Rainbow Dash Around the World

by MagicS

Veins

Rainbow Dash and Barnaby descended down an elevator deep below the surface of the earth and even deeper than the already sunken parts of the city Rainbow Dash had seen above her.

She wasn’t aware that mines were something to be so proud of but she guessed if Oreville pretty much revolved around them that they must be important to the ponies here. After all, she couldn’t even count how many carts full of mining equipment and raw materials she had seen on the streets above. Barnaby had taken her to a large building in the southwest part of the main Copper Section cavern. Dozens of ponies were going in and out of it, half of it looked like a standard office building while the other looked more like an elongated garage that went back directly into the wall of the mountain. Rainbow Dash and Barnaby went to the back of that garage after Barnaby had consulted with the mine forepony and found themselves at several freight elevators that descended into the ground. A couple of the elevators were even bigger than the one they were in now and looked like they were made specifically for large carts or equipment to be put on and taken below.

“This is the main entrance for entering the Copper Section mines,” Barnaby said while they made their long and slow way down. “There are dozens of other elevators, ladders, pulleys, and even just zig-zagging ramps that go below in other places in the city, but your average mine worker takes these elevators in and out.” He sounded very enthusiastic and Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but grin a little.

Right now he reminded her a bit of how Twilight got when explaining... well, basically anything from her books, or Rarity about fashion or Pinkie Pie about parties... huh. Any of her friends and their passions worked. Probably including her and the Wonderbolts.

“At the bottom of these elevators is the staging area—a large dug out cavern full of small prefabricated buildings and the central station for the trams that run all throughout the mines,” Barnaby explained.

“You’ve got trams down here too?” Rainbow asked.

“Trams and minecart rails to make travel and ferrying of supplies and rocks easier. We’ve been building all of this for a long time, our mines are elaborate, efficient, and high-maintenance. Mines are what Oreville is all about and the Copper Section mines are growing and growing every day. We put everything into these mines. You could essentially say that all three Lords’ real jobs are just to make sure these mines are working in order,” Barnaby finished.

“Oh, so there’s mines like this in the other sections too?”

Barnaby’s eyes briefly flickered to her before he resumed looking ahead at the door of their elevator. “No. Not so much anymore.”

“Uhhh...”

Barnaby sighed. “Gold Section was the very first, and its mines were started hundreds, hundreds of years ago. Those mines have all gone dry. Same as Silver Section just about. It’s why we’re constantly expanding here in Copper Section and making more room to find new veins of precious metals. One day Copper Section will be as big as Gold Section and one day even these mines will go dry and we’ll start a new Section in these mountains looking for more.”

“What’s that gonna be called? Participation Section?”

Barnaby laughed good-naturedly. “Haha… perhaps, perhaps. There hasn’t really been any official talk of it, this is a situation possibly a hundred years off. At the moment these mines still haven’t given us the slightest sign of going dry anytime soon.”

The elevator rumbled as it continued on down and the light in the ceiling flickered once. She had been trying to estimate how far down they had gone and she was thinking maybe about two-hundred feet. The freight elevator was pretty slow and Rainbow Dash was starting to get a little antsy. She looked over her shoulder briefly at the empty space behind her, probably about thirty or forty ponies could fit in here if they were all bunched up together but she and Barnaby had taken it down on their own.

Finally the pace of the elevator slowed to just a crawl and it came to a stop with a dull grind as it landed at the bottom of the shaft. A red light buzzed on over the doors and they slid open to the sides to allow Rainbow Dash and Barnaby out. There was a small tunnel exiting from the elevator into a much larger chamber beyond it where Rainbow Dash could already see a bunch of other ponies moving around in. A pony in a yellow hardhat was standing right to the side of the elevator’s exit, holding a clipboard in hoof. He kind of dumbly looked back and forth between Rainbow Dash and Barnaby before shrugging.

“Governmental business, don’t worry about it,” Barnaby smiled friendly at him and led Rainbow Dash out of the elevator. He glanced at his mare companion and hummed to himself. “We’ll need to get you a hardhat while you’re down here.”

“Guess you’ve already got one, technically,” she said as she looked up at his red helmet.

“Yes, but no need to worry, there are plenty of extra supplies and equipment down here,” Barnaby said as they walked forward and into the main staging area of the mine.

Rainbow Dash took a long look around at the heart of the Oreville mining operation. As Barnaby had suggested it was a pretty big place. The ceiling was low over their heads with various lights strung up from it and electrical wires criss-crossing all over to feed them power. Various shacks made of corrugated steel and cheap building materials were set up inside it, Rainbow Dash saw one that looked like a kind of “bar” for the stallion mine workers who were on break and another few that were probably storage sheds.

And a lot of outhouses, but Rainbow did her best to ignore those.

Furthermore there were outright dozens of tunnels going off in other directions at every side of the cavern. Every last one of those tunnels had at least a rail for minecarts to travel down and a few of the bigger ones had large trams going in and out.

“Come on, we’ll hit up the head office and you can meet the mine chief and see a map of the mines,” Barnaby said and led Rainbow Dash on.

As expected, Rainbow Dash continued to get plenty of looks from the stallions down here. She didn’t notice any mare miners, which wasn’t really a surprise, probably not a job that was popular with mares. Eventually Barnaby took her past several other roughshod structures before they arrived at a squat but fairly long rectangular one. He opened up the metal door on its front and stepped inside with Rainbow Dash following him.

Inside was an assortment of lockers and metal tables set up with a few ponies mulling over charts and reports on one of the tables and another few who looked to be talking and laughing about something else entirely in the back. Boxes and crates of all sizes were also stacked up along the back wall and Rainbow was pretty sure she saw a coffee machine on top of one of them. It was really dusty inside but that wasn’t a surprise either. Didn’t stop Rainbow from coughing once or twice.

Of course once they had opened up the front door and stepped inside everypony looked up to see the two of them. And they were unsurprisingly flummoxed at the sight.

“Barnaby?” A heavyset, bearded stallion in the group near the back said as he sat up and started walking towards Barnaby and Rainbow Dash.

“Hello, Crom. How might your day be going?” Barnaby grinned.

“Uhh… was going pretty normal until now,” Crom said as his eyes wandered to Rainbow Dash, looking her up and down. “Who the-”

“The name’s Rainbow Dash,” Rainbow said with an easygoing smile and reached her hoof out.

Crom took it and slowly shook her hoof. “Pleasure to meet you.” He still seemed a bit confused.

“Rainbow Dash here is from the outside, obviously. She’s an important ambassador from another land entirely. I’ve brought her here to show her the mines of Oreville,” Barnaby said to him.

Crom frowned up at him. “This isn’t a place for tours, Barnaby.”

Barnaby just rolled his eyes and huffed. “There’s no other place more important in all of Oreville than these mines. Rainbow Dash represents a country that has never had contact with us before, she’s not from the Weeping Mountain or any small town in the mountains to the south either. She needs firsthoof experience with these mines so she can tell her home and all the other countries she travels to about them. They’re our pride and joy, Crom.”

“Oh whatever...” Crom sighed and shook his head. “If it’s that big a deal then fine, you’ve been down here enough times to know how to take it safe.” He glanced at Rainbow. “Just give the ambassador a helmet and take a radio with you just in case.”

“Thanks, old friend. I’d like to show her the current map of the mines as well, if that’s alright?” Barnaby asked.

“Go right ahead, it’s on the table over there,” Crom said and pointed to a large table next to the one the other group of working stallions were at. He then chewed his lip and spoke to Rainbow- “Not that I’m not curious about you or where you’re from and it seems like Barnaby is gonna be monopolizing your time and all. But uh, what’s the name of your country?”

Rainbow Dash chuckled and gave him a wink. “Heh, don’t worry about it dude, my home’s called Equestria and it’s an awesome place.”

“You’ll be able to read about Rainbow Dash in the paper tomorrow, don’t worry,” Barnaby said to Crom and ushered Rainbow Dash over to the other table. “That goes for everypony here.”

“Good cause I was wondering if I was seeing straight when a pegasus with a rainbow mane walked on in here,” another stallion said before Crom elbowed him in the gut.

“Be polite, idiot. She’s an important visitor to Oreville.”

Rainbow Dash just rubbed the back of her neck. “It’s totally alright, you guys can be casual around me. I actually really prefer it that way.”

“I can corroborate that,” Barnaby said.

The two of them then sidled up next to the table with the map of the mines on it and Rainbow Dash practically went cross-eyed immediately just looking at it. It was a mess of spider-webbing lines and hastily scrawled notes, some lines drawn in red, green, blue, and black with no legend she could see that helped denote their meanings. The only thing she could make out for sure was a large circle drawn near the middle of it with a gold star plastered in it—that was the staging area. But everything else was a mess. Parts of it looked like they were drawn from a bird’s eye view while others looked like a cross-section of the mine. Perhaps a trained eye for this sort of thing could decipher it but for Rainbow Dash it was just boggling.

“Grand, isn’t it?” Barnaby said with a proud smile on his face. “Hundreds of years of work is on this map. And these are just the mines of the Copper Section.”

“Very grand,” Rainbow attempted to sound genuine.

“We’ve got miles of tunnels and mine shafts mapped out here, obviously it’s far too large of a place to show you around all of it so I’m going to take you to one of the newer areas that we’ve been working on lately. There’s a rich mineral vein that was uncovered and we’re building the necessary tunnels to mine it all out as efficiently and quickly as possible,” Barnaby said.

“Geez, you’re sounding like you’re a miner instead of a constable,” Rainbow Dash said.

Barnaby grinned. “I just have a friend on the inside who I talk with about this stuff occasionally.” He glanced over at Crom and nodded.

“You’re always the one who brings it up whenever we meet up,” Crom mumbled.

“Anyways-” Barnaby said back to Rainbow Dash. “Let’s get you that helmet.”

---

Rainbow Dash stepped out of the main office with a yellow hardhat on her head and Barnaby came out with a radio clipped onto the front of his suit with an earpiece in his right ear and a small microphone in front of his mouth.

“Alright, where to now?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“The tram,” Barnaby pointed to a large platform near the south side wall of the staging area to the left of the main office.

The two of them started walking towards it and Rainbow Dash glanced at his new piece of equipment. Tech like that wasn’t unheard of in Equestria and the places around it but it was still uncommon and Rainbow Dash admittedly had no idea how it worked. Might as well have been magic. She remembered the ponies in the Metal Mountain back in the True North had similar devices. “So how well does that thing actually work?”

“Depending on how far or deep you go there can be interference but we’ve got a lot of signal boosters and auxiliary stations set up through the mines to help that. After all these are specifically designed to be used down here and we’ve had a long time to adjust and improve them. You could contact me on this from the surface if you had your own radio,” Barnaby told her.

“Cool,” she nodded. “So a lot of the ponies down here seem to know you. You that famous around the city or something?”

“Hah! Not really,” Barnaby laughed. “You see, Crom and I are actually old friends from school. I’ve known him since I was just a young colt. And you obviously already know how much interest I take in our mines, I come down here fairly often to either talk with him or research them myself when I’m off duty. So a lot of the regulars working here have gotten to know me as well.”

“Crom seems like a decent guy too.”

Barnaby nodded. “He is, a no-nonsense type who has kept the mines running smoothly ever since he came to be in charge. Things’ll be great for years down here with him.”

Rainbow Dash and Barnaby walked past a group of miners who were playing some sort of dice game outside a steel hut. They briefly paused and tried to act like they were busy until the two ponies passed by, something that got a brief smile out of Rainbow. After that the constable and the ambassador made the short trip to the tram station—currently empty of any tram but with a couple dozen miners carrying pickaxes and other tools waiting on it. Rainbow and Barnaby had to step up onto a bridge that went over the tram line to get to the platform, then walking up a few steps to stand on the metal station with the miners.

“What’s up,” Rainbow Dash casually said as she waved to the surprised and curious miners.

A few of them gave waves back and one or two even managed a “Hello” or a “Hi” before Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes.

“Relax you guys, I know you haven’t seen a pegasus before but I’m not going to bite your heads off. Me and Barnaby here are just checking out the mines—and my name’s Rainbow Dash by the way, hope you have a fun time working,” she winked.

That bit of levity at least seemed to improve the mood on the platform and most of the miners gave her friendly smiles before returning to their own business and talking with each other.

“I think it’s good that you’re not actually some stuffy ambassador,” Barnaby said.

“So do I,” Rainbow Dash said and looked down both sides of the tram station. “Sooo, when’s the tram coming?”

Barnaby nodded to their left and towards a tunnel in the wall of the staging area that the rail emerged from. “It’ll be coming from there and it shouldn’t be too long. Don’t know when the last one came but if this many miners are waiting then it can’t be much longer.”

Impatient as ever, Rainbow Dash couldn’t help but keep looking down that tunnel in the hopes that soon she’d see the tram emerging from it. Turns out though that she heard and felt it first.

The heavy sound of slowly spinning metal wheels over iron came from the tunnel and the entire rail line and platform shook as the tram approached. Rainbow squinted her eyes at the dark tunnel as a light emerged from around the corner and the tram came into view. A white front car came out of the tunnel with a strong light attached to its front, the cab was completely closed and she could see a single stallion driving the tram from the inside. More cars came out until the tram ended at eight total segments, all of them painted white with heavy steel doors on their right sides for entering and exiting. All of the cars were enclosed just like the front one, which probably made it a lot safer for riding through these tunnels.

Rainbow Dash tilted her head though when she saw it lumbering towards the station on its many grooved wheels that perfectly fit over the rails on the ground.

“How’s that thing move anyways? What powers it?” She asked Barnaby.

“Electricity,” Barnaby said and pointed down at the track. “There’s a special rail in the middle of the track which electricity flows through and into the tram.”

“Oh. We’ve got trains back home but they’re all powered by like steam or whatever,” Rainbow said.

The tram came to a stop in front of the platform, long enough that it took up pretty much all of the space in front of it, and the doors opened up to let them and the miners in. Barnaby took her to the very last car to leave the others for the miners so as not to interrupt their work. Inside it was pretty simplistic, as to be expected, with a couple of shelves for putting up your tools and rope loops hanging from the roof of the car to hold onto. The side opposite the door also had a long window running along it so you could at least look outside when you were riding, though Rainbow Dash expected it to be dark for quite a lot of the time. After about a minute the tram thrummed back to life and the wheels started to turn underneath them as it left the station.

“You’ll see a lot on our way to the newer area. But in a short while we’ll be stepping off the tram since the line doesn’t go that far yet,” Barnaby said.

“Whatever you say, I’m just following you right now,” Rainbow Dash shrugged.

“Well soon you’ll have something far more interesting to see. An active mine with dozens of ponies working on excavating precious minerals. You’ll see what Oreville is all about,” Barnaby smiled.

Rainbow Dash grinned, it might not have been as interesting and exciting for her, but she was willing to check it out. “Looking forward to it.”

---

Deeper in the mines, a newly constructed four-way intersection of tunnels sat. It was an important new juncture for ferrying materials and ponies both from one of the older groups of tunnels to some of the newer ones that were still being constructed and mined out. The intersection was supported by a series of metal struts that would be there until a few more permanent support structures could be built in. It was dusty and poorly lit with nothing but a single lamp on an extension cord hammered into the ceiling with a series of large metal staples.

“And so all I’m saying is, I think I would work just as hard if they allowed drink on the job,” a miner in a group of five others said as they walked through the intersection.

“You drink on the job and you’re liable to put a pickaxe right through your hoof,” one of the others chuckled darkly at his friend.

“Or drive one of the drills straight into the wrong wall and cause a cave-in,” another said. “And that’d end you and everypony else around real quick.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” the first one started again. “Drinking on the job doesn’t mean being drunk on the job. There’s a difference.”

“Not for you there isn’t,” the second one said.

All the others laughed at the expense of their friend after that dig and walked on through the intersection to the newer tunnels where work was being done. Already they could hear the sound of heavy equipment being used to drill and smash through the stone of the mines down here on the search for more precious veins of minerals and metals. While most of them kept on walking and talking as they went, one figure at the back of the group stopped in the middle of the intersection.

The stallion carried a heavy bag on his back that he carefully took off and placed on the ground, his hooves shaking the entire time. As the bag rested there he took a couple of unsteady steps away from it and lifted a hoof to his forehead, wiping away a waterfall of sweat. In contrast to his wet brow his throat and lips were as dry as a desert. With a last, fearful look at the bag he quickly turned around and began running back the way he had come.

Author's Note:

Definitely didn't make any last minute changes to this chapter.

Comments

[Cynderfall]

11197151
You're thinking of City Of Ember. I happen to have it on DVD.

[redmar]

I think that bag at the end is filled with explosives and that something will go wrong. That map is only understandable for those that know it I hope it hasn't cause much trouble with ponies not understanding it.

[TheCommunistDog]

K

In today's chapter: Some Fine a$$ minecraft!..... and some guy is gonna try and make the mine disaster from the hunger-games a reality!

[RoboRed]

That's not in the least bit suspicious. At all.