Normally Fluttershy wouldn’t join in a fight, but that was against anything that actually had a soul, that could feel emotions and or be considered alive. Mira’s friend XR definitely had a soul from the tale Fluttershy heard of the space iceberg.

The hunks of metal could easily be rebuilt; a life couldn’t be brought back after it was gone and was far more complex then bits of metal and wiring. Unless said life was made of metal and wiring and had acquired a spirit all its own, Fluttershy had no compunctions or hang-ups about destroying mindless machines. She likened it to taking away a spoiled child’s playthings; said spoiled child was the leader of his own evil empire.

So Fluttershy, while not entirely of sound mind, snuck into a room to take out its robotic occupants with her only backup at the time being Roller. It had worked, only now she and her friends were surrounded on all sides by tons of robots, Truffle was injured and they now only had two exits as Pwerta smashed the door controls to one of them locking it down. This was assuming that the robots didn’t have the ability to break through the door in some manner.

Truffle was now helping out with Professor Triffid and being more careful, Pwerta was using Mira’s pea shooter to help out Kleptchi and Mira finally managed to get the ship moving. The pony stayed out of the way watching it all with the living wheel, this was the kind of things heroes did and all these people including Mira were putting themselves in danger for the sakes of others.

“Now if only we can get out of here safely.” Muttered Fluttershy, as they were already halfway to making sure this Zurg would never bother the friendly people of Janet Rhizome ever again. She might have ignored this kind of stuff back in the Lylat system because it wasn’t her place and she was being a bit selfish at the time, this however was her place and she was putting her life in the line of fire for millions of people who weren’t able to stand up for themselves very well.

Fluttershy knew the feeling of being bullied all too well, if only those bullies could see where she was now and what she was accomplishing. They’d be a little more than shocked at what meek little Fluttershy has been able to survive. If asked why she wouldn’t defend herself against any bullies? She’d now tell them that it was too dangerous for them if she were to fight back. Fluttershy still doesn’t want to hurt anyone that doesn’t deserve it and she knows what it’s like to be the bully herself and she doesn’t relish the memories. A bolt of energy whizzed past her face causing her flop backwards on her butt while squeaking, she looked to Mira who had instinctively ducked the shot as she pilot the ship.

“This is Ranger Mira Nova, is there anyone out there? We’re under attack in a partially commandeered and heavily damaged hornet carrier, Star Command if you can hear me get someone out here like yesterday!” Mira was working communications as she piloted the ship, which was something she did anyway on Cruiser Forty Two. What she wouldn’t give to see that ship right now flying up to the damaged carrier in a blaze of glory. “I repeat this is Ranger Mira Nova, is there anyone out there in the sector of the gamma quadrant? I could take all the help I can get; I’d even trust Warp Darkmatter with my life at this rate if he was willing to take a month’s worth of my salary!”

Fluttershy watched as Mira was yelling at the console in slight despair, none of the other Rhizomians covering the doors said anything and kept firing when an opportunity presented itself they were holding the doors valiantly and their suits were getting shot up badly. She went up to Mira and put a hoof on her shoulder as she started the carrier on a slow turn so that she could aim it to wedge the carrier between the other two, Janet appeared to have done enough damage to immobilize them by ramming pod grenade loaded ships up their aft sections.

Mira looked to Fluttershy and smiled slightly, it was a nice thought that the pony was trying to comfort her and hey it was actually working. If all ponies were adorable like she was, then she wouldn’t mind spending her retirement years living on a planet with them provided this one in particular can find it in the vast universe.

“Is there anyone out there worth talking to? This is Ranger Mira Nova, I’m requesting help.” There was no one out there it seemed as she steered the ship around.

“Hello, this Fox of the mercenary team Star-Fox what do you need help with exactly and what in the world is going on over there?” The voice sounded very familiar to the only pony onboard a ship loaded with deadly robots and she broke out into a slight smile.

“I’m Ranger Mira Nova and I’ve recently helped Rhizome route an invasion force, lots of nasty robots called hornets from an empire were held off and the rest stuck around. There were five carriers loaded with hornets at the start of all this. I’m jacking currently one of the remaining three ships to finish the job, the carriers are where they are because they fear the firepower Rhizome can point their way, that orbital defense system has a nasty kick to it. I’m in the heavily damaged one and we have a bunch of automatically piloted Rhizome ships doing some damage and distracting them, but it’s not enough to be worthwhile since Rhizomians don’t have anything resembling effective ship to ship combat. They’ve got their ground forces well covered and equipped at least.” Mira paused in the midst of pulling an image up on screen, she stood up and threw a grenade down the corridor Triffid and Truffle were covering giving them some relief and then did the same for Kleptchi and Pwerta. She turned back to the monitor to see a fuzzy face on it; she didn’t care if they were from the Lylat system, she could take what she could get at the moment. “We’re kind of pinned down and being swarmed relentlessly here, I have five people and a relatively intelligent animal with me one of ours is injured and our Rhizomian suits are barely holding up to all the strain of taking hits as it is. We’re trying to ram this ship between the other two and we’re going to set it off, but we need more distractions and a lot of firepower. Can you help a girl out?”

“Depends, we’re looking for a friend of ours and… guys get to your fighters now! Rob start doing some damage with the main cannons to those robots and take out as many as you can squeeze into each shot, clear a path for us to launch as we’re going in hot! We’ve got to start clearing the space out here.” Fox saw Fluttershy on the monitor, well her head at least inside of a Rhizomian suit behind Mira. She was looking up at him with a faint sad smile as she hugged some kind of strange wheel with eyes she gave him a tiny wave with a hoof; he knew well enough that she was in danger and needed help. He was already running down the hallway for his fighter with his three friends as Rob carried out his orders and started vaporizing hornets with fire from the Great Fox’s two massive energy cannons.

-

“Where’s the fire Fox, what’s going on here in hippie space?” Falco was rather grumpy as he ran full tilt alongside Fox, Slip and Peppy.

“If I said the Rhizomians successfully repelled a large invasion force attacking Rhizome would you believe me? Fluttershy’s currently onboard the damaged enemy carrier and in a room that has a lot of deadly robots swarming towards it. Oh and did I mention that they are going to try and blow up two other carriers with it? They are going to have a hard time getting out there with so many robots coming down on them; I can only imagine what Katt would have in store for us if we don’t help them.” The minute he finished telling his bipedal bird companion Fox was amazed as Falco blurred down the hall within seconds of hearing Fluttershy was in danger, he smiled cheekily. Fox was never going to let Falco live that kind of reaction down, not without throwing tons of jabs at him.

-

“Looks like we got some help guys get ready to start running. Can you manage it Truffle?” Putting the ship on course with the other two carriers, Mira turned to the injured Rhizomian who nodded in her direction. She stared the pony in the eyes. “Be prepared to move Fluttershy, you should have another pod grenade by now in case you forget that they regenerate. I’ll get us all out of this alive, okay?”

“Okay.” Was Fluttershy’s reply, she didn’t think she’d see Fox and his friends in a situation quite like this one. She heard a stifled male scream and saw Professor Triffid stumble back as his leg was got grazed and Truffle almost took a blast to the chest. After a few moments it looked like Triffid’s suit wasn’t regenerating from some of the damage it was taking, Fluttershy nodded to herself that he was too busy to make repairs. She immediately ran up to Pwerta who turned to her after firing another thorn into hornet. “Burn wound medication, spare suit patch.”

Kleptchi stepped out and kept firing as much as a she could to give Pwerta some time to hand Fluttershy the necessary equipment. Fluttershy was immediately on her way back to Professor Triffid when she heard an anguished shout and what was likely Kleptchi’s body hitting the floor; she didn’t stop until she was at Professor Triffid’s side. The pony immediately pulled out the required plant and squeezed out some blue fluid that would heal the burn wound and slapped the patch on top of the hole that was refusing to regenerate; the entire suit became revitalized within seconds. Professor Triffid glancing down at the suit patch integrating with the suit pulled out another suit patch and slapped it over Truffle’s suit making it revitalize as well.

Turning around Fluttershy saw what happened to Kleptchi, the thorns on her suit were missing and the entire hallway beyond the door was covered in hundreds of little acidic thorns spread out everywhere. Pwerta punched the door controls like she had previously done and the door locked down like the one on the opposite side of the room. One of which had a small glowing dot on it slowly moving across the top of it.

Fluttershy didn’t have time to pay attention to the glowing dot moving along the door as Kleptchi had a small hole in her abdominal region that she was clutching at with her right hand as she held her rifle in her left as she started bleeding out on the floor.

“She’s going into shock Pwerta; we can’t let her fall asleep.” Fluttershy received a nod at her diagnosis and Pwerta pulled out what looked to be a cactus and stuck Kleptchi in the chest with it for a few seconds before quickly ripping it out. Kleptchi jumped slightly, but was held down by two comforting hooves and she started breathing evenly.

“This is a pretty bad injury Fluttershy, but nothing I can’t handle. Now hold her still, this is going to cause her a lot of pain that I can’t even begin describing to you, at least it will keep her from bleeding out. I’m sorry about using a Fire Veins on you Kleptchi, but you’ll thank me for this later.” Pulling out a plant that the Rhizomian on the floor grimaced at, Pwerta squeezed some red fluid into her wound and the sickly fluids coagulated at the surface of the wound after a few seconds. Kleptchi was rolled over to get at her back with the other half of the fluids. After waiting a moment for the red fluids to settle Pwerta applied a suit patch to revitalize the suit Kleptchi wore, holding the coagulated fluids in place.

It was odd to Fluttershy that she didn’t hear anything that sounded like pain as she held the Rhizomian down, a moment later Kleptchi started grunting and gritted her teeth in anguish while trying not to thrash against Fluttershy’s gentle hold. Soon it appeared like she was having a seizure by how much her body struggled as Pwerta joined Fluttershy in holding her down; she was pretty tough to not be screaming her head off at the moment.

Mira looked up from piloting the ship and saw Kleptchi being held down by both Pwerta and Fluttershy; looking behind her she saw that Triffid and Truffle were still holding the last door. Hearing something, Mira turned to a hissing noise and saw that the hornets were slowly cutting into the first door that Pwerta locked down. Oh great, more problems, that’s exactly what she needed. They were so close to a collision with the other two carriers, which were currently stymied in their efforts to move out of the way of the damaged carrier by the numerous Rhizome vessels clogging up their tailpipes.

“Triffid, lock down that last door and gather everything together now! I want the two of you to move over to Fluttershy, Pwerta and Kleptchi. I need everyone touching each other, tell Fluttershy to get Mr. Wheel to come over to her. You’ll see why in a minute, if we’re lucky nothing will go horribly wrong. Come on, group hug everybody!” Silently the space ranger muttered a few expletives as she moved away from the controls as she joined the group. “Come on Mira you can do this, just a little focus. I really need to start ghosting right now; it’ll save us a lot of headaches if I can.”

The door blew inward as Mira gathered into her arms as far as she could. The quickly hornets piled into the room and Mira tool three shots, two to her back and one went through her right leg before the ship crashed. Mira was holding on tight as everyone close to her followed her when she through the floor at an angle and passed through several layers of ship. They stopped falling when Mira lost her concentration in midair in the middle of a faintly lit room full of large metal boxes.

“Did I ghost everyone out?” Even through the haze of slight pain she was more worried about the others then herself at the moment, she had taken two damaging shots along her spine and her leg didn’t look to good. She got everyone, even the wheel was there and all their equipment was present. “Pwerta check the others first, that’s an order not a suggestion!”

“Mira, that was amazing! Oh wait, you’re hurt, are you feeling okay? How many hooves am I holding up? Are you seeing a tunnel with a bright light? Stay here please, if you don’t mind me asking you to do so that is.” Fluttershy wondered how Mira was awake; she had to be in so much pain right now. She could even see how messed up Mira’s knee was as the shot had hit the back of it and went straight through and her back looked to be a complete and utter mess.

“I’ll be okay Fluttershy; this isn’t the worst thing that’s happened to me. Becoming temporarily partially fused with a robot and a Jo-adian was much worse than this; I needed psychiatric help for weeks after that one. Thank goodness for ranger medical benefits that leads to them solving just about everything medically except Commander Nebula’s leg oddly enough, that and death.” Speaking in a bored tone Mira was treating this as if she were talking about the weather. Sure Rhizome couldn’t field a military that could fight effectively, but they could restore a nearly useless completely shredded limb to full working order given enough time. Darn it, she was going to need more physical therapy and just after she got finished getting over her blast wounds!

“Everyone else is mostly fine, Truffle still has a numbed arm, Kleptchi has a sealed abdominal wound in her and Triffid’s leg is good to go thanks to Fluttershy. Other than a being a little jolted from hitting the floor they’re doing fine, now you… yeah, you need another week on Rhizome after all this.” Pwerta just shook her head as aside from her, Fluttershy and Roller were the only ones untouched by all the fighting. “Help me lift her up into a sitting position. I’ll get the damage to her back first. ”

After a bit of checking Mira over, Pwerta slathered a purple liquid and then a blue liquid on her back and then looked over her leg while she pondered why the back only looked worse than it actually was.

“Well Mira It’s rather odd, but you don’t seem to be feeling incredible amounts of pain despite having your back flayed open by two shots that punctured your suit. The wounds in your back surprisingly aren’t as bad as they look, compared to the horribly damaged leg of yours.” Pwerta was looking to Fluttershy’s eyes for her convenience of knowing what she was saying.

“Yeah well, our ghosting powers have the natural side effect of making us Tangean Royal’s slightly resistant to energy based attack… makes sense if you consider the existence of Tangean Grounders. Our nervous systems are really hard to damage permanently as a result and despite the pain I should be in I can kind of well… shut it off.” Mira shrugged slightly when she said she could shut off her ability to feel pain. “That nifty ability helped a lot with Space Ranger training. It only works with pain though and doesn’t affect my ability to feel fatigued. I’m feeling pretty tired at the moment, but I’m made of tougher stuff then that and I’m not a princess that is easily distressed mind you.”

“For a second there I was about to call such a practice as being able to turn off your ability to feel pain unhealthy, in this situation it’s actually quite useful.” Reaching into her bags Pwerta pulled out a particular plant she had called Fire Veins that she had previously used on Kleptchi. She doused the leg wound completely with red fluids that started hardening around her knee and just stared expectantly at Mira. “How do you feel?”

“My leg just kind of feels ticklish.” It was Mira’s reaction to the complete agony she should be in, this left Fluttershy completely confused considering Kleptchi’s reaction to the stuff.

“Remind me to make a note about this if you will Professor Triffid, we’re down to four suit patches after I use this one.” Pulling out a Rhizomian suit patch, Pwerta slapped it over Mira’s suit and revitalized growing over her medicated wounds.

“Yes that is a useful trait, Fire Veins usually burn through anything even resembling anesthetics. Maybe she could help us look into it later to solve the anesthesia problem; of course we have to survive blowing up this negative mass obscuring our cosmic field of peace and tranquility first.” At least Professor Triffid was standing with relative ease, he was shouldering Truffle who refused to let go of his thorn rifle or stop paying attention the doorway into the room.

“Yeah, not sure how we’re going to set off a self destruct in the conditions we’re in and escape safely.” Moving her leg about, it looked to Mira that her leg stiffened sticking straight out and she couldn’t even flex it a single millimeter.

“How about we just escape? Fox and his friends are really good at destroying all kinds of large ships and they could safely blow it up once we’re off it. I traveled with them for a time Mira; they can blow it up for us.” One of the things neither Fluttershy nor anyone else had told Mira was that Head Hunter was a stolen ship. The Rhizomians were definitely keeping a lid on that information for the pony’s sake.

“Fine, we’re escaping. We’ve already made them think twice about sticking around Rhizome and if you know those mercenaries enough to vouch for them, then they’ll take care of the carriers.” Mira raised a hand and it flickered for a second, after a moment of staring at her hand with concentration she just forced herself to stand and looked at the Rhizomians and Fluttershy. They all looked worse for wear and were not naturally fighters, but they held together well enough under stress and Mira had to admit that she wasn’t that great a leader. “Sorry guys, it seems I can’t ghost us out of this. I’m too tired after getting us out of the control room.”

Fluttershy just pulled out the memory stone and concentrated on calling out to Discord specifically, she could use his guidance and he could see things from a really long distance away. With a flash the stone started glowing as it made a connection with one of Discord’s mismatched horns.

“You have reached the discordant help me hotline. If you would like to cause chaos, press one now. If you would like to do something unnecessarily stupid, then you will press two now. If you would like to make prank calls to Celestia to distract her while you steal all her cake, press three now and be wary of the sun for a while. ” Discord’s voice was coming through loud and clear for Fluttershy, it sounded like complete gibberish to everyone else. The pony slowly rolled her eyes as Discord continued. “If you would to have the chaos lord himself give you an overview your current situation as it stands, press four now. If you desperately need to be hit by the elements of harmony and turned to stone for some reason, please do go ahead and press five now especially if you’re bored with chaos.”

Fluttershy started tapping her left hoof impatiently, but there was a small smile on her face.

“If you would like to giggle like a little schoolgirl wearing a shrimp costume, press both six and nine now. If you would like Discord to assist you with getting out of another horribly dangerous situation with your friends in tow while hopefully surviving it intact, press ‘Fluttershy’ now.” The voice sounded rather smug at that last one.

“Fluttershy, I’m done playing around for the moment if that’s alright with you Discord. If you don’t mind me asking this of you, could you maybe help me and my new friends without all the sidetracking commentary?” Fluttershy could hear Discord smiling on the other end of the stone.

Author's Notes:

Pwerta- Healthy, if tired of everyone around her getting injured.

Fluttershy- Healthy, also tired of seeing others being injured.

Triffid- Medically treated burned leg, overall in good condition.

Mira- Treated back and leg wounds.

Kleptchi- Treated abdominal wound, suits special function completely spent.

Truffle- Medically numbed and wrapped left arm.

Roller 'Mr.' Wheel- ????

Roller addendum- Still just going along with everything.

Might not post another chapter for a while, I'm busy playing Golden Sun and waiting for season 5.