Last time on “There Was a Flood” Quest:
>Trekking through froggy bottom bog with Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy flying above.
>Fluttershy fell out of the sky.
>When you and the others came over to help, she was babbling incoherently. You thought she was delirious from the heat and tried to remove her armor to cool her down.
>She fought you the whole time.
>Eventually, she was able to make it clear she was warning you all of an incoming flood.
>The ponies tried to strip their armor and make a run for it.
>Twilight and Applejack got away using some spell of Twilight, Fluttershy flew away, but Pinkie lagged behind.
>You tried to run for her but were too slow. You lost sight of Pinkie as she got buried under the wave.
>You were hit next and struggled to keep your head above water.
>After grabbing a handhold of something stationary, Fluttershy came to help you.
>You accidentally slipped and pulled her under the water with you and lost her in the current.
>Eventually you got hold of a tree, climbed up and passed out.
>When you woke, the tide had gone down. There was no sign of your friends.
>You explored around and eventually found a stone hole in the ground.
>Deciding to explore it, you accidentally slipped and fell.
You are Rusty Shackleford, a human with no memory who has found himself lost in Equestria.
Currently, you are sliding at high speed down a slick cave tunnel. It's pitch back and you can't see anything, only the sickening sensation of acceleration and the scrapping of your skin and fabric on the stone.
Then the bottom falls out from beneath you and you fall through space. You hit a pool of ice cold water. Still in complete darkness, you swim to the surface using pure panicked instinct. The water is still, but deep and you can't see anything anywhere.
"Pinkie!" You caught water up, calling for your friends. Your voice echoes around you in all directions, disorienting you even further. But there's no reply. Unsure what else to do, you swim ahead.
Eventually you hit a wall. It's river stone smooth, offering no handholds or support.
You swim along the wall, using it as a reference. The water is freezing and the waterlogged pack with all your stuff is weighing you down. You're not sure how big this pool of water is, but you seem to swim around in the black for at least half an hour. Just as you feel like you can't keep it up, you see some light.
Swimming over to it, you find that a little alcove, shading the light from the rest of cavern. There's a lip of rock above the water, allowing you to climb up out of the water. Exhausted, you flop down on the stone, laying you heavy pack down beside you. The first thing you notice is that this alcove goes on to form a corridor, the light casting down until it hits a wall at the far end.
The second thing you notice the source of the light. There's some machines here and, oddly enough, you recognize it. It's... a car.
You search around, calling out for your friends some more, only to continue to be answered with echos. You don't see any of them, but a glint of gold nearby gets your attention. Upon inspection, it appears to be some of the gold armor the guards wear, and the armor that your friends were in. Looks like maybe part of the of a leg section.
You also inspect the car. Normally you're at a loss when you're dealing with things, like helping Applejack buck apples or Pinkie and her party stuff. But this... this is familiar. It's some kind of buggy, mostly just a roll cage with heavy shocks and big tires. The light is coming from its huge high beams.
Also it's upside down.
It seems mostly intact, so you try to right end the vehicle. It's lighter then you are expecting and you're able to push it up a few inches, but any more then that seems beyond what you are capable of. With a grunt, the thing slams back to the ground from your buckling grip.
Giving up on that idea, you crawl under into the cab, the roll cage giving you easy access. The interior is exceedingly sparse, with heavy rubber seats, large body harnesses and everything else simply the bare metal of the frame. Except for the dash, witch has a few buttons and a little screen.
Crawling out from inside the buggy, you push against the buggy in the hope to direct the headlights around and give you some more illumination. Luckily, swiveling the thing is a lot simpler then easier then trying to flip it. The metal grinds against the rock and the shadows dance around as you point the lights back the way you came.
The light casts over the water, giving you a better idea of how large the cavern is with some illumination. The water is black and still reflected off the light. You can't see the opposite wall or the ceiling from here.
You swivel the lights back down the tunnel. It lights up all the way to a bend a far ways down, sloping gently deeper underground.
You also give the buggy a full once over. There doesn’t seem to be any license plate, but on a back panel you see "B-45" stenciled into the frame in bold blocky figures.
You crawl back into the interior and fumble with the screen. Finding a power button on the side, it clicks on with a light electronic whir. On the screen is a bright green grid. There's a blipping red dot in the bottom left side of the screen and a solid white dot in the center top.
You try to decipher the screen. You're fairly sure its some kind of radar or something, but nothing is labeled. There's also a red button, a green button and a yellow button, also not labeled. Not sure what to do, you crawl out and try to flip the vehicle again.
Nope, you're still too much of a weenie.
Everything else seems to have been lost in your fight with the flood.
You gently lay out you went supplied in front of the industrial sized headlights, hoping to help dry them out.
After setting your items in order, you take stock and keep the things that don't need to dry on you. The knife, the hatchet, lighter, gems and what food is salvageable into the backpack. You also give the buggy one last lift, putting everything you have into it.
Third time's the charm! With a huff you are finally able to tip the weight of the buggy over, sending it right side up. The vehicle bounces on its screechy shocks and comes to a rest.
Deciding there's no need to keep the stuff here to dry, you load up everything into the back of the buggy's little flatbed and climb into the driver's seat. This... all seems oddly familiar to you. No specific memories are coming to light, but the way you back rests in the seat, how your hand grips the wheel, looking over at screen. It's like walking through a dark room you're familiar with; you can't see anything, but you know where everything is. So driving this thing should be simple, right?
You sit there, hands on the wheel, ready to get going. Nothing seems to be happening. You try turning the wheel and pushing on the pedals, but the car stays where it is. How do you work this thing?
There doesn't seem to be a key, just the three buttons by the screen you noticed earlier. The screen has remained the same, although things are reversed now that things are right side up. The red blip is not in the top left corner of the screen and the white is in the middle of the base.
You punch the green button. The engine comes to life. It's very quiet. You're only able to tell its on from the vibration. Testing the pedals, the buggy lurches forward with a lot of power. You'll have to go easy on the gas.
Carefully, you give it some juice and cruise down the tunnel. The going is a little bumpy, but it's pretty much just driving in a straight line.
Driving is uneventful, but surprisingly enjoyable. It's sorta your first time and using such a big machine gives you a certain juvenile delight. None the less, you go easy. The tunnel is plenty wide enough for the vehicle and the terrain is pretty smooth, but you don't want to do something stupid and flipping the thing on top of you or something.
After a while of driving, you come to a stop at an intersection. The tunnel forks into three more paths. You turn the headlights down each one, but they seem mostly identical.
You check the little screen on the dashboard. The red blip has moved since you last checked it. You guess it would be directly ahead in the middle path, assuming that way goes straight on, of course.
Middle way it is.
You drive ahead at a good, cautious pace, ready for anything that could jump out at you. The tunnel slopes steadily deeper and deeper into the earth. The earlier excitement from driving is giving way to boredom of the monotony. Everything looks like just more of the same.
After driving for a while, the tunnel begins to shake. A fairly large rock shakes loose from the ceiling and bounces off the hood of the buggy with a loud clang.
You're not going to get stuck in a cave in! You put the peddle to the metal and
WHOA!
The buggy fires down the tunnel like a bullet though a gun barrel! The engine whirs a little louder, but is still very quiet and is mostly drowned out of the sound of the shaking earth. You manage to keep control fairly well even as the vehicle bounces on the bumps and hopping you out of the seat.
There's an explosion in the side of the cavern wall up ahead in the light of your high beams, partially blocking part of the way. A massive quadruple set of teeth filled jaws emerge from the hole, splaying open like a flower from nightmares.
Without even thinking, you slam on the breaks, shift gears and set the buggy rocketing backwards up the tunnel in the span of a few seconds. The gaping creature, whatever it is, slides through the snow and burrows into the floor of the tunnel. A fissure splits up the tunnel, following you. You keep turning you head, watching back to see where you are going and keeping an eye on the creature coming at you from under the ground.
The little buggy is giving all it can, but you can't seem to broaden the cap between you and your pursuer.
You keep gunning it, keeping full attention on where you are going. None the less, you keep feeling tempted to look back at the fissure following close behind you, though you can tell its still close from the rumble of the ground and the sound of the splitting stone.
Eventually, you skip back at the four way intersection. Directly in front of you is the way you came and the fissure rushing towards you.
You turn the buggy and shoot down the right most tunnel. This way curves left and right while sloping upwards. Without looking back you can tell you're still being perused by the digger. Now going forward, you go as fast as the engine possibly can, driving part way up the walls when the turns get tight.
After taking a particularly tight turn, the tunnel opens up into a fairly large, wide cavern with a high ceiling. There's a few shelved terraces of rock, but there aren’t any tunnels leading out that you can see!
Out of the corner of you eye you see something purple jump behind a large rock.
You slam on the brakes and do a doughnut, kicking up bits of loose rock everywhere. It gives you enough time to double back around the open caver, letting you keep your distance from the thing chasing you.
"Twilight!" You shout at where you saw the purple thing. "Help! There's a giant monster underground!"
"Rusty?!" That's not Twilight. It's Rarity!
The unicorn appears at the top of a rock, her purple make frazzled, dirty and split. She watches in awe and confusion at you zipping around with the thing chasing you. She shakes her head, bringing back her senses.
"Quick, we need to get out of here!"
You slide the buggy to a stop by the huge rock Rarity is perched ontop of. Without even needing to be told, she quickly hops down and lands in the flatbed. You send the wheels spinning a half heartbeat latter and make a b line to the tunnel, the beast still on your tail.
"Hurry! Hurry!" Rarity shouts from the back.
"I know!" You shout back.
"No you don't understand!" Rarity cries frantically. "Not that one!"
"Wh-"
The entire cavern violently shakes as something massive drops from the ceiling just in front of the tunnel mouth, cutting you off and making the buggy bounce into the air from the impact. At first you think its a cave in, but it stands up on two squat, fat legs and swings long, rocky looking arms around. It lets out a challenging roar in your direction with a giant gaping mouth in the center of its oblong body.
You turn the wheel frantically to one side, sending you drifting towards this new guy as the wheels take forever to gain traction for the direction change. It slams its massive arms in the ground, trying to cut you off, but you swerve out of the way and drive around.
"What the?! Where do we go Rarity?!" You yell back the pony as avoid oncoming burrower.
"I don't knooooow!"
There's a tectonic slam from behind you, making you look back. The burrowing creature has collided with big fat one, latching onto the side of its fat craggy body. It cries out and wings its long arms wildly at the worm, each impact like a thunderclap of stone on stone.
"Is there any other place out of here?" You ask Rarity, turning back to her. She shakes her head, making her ratty mane whip around.
"Believe me, I've tried! That's the only way out of here."
You bring the buggy to rest at the opposite end of the cavern. At the other end, the two monsters continue to duke it out. Neither one seems to getting much over the other. The fat one has size and reach, the burrower has leverage and a strong grip on the other. The two tumble around with size and force what would crush you, Rarity and your little car like a bug.
As their fight continues to rage on, a few heavy rocks the size of your vehicle fall from the ceiling with loud cracks. The two of them tumble around away from the tunnel some. You see an opening!
But it's very close to the two titans battle.
You turn back to Rarity, meeting eye to eye. Her eye's widen and she shakes her head back and forth. Your eyes narrow and you nod very slowly with a wicked grin.
The buggy whirs lightly as you slam the pedal down. The wheels skid momentarily, followed by you and Rarity being flung back in your respective seats as you race down the cavern. Rocks crash down all around and the fighting of the two monsters envelops the world. There's a opening just between them and the cavern wall. If you can just make it fast enough...
One of the fat monster's big limbs slams down as the battle turns suddenly, crashing down directly on the hood of your buggy. The impact drives it into the ground and the back up. You and Rarity spin end over end in space, your vision occasionally catching snapshots of cavern, monsters and Rarity screaming.
The buggy makes contact with the ground with its roll cage, sending up yellow sparks everywhere. You fall down (or up) since you weren't restrained, your head hitting the cavern floor. You hear Rarity yelling right in your ear behind you, but are struggling too much holding on to look back at her.
An eternity of pain and sparks later, the buggy finally comes to a stop with a lurch. Looking around and see that the vehicle miraculously slid down the tunnel, leaving the tunnel and the fighting well behind.
You crawl out from the wreck. You seem to be mostly uninjured, though you can feel you scrapped your head up pretty good. The buggy, however, is clearly dead; the entire front section, where you were sure the engine must have been, is smooshed inside out.
"Rarity?"
"Over here!"
You help pull the unicorn out from the back of whats left of the buggy. She also seems pretty banged up, but is well enough to stand up on her own. Now that you have a chance to get a good look at her, Rarity doesn't look all that well. She's bruised in places, her hair is a absolute by anyone's standards and she looks very very tired. She keeps fussing with her horn.
"Ow ow!" Each time she touches it she pulls back in pain. "I think I fell on my horn. How does it look."
The tip looks like it's been ground flat when the buggy was sliding.