Rarity Gets Caught

by lord_steak

29 - Into the Underground

{I spent way, way too much time in this part of the game....}

Twilight Sparkle and Starlight Glimmer descended slowly with flailing feet and landed. As their vision cleared up, they found themselves in a tunnel of a thick sandstone deposit. The tunnel was wide enough to fit five abreast with breathing room. However, the ceiling was too low to allow any aerial mobility; even Rainbow Dash or Spitfire would struggle to stay aloft without knocking themselves against the low overhead. Wooden support beams were evenly spaced. They appeared at a four-way intersection.

“Wow. Uniform in every direction,” Twilight said, looking around.

“Yeah, I see that. Hopefully this ‘underground’ isn’t too big,” said Starlight. “What does your divination magic say?”

Twilight’s horn powered up, but a pinging noise sounded as a thin expanding circle issued from her horn. She scrunched her face, raising an eyebrow. “Wha...my magic doesn’t work normally down here! All I can sense is a vague something, and at that, only within about seven lengths!”

Starlight grumbled, “Crud. Now what?”

“There’s nothing right here. With the tunnel looking the same in every direction, I don’t know where to begin!” Twilight said in exasperation, looking around fervently.

“She went that way,” Starlight said, pointing to the south.

Twilight took a breath and said like a condescending mother, “Now Starlight, I know you want to find her. But you shouldn’t let your imagination run away with you and act on false hope.”

“Twilight...,” Starlight began.

As her horn lit up again, Twilight kept going, “I’ve already begun analysing this strange field that disrupts divination magic.”

“Twilight,” Starlight urged.

Still ignoring her, Twilight continued, “Until we have proof, we cannot proceed with any real chance of locating Trixie.”

“Twilight!” Starlight shouted in exasperation.

Twilight shook her head in surprise, but her horn still held the small charge it had. She blinked several times with her mouth slightly parted. Shutting her jaw, she cocked her head to the left and raised her left eyebrow, saying, “Is...why are you shouting, Starlight?”

Pointing downward, Starlight condescendingly grumbled, “She left hoofprints.”

Twilight looked down. Among the sandstone was a thin interbedded deposit of shale that was noncontiguous, but had been marked by pony hoofprints. These were too small to be a horse, and spaced in a way that could only come from a pony at a full canter. Twilight blushed and shrank back, muttering, “Oh. I...oh. Wow. I’m sorry for doubting you, Starlight.”

Starlight frowned, but said calmly, “It’s fine, but there’s no point in staying here.”

The two trotted after the hoofprints, following the prints along their last-seen trajectory through the gaps where the shale bed was gone. They passed multiple intersections, turned west, headed north a bit later, and followed Trixie’s trail through a thin pass. A few steps out into the wide corridor, a large billow of fire leapt all around Twilight, as though there was an oversized blowtorch under her. A woman voice over an unseen P.A. system announced, “Twilight Sparkle triggered a Trap!”

Twilight yelped and jumped straight up, even though the fire was semitransparent. A similar disembodied voice nearby said, “Oops! Fire Trap! Blow the Trap away!”

“Twilight!?!” Starlight shrieked in terror.

Still with her horn charged, Twilight furled her brow, looked at the fire surrounding her, then calmly said to Starlight, “It...doesn’t hurt. It’s like it’s not even there, except that it’s not letting me move at all.”

Starlight forced deep breaths to slow her lungs to a normal speed. She looked the flames up and down, and said, “Uh, Twilight? Is it me, or does this fire look a little funny? It’s kinda boxy.”

Twilight pursed her lips a moment, then nodded. “You’re right. It’s pixelated. But why?”

“‘Pixelated?’ Never heard that word before,” Starlight said.

“I’m not surprised,” Twilight answered. “I hadn’t heard the word before going to Canterlot High. When that world’s Applejack and Rainbow Dash played something called a ‘video game’ there, there was this kind of boxiness to what was on the screen...though not this pronounced. This is pretty severe.”

“You’re getting yourself into sidebars again.”

Twilight grimaced. “Oh. Sorry. Heh heh. Anyways, I asked Pinkie why it looked so, and she said all video games are pixelated to some degree. It comes from old television screens having miniature lights on them, called pixels, that change colour and brightness to create—”

“Twilight! Now’s not the time!” Starlight yelled, her face vexed. “That voice from...wherever it came said to ‘blow the trap out!’ So, blow the trap out!”

“How? This isn’t exactly a birthday candle,” Twilight quipped. Starlight shrugged with gritted teeth and annoyed eyes. She walked up and blew as if it were a birthday candle anyway, despite the funky flame standing twice Twilight’s height. She huffed and puffed at the flame to no noticeable effect whatsoever while Twilight rolled her eyes. She muttered under her breath, “Listening never was one of your strong points....”

“Well, what do you suggest!?” Starlight barked.

Twilight tapped her chin for a moment, then her face lit up. She flapped her wings hard, repeatedly. The flames shrank, then returned to their overblown height, hitting no points in-between the two sizes. She flapped faster. The pixelated fire shrank, then disappeared. A strange music box chimed nearby as the woman over the P.A. said, “Twilight Sparkle escaped the Trap.”

Starlight looked all around her, but could not find the music box, nor the P.A. speakers. She grumbled, “This is the strangest place I’ve ever been to. And I’ve seen plenty of strange places.”

“It’s certainly up the list for me,” Twilight snorted. “A pixelated illusion of a fire that keeps one from moving? That’s just bizarre. Who thought of such a thing?”

Starlight rolled her eyes. “I seriously doubt we’ll find a plaque with all the architects’ and miners’ names, or a list of whoever all donated money to carve out these tunnels.”

Twilight continued grumbling unfazed. “Why the pixellation? Did we stumble into a video game or something? It’s rubbish to even entertain such an impossibility.”

“Let’s just get going before something else weird happens,” Starlight sighed.

Twilight further powered up her horn, but it was to the same effect. From the pinging noise, a silver speck shined on the floor behind Starlight, and two golden sparkles shone on the wall. As the expanding circle disappeared, so did the flecks of light. As her horn resumed the soft glow from earlier, Twilight said, “I think there’s something behind you.”

Starlight turned around, and saw nothing. She snarked, “Oh, yes, the dangerous, dangerous air is gonna pounce me! So many perils await from the lightly wafting dust! Let me just scoop this up with my hooves, and—”

“Starlight Glimmer disengaged a Trap!” said the woman over the unseen speakers. Starlight looked down to see some square device in her hooves, red with a thick arrow pointing east.

Twilight talked over the other voice that had started, “Do you know a one-centimetre levitation spell? Running on such a puff of air would keep us from triggering these traps.”

Starlight looked over the square in her hooves. She muttered, “I do, but...what is this thing?”

“Some kind of weird tech. It held me in place when—oh! I get it!” Twilight said with a sudden smile. “Hologram projection. That’s why it looked like there was a fire around me, but I couldn’t feel it. And while that was going on, it just halted my momentum.”

“A ‘hologram,’” echoed Starlight questioningly with a hint of irritation.

Twilight said, “It’s like an illusion spell, except it’s done by technological means.”

“Whatever. Why they made such a contraption is beyond me,” Starlight muttered with waning patience. “I’m not carrying it around.”

Starlight dropped the object behind her and the two took off again, this time levitating barely above the floor. After another minute of following the interspersed shale bed, they ran out of visible hoofprints. Twilight and Starlight stood at a four-way intersection with no shale to follow in any direction. Twilight sighed, “Oh. I was afraid this would happen.”

“Is there something we can do to leave a marker here or something?” Starlight asked, looking between the different paths. “We can’t just quit now!”

Twilight squinted as she looked down the corridor. She said, “It looks like there’s a human male standing there a little ways ahead, at the next intersection. Let’s go ask him.”

The two hurried along the longer stretch without the tunnel meeting another, stopping at the large, bearded, barrel-chested man. Starlight said, “Excuse me, sir, but have you seen a blue pony run by here?”

“Starlight Glimmer talked with someone,” announced the woman over the P.A.

“You’ve got a Sphere or two? If so, I’ll trade you something,” the man answered.

Twilight raised an eyebrow, “You...want us to trade you a ‘sphere’ for information??”

“We, uh, don’t have a sphere with us,” Starlight sadly admitted.

The man answered, “I’ll be seeing you, then!”

As Twilight and Starlight ambled away, Starlight muttered, “What a weird thing to ask for. Spheres?”

Twilight shrugged and quipped, “Some ponies juggle geese.”

Starlight paused, then said, “Also weird, but seriously, who hunts spheres as a living?”

“Uh, Starlight? This is the world where they trap wild animals in hoof-sized balls, or spheres if you would rather, and make them duke it out for money and fame,” Twilight said snidely. “You shouldn’t expect anything here to make sense.”

“It just doesn’t look like a good spot to find the stupid things, if you ask me,” Starlight said. “I mean, if he’s gonna be a sphere hunter, why is he hanging out underground? A sporting goods store would serve him better, or a pool hall. Or hey! Why not get those enslavement balls, and buy ‘em by the crate? Or how about he really goes to the extreme? Why doesn’t he, I dunno, fly some mechanical thing, since they like those machines around here, and go around the world and delve into old ruins to find them? Have him and his two closest buddies do the away missions while his relations run the vessel. I mean, really. It’s just asinine, no matter how you spend your days looking for them.”

“Eh,” Twilight sighed, rolling her eyes. “It’d be more marketable to have a trio of adolescent girls do the ground-based legwork than three burly guys. And have them stomp out a revived threat from a thousand years ago.”

Starlight stopped, her entire mouth curled in incredulity as her eyes squinted from the same. Twilight turned and looked at her. Mouthing moving silently, Starlight’s larynx took a break. She gestured, despite no words leaving her lips. A moment of this later, Starlight inhaled deeply, and squawked, “What in the world, Twilight?!!”

Twilight snickered and said, “You said something absurd, thus did I do the same as a reflection for you. Besides, marketing firms like to use the young and beautiful for adverts, especially girls.”

Starlight slowly shook her head, before waving dismissively at Twilight. She grumbled, “Just forget it. Let’s find this guy his damn sphere or two.”

“Language,” Twilight urged motheringly. Her horn flared up for a moment, resulting in the same pinging and circle as before. As the glow slacked back to the soft and steady one Twilight had been holding, a gold sparkle shone on the wall. They walked over toward where it was as Twilight said, “Wonder what that was about.”

As the stood in front of that point, Starlight said, “The wall is bulging slightly.”

“Hmm,” Twilight hummed, tapping her chin.

“What do you think? Should we dig here?” Starlight said.

“Well...it’s worth a shot,” said Twilight with suppressed hesitancy. “Hopefully this won’t end up as a ‘it seemed like a good idea at the time’ moment.”

As she got out her pickaxe and shovel, the woman on the P.A. announced, “Twilight Sparkle is digging for Treasure!”

Twilight’s shovel clanged against the stone, to no effect. The noise came from Twilight’s horn again. Some disembodied voice nearby, just like the one earlier, said, “Something pinged in the wall! 4 confirmed!”

“Fine. Pickaxe it is,” Twilight grouched. She looked at the hammer that also came with the kit, then at the tan and brown chunk of wall in front of her. Pursing her lips, she telekinetically took the pickaxe and smacked a random spot in the tan area. Beige rock appeared behind where she struck, while the surrounding parts cracked. She hit again, and again, exposing more beige underneath. On the fourth strike, something not-beige was there. There was a green crystal with a bit of yellow on it. Carefully Twilight picked away at the surrounding rock, until this crystal had everything over it removed. It was the colour of an emerald, but with a lightning bolt upon it. She pulled it out with her telekinesis, then hit somewhere else. Here was something yellow. A moment of careful strikes later, she removed a yellow octahedral crystal, one with four instances of twinning. Two pickaxe strokes later was something brown and curled. Soon Twilight freed a petrified crinoid. Something else had also been revealed from that excavation. Two more pickaxe strokes, and she freed an opalescent heart.

The nearby voice said, “Everything was dug up! A Heart Scale was obtained. A Root Fossil was obtained. A Max Revive was obtained. A Thunderstone was obtained.”

“No spheres, though,” Twilight said with a frown. “But it was kinda fun. I wouldn’t mind doing this for a little while. I like guessing what I’ll find!”

“Twiliiight...!” Starlight whined with petulant impatience. “Trixie, remember?!”

Twilight blushed and nodded. “Sorry. Let’s keep looking.”

A few moments later, Twilight and Starlight were both catching their breath after each finished another dig. As Twilight wicked the sweat from her brow, she grouched, “One. One sphere after ten digs. Everything dug up each time, too. Far from perfect.”

An adolescent human male was passing by, stopped, and glared at her. He snapped, “And you’re complaining!? Everybody else is up to their ears in them spheres, trying to find something more useful, but you’re not satisfied because one sphere mussed up your perfect record!? You know what? Screw you, pony! Screw you! Screw! You!”

He stormed off, shaking his head and throwing his hands in the air in frustration. Starlight quietly seethed, “That’s what we’re looking for, buddy. We’re trying to find the effing things so we can get some info.”

Twilight set her pickaxe down, but the soft glow continued. She panted, “I’m gonna try one more time. If that doesn’t do it, we’ll have to hope this ‘Pale Sphere, Size 17’ is worth enough to that man.”

Blowing off the woman over the P.A., Twilight found another twinkling on the rock and went for it. The voice nearby said, “Something pinged in the wall! 2 confirmed!”

The wall here was nearly completely tan. Three hits, and something dark presented itself. Picking it out, Twilight sighed, “This is, what, our fifth Moonstone?”

“Sixth,” Starlight corrected her. “I got two in my last dig.”

Twilight muttered through her efforts, “Well, if that, uh...pleasant young man could be trusted, we hit the motherlode, when we just wanted what everypony else, or rather, everybody else, usually digs up.”

Then Twilight exposed something bright red. Peeling away the rock, she exposed a chunk of some red thing, shaped like it started off as a kite shield, but since has had its edges heavily rounded. The nearby voice said, “Everything was dug up! A Moonstone was obtained. You obtained a Red Sphere, Size 20!”

Twilight looked at the red thingamabob. She barked, “This is not a sphere! It’s not even close! While the so-called ‘Pale Sphere’ isn’t either, it at least could pass for one at a distance!”

Starlight scoffed, “Weren’t you the one who a few minutes ago said we shouldn’t expect things to make sense in this world?”

Giving up, Twilight closed her eyes instead of arguing the point. She mumbled, “You’re right. I guess it can’t be helped. Let’s go see that person.”

They meandered back toward that man, Twilight's horn still glowing quietly. As they neared him, Twilight slowed down and stopped, her face most-pensive. Starlight turned around. Raising an eyebrow, she asked, “What is it?”

Twilight pursed her lips, then said, “Go on and talk to him. I’ve got something on my mind.”

Receiving the red “sphere,” Starlight gave Twilight a long look. A harsh quiet followed. Starlight slowly said, “Okay then. I’ll...I’ll just get that info.” Starlight looked at Twilight a moment as she continued forward, then, simply looked at the large human. She stood in front of the man and said, “We got a couple of spheres for you. Now please tell us what we need to know.”

The woman over the P.A. announced the same as before, “Starlight Glimmer talked with someone.”

The man said, “You’ve got a Sphere or two? If so, I’ll trade you something.”

Starlight paused at how his pitch, inflection, and pacing had all changed none in the interim. She held up the two spheres in her telekinesis and said, “Yes...trade spheres for information. Which way did a blue pony go?”

The man said nothing, but showed her five of the technological squares, much like the “trap” she had inadvertently “disengaged” earlier. Starlight blinked several times, then gritted her teeth as the corners of her mouth turned downward. She snarled, “You mean to tell me...that after we busted our flanks digging...trying to find these spheres...so we could trade you that for information...all you are is a merchant, who doesn’t know what I was asking, and these ‘spheres’ are your goddamn currency!?”

The man said nothing, but still had the same serene grin on his face, nonplussed at her ranting. She threw both spheres and caught him in the face. Whirling around and stomping as she departed, she heard him say the same as before, “I’ll be seeing you, then!”

Starlight groaned and growled, not even trying to form syllables. She marched back to Twilight, whose horn pinged with that radiating circle every few seconds while she was talking to herself. As Starlight neared, she could discern Twilight’s words. “No...adjust the waveform to compensate for...no, closer, but...reduce it by forty-five hertz, and...no, that’s too big a drop....”

Starlight took a deep breath and asked, “What are you doing?”

“The same thing I’ve been doing since almost immediately after we arrived,” said Twilight. “Trying to isolate the field harmonics that reduces my divination magic to a short-range ping.”

“That’s why your horn’s been glowing?” Starlight asked. Disappointment overtook her expression and voice. “I thought you’d have it perfectly on the first go. Why’s the math fuzzy?”

“The exact conversion rate between Equestrian magic and the tech that made the field isn’t clear,” said Twilight. “I’ve narrowed it down to a small range, but even with that, the gap that follows when you have a logarithm’s base directly impacted by the substitution rule in double integrals via that change in value is substantial. The—”

“I got it! You have to finish testing!” Starlight hastily interrupted. Caught between impressed at skill and turned off by boasting, she said, “Geez, you can do unnecessarily complicated math in your head like that?”

“Energy conversion between two worlds is always a mess,” Twilight answered as another ping left her horn. “Wish it wasn’t so, but at least I’ve had some practice.”

“...I’ll take your word for it,” Starlight said flippantly. Twilight’s horn charged, and instead of the circle with its ping, a wispy trail lead down the corridor, back towards where they were digging. Starlight’s eyebrows raised. “I hope that’s a good sign.”

“I’m picking up good vibrations!” Twilight cheered, filling up with excitation.

“Well, don’t just stand there! Let’s roll!” Starlight insisted with a smile.

The two ponies galloped down the corridor, around a corner, took a right, and continued on, following the blue-grey wispy line. Another corner later, and they found themselves charging northward down a long straightaway with no intersection tunnels, not even the thin ones. Once it came to an intersection, the line continued north, and again through the second intersection, but it turned left at the third. Starting west, they quickly found the trail turned north again, into one of the thin tunnels where Starlight had to follow Twilight. They had little room to turn themselves around where they found the trail stopping against the east wall. With some effort, and her backside scraping against the rock for a moment, Twilight turned herself around.

“Looks like this is the spot,” said Twilight.

“Good,” said Starlight. She looked over the pickaxe and hammer in the kit, and commented, “I doubt these will get the job done before we’re both old and grey.”

Twilight smiled, “Wasn’t about to suggest that.”

Starlight’s eyebrows perked up as a cheeky smirk came to her face. “Combined pulses of Chalcitis’s Mine-Maker?”

Twilight nodded with an anticipatory grin as she pulled a pair of safety goggles from the kit and put them on, along with a dust mask. “That should take out even the most stubborn wall.”

“Count me in,” beamed Starlight as she donned the eye and breathing protection from her borrowed kit.

Hard hats placed themselves atop both heads from their respective wearers’ magic. Princess and student charged up their horns. Two dots appeared on the wall, one of Twilight’s magenta, and the other of Starlight’s phthalo green. As the two adjusted where their horns pointed, so did the dots. They fine-tuned their aim so that the dots overlapped, centred where the blue-grey wisp led them. A faint glow of their respective barriers shone in front of them both.

“On three,” said Twilight.

Author's Note:

Thus they found their way to Trixie's Secret Base, but the door's closed. Perhaps they're about to do some overkill on that wall?

A bit of a shorter chapter than usual, and here's why: I stopped partway through describing all ten of their digs, figuring it added words, but not much else. Heck, that amount would take away from the plot. I also left off the list of their unearthed treasures. That's some obscene luck she had, that is. I cannot tell you how many hours of m' life were lost down there....

Secondary classic rock reference this time is courtesy of The Beach Boys.

Next time we start things with a bang...maybe even an explosion. How Michael Bay-like. Will it be too much? Either way, what's Trixie gonna do next? What's her story? And, will they get back before Mewtwo arrives? Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading.

Comments

[Emtu]

Yeah the whole "sphere that isn't actually a sphere" thing pissed me off too.

Edit: The Japanese name for them is no better; it's just "tama" (ball). It's written in katakana, though. (Like this: タマ)

[Booster Spice]

Dan had a bit of Madness there, Going Underground.

Decent trade off really. Give the details on first event to show how they react, then come back after multiple occurances to give rough description of results, lets you have them spend years if needed. And after all that we found one twisted spoon. SPOOOONNN. :Tick:

Well, they are in a restrictred size corridor, theyre casting blast bulkhead barriers, firing up Mining Lasers, its dark, and theyre wearing goggles. I think theres going to be a Cowabunghole man.

[SWEETOLEBOB18]

I’m picking up good vibrations!”

Line from an old Beach Boys song Good Vibrations # 1 non British Blitz hit in 1966 & maybe the biggest hit the Beach Boys ever had

[Odeinoichus]

Into the Underground was not very impressive. As a chapter it is lacking certain things, namely Trixie, after all that's what the readers wanted. This would have been an excellent time to put a scene in with just her contemplating everything that has happened to her we haven't seen yet. A sort of existential moment or something where she's considering what to do now that she knows Starlight and company are in this place looking for her.

I'll be honest the Underground section of Sinnoh can be rather bland, there isn't much to do, and the meta almost realization that Twilight has in this chapter felt a bit off. The song reference thing was rather cheesy too, it didn't flow naturally as it had before, this was the first time I've actually noticed the thing, all the other previous chapters it didn't stand out to me as a 'this obvious bit of dialogue is lifted directly from a popular song of the past few decades, see, see, laugh at it because it's funny and wink, wink it's a nod to somebody else's work'.

I honestly don't get the song references thing in this story anyway. What purpose it serves other than bringing to light someone else's work and all that. Probably because in my own writing style I try to avoid lifting dialogue from other places, though it can be difficult not to make reference to such classics as 'I've got a bad feeling about this', or 'I think we need a bigger boat'. So yeah, it's probably not meant for me as a literary understanding thing.

I guess what I'm getting at here is, the overwhelming amount of peril and time-sensitive stuff going on in the main narrative, with Mewtwo rapidly approaching and Rarity needing to be brought back so that they can just leave and not deal with this fucked up Pokémon world anymore... This chapter has no conflict, it has no peril and it has no edge of your seat wondering what's going to happen next. It's a boring little side-quest that ultimately doesn't seem to go anywhere and gives the ponies nothing substantial to do. I feel it might have benefited from another pass and a bit of a re-shoot as it were.

Why waste time going back to that guy to get information when other Trainers are in the place? Surely one of them could have explained that Spheres were used to get Traps, and it would have added more interaction that wasn't just NPC related. Twilight also comes off here as being a little ill-prepared... I suppose showcasing this area of the mechanics of the game was an idea in the making since day one, but the Underground isn't exactly the best side area in a Pokémon game. Nothing like Unova's Make your Own Market Square dealie or the new Festival Plaza in Sun and Moon. It's just a massive underground network of tunnels where you can dig for fossils, evolution stones and other items that can be sold for a high price in shops like Nuggets and things. I was kind of hoping you might have found a way to make it feel more interesting, like tweaking it a bit for a world that isn't just a Video Game, making it seem more impressive than what it actually is. Or at least introduce a new character to lend a hand to the ponies or something after that farmer showed just how horrible humans could be with their guns when he hurt Pinkie. But I guess it was not to be.

Also that has to be the least suspenseful cliffhanger yet. There's no peril, no wondering what's going to happen next, just a Ho-Hum, they're about to use a battering ram for a key deal, how exciting, wake me when it's intermission.

My apologies, but after everything before, this chapter just didn't grab me like the rest.

[harts fire]

I really like this chapter it is fun and a vary good read.

[Robot972]

Damn it Twilight! So close to becoming Meta...

Also, I didn't know that thing about pixels being named that because of the lights in old TVs. Pinkie's taught me something! Yay!