Last time on 'Off The Rails' Quest:
>Your and your party were ambushed by diamond dogs!
>Your pony friends were over powered and out numbered, while you were still locked in a cage.
>One seemed particularly interested in you, since your outfit was studded with gems. Getting an idea, you picked some off and scattered them everywhere, causing a small riot as the dogs tried to get all of the gems.
>Oder was restored by dog, who you later learned was Rover.
>After subduing the other ponies and gagging Rarity, your group was to be brought before Rex, the diamond dog king.
>But with an opportune earthquake and some crass bargaining, you were able to get them to let the ponies go.
>You alone were brought before Rex, who seemed to be really cute, but turned out to be kinda of a dick.
>Despite your warnings that you were a fugitive the Princess Luna herself was after, Rex ordered you striped of your gems and thrown into "the pit," to dig for more gems.
>You were broken free from your cage, your outfit was roughly ripped apart and you were shoved into a mine cart going down a steep slope with nothing more then a torch.
You are Rusty Shackleford, a human with no memory who has found himself lost in Equestria.
Currently, you are deep underground, in a mine cart hurdling down a dark cavern. The light of your torch is woefully unable to light more then the immediate area around you. You cant even see the bottom of this slope. Cold air is whipping around you as the cart is steadily gaining more and more speed to who knows where.
You are whipped by the cold air on your face and the exposed skin of your chest and arms, making you angry that the diamond dogs tore it apart so greedily. But your personal vengeance takes a sideline as the cart momentarily leans to one side before slamming back down into its track. You feel incredibly vulnerable and frightened on this rickety rust cart firing through space with no chance for you to get out or even slow it down. You know its just a matter of time befo-
WHAM!
The cart comes to a sudden violent stop. You are flung forward like a ragdoll, hitting your mid section on the lip of the cart, knocking the wind out of you lungs and giving you the sickening feeling like your chest was crushed. You fall back on your butt back into the cart, sucking in a few painful breaths. You're in pain, but you think you're OK. You rest there momentarily in the cart, alone and in the dark before you gather yourself up and look around.
You are in pitch black cavern. The little torch you were given is bright but casts only enough light to reach the closest of the walls and stalagmites. The blackness stretches before you, unknown and menacing, ready to swallow you up. Behind you is the slop you just rocketed down. The rock is slick with a tiny layer of running water, making everything slick and shiny in the fire light. You don’t see much water pooled at the base, though.
Far above at the top of the slop is the shining light of the room you were just kicked out of. Its a long way up from here.
You flop out of the cart awkwardly and get to your feet. This entire area gives you the creepiest feeling of isolation, with no other companionship beside the light the torch and the sound of your own foot steps.
The mine cart has hit a large lock that seems to be a makeshift stopper for the end of the tracks. It would seem they want you to find gems and bring them all the way back to the cart to be pulled up.
With torch in hand, you explore, heading into the blackness. You soon lose sight of the cart as it leaves you little bubble of light, but the slope is a pretty easy landmark to see even in the dark, so you dont thin you'll get lost. Or at least you hope not.
You wander aimlessly in the dark, mindful of your footing. The terrain dictates your path as you grope around, suddenly being blocked by a wall or needing to go around a massive stalagmite. The walls seem mostly natural, though there is clear evidence of past mining, with large ugly chunks missing from the walls.
Eventually, you come to where the cavern narrows to an end. From you torchlight, you see that there are a number of tunnels, leading yet deeper into the earth. Theres five of them; two on one side, two on the other and one in between both. They all seem the same to you.
You decide to do a little experiment and go a short distance down the left most tunnel. You take a deep with of the air, testing to see how fresh the air is, hoping to get a clue of what may be beyond. Here, you clearly smell water, but tinged with a bunch of other smells you can only guess at.
The next tunnel doesn’t smell like much of anything, though you can feel a light, very faint breeze wafting down from below.
The middle and two right tunnels smell mostly identical to that of the main cave you entered in.
A breeze seems like a good sign to you, so you take the tunnel second to the left. It winds around, heading downward in gently curving slopes. You feel the air get noticeably warmer compared to the cave you were in, but the little breeze is still refreshing.
Until there's a very sudden heavy gust, blowing your torch out and leaving you in total darkness.
Carefully, you grope blindly over to the wall, giving you a reassuring point of reference in the absolute darkness. You notice that the wall is kinda damp, but ignore it as to reach around in your pockets for your lighter.
Inventory check:
Luckily those diamond dogs didn't take any of your stuff with top part of your outfit.
You flick open your lighter and go through the process of trying to coax a flame out of it. The gust stopped as soon as it started, but the gentle breeze is still going, making it slightly difficult for you to light the torch. With a little persistence, you're eventually able to get the torch going again.
With the light back, you can see you're not alone anymore. At the edge of the torchlight is the clear silhouette of a pony with their back to you.
"Hello?"
The pony doesn't acknowledge, though they're moving, kind of shifting their weight from one side to the other. Cautiously, you approach.
"Hello?"
As you get closer and the light shines over them you make out more detail. Curly tail and mane, balloons cutie mark, pink all over.
"P-Pinkie?"
She suddenly turns around as if it just heard you. at first momentarily confused, her expression immediately lights up with a big smile as she sees you. She jumps forward, tackling you to the ground in a hug.
"Rusty! You're here!"
"Pinkie! How did you get here?" You say, so happy to see your friend again. You hug her with her on top of her, careful not to burn her with the torch.
"Oh that's a looooong story!" Pinkie giggles, getting off of you. She's bouncing up and down excitedly. "I was digging in the dirt, trying to find you and Rarity and the others. But then I fell in a hole into a big lake. When I swam to the other side there were these funny talking rocks. One of them was kinda grumpy, but eventually they told me where to I could hop across the chasm on floating mushrooms. Then I went down a water slide that went though a volcano! And then..."
Pinkie seems to have a really long story here, butting your little encounter with the diamond dogs to shame.
You patiently wait for Pinkie to finish her tale, which goes on to include finding three magic gems and eating one by accident, fighting a two headed dragon by making both heads argue with each other and solving a long series of maze like puzzles, until eventually finding you here.
"Yeah well, I met some talking dogs," You retort back, not to be out done. You tell Pinkie about how Rarity and the others were set free and the relatively short course of events that brought you here.
"And so now I'm here and I don’t have a shirt. But anyway, Pinkie, can't we just get out of here going back the way you came?"
"Nah, I just made all that stuff up." Pinkie says, smiling and shrugging. "I don't know how I got here."
"Pinkie..." You groan, holding your head in your hands. You get to your feet. "Whatever, it's fine. Let's just keep going. We're bound to find a way out of here eventually. Stay close."
"Oooh, stay close to Rusty." Pinkie mocks as the two of you walk. "Cause Rusty isn’t a complete screw up and a constant danger to everyone around."
You look down at Pinkie, who is looking right back up at you with her usual smile.
"You... you feeling OK Pinkie? You're not mad or anything?"
"No. Why?"
"It's... never mind, let's go."
The two continue down the spiraling tunnel until it opens up into another cavern, though its much smaller then the one you came from.. By the light of your fire, you see a very large formation of some kind of orange gem sticking out of the floor in the very center of the cavern.
You inspect the gem formation with Pinkie. Its very beautiful, with the natural rough gems sticking out in fractal patterns. Sparks of color dance along the surface in the light of your fire. You guess this is probably the sort of thing the diamond dogs want you to bring back to the cart.
"Pinkie, I’m sorry about... well, you know. Being me." You apologize to Pinkie as the two of you walk around the big gems. You see her image shift around like a fun house mirror through the bent reflection of the gems.
"Oh great, an apology." Pinkie whines, exaggeratedly rolling her eyes. "Maybe we can make saddles out of these gems and ride that apology out of here, powder with all the care I have for it."
You check to see if you can find where that breeze is coming from. But it seems it's stopped. Or maybe you can't just feel it in here.
"Did you hit your head, Pinkie? You seem kinda... not yourself."
"Upset?" Pinkie says, her head snapping to look at you. "Why would I be upset? We're only trapped underground cause you screwed up. Again! Cause the Princess is after YOU. Everyone got capture because of YOU. Maybe if we get out of this, you can accidentally push everyone in Ponyville down a flight of stairs!"
Trying to do something constructive, you pull out one of the weird coins you've been carrying around with you. You palm one and flick it with your finger towards the formation. It pings off the side with a bright chime.
"Why did you follow after me?"
"Because you are just so PATHETIC." Pinkie is circling around you now. "Oh look at me, I'm Rusty. The Princess is mad at me and I don’t know why. Boo hoo. You're just a constant burden on all of Rusty and you know it."
"Pinkie..."
"Why don't you do us all a big favor and just find a quite spot to curl up and die."
"Hey! Listen, I know I'm not the best a-"
"Noooo, ya think?"
"Look, we just need to find a way out of here. Then I can be thrown in a dungeon or whatever else the princess has in store for me and you and all your friends will never have to deal with me again!"
"Hmmm, I guess that's true." Pinkie says, nodding. "But that'll take forever. This way will be faster."
Pinkie's head suddenly explodes with a loud pop like a balloon. There’s a little shower of confetti where here head just was. Her body just stands there, unmoving.
You're starting to think this isn’t the real Pinkie Pie.
Despite how disturbing that just was, you go over and examine what's left of Pinkie. Or not Pinkie. Whatever. Despite having no head, Pinkie's body is in good shape. It's standing on its own, the tail is twitching slightly and is shifting its weight in a natural way.
The body suddenly kicks at you sideways at your leg, making contact with you kneecap. You yell and fall to the ground, no long able to support your weight on the shattered bone. At some point, the torch falls out of your hand and rolls along the ground, giving everything drastic shadows.
The headless pink pony prances around you on the tips of its hooves playfully.
Desperate, you crawl along the ground through the pain, trying to get the torch. It only rolled a few feet away, but the pain is incredibly intense. You see little bright stars in the corner of you vision, making you dizzy. Just before you fingers can brush against the handle of the torch, a pink hoof stomps down on them. You try to pull back by the weight but the leverage against you is too great. You're stuck in this painful position until the pink pony lifts its hoof up.
You roll on to your back, trying to get away, but there’s no where for you to get away to. The headless pony stands above you menacingly. Reflexively, you hold you arms up to protect your head and face. As if to mirror this, it rears up on its hind legs. The legs come down.
.....
.....
You wake up, gasping for air and in a cold sweat. You're on a stone floor. It's pitch black.
You check yourself over. Fingers, knees, head. Everything seems intact. Nothing hurts, except your chest. All the things in your pockets are still there, but you seem to have lost your torch.
You seem to be alone again, as far as you can tell, but in the darkness something could be standing on top of you and you wouldn’t even see it.
You grope around for the torch and, miraculously, you find it near by. You quickly give it a light with your lighter and illuminate the area.
You're back in the main cavern of the pit, right in front of the different tunnels. Only now there’s only four, instead of five. One on the far left and three clustered off on their own.
Brushing off your recent... experience, you go over to the tunnels and give them the same test as before. And they give the results as before; one with the scent of fresh water and other smells, three that smell like nothing at all. But you also test them with echos, shouting down each one.
All of them at least partially reflect an echo back at you a few times.
You test where the missing tunnel was. Running your hand on the surface, giving it a few taps. The wall is solid and unbroken with living stone. It's almost as if there never was a tunnel there to begin with.
What is going on here?
Seeing it as your next best option, you go down the tunnel that smells like fresh water. If nothing else, you hope you might be able to get something to drink. You keep a hand along the wall, in case you get turned around or lost...