It was a total blood bath, no doubt about it. Even Trixie was astounded into pure silence. But the Hat wasn't. "All of this."
"What?" Mare-do-well asked him. He seemed angry angry in a way that she had never seen him. His face wasn't red and his eyes weren't bloodshot, but she could still tell.
He fell to his knees, almost as if he had excepted defeat after all they had done tonight. "All of this... FOR NOTHING!!!" He screamed at the top of his lungs, thrashing the floor with his front hooves. She had never seen her boyfriend like this before. He was usually so calm and level headed in everything he did. Each move he made it look like he had some degree of control, with the exception of her. He never did like forcing her into anything. But this? This must have been some kind of torture for him to witness.
Trixie just stood back and watched, taking off her mask so as to get a better look at the surrounding and maybe investigate. Mare-do-well thought it was safe so she did the same. IT actually felt really good taking off her mask. She'd been wearing it for hours and, frankly, she could use a cool down. "Brae?"
He was back down to a calm enough level for her to approach him now. Although now his voice was so quiet that he could barely be heard, except by Rainbow Dash. "Everything was just... a waste. The planning. The traps. The deaths. I put you in danger for no reason other than failure."
"Braeburn..." Rainbow Dash said, trying to comfort him. It was almost as if he had hit some sort of unbreakable window. "You saw a chance and you took it. Nopony could blame you for that."
"No..." His eyes were wide open, as if trying to gauge the spoke of his defeat but couldn't. "Everything was just... I don't even." He was so broken he couldn't even talk right. "You could have been killed, and it would have been my fault. I forced you into this. I tricked you into taking on a fight that could have killed you. I-"
"GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF, COLT!” Rainbow Dash had about enough of this Braeburn and wanted the old on back, so she slapped him hard across his face, knocking him to the floor and taking off his hat in the process. All he did was stare at her in shock at what she just did. "You think you’re the first pony to ever fail at something?! Well you're not! Do you know how many times I've failed? More times than I can count! And here I am! And here you are, complaining about something that wasn't even your fault! You couldn't have known what they were going to do!" She wasn't really angry with him so much as she was angry at how pathetic he just became. "But if you want to sit in the corner and cry like a foal, then fine!"
"Every pony!" Trixie called out to her comrades in arms. She had found something important, it seemed. "It seems as though the great and investigative Trixie has found something!" She held up a small charm with her magic and placed it on the floor next to Rainbow and Braeburn.
"What is it?" Rainbow asked her. It seemed familiar, like she'd seen something like that in Twilights house, but she just couldn't put her hoof on it.
"It figured that you would not know, so it seems that the great Trixie must enlighten you!" She hadn't changed at all since Ponyville. "This is a recording charm, a very high quality one at that! And it seems as though they left it behind because they knew-"
"PLAY THE DARN RECORDING!” She was up to her ears when it came to her patience threshold hold. She did not want to listen to Trixie’s loud mouth right now.
"Fine," She seemed disappointed, but Rainbow Dash genuinely did not care right now. She zapped it with her horn and then an image began to play out.
A magic screen appeared and within it was a young unicorn female, maybe in her early twenties. She had a reddish silver coat that almost seemed to sparkle and violet mane with golden streaks in it. She was not a small mare, but she wasn't fat. She was just tall and it seemed as though she took good care of herself. "Greetings, visitors! I trust you all have received my gifts?" She gave an evil smile. So it had been her that killed all these colts. Even the mauve one that had captured them had not been spared. "If you all are listening to this, than my brilliant gambit has paid off in full! You have killed all of my loose ends for me, and for that," she gave what had been a sarcastic bow, "I deeply thank you! Now then, away with the pleasantries. You may wish to know my name, and I intend to tell you, but first, let us play a little game, shall we? What is underground by a few dozen feet within a series of tunnels that has been filled with explosives? I shall give you three guesses and I will not even count the first two!"
"This griffon is talking way too much." Rainbow completely blew off the fact that they might be killed if they didn't do something.
"Give up?" She took a sinister smile as she continued. "It's you! If you are listening to this still, then you are no doubt smart enough to realize that there is nothing you can do to stop it. Now, before you all perish in the underground, there are a few things you should know. My plan isn't one of them. Now, first thing, your plan would have been brilliant had I not have put two and two together. You might have even won against us. Too bad I realized before it was too late. Secondly, your leader. Whoever led you here must have been some kind of brilliant. And whatever mare he is with he is wasted upon."
Okay, Rainbow thought to herself, that griffon is going to die.
"And lastly, my name. I am known to all who address me directly as 'Blood Diamonds'. Why am I telling you this? Because I want my name to be the last you here before you die... right... about... now. Bomb voyage.”
...
An explosion rocked the whole complex. Braeburn was still shell-shocked, so it was up to Rainbow Dash to take the reins of command right now. “TRIXIE!” She shouted at her as a thousand tons of debris began to fall upon their heads.
Almost instinctively, she knew what to do. A force field appeared all around them of magenta enveloped them into a protective shell, rescuing them from what would have been a quick and brutal death-by-boulder. The barrier quickly began to recede, however, and soon enough they were left with precious little space with only just enough elbowroom not is touching each other. “Is every pony okay?”
“We are stuck a hundred feet underground with a thousand tons of rock trying to crush us!” Rainbow did not feel like dealing with any stupid questions. “NO, WE ARE NOT ALRIGHT!”
Trixie was just quiet. “A simple no would have been fine. The great and observant Trixie knows how to take a hint.” She seemed discouraged after that, or maybe she was just busy concentrating her magic into the barrier that was keeping them from being crushed. Either way, Rainbow Dash was not happy about this situation.
However, she shouldn’t have taken it out on Trixie. What she asked was only a standard question and yelling at her wasn’t going to make anything better, especially with them not having much oxygen to spare. “Trixie,” she started out strong, but went into a mumble. “I’m…”
“I’m sorry?” She was still intently focused on her current job.
“I’m…” Rainbow simply couldn’t bring herself to say it. Not because it was Trixie, however, well, maybe a little. It was because she wasn’t use to apologizing about anything.
“The great and concentrating Trixie still cannot ma-“
“I’m sorry!” They both seemed surprised to hear her spit it out like that. “It wasn’t your fault we’re in this place and you are only helping. I’m sorry for yelling at you.”
“The great and merciful Trixie acc-OW!” Rainbow Dash was getting tired of her doing that, so she punched her in the arm. “Fine. We get the idea. So what is our leaders great plan for freeing us from such a dark and horrid abyss?”
“I… I don’t really know.” Rainbow Dash hated not knowing what to do. If she wasn’t in control, she was always around somepony who was, and that made her feel safe. It made her feel like she actually had some level of control over the situation. But now? Now they were stuck underground with almost no way to make it out. Trixie had upped her magical game, sure, but she was exhausted and they were lucky to still be alive. She doubted she knew how to do a magical blast and, even if she did, she was probably too tired to even use it. “You wouldn’t happen to know a teleportation spell, by any chance, would you?”
“Trixie was currently working on the mastery of such a spell, she hasn’t gotten the hang of it quite yet. Mastery of teleportation spells is elusive, even for I, the great Trixie.” Even being buried deep in the earth still didn’t mellow her out at all. “For all Trixie knows, it would take nothing less than a miracle greater than the great and powerful Trixie to save us from these depths.”
Rainbow Dash was tempted to punch her in the arm again, but decided against it. If they were going to die here, then at least they could go out how they would have wanted: Trixie not shutting up and Rainbow with her Braeburn, shell-shocked and all. Indeed, it seemed like they would die right then and there had the impossible not happened again.
It seemed like a blazing inferno cut through all the rocks and boulders. Rainbow Dash nor Trixie could even fathom the kind of raw magical power it would take to melt through all those layers of dirt and earth. Even Braeburn got off his plot to see what was going on. “What in tarnation?”
They could see the faint glow of a horn maybe 50 yards away. Eventually, it got closer and closer and closer still until they could actually make out who the hay it was. And when they did, they were all surprised. “You all look like something the manticore dragged in.”
“Summer?” Rainbow Dash called out. She could hardly believe her eyes as she saw him walking casually toward them like there was nothing at all wrong with the world. “Well,” Rainbow Dash began trying not to act like she was too surprised at what she saw, “I’ll be darned.”
She could see the faint flicker of a smile beneath his flaming horn. “Well now, I couldn’t in conscience leave you all down here to die, could I?” His voice arrogant, almost as bad as Trixie’s, only not near as boasting. “Besides, I owe you guys one.”
“How the hay do you owe us one?”
He just shrugged. “You all let me live.”
“But you stayed behind and fought that crazy griffon.”
“Hey! That’s my sister you’re talking about! And besides, I’m a practical kind of guy, I’m sure we can work something out for payment if you feel so badly about me saving you for no reason.”
“Well you did try to kill us earlier.”
He took a moment to respond back “Are you still on about that? Alright. Fine. We’ll just call it even.” He stretched out his neck and popped it. “This is going to take a lot of concentration so none of you can move. Got it?” They all nodded and his horn began to glow brightly. Suddenly, the force field that Trixie had formed began to glow with an outer orange along with the inner magenta. It began to move out of the crevice it had been stuck in and, soon, it was moving through the tunnel made from fire and earth. Summer began to levitate himself and, for a moment, it seemed as though he didn’t have it in him to rescue all four of them. But that thought was soon banished as his eyes began to glow a bright shade of red. They began to move faster and faster through the cavern until, finally, they could see some faint sunlight. Going faster and faster, he propelled the team of heroes through the never ending whole in the earth, finally setting them free and sending them frying briefly as though they had been shot out of a cannon. “GOOMPH!” Summer was the first to hit the ground. He was sent rolling across the debris of the abandoned apartment complex. “Owww, he moaned in pain.
The other three heroes landed safely, though, thanks to Trixie’s force field, and it was then that they actually got a good look at what condition their savior was in. He was covered from head to toe in bruises. His coat had small cuts all over it and his horn was pitch black. He must have been totally exhausted from losing to the three of them, then fighting another mercenary roughly on par with him, and then the melting of solid rock to rescue them. Truly, this stallion was a cut above most other unicorns. Trixie was the first pony to walk over to him. “We should help him.”
“What?” Braeburn and Rainbow Dash both said at the same time. It wasn’t that they were against it, but the very thought of it being Trixie’s idea struck them as kind of strange.
“This one has aided us in a time of great need! He must be tended too at the hospital!” She used her magic to levitate him. “You, Braeburn, shall be the one who carries him!” She used her magic to throw him at the earthpony. It did not work.
“Owww…” Summer Blaze said weakly as he crashed into Braeburn.
Trixie’s eyes shifted from side to side as she the result of what she had done. “… Then the great and altruistic Trixie shall be the one who carries our savior to the retrieve medical attention!” Therefore, as they discarded their costumes and made their way to the hospital, Rainbow Dash took a moment to look at the wreckage that they left behind them. It wasn’t pretty, but at least they survived this adventure. Eventually, they made it to the hospital and they were able to check Summer Blaze in. It would be a few days until they saw him again, and with everything that went on, they all agreed that they deserved some respite.