved herself up, stretching her disjointed hind legs against the shadow's hungry embrace. There was a blinding shot of pain through her hind legs and a ripping sound as she finally broke free, landing a few inches from the transporting Captain's boot, which she quickly reached out and touched.
She slumped to the ground as she felt the transporter finally take her with them back to the ship.
Rose awoke to the slow *thump-thump*s of a med bay's monitoring systems.
A bed was beneath her and sheets covered her body. A human stood over her, wearing a blue uniform and a ranking officer's insignia. He smiled slightly.
"Good morning, Ensign Rose." Doctor McCoy said warmly as he noticed her open her eyes.
Rose could only grimace as the room slightly bobbed up and down around her, probably the after-effects of some fancy Federation drug. She silently wished she was back in Equestria, far away from the Enterprise and her crew, surrounded by the rest of the flower fillies...
Wait, why couldn't she feel her legs?
"I'm afraid you suffered a few injuries during your away mission, Rose." the Doctor informed her sadly, "I'm afraid your hind legs were brutally torn off by the shadow creatures."
While, you may assume that Rose would have immediately fainted at that news, a wide grin spread across her face at those words.
'A severe yet not lethal injury? M-maybe I'll get an honorable medical discharge! Then I can go right back to growing roses and never have to go on another away mission ever again!' she fantasized.
The Doctor continued on, seemingly oblivious to Roseluck's unnaturally wide grin.
"Now, while that news may seem... shocking to you, I am here to tell you that you have absolutely nothing to worry about! Cutting-edge Federation medical technology allows as to regrow limbs in a matter of days! We should have you back on all four feet, er, hooves and ready for duty once again in a week or two!" the Doctor turned back around with a grin, only to see that Rose's had turned upside down.
Roseluck screamed.
And even though she was in space, I'm pretty sure everypony could hear her scream.