//------------------------------//
// Mountain Mysteries 
// Story: Down into the Deep 
// by DenyTheWitch 
//------------------------------//

Ryley hadn't had much time to rest and relax since the crash, his time had been spent finding food, constructing his base, and avoiding all the things in the ocean that tried to kill him. Because of all that, he sometimes forgot just how majestic this ocean could be.

At least, the parts that didn't try to kill you.

The massive kelp forests had been passed a little while ago, and they could now see the base of the island itself in the distance. Rainbow Dash had spent the entire trip staring at everything in wide eyed wonder. Pointing and shouting at everything she could see, from floating rocks to Gasopods and even the giant Reefbacks in the distance, everything seemed to catch her interest. It made the cockpit significantly smaller, a Seamoth was meant for one pilot, and just the pilot, and certainly not an extra hyperactive tiny horse as a passenger.

It hadn't been hard to get rainbow into the Seamoth, while she had a rather amusingly startled reaction to him resurfacing with it, she quickly caught on to his meaning, and climbed into the cramped confines to the Seamoth cockpit. She had seemed slightly unnerved when he went straight down with the seamoth, but after that the ocean proved a handy distraction.

That was also around the time he started thinking of Rainbow Dash as a she. He didn't have much to base that on honestly, the voice which could be the deepest most masculine voice there was among Pegasus as far as he knew. But it sounded feminine to him so she it was, it was better than referring to Rainbow as it anyway.

So anyway, Rainbow Dash, a she, and she while at first she had spent the trip suspiciously staring at him, now she was taking this little trip to gawk at practically everything they saw in this strange ocean. In some ways it was starting to bug Ryley, but on the other hand, he could understand it, if he hadn't been so busy trying to survive he probably would have spent more time gawking at this strange ocean himself. "Honestly I probably did gawk a little at a few of these things at first, definitely stared at the first Reefback I saw." But more than that, it was nice to just see anyone aside from himself do anything in this ocean, Rainbow Dash's wonder just served as a small reminder that he wasn't alone on this planet anymore, okay Rainbow wasn't human, but she wasn't some stupid alien fish either.

There was also the fact that Rainbow kept chatting about everything she saw, now of course Ryley couldn't understand a word of it, but the more Rainbow talked, the more data his PDA acquired and the sooner they could have proper translated conversations. "Then we won't have to play charades every time we want to talk about something."

It also helped that Rainbow looked genuinely adorable as she did all this, it was almost enough to make him forget the little ambush she'd pulled in the base.

Almost.

By this point they'd cleared the second kelp forest and now there wasn't much to see, except for the rising pillar of stone in front of them. "We're here." He said with a flourish, grandiosely waving his arm in the direction of the Island. 

Rainbow Dash stared at him for a few moments until he lowered his arm sheepishly, then turned her head to stare at the approaching mountain. "Still charades, okay then."

Compared to the ground around it, the underwater part of the island wasn't impressive, the same dull grey as the sea floor surrounding the island, but it's size certainly made it stand out, and it was at least interesting enough to keep Rainbow's gaze as they approached. Ryley hadn't explored too much of the island when he was last here, the impending arrival of the Sunbeam and the Alien structure that had ended up shooting it down had been somewhat distracting, he did remember that the nearest beach was a but further past this part of the Island, so he drove on past despite the questioning glance from Rainbow Dash as he did so, though she didn't do much more than that. And as they started to rise, getting closer to the beach, an idle thought stuck him.

"I wonder if she remembers the alien monolith?"





The submarine itself that they where in was pretty cramped, with Rainbow Dash having to squeeze herself up against the glass cockpit at Ryley's feet. And it would have been humiliating if she wasn't distracted by the ocean around them, and honestly it was pretty cool. Rainbow wasn't an egghead like Twilight or a big animal lover like Fluttershy, so maybe some of the appeal was lost in her, but right now, exploring a strange and far away ocean, she felt a bit like Daring Do, and that was never a bad thing in Rainbow's book. The fish where weird, like the ones with massive eyes filling pretty much their entire heads, or the big cow looking fish with the giant butts that farted had all the time, that had gotten a snicker out of her. 

Then there had been the massive kelp forests, with the sharp toothed fish who went swimming around carrying pieces of metal in their mouths. Some of them had tried to attack the sub which had given Rainbow a good look at their long mouths full of sharp pointy teeth. After that had been some much bigger predator fish, some of them swimming along the sea floor, all flat looking or even buried in the sand, before bursting up to charge and gobble some other unfortunate fish. Then there where the big armoured fish with heads a bit too similar to dragons for comfort. They had swam right up to the sub, and Ryley went about making a few turns to get out of their way, he didn't seem quite so amazed with this ocean either, (she was fairly sure Ryley was a he by now).

Eventually though, she saw the big cliff in front of them before being startled when Ryley suddenly loudly said something in that weird language of his and pointed his arm at the cliff, eventually Ryley eventually let his arm down after a short bit of awkward staring, and Rainbow just decided to file that under weird alien things. But when the Submarine started to rise up she realized what he was probably going for. "That must be the island, weird way to say that." 

When the sub surfaced Rainbow was immediately greeted with the sight of, well it looked a bit like a mountain, except it was really, really small. I mean sure it definitely was the tallest thing she could see right now, but given she couldn't see anything else above water, in fact when Rainbow looked back at the wreck in the distance, it honestly looked a lot taller that this tiny mountain. Yes Rainbow had seen it before, but from a distance and all by itself it had looked so much bigger, to what it actually looked like now, it was honestly pretty disappointing.

But while Rainbow was comparing the mountain and the wreck, the sub had kept moving, and when Rainbow turned around disappointment was suddenly the farthest thing from her mind. 

The sub was now past the "mountain" part of this island, coming up on a beach, but behind the beach, previously obscured by the mountain, was, well, an alien tower! And not the same kind of alien as Ryley and the wreck, Rainbow wasn't an architect or a fashion designer but even she could immediately see that this alien building was her, very different from Ryley's alien things.

It was completely black for one, and for another it was blocky, very blocky, no curves on it anywhere she could see, just blocks attached to other blocks. It was also pretty tall, obviously not as tall as the mountain, which yes Rainbow had been complaining was small, but that was small for a mountain, which was very clearly what the thing looked like. This alien building was tall for a building, it looked a bit like a tower. 

Even though she was pretty sure she'd know the answer, she still turned back to Ryley, wide eyed, and pointed at the alien tower in front of them. Ryley looked slightly smug at her face, but she saw his expression fall rather noticeably when he looked back up at the Tower. He shook his head and shrugged, Rainbow was starting to get really tired of that reaction.

When they finally landed Rainbow was the first to scramble out, desperate to stretch her legs on dry land, and to take a look at the big tower. She immediately ran off towards the alien building as soon as her hooves had touched the sand, forget exploring the ocean, an alien ruin? That was absolutely like Daring Do. She didn't get far though, before she heard some shouting from behind her. She looked back to Ryley. "What?"

He pointed at the Alien tower, shaking his head emphatically. "Rainbow Dash, carry, ne." Then Ryley pointed at the mountain. "Rainbow Dash, carry."

Rainbow simply stared at Ryley, she'd been doing that a lot lately, then she hesitantly pointed at the Tower. "I wasn't going to carry, ohhhh." Understanding slammed into her like one of Pinkie Pie's surprise parties. "We're here to get my bags and I'm pretty sure I didn't crash into that thing." Then she looked back to the tower. "But that tower looks so cool, the kind filled with booby traps and treasure and everything."

Eventually, and unfortunately, reason won out in her little internal argument and with a heavy sigh she turned her head away from the Tower and to the small boring mountain instead. By then Ryley had caught up with her and was now standing with her staring at the mountain. It was then that another problem made its presence known. 

Rainbow Dash hadn't eaten anything since her last stop, and while she herself didn't know exactly how long ago that was, she had been flying for one and a half days straight when she crashed into this island. After that she had been sleeping in that weird base, and then she had woken up and done all this. So needless to say, Rainbow was pretty hungry, and while before the adrenaline, the sadness, and then the wonder at everything around her had been sufficient distractions, now her stomach refused to be ignored.

And so it was that as Rainbow was staring at the mountain, wondering how long that would take to climb since she still couldn't fly, with the Alien Ryley standing right next to her, that a loud growl echoed from her belly, and a sharp pang of hunger struck her. 

There was a moment of silence after that, before Rainbow broke it with an embarrassed chuckle. "He he, guess I better get my bags so I can finally eat huh." Her cheeks felt a bit warm as she turned to look at Ryley, who it appeared had jumped back eight hooves and was now crouched down holding his weird blunt spear thing again. This time Rainbows chuckles where far more sincere and amused, and later accompanied by some snickering.

"What, never heard a hungry hungry pony before?" She pushed out between snickers, he looked offended and about to retort when her stomach growled again, and Rainbow clutched her guy with one hoof. Ryley started to reach for its belt before he seemed to the no better of it, then he started talking to his PDA thing, much to Rainbows confusion.

"What are you talking abo-" Ryley loudly shushed her and held up one hand with a single finger raised, then started listening to it's PDA, this time to Rainbows annoyance. "Hey don't you shush me, what are you-" Then Ryley pulled out a knife from its belt.

This time Rainbow leapt back in alarm. "Hey, what's the big idea!" But Ryley just ignored her and instead made its way to one of the weirdly small trees, which it proceeded to stab with its knife, and pulls off a strip of bark. Alarm had given way to confusion now, as Ryley, knife back on its belt, strode over to Rainbow and held out the bark. She stared at it, then sniffed it cautiously, it smelled a bit more moist than most bark, and a bit more tangy, but it was otherwise just bark, alien bark but still bark. She looked up at the aliens face.

"What's this for?" He sighed, ripped off a small piece of the bark with its hands, then stuffed said piece into his mouth. Realization then dawned on Rainbow Dash, horrible, horrible realization.

"You want me to eat BARK! Are you kidding me!" 

Ryley seemed unaffected by her outburst, instead simply shoving the bark closer to her face while chewing in a very overt fashion. Rainbow pulled her head back away from the bark, eyes fixated on the piece of wood in front of her. "No way! That's disgusting." The bark was pushed closer and Rainbow took a step back as it did so.

"You like that bark so much you have it!" She desperately twisted her head around, keeping her mouth as far away from the bark as possible while Ryley kept step with her, still holding out the bark. That was when she remembered something very simple about this Island that could solve her current problem.

It was covered in grass.

And so, as Ryley took yet another step forwards, Rainbow Dash reached down, and took a big mouthful of grass from the ground. Then she looked back up at Ryley, and started to chew enthusiastically. Still chewing, she bragged, "see, grass, I can eat this, don't need bark, nooo way." She grinned around her current mouthful. Ryley just stared at her in confusion this time, then he threw away the bark in his hand in exasperation, ranting about something, and waving his hands around while kicking a tree as he walked past it.

Rainbow sighed in relief as Ryley turned back to the mountain, bark now forgotten, and began to get into another conversation with his PDA thing while Rainbow started to graze. "This is actually really nice grass." 





Finding Rainbows bag was far less challenging that Ryley had thought it would be. There was a path up the mountain marked by weird alien lamp things, which lead up to a small clearing up the mountain. Said clearing had a severely damaged tree and a crushed bush in it, which had made it fairly obvious where Rainbow had crashed.

The bags themselves looked a bit strange, more like waist held bags around a belt, but it probably made sense for a Pegasus. The bags were also rather better off than he would have thought they'd be, it seemed like the Cave Crawlers had completely ignored them. But when Rainbow opened the bags, she was rather unhappy, and it didn't take any charades to guess why, something was missing.

And so, after Rainbow explained she was missing some kind of crystal, which did take a few rounds of charades, they had started to scour the entire mountain and all its caves. There where a few surprises in the caves, firstly yet more of the strange lanterns, and strange alien cables built into the walls. A more pleasant surprise had been finding the mountain full of lithium and shale rocks, which held among other things things, more lithium, gold and diamonds! Rainbow wasn't happy when he kept stopping to collect/smash all of these, but was quickly distracted by a far less pleasant or surprising thing in the mountain. Cave Crawlers, everywhere.

"Fuck off!" Ryley cried as he batted another leaping crawler out the air with a swing of his rifle, it would have been a waste of charge to shoot them, but he and Rainbow had already collected more than enough little scars from the crawlers for the both of them to be fed up with the things. Rainbow immediately set upon the downed crawler, crushing it underfoot (underhoof?) with particular vigour. Being the smaller of the two and lacking a Rifle with which to bat them away, she had taken the lions share of bites from the crawlers, and her initial shock at seeing him viciously stomp one to death had very quickly morphed to enthusiastic participation.

That said the crawlers bites where not deep, or poisonous or anything else that might make them dangerous. Just painful and annoying, so they didn't slow their progress down very much. Also Rainbows constant grumbling was providing the PDA with a nice supply of words to help it's translation along.

And so with the latest annoyance dealt with, and another helpful flow of what Ryley was pretty sure where yet more expletives and swears. The two continued on in search of the one particular gem that was just soo important. 

"Rainbow coloured gem, rainbow coloured gem. Maybe a memento? A family relic?" It was thoughts like that which had been running through Ryley's head when he wasn't busy dealing with Crawlers. It was obviously important, given Rainbows continued determination to search for it in spite of all the crawler injuries she had received, but in what particular way he wasn't sure. 

It was at that moment that Rainbow let out another sudden shout. Ryley whirled around rifle held in a batting grip as he prepared to fight off yet another Crawler, but instead saw the tail of Rainbow Dash as she rushed around a corner and out of sight.

"Hey, wait up!" He knew she couldn't understand him, but he hoped the shout would get the point across. Still he quickly ran after her, not counting on it. And as he rounded the corner she had disappeared behind he quickly discovered what had gotten her attention, as she was now cradling a large Rainbow colored glowing rock, about the size of his fist and perfectly smooth in her hooves. But even as he sighed in relief at this little adventure in the mountain being over, he noticed that Rainbow was not looking at the gem, but was instead staring wide eyed past a corner he had yet to see.

As he walked over to take a look for himself Rainbowdash suddenly took off running straight for whatever she had seen, Ryley let out another sigh, this one of exasperation, before he jogged round to catch up. And suddenly stop to gawk at what he saw.

The room had an opening in the roof where daylight shone down into a room full of alien structures, there where more lanterns along the side leading to a natural bridge, Hanging from the roof on either side of this bridge where two massive roof lights, which reached down to nearly level with the bridge itself. And on the bridge stood a large alien arch.

The archway itself stood over the middle of a short pathway the sides of which was lined with more of those strange alien lamps/signs. On the path just before it went under the arch was a pedestal, which reached just above waist height. All in all it wasn't the most impressive alien structure Ryley had seen, that want to the giant gun platform just outside, but it was still a bit of a shock, not to mention he had no idea what it was for. "What the hell where these aliens doing here?"





Another portal.

Rainbow had come into this cave thinking that maybe the glow might have come from the communication gem, she hadn't expected to see a practically identical portal to the one that had brought her here on this weird island. She immediately turned to Ryley, pointing at the portal. "That's what brought me here, that portal thing! How do we turn it on?"

But that very quickly seemed to be a lost cause, it was hard to read Ryley's alien features, but there by now she was pretty familiar with what confusion looked like on his face, and that was how he looked at the portal. Rainbow decided to give up on that and ran over to the deactivated portal, stopping suddenly as the pedestal in front of it opened up to lift a black box just as she got near it, but she quickly ignored that and ran on to the archway itself.

"This, this is how I got here." That just made the confusion worse. "Grrr, remember Ranbowdash, he can't understand you." Staying calm and slowing down wasn't really her strong suit, but this definitely needed the delicate tough. "Okay."

Rainbowdash pointed at herself. "Me." 

Ryley nodded.

"From far away." She waved her fore hooves vaguely up in the air.

Another nod.

"Portal." She pointed at it.

Slow nod.

"Here." She gestured to herself and the ground.

Ryley paused for a bit, seeming to think that over, then he pulled out his little tablet, no, PDA and said a few things to it, the weird voice spoke up and he nodded before looking back at her. Then he pointed at the portal and spoke, and as he did so the voice also spoke, but in Equestrian.

"You, come here, through that."

Rainbowdash paused for a moment, shocked before she quickly began to nod. "Yeah, yeah! I came here though the portal, well probably not that portal but another one just like it. And since when can the weird P-D-A thing speak equestrian?"

Ryley held up a hand, then spoke again through the tablet. "Not many words. Still learning. Stop down." Rainbow snickered, Ryley frowned. 

She shook her head and turned back to the portal, the smooth obsidian surface felt very cold to the touch, and the strange patterns felt engraved into the surface. Ryley spoke up behind her. "How it work?"

She shook her head, "Twilight used some fancy unicorn magic on it, I can't do that." But then she remembered something, and turned back to the pedestal in front of the archway. "But I remember she did something to that." As she walked over to it. Ryley also walked up to meet her at the stand as Rainbow looked it over. It opened up again as she neared, the top sliding open to lift a black box up. The pedestal and the box where covered in the same strange patterns as the rest of the device, but something about it was wrong. "It didn't look like this, it was covered in wires and stuff and the box was open." But as she reached out to the box, running her hooves over it, she couldn't seem to find any seams to open it with.

Ryley looked over the pedestal, before pulling out another strange device from his belt, a strangely shaped ring with a lightly glowing blue edge. He pointed the glowing part at the pedestal and a pale blue light emerged, washing over the pedestal. He then walked over to the arch and repeated the process before pulling out his PDA and looking it over. Ranbow watched in curiosity as he quickly poked and flicked at the tablet, before looking back at her and pointing at the pedestal. "Need to turn on. Need potenco."

Rainbowdash grumbled. "I know we need to turn it on, but how do we do that?"

Ryley looked at the archway for a moment, then looked up at the hole in the ceiling, before looking back at Rainbowdash. "Turo, ekstere."

"What?" He facehooved (facehanded?) Then he pointed at the long cables attacked to the side of the portal.

"That, go, out." Then he held his hand up high, palm facing down. "Turo."

Ranbow stared for a moment, before realization struck. "Oh, the Tower." Ryley nodded.

"Yes, Tower."