//------------------------------//
// 17. [Sunset Shimmer] Off the Assignment 
// Story: Deep Rock Equestria: Into The Abyss 
// by The Atlantean 
//------------------------------//




Full Mission Roll:
6 Eggs, 15 Apoca Blooms, Haz 3, Salt Pits
Warning: N/A, Anomaly: Mineral Mania
Machine Event: Kursite Infection
Encounters: Lost Pack
Extra Resources: Error Cube x1, Compressed Gold x1
Roll System in Phase 3




“Are you serious?” Rainbow Dash practically yelled the next morning. “We’re not ready for another Haz 4!”
Sunset sighed. “Unfortunately, that’s what we rolled today. Haz 4 in the Glacial Strata. We have to refine Liquid Morkite and find a bunch of Boolo Caps.”
“You remember what happened last time? We’re going to die!”
“It’s going to be difficult, I know,” Rarity mused. “Our upgrades are pitiful at best right now, but we can do it.”
Rainbow was having none of it. “It’s only been, what? Two missions? We can’t handle that!”
“We’re doing it.” Sunset tapped the hologram table’s controls, and the Drop Pod’s doors slid open.
“Mission locked in. Powering up Drop Pod 17-D,” Mission Control reported.
Sunset held her gaze steady as she stared at Rainbow Dash and Rarity. “Get your gear ready and see if you can get yourself some Perks. We’re gonna need everything we can bring down there.”
“I selected mine last night,” Rarity said. “I’ll be running with ‘Heightened Senses’ as my active perk and ‘Friendly’ as my passive perk for the mission. I might change my passive to ‘Thorns’, though, if ‘Friendly’ doesn’t prove all that useful.”
“I have ‘See You In Hell 2’ and ‘Thorns’,” Sunset said. “I figured dealing more damage would be useful than not.”
“Same here!” Rainbow cheered. “They hit me, I hit them right back!”
“But do y’all have ‘Thorns 2’?” Applejack asked. “Ah had the points so I put them into that. Ah have no active perks, though.”
“We can work with that,” Sunset said. “Maybe tomorrow, whether or not we fail today, we see what we can do about getting better perks and upgrades.”
“We are going to be extremely lucky if we succeed today, and you know it,” Rarity said. She walked over to the hologram table and messed with the controls. “I’ve done a little more research into the systems at our disposal. We actually can change today’s mission if we wish. The assignment mission may change to something more manageable tomorrow.”
“Well, which one do you want to do?” Sunset asked. She turned back to her own controls and searched through the available missions. There was the assignment mission in the Glacial Strata and a few others scattered about the other biomes.
“Following your suggestion about our perks, I think we should do a mission in either the Salt Pits or Radioactive Exclusion Zone to get at least two points when we return. If we select a Haz 3 mission, we can make that four points. Choosing either an Egg Hunt of Salvage Operation on top of all that will give us six.”
“That's a lot of requirements.”
“Yes, but there’s an Egg Hunt in the Salt Pits with Apoca Blooms as its secondary. Which, if we make it Hazard Level 3, gives us eight new Perk Points if we succeed because our last mission had Apoca Blooms as well.”
“I could get Thorns 2 with that and still have a couple points left over.”
Rarity smiled and locked in the mission. “That’s the point, darling.”


---------------------------------


Sunset gripped her rifle tight as the Drop Pod clanged through the relatively soft red stone that made up the Salt Pits. Through the open door, she occasionally saw a flash of white salt or the brief glow of a crystal, but otherwise, it was a never-ending sea of red.
There was the characteristic sudden drop as the pod breached the ceiling of their target cave, followed by the crashing stop and creak of metal. The ramp lowered, and Sunset leaped to the ground beside it, landing in a roll and ending on her feet. She looked back. Rainbow Dash bounded down the ramp, followed by Applejack and Rarity.
Rainbow looked the most excited, Applejack the most prepared, and Rarity the most determined. They could do this. Just a quick mission, in and out, then see what the next day brought.
Sunset fired a flare into the ceiling. The soft red rock of the Salt Pits glowed in response, reflecting her light onto the walls and salty outcroppings.
Applejack made quick work of the first patch of dirt, and they moved quickly through the tunnels and into the main cave. Sunset, remembering her first encounter with a Cave Leech, fired a flare up and rolled out of the way as a gross tentacled arm reached down from the ceiling to grab her. She pelted it with rounds until it exploded.
“Nice work, Sunset,” Rarity said. “I wouldn’t have seen that myself.”
“Could’ve used less rounds,” Sunset grumbled. “What’s our warning, by the way?”
“We don’t have one,” Applejack said. “The only Mutator for this cave is ‘Mineral Mania’.”
“Alright, then, let’s get these eggs and go home!” Rainbow called. She bounded off into the dark toward one of the many pulsing purple blobs of goop on the walls.
“Hey, wait!” Sunset yelled. She switched to her grapple gun and zipped to catch up to her friend, who was already at one of the blobs. “We need to stay together, Rainbow,” she continued once the girl was close.
“We’re fine, Sunset. We have Perks now.”
“If we were ready, we would’ve done the assignment mission today.”
Rainbow shrugged. “I guess that’s--”
“Swarmers, team,” Mission Control reported. “Lots of them, coming your way. Get ready.”
“Son of a… alright,” Sunset said. She frowned. “Rainbow, cover me while I get this egg.”
She swung her pickaxe into the goop and removed a fair chunk. Another swing made a hole big enough for her to crawl inside. She swung again and again, then checked her terrain scanner. Finding the egg on the scanner, she altered course slightly and swung a little higher.
“Eyes up! The Swarmers are on you!”
Sunset dug deeper into the organic goop as the sound of Rainbow’s minigun whirred to life. From the way the pitch rose and fell, Rainbow was spinning in a circle to get the bugs coming from every direction.
After yet another swing, she saw the greenish outline of the Glyphid egg. One final hit loosened it from the goop. As she caught it, the ground shook with the distant howl of a panicking Glyphid mother.
Mission Control crackled back on the comms again: “Swarm detected. Get ready, they’ll be with you shortly.”
“Did you just set off ANOTHER SWARM in the middle of this one?!” Rainbow Dash screamed.
“Sorry!” Sunset yelled as she crawled back out of the hole she’d dug. “I didn’t know it would happen!”
“Both of you get over here!” Rarity called from where she and Applejack stood next to the M.U.L.E.
Rainbow nodded to Sunset and took off. When she was about halfway there, she set her minigun down and waved her arms high. Sunset threw the egg with all her might, and Rainbow caught it, although she stumbled a bit from the catch. Applejack took the egg from her and hauled it back to Molly, depositing it along with some minerals into the robot’s cargo hold.
Sunset grappled to the group just as Rainbow picked the minigun back off the ground and reached them. She raised her hand high and grasped Rainbow’s.
“That was some great teamwork, Rainbow, Applejack. Let’s keep it up.”
“You betcha, Sunset,” Rainbow grinned.
“Contact!” Mission Control called. “Lock and load!”
Sunset reloaded her rifle and heard Rainbow spin her barrels around. Rarity cocked her shotgun, and Applejack tested her flamethrower. In the distance, they heard the howling screeches of the approaching Glyphid swarm, and they lept into action.
Rainbow’s minigun burred, and Applejack’s flamethrower lit up the cavern walls with eerily beautiful dancing flames. Rarity threw her auto-turret together, then dodged a slashing Glyphid. All eight of her pellets hit the bug square in the face, cutting its howl short.
Sunset fired into the mass of bugs around her, swiveling to change targets as each one went down. When her clip ran empty, however, she didn’t bother to reload. Instead, she jumped over one Grunt that got too close and slammed her shotgun down on the one behind it, crumpling its head, then blasted two others. Her hands moved quickly to replace the spent shells.
Before she could finish reloading, a Grunt Slasher sliced at her leg. She felt the cool edge of its serrated forelegs scrape (luckily) against her armor, but the bug’s attack carried enough momentum to make it hurt. At the same time, it screeched in pain as if it had sliced itself. Before it could attack again, she grappled away, landing in a roll and turning around to see her friends still fighting the rest of the horde.
Rarity’s L.U.R.E. sprang up some distance away from the main group, and a goofy image of Principal Celestia doing the cha-cha slide. Somehow, this offended the Glyphids more than being shot, and many angrily swarmed the hologram. Sunset threw her own grenade at the distracted bugs and watched as it released an electric field that slowed them.
Applejack, with nothing immediately attacking her, tossed a lumpy rectangular package into the slowed, distracted crowd, and with the press of a button, blew half of them apart and sent the other half flying.
“The wave is significantly diminished. Well done, team!” Mission Control reported.
“They’d better run!” Rainbow Dash cheered as the last remnants of the swarm skittered away into the unlit darkness. “Woo-hoo!”
“Rock and Stone, girls,” Applejack breathed.
“We rock!” Rainbow yelled.
Rarity refilled her turret’s magazine, her shoulders heaving. “Rock and Stone indeed. I’m sure we’ll see more of them soon, so stay on your guard.” She looked around. “Sunset?”
Sunset limped back to the group panting. “I’m here. One of the bugs got me. Rock on, girls.”
“Is your shield down, dear?”
Sunset checked her armor rig’s status display. “Yep,” she groaned. “Its damage meter is down about a quarter, too.”
“You best take it easy, then,” Rarity said. She sat down and started treating a nastily long cut on her arm. “My shields failed as well. I don’t think we should try taking on two swarms simultaneously again.”
Applejack set her flamethrower down briefly so she could crack her knuckles. “Ah can’t say anythin’ of the sort, but you two look hurt, so Rainbow and Ah’ll go fahnd the other eggs. If you could find some Nirta while we’re lookin’, that’d be nice.”
“Can do, Applejack,” Rarity said. “Don’t be afraid to call Molly if you need her.”
“Got it.”
While Applejack and Rainbow Dash walked to the other end of the cave, Sunset fired a flare so they could see. She sat down and shook her head clear of any light-headedness remaining. Her breath sounded a little more ragged than before.
“It’s nice to see everyone working as a team, isn’t it?” Rarity asked.
“I guess so,” Sunset replied as she kept pressure on her leg until her armor rig managed to stop the bleeding. “What kind of teamwork do you see in us?”
“Well, for starters, tossing that egg earlier. With you, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack passing it between yourselves, you made it back faster than if you carried it alone.” Rarity paused, instead concentrating on reloading for a moment.
She continued: “And then during the double swarm, we all worked close and together. I’ll admit we weren’t perfect, but we were far from how we acted back in the Fungus Bogs or even on our last Egg Hunt.”
Sunset raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying we’re getting better.”
“To a degree, yes. I’d say it’s a combination of experience, knowledge, and better equipment.”
“The L.U.R.E. was pretty funny.”
Rarity smiled. “It was, and it was also something I was afraid would happen. However, now that it has happened, I’m not so sure my worries were truly warranted. In any case, Twilight will be glad to know that it still works.”
“Is there anything we can look forward to, besides going home?”
“Barry, the kind dwarf from 17-A who’s been helping me understand everything, told me that if we complete the training assignment, we will be allowed to decorate our Drop Pod as we wish. It’s apparently a tradition from the days of Karl’s missions. Also, if I’m not wrong, we’ll soon be allowed to purchase drinks at the bar ourselves.”
Sunset grinned. “That is something to look forward to.” She stood, stretched, and fired another flare into the ceiling. “Let’s go find that Nitra before Applejack comes back.”
Rarity nodded, stood, and switched to her platform gun. “After you, Scout.”