Of Rushes and Proxies

by RedvsBlue327

Rating: teen
Tags: Random, Crossover, Human, Comedy
Length: 5321

The commander of an army combats his boredom within the peaceful rainbows and sunshine land of Equestria.

Mike, a commander of the glorious Terran Dominion has been stranded within Equestria for quite some time. So when you're stuck in a boringly peaceful land, what is a man in command of now limitless soldiers and resources to do?

Blahblahblah work in progress

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2015-01-04 17:55:27 UTC

Call of the Cider

Mike, a fearless commander of the mighty Dominion army, was sleeping away on the couch of a persistently poking purple pony.

        “Mike…” Twilight said again, now shaking the Terran’s shoulder.

        Now there are many commanders in the Dominion military. Hundreds of thousands even.

        “Mike!” Twilight was now raising her voice, but all this elicited from the commander was a snort. He rolled away from the source of the noise.

        It’s also not like these commanders were elite teams of the best in the galaxy. They were fearless and mighty, since nobody feared this mighty large category of idiots.

        And one such idiot was now being thrown off a couch.

        “Ah! What the heck Twilight?”

        “You were snoring loudly, slept through the entire morning, and did you even remember the cutecenera Pinkie is hosting?”

“The who in what now?”

Twilight shook her head and checked a box on her list, she didn’t have time to deal with the Terran as she went to the kitchen where her baby dragon Spike was cooking dinner.

        Mike got up and stretched. He’d woken up to worse. Angry superior officers, pranks from peers, the enemy tearing down his bedroom door with cannons, acid, and/or plasma. “Hey Spike, can you save some of that food for me?” He called over his shoulder as he walked to the back door.

        Mike stepped outside before he could hear Spike’s response, and looked over the glorious sight of the sprawling military complex in Twilight’s back yard. Structures of varying purposes were scattered about, occasionally glowing until they popped more troops into existence using the finest technologies in Terran production ingenuity, with such vigor and impressive show not ever seen before in the land of Equestria.

        Then Mike realized he could’ve checked on his main base from his helmet’s overhead view, and promptly shunned the outside in favor of laying on the couch.

        Before he could be reunited however, another of Twilight’s companions/friends, this one a rainbow maned, Teal furred, annoyingly brash, once a target of his airfleet in that incident with the dragon, pegasus named Rainbow Dash, ambushed his path.

        “Hey Mike, I need to borrow something real quick.”

”Ah,” Mike thought, “Trying to swindle me from more of Applejack’s cider eh? Not a chance lowly noob, this is for officers of the Dominion sucker!”

        Rainbow kicked his kneepad to shake him out of his thoughts.

        “Ow! What is it you feathered rat?!”

        Rainbow probably chose to ignore this, seeing as how…

        “I need to borrow one of your flying machines.”

        “What? Why?”

        “Applebloom is trying to get a cutie mark, and nothing I’ve tried worked. Then I thought, ‘well, what if it’s not for Equestria?’” She walked toward a window and pointed outside toward Mike’s base. “Then I thought of you weirdo’s camping outside Twilight’s tree home. And that’s why I’m here. So, which flying craft should we use? How about the ones you took to the Cloudsdale competition? Those were kinda cool.”

        “No.”

        “What?”

        “I’m not gonna let some small horse alien use such high level machines.” Because that would take work, and he wanted to go back to sleep.

        Rainbow was displeased. “Oh? You don’t want to help Applejack’s little sister?”

        Wait, what?

        “A darn shame, guess Applejack will have to give her leftover cider to more helpful folk, like certain pegasi giving her family awesome cutiemarks.”

        Ohshitnothecider.

        “Hold on! Uh… it’s… an issue of control.” Mike wiggled his fingers. “How are you or the kid going to run the ship without these?”

        “I dunno, guess you’re gonna have to work that out.” Rainbow turned back around as Spike exited the kitchen carrying Mike’s dinner. “Oh sweet, pancakes! Can I have some?”

        “Uh, actually they’re for Mike.”

        “Oh really? Well I’m sure he won’t mind if I have some.” She scooped the whole plate of food into her mouth before Mike could even protest.

        “I’ll be back with Applebloom soon. See ya!” Dash then trotted out of the library. All Mike could do was curse and rage in his head.

        “What was that about?” Spike asked.

        Mike only vaguely heard him before formulating a plan. “Hey uh, I got some stuff I need to get together, talk to you later.” He hastily left to the backyard to rally his plan into motion. This blackmail by technicolor donkeys would not stand.

[Page Break]

        For the last hour, activity within the base had been continuous and bustling as troops and airships were set up on patrols that would actually make the base secure, rather than what they’d done ever since they’d arrived in Equestria, which was wander aimlessly with no attention to anything.

        So after intense work, the military base finally lived up to expectations in security, now being able to repel even the toughest of wandering foals.

        Mike directed the final touches hastily however, he didn’t know when Applebloom and the cider fiend would show up, and so his personal vanguard was on edge.

        “Vanguard Alpha! Go to your assigned mineral line defense position, Vanguard Charlie are the ones supposed to be stationed at the cliff edge!

        This error was corrected, and just in time, as Rainbow Dash and Applebloom made their way over. Team Bravo, consisting solely of surviving ghosts from Mike’s massive storming of Canterlot, activated cloaking, and the sole individual disappeared from visible sight.

        “Hello girls! Welcome to my humble camp!” Mike put on the most non-threatening smile he possibly could. A pointless gesture, seeing as how he wore an intimidating and obstructing full face reaper mask.

        Applebloom looked at the Terran structures with awe. All of ponyville knew of the strange space aliens at the perimeter of town with Twilight’s library nearby, but there was never any opportunity for a reasonable excuse to get a close look.

        Rainbow was not so easily impressed, as she looked through her list. “Tried that one… tried that one…”

        Applebloom then glanced at the hovering terran aircraft moving to and fro above the base. “Hey Dash. What if my cutiemark is operatin one of them flyin machines?”

        Rainbow looked up and noticed for the first time where they were. “Oh. I’d forgotten about this one.” Mike’s concealed smile crashed at her blatant negligence. “Well, while we’re here, you going to help Mike?”

        “... Yeah, yes. I have just the ship for you.” He stepped to the side so that they may behold the Terran starport behind him. On cue, a brand new aircraft, straight from the assembly arms rose dramatically. Alarm lights flashed as the platform carried the savior of infantry in any Terran battle: A Dominion red Medivac transport.

        “Ready for dust off.” The female pilot called out.

        Roaring Vtol rockets went vertical as the ship launched itself into the air, the fact of it keeping horizontal to the ground the whole way up showing the familiarity paired with skill of being in the air only seasoned pilots possessed, while demonstrating the expert precision that professional surgeons had. Medivac transport operators were always both of the above.

        “Waitin on you.” She called out again as the dropship maneuvered itself over the commander and two ponies.

        “Alright, land next to us, I need you to do something that wasn’t covered in your forty-two second training program.”

        “Inbound.”

        The ship lowered itself to the ground, facing the trio, and landed.

        “Good. Now get out of the pilot chair and teach this filly pony how to fly that thing.”

        “... What?”

        Mike kicked open the cargo bay door and marched in, Applebloom following eagerly while Dash trotted in with disappointment etched on her face. “Where’s the cool weapons and stuff?”

        This brought commander Mike to a halt. “You doubt the power of Medivac?”

        “Well, all the other stuff you’ve showed off always made an awesome explosion. And instead of all those other things, you give us a heal bus?”

        The cockpit door behind Mike practically exploded outward

A Dog and Mule Show

Of Proxies and 6 Pools. (A Dog and MULE Show)

After having managed to quit yelling like a noob, he sprinted with all his might to Twilight's house in a tree.

"Mike, if you would just tell me what you're looking for, I would be able to get it to you in an instant." Twilight griped.

This towering person was glancing at each book he came across, before tossing it aside each time he realized his Reaper gas mask smudged his sight to illiteracy. Mike's cape wasn't helping things much, since it constantly would move back over his arms annoyingly every time he turned back forward.

"A good Dominion commander doesn't disclose information about his mission to unauthorized personnel." Mike recited, as if from memory.

"Well, would you at least stop, for the third time, throwing my books on the floor!"

Rainbow Dash, hovering off to the side, spoke up.

"Yeah, we stopped putting them back in shelves awhile ago, and every book so far has somehow managed to hit the floor." Dash gestured below her, revealing a floor that was more literature covers than actual carved tree ground.

Before Mike could pick another random Dominion handbook guideline from his side of his visor, Spike burst through the door, gapsing desperately for breath, and hastily spewing out his situation.

"Aaah! Rarity-woods-jewels-dogs-hole-taken-save her!" He managed to get out before collapsing.

Twilight and Fluttershy rushed over to help Spike, Flutters being the one to examine Spike. Though Mike wondered how much good that would do from someone who was deathly afraid of the dragons.

"He should be fine, poor Spike is only exhausted."

Applejack, woken from her snooze, asked:

"Did anyone understan what the fell'r said? Cause I di'nt catch a word."

"I did," Mike spoke up, his years of interpretting hasty messages coming to fruition.

"Rarity is in trouble, not only that, but taken!"

"But who would ponynap Rarity? Or anypony round these parts for that matter?"

"It's obvious from the rest of Spikes message." Mike answered, direction his vast Terran army behind Twilight's house for a rescue mission, and readjusting his Ghost armor plates.

"Flying woodpeckers kicked Spike in the family jewels before dogpiling Rarity and take her into their proxy base!"

"No... That doesn't sound right. And woodpeckers don't live in white tail woods." Twilight corrected.

"Doesn't matter! Rarity is in trouble, and we need to get to her now!" Dash exclaimed quickly before zooming out a window. The rest of the girls nodded in agreement, and soon followed through the front door. Not much later, Mike too left the house tree atop a mechanized battle walker, one of multiple thors, with legions of infantry marching behind.

[Page Break]

As the remaining Mane 6 and Mikes Terran army charged toward the dig site, Spike had regained consciousness.

After further prodding and explanations, they had found out that Diamond dogs had in fact been what had taken Rarity.

"Well that sounds mighty easy,” Applejack wrapped up, "Just take us to that there hole and we'll go save Rarity!"

Unfortunately, the universe frowned on such optimism, and promptly punished the fools. When the noble mares and drunk space marines arrived at the site, endless holes with endless falls were spread around the dried lake bed endlessly.

Mike scowled.

"Well that's friggin-tastic!" He complained out loud as his men spread out.

"Holey moley that's alot of holeys!" Pinkie added.

Twilight trotted past the group.

"Come on everyone, let's get started."

Everyone poked their heads into every hole they came accross with absolutely no form of organization or efficiency. Some holes would even have multiple marines shoving others out of the way to look, while other holes went completely ignored. This was less a rescue party and more group of high party goers looking for free money. Truly, Rarity was doomed.

Twilight having noticed this had been trying to get Mike to follow her hasty search organization idea.

"This isn't helping, if you would just listen to the simple plan..."

Mike barged past her to revisit hole thirty-two for the seventh time.

"This is a rescue operation! There's no time for such wasteful things, like upgrades, plans, or even build orders!"

While those two had their argument, Applejack peered intently down a hole with several other Marines and a Marauder.

"How far down ya'll think these here holes go?"

"No idea," the marauder responded, "Not even our suit lights are reaching down that far."

A marine eagerly pipped up.

"Maybe we should throw something down there and count how long it takes."

"Great idea!" His buddy vouched, and he then pushed the first marine down the hole.

"SomeTHING mor-" The marine hit the bottom.

The marauder stopped his stopwatch.

"Wait, no, I started the dang thing too late, let's send something else." A third marine was pushed.

"Hey!" The first marine echoed out, "I'm ali-" only to be crushed by the other guy.

"Three point two seconds."

Then several mules were called down right behind the group and the other two were shoved aside into the hole.

Applejack, mildly concerned by all this, went on her way.

Twilight wrapped up her idea as she peered down hole one-hundred twenty six.

"And that's when you regroup everyone and surround the best staging point."

Mike alongside her broke out of his trance in the presence of such a grandmaster level plan.

"That's genius! I'd never thought to give orders with such a mindset. This changes everything..."

"Wait, really?" Twilight took pride in finally breaking through to the stubborn commander.

"Really what?" Mike said. Now Twilight was confused.

"Huh? Didn't you just say-"

"Oh, sorry about that, just reading aloud the kissing ass portion of the manual. What were you saying?"

Twilight lowered her head in sharp disappointment, her day having been slightly soured even more ever since hearing her dear friend had been pony napped.

The geyser of dirt flying into her mouth and eyes didn't help any.

Managing to shake the dirt off and out, she noticed more holes were being filled with geysers of dirt.

"Quick!" She yelled snapping everyone out of their dumb stares, "We've got to get down one before they're all filled up!"

"Go men! Into the holes!"

Everyone scrambled to attention and dove towards their closest local abyss. While the faster reapers, and occasionally mobile marines would barely make it down, the ones that landed too late were treated to getting crushed by their fellow failed comrades. On top of that, none of the native Equestrians, Spike, or Mike could beat the geysers.

Applejack attempted to push her way through the hoses of dirt, but was eventually thrown back by the force. Several marauders that following her lead met even more catastrophic failures as they were launched into the air.

"We can't muscle through it!" Applejack exclaimed before wiping dirt from her face. Dash, spying another open hole, aimed determinedly.

"We'll see about that!" As she gained speed, multiple aerial vikings quickly fell in attack formation around her in hopes to make it through as well.

However, at the last possible second Rainbow routed from the charge, her shamefur dispray causing the vikings to slam into the ground and explode pointlessly.

Mike pulled his head out of the ground and called in for more reinforcements when his immediate group disappeared/died/dive-bomb suicided, but by the time the replacements arrived, there were no holes left.

Everyone regrouped after they regained their bearing. Applejack spoke up first.

"Whew. Heavens to Betsy, now I'm used to pickin myself up and dustin myself off, but Rarity won't even touch mud 'less it's imported."

“Oh Rarity…” Twilight and friends looked up into the sky in worry as a misty scene played out above them. The car theatre movie in the sky played out on the cloud layer, depicting everyone’s abysmal mental image of the high society, vain, fashionista’s orbital standards.

At the conclusion, Mike looked back to the ponies with a hint of confused disgust.

“Really?”

“We gotta go save her.” Applejack stated.

“But they’ve blocked up all the holes.” Fluttershy retorted.

“Don’t mean we can’t dig em out, come on!” AJ leaped ontop of a pile and began to savagely paw the dirt.

The other ponies followed suit with her wild arm swinging technique that somehow worked. The industrious and sensible Terrans decided to instead use a more reliable and proven method, and thus began shooting the obstructions instead.

Amidst all the gunfire and cannon bombarding, no one noticed a diamond dog swim out of the ground until it yanked Pinkie off her pile by the tail.

Marauders and marines noticed this instantly and retaliated.

“Die die die!” They adjusted their fire slightly so that they may hit the dogs now popping out everywhere like gophers.

Rainbow and Twilight noticed another dog between them, and due to the intensity of the above ground impromptu trench warfare all around them, they didn’t think to stop for one second before smashing into each other. Applejack failed to catch a solitary diamond dog, Spike and Mike failed to do anything, Pinkie wasn’t even trying, and Fluttershy just cowered for any calm section like a pansy.

The dogs efforts to disorient and confuse was only aimed at the ponies, but vikings and thors wasted no time in laying waste to larger amounts of friendly fire instead of their intended targets. Marines died left and right, only for the medivacs not shot down to drop in more soon to be corpses.

Eventually the ponies got tired and the terrans depleted yet another battalion within the span of three minutes.

“Oh, all those scary monsters popping out of the ground, Rarity must be terrified.” Fluttershy woed before they all looked up for another acid trip vision.

“Really? Again?” Mike called out under aircraft wreckage.

Everyone ignored him so they could have their reference in the sky, before reiterating for only themselves.

“Poor Rarity, what are we going to do?”

Spike glanced around and spotted one last open hole. Looking to the gem in his hand, he had an idea.

“I’ve got it!” Spike ran to the hole, “I’ll save you my sweet!”

Moments later, Spike was lowering the gem into the dark expanse with a heavy chain borrowed from one of the wrecks. Terran infantry all had their guns trained on the hole, with the thor and viking battle mechs right behind for their rescue operation formation.

The rest of the mane 6 that weren’t a prisoner of war stood next to Spike, so that they could actually do some damage if need be.

Silence reigned supreme in this fragile situation. Well, until Twilight rudely interrupted it loudly.

“Spike, it’s very noble of you-”

“Shhh!” Spike shushed. Twilight continued more quietly.

“To sacrifice the gem Rarity gave-”

A thor pilot interrupted hastily.

“Be quiet!” He screamed, “We’re trying to sneak up on them!” Pebbles fell into the hole from the vibrations.

Twilight glared at the hypocritical pilot, while Spike began glancing off, thinking about how noble and humble he was being right then.

“Oh lady Rarity, my damsel in distress-” He was smacked in the back of the head by Mike, almost making the dragon fall into the hole from the force.

“First,” Mike began, “Cut that out telepathic freak.”

A ghost lowered it’s outstretched hand and stopped channeling the force.

“Sorry.”

“Second,” Mike resumed, “Cut it out with the daydreaming, all of you! This is a rescue operation, and you.” He pointed at Spike accusingly, “Are the lynchpin that’s going to fail from all this physical vision daydreaming junk. Seriously, are you all trying to lose Rarity forever?!”

“Mike!” Twilight interrupted, “Yelling out rudely isn’t going to help.”

Spike regained his senses and straightened himself.

“No, he’s right. Rarity is in real trouble, we can’t be zoning out every few seconds, or we’ll be distracted then interrupted mid senten- I’ve got a bite!” He lurched forward, but hauled back in time thanks to not daydreaming something stupid, like being some kind of buffed up dragon knight or whatever.

The ponies and Terran commander grabbed on as a conga line leading to the dragon.

“We… can’t hold on! We’ll git dragged in!” Applejack grunted out through strained teeth around Twilight’s tail.

“Then we’ll… have to go in… after them.” Twilight responded, her front hooves slipping over the edge while she crushed her grip on Spike.

“Alright men! Prepare to drop!” All the marines, and ghosts strapped their rifles to their back, while the reapers and marauders prepared to jump in. Vikings landed and revved their gatling guns, thors tucked in their multiple siege cannons for the leap. Everyone was ready and braced themselves for a vertical storming into enemy lines at a moments command. North Korea could only dream of ever achieving such a scale of invading tunnels.

Finally, Applejack, then Twilight and Mike lost their footing/hooving, and everypony else followed, scooped as a connected freight train into the abyss. Marines and marauders stim sprinted into the hole after their leader. Vikings both on the ground and in the air dived bombed again soon after. Thor battle mechs charged forward, only to have their Lower Exoskeleton Gyro’S fail to fit into a circle ⅓ their size, tripping them and blowing up their cannon ordinance. Flaming wreckage flew everywhere from each destroyed thor and crashed viking. The shockwaves bowled over what infantry was left and they uncontrollably tumbled in. It was an unorganized mess as if the Great Leader himself lead this militant charge.

Either that, or rushing hundreds and hundreds of troops into a 1x1 meter hole was a bad idea. Either or.

As the ponies, Mike, and Spike held onto each other, flaming wreckage, falling soldiers who lost their footing, and earth shaking kabooms surrounded them, the red glow from light reflecting off Dominion armor giving Mike the impression of a decension into hell.

Finally they crashed into the ground a final time and stopped falling. Everyone groaned from almost certain multiple bruises.

“I pictures that going better in my head.” Mike commented, sitting up and dusting himself off.

“How is that any different from every other time Mike?” Twilight snarked, getting up along with the others.

“Well purple horse, for starters-” A marauder interrupted by landing right next to him.

“Yo.” The soldier greeted.

“Glad to see you made it. Now then… darn, lost my train of thought. Anyways, where are we?”

“Underground, duh.”

“No shit Sherlock. Damn, out of all that could’ve survived…” Mike looked around and saw passages going in every frigging direction he looked. It reminded him of swiss cheese, making him question the stability and mining regulations of the diamond dog tunnels.

“Wait,” He restarted, “Which hole did you just fall from?”

The marauder pointed a cannon/hand twoards the highest hole he just fell from.

Then a cave in of terran marines, marauders, and reapers flooded in, backing up like a weak toilet well past it’s prime up to the roof. The few that survived got up and dusted themselves off.

“We’re trapped!” Twilight obviously stated.

“Oh no, how are we going to get out?” Fluttershy said as her panic began it’s S.o.p.

“Eh,” Mike replied dismissively, “They’ll disappear soon enough.”

And so they waited…

And waited…

…

Uh huh…

“Ok,” Mike said raising a furry eyebrow, “Why are those still here?”

A marine walked to a corpse and kicked it. His boot dented.

“They turned into doodads sir.”

“Shit.”

Rainbow glanced confusedly. “What the heck is a doodad?”

“Props of the world that are indestructible to anything and everything.”

“So we’re trapped?”

“Yep.”

Everypony else sagged down at the unfortunate news, but Spike looked back down at the severed chain that once held the gem, and remembered why they were in this bullshit situation in the first place. “We need to save Rarity, that’ why we’re here at all. After, then we’ll worry about an exit.”

“Right!” Dash yelled as she jumped to her hooves with rejuvinated motivation, “Come on guys, let’s go!” And she sped off down a random passage.

“Rainbow, wait!” Fluttershy reached out, but dash was already gone. Then she came back from behind and crashed into Mike.

“Owie…”

“ I think it would be better if we… you know, stayed together.”

Applejack hoisted Mike up, leaving Dash to fend amongst the dirt. “Ya’ll quit horsin aroun’ let’s get movin!”

Mike looked to the handful of his men absentmindedly sitting around, glancing around, or shooting odd stones. “Nah, you ponies stick together. Me and my men will go down the back end tunnels and establish map control.”

Twilight lifted Spike onto her back, “But how will you find us afterwards?”

“I’ve got my overhead minimap, if I need to get to you gals, I’ll just right click on you.”

“How does that get you to us!?”

Spike poked her, “Come on Twilight, it’s Mike. Let’s ask later, can we please start looking for Rarity?” he pleaded.

Twilight gave in and nodded. The ponies and terrans split up to begin searching for Rarity.

The ground rumbled as dust and loose stones fell from the ceiling.

[Page Break]

Deeper into the tunnel network (Actually only 10 feet away from the main group, but the tunnels did weird things to acoustics) Three marines and a marauder were wandering about.

“Ya still didn’t have to push me.” The marine with a cracked visor said.

His companion mostly ignored him as they walked on, “Whatever.”

The third marine spoke up “Hey, aren’t we supposed to be rescuing a white unicorn?”

The marauder answered, “Yeah, why you askin?”

“Cause she’s in front of us.” Sure enough, torchlights marking the populated area were up ahead in the distance. The white unicorn, Rarity was surrounded by the dogs (Who seemed to be reeling back for some reason) as monstrous high pitched noise daggers echoed down the hall.

The first marine’s companion shook out of his daze at this.

“Great! Let’s get her so I can finally finish my beer!”

“Well, how are we going to get her away?”

“Charge!”

All four broke into a sprint towards the pony and her dog captors, yelling loudly like savages into their speakers.

But then the whole tunnel system shook, tripping the Terrans and ending the charge anticlimactically. Even worse, a cave in separated the three from their goal, and the fourth’s promise of early beer.

The marauder got back up first as the rumbling continued. “The hell?” He raised his arm to swat away some falling rock debris. The shaking was relentless for a short while, before eventually going away..

The alcoholic marine scrambled up and took stock of what was happening for two seconds.

“Fuck this, I’m outta here.”

“Don’t leave me hangin!”

“Hold up guy’s what about the white pon- AH, my visor again!” A rock flew into his view glass, causing more cracks to web out as he ran to catch up.

[Page Break]

On the surface, thors that were waaaay late to get to the rally point were following the outdated orders of shooting the dirt piles.

Well, they were way past blasting away such measly mounds, and were now scratching away at the harder ground rock.

An observing aerial viking started a point, “Heyy, uh, you guys sure they still want the ground blown up?”

A thor pilot turned his mech toward the viking, still holding down the shooting triggers the whole time. Luckily for the viking, thor hammer cannons couldn’t attack air units. “Of course, you idiot! Otherwise the commander would have said stop by now.”

“Ragnarok!” Another thor pilot screamed over the heavy metal blaring out his radio and deafening cannonfire.

“... Eh, good point.” The viking pilot landed and revved his gatling guns to join them.

[Page break]

Back underground, the “unusual” earthquakes were unraveling the ponies nerves, and they had no word with Mike since they’d split, except for maybe seeing the occasional marine group.

“All these tunnels and tremors, how are we going to find Rarity before everything collapses?” Twilight spoke worryingly.

Applejack wiped some ceiling rock dust from her face. “Guess we’ll need to pick up the pace and keep going down each tunnel one by one.”

The second “one” tunnel collapsed in on itself shortly after.

Dash hoped over a chunk of rocks as the group diverted course again.

“Are you kidding me? We’ll be six-hundred feet under before we find Rarity at this rate. We have to find a way to narrow it down further.”

Twilight levitated Spike over a particularly long chasm that led to a further down tunnel, Fluttershy and Dash ferrying the others over as well.

“Mike’s already split off from us, and that was because of his strange map sensor… things… I can’t think of anything else we can do.”

The roar of jump jets echoed from the chasm they just hopped over, and a reaper jumped up from the hole.

“Hey ponies! We found yo-” The ground gave way as soon as he landed back down, burying him in rubble.

Mike and a mule carrying gems were the next ones to pop up. “What he was going to say was that we found Rarity. She’s just down that way.” He pointed to the chasm the reaper just caved in. “... Uh… don’t worry! It’s a big loop, we’ll just take the longer way around over there.” He pointed in the opposite direction where two marines and a mule were standing guard.

The mule timed out and exploded, caving in that way as well.

“What the hell is this place made of? Hardened sand?!”

The baby dragon and the ponies grimaced from the rollercoaster of hope and despair, until Spike took note of the mule beside Mike, then the shiny stones that resided in the rubble. “Hey, I remember the dogs taking Rarity so she would find them gems. Wouldn’t they be where the most gems are?”

Twilight promptly shot down that idea, “But Spike, Rarity is the only one who knows how to find gems.

“No Twilight. You can! You can copy Rarity’s gem-finding spell!”

“Copy? Spike, one does not simply ‘copy’ a spell, especially from nothing. Don’t you know anything about the conservation of magical energies?” She sighed, “I’m sorry, but I don’t know any mineral based locating spells, and unless someone here knows how…”

Mike perked up at the single most important object in his universe. “Finding minerals you say? I think I may have a solution then…”

Instantly he began calling down mule drop pods. They phased through the cavern ceiling as if it wasn’t there, then would smash into the solid ground, before collapsing to reveal more mule resource collectors.

Mike ordered all of them to mine out the gems within the walls, and they got to work digging out what few supports were left into the already pathetically weak cave network.

As the tremors and crashes got worse and more frequent, the ponies looked upon Mike as if he were insane.

“Don’t worry ponies, the mules will keep mining where there are minerals until they’re depleted, then we’ll follow where they go, and then we can save Rarity and ourselves!”

Dash couldn’t believe what the madman was saying, “Save us? You’re going to get us all killed!” She then looked up and rolled out of the way of falling ceiling boulders. “Cut out cutting gems out!”

“Come on scrub, this’ll work.”

“MIKE!”

“Ugh, fine.”

He halted calling down any additional mules, but that was only because his hotkeyed Orbital Commands energy was depleted.

Several dozens of mules extracted the earth around them of any possible riches, quickly carving a path toward possibly Rarity. However, the earth continued to groan around them as more of the ground was hollowed out.

Spike hopped onto Twilight, “Come on! Hurry, before everything comes down on us!” Everyone began to gallop forward as the cave ins became more frequent. “We’re coming Rarity, just hold on!”