A ruined Vacation

Wilhelm attacked the dirt with a flurry of irritated movement, "Oh yeah, I'll help you get your gems, if you help me." he mumbled in a mocking tone as he paused for a moment before attacking the ground with renewed gusto, "Here we are!" he shouted as he bent over and grabbed some rubies, "I always thought you had to dig alot deeper for these..." he said to himself as he inspected the fist sized gem that was buried beneath the rest, then it was surrounded by a pale blue nimbus and hovered out of his hand.

"These are absolutely wonderful, Thank you, Wilhelm!" Rarity declared with enthusiasm, "If we keep finding deposits like these, my dresses won't go wanting for a long, long time." With a flourish, all of the rubies spun into the back pack on Wilhelm's back.

Make me do all the work... Wilhelm thought to himself sourly as he climbed out of the pit he had just created, Your lucky I'm so nice! He grabbed the parasol that had been stuck in the dirt and followed Rarity as she hummed to herself happily, with her horn glowing faintly.

After a few minutes Rarity broke the silence, "So... How have you been?" She asked awkwardly, Wilhelm just raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged. Rarity opened he mouth to continue, but the familiar sensation that traveled down her horn cut distracted her, "Oh!" she exclaimed, "Right here, if you don't mind." She points at a non-descript patch of dirt.

Wilhelm stabs the parasol into the ground as he thinks to himself, Like the rest of this flat, desolate, rocky, hot, dirty... He continued to follow that train of thought as he pulled the shovel from over his shoulder and stuck it in the dirt. Wilhelm focused almost completely on his description of the area for the next half hour, pausing only to shift tools from shovel to pickax, and as he stopped to switch he noticed a buzzing, and as he looked around he noticed that it was coming from Rarity's open muzzle.

"... And her dress was absolutely gorgeous, it took me weeks to get the colors to blend in just the right..." she trailed off as she noticed that Wilhelm was staring at her with his head tilled quizzically, "Are you alright, Dear, is the heat getting to you?" she asked as she stood up from her highly decorative lawn chair.

"I didn't think you acted THAT similar..." Was all he said before he went back to work.

Rarity took exception to that, "What do you mean by that?!" She harrumphed.

Wilhelm stopped swinging, put the pick ax on the ground and leaned on it as he looked at her rather blankly, "I mean that you two could switch bodies and no one would be able to tell the difference... except maybe the fact that people might notice that fact you -being her- don't drink the equivalent of a kiddie pool in whiskey every night."

The two creatures locked eyes for a moment before Rarity asked, "What was your old life like?" Wilhelm shook his head, mumbled something, and went to resume swinging, only to have the pick ax taken from his hands. "You can tell me, I won't tell anypony." She added rather softly as she made a crossing motion over her heart with a hoof.

Wilhelm snorted in amusement and jumped at the pick ax, only to have it pull just out of his reach, so he cursed under his breath and looked at the less-the-amused looking Rarity, "Please?" was all she said.

Wilhelm sighed, looked at her and said, "Give me back my mining implement, or I'm done." as he held out his hand towards said implement. With a sigh Rarity complied and Wilhelm resumed swinging at the dirt.

After a minute or so of deafening silence, Wilhelm started to sing quietly.

"You load sixteen tons, what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt,

Saint Peter don't call me, 'cause I can't go,

I owe my soul to the company store!

After a little bit Rarity realized that he was just repeating the same line over and over, "Umm... Wilhelm?" He locked onto her with an irritated gaze, "Is that all there is to the song?"

"Oh dear god, no, I've just got a terrible memory... Though I do remember that it was my uncle's favorite song..."

Rarity pounced on that like a cat pounces on a particularly fat mouse, "Oh, what is your favorite song?"

"All of them." Wilhelm answered offhandedly as he raised his pickax once more.

"And your sister's?" Wilhelm sighed and stopped.

"Which one?" Wilhelm looked at the increasingly irritating creature that sat so calmly in the parasol's shade

"You have more then one?" Rarity asked with a jerk of her head.

"Two." was all Wilhelm said. Rarity was losing him fast, she had to think of something.

"What were they like?"

Wilhelm was silent for a moment as he stared into the cloudless sky above his head, "They were good people I guess... Nina especially."

"Who's Nina?"

"She's the one who raised me, my parents sent me to the capitalist west with hopes that my uncle wou-" Wilhelm stopped abruptly as he noticed the accent creeping into his voice. Wilhelm looked back down from the sky and glared daggers at Rarity. "Thanks for dredging THAT up." He growled before he assaulted the hole once more, Rarity shied away.

Rarity bit her lip as she looked at the dirt by her chair and thought about how she could fix this, she cast a sidelong glance at the now raging Wilhelm as he hacked at the dirt. Oops... she studied him for a little longer before she decide to say something, "I'm sorry, Wilhelm, I didn't mean-"

Wilhelm stopped swinging and stood stock still with his eyes wide open, then he slowly turned his head towards her with a look of pure shock on his face and said "This isn't how I expected to die." in a deceptively calm tone before Rarity felt the ground shake and he disappeared in a plume of dust.

"WILHELM!" Rarity shouted as she jumped from her chair and was almost hit by the pickax that had been spinning in the cloud as it plunged full length in the ground on the edge of the hole in front of her face.

|*|

Kit awoke with his face in the dirt and a mild pressure on his back, after a moment to blink away the stars he tried to push himself up, only to aggravate his apparently ANGRY shoulder. With a pained grunt he turned his head and immediately noticed his left shoulder was dislocated and that he was buried up to his shoulder blades in dirt and loose soil. "What did he do?" He asked the air as he stretched his right arm in front of himself... and grasped a cold metal.

He looked forward but was met with complete darkness as he pulled with all of the strength he could muster, which didn't move him an inch, so he moved his hand to his dislocated shoulder and moved it to the front of the socket... which he then slammed into the ground. "GAH!" tore it's way out of his mouth as the shoulder relocated it's self and his head fell back to the ground in agony, "What DID he do?" he said between pained breaths as he extended both of his arms forward and grasped the metal again and, after resting a moment, pulled with all of his strength once more and managed to pull himself out of the dirt, leaving a large portion resting on his back.

Kit rolled to his right and found the "patch of dirt" was attached to him by straps that went over his shoulders, he looked back at the dirt pile he had pulled himself out of and realized it was originally only up to his waist and blocked of that end of the tunnel. He pulled himself to the side and, when he ran into the wall, a clang issued from a few inches above his head, so he reached for it and found the shovel that was attached to the "Dirt pack" which jingled ever so slightly. Kit pulled himself up the wall and took a step forward, only to collapse as his left foot hit the floor. "That one is broken." hissed between his lips as he grabbed the shovel on his back and lifted himself up.

Kit surveyed the tunnel in front of him and was again met with absolute darkness, "That's not helpful at all." he looked once again over his shoulder and noticed the faintly glowing motes of dust in the air, "Must have been in the dirt..." Then he walked along the wall, one hand on the wall and on grasped firmly on the shovel, after what was probably minutes, but seemed like hours, Kit found himself standing in a cross path in the tunnels and immediately pulled himself back to the wall he was on before. "Keep your hand on the right wall to escape a maze..." He muttered to himself as he went to round the corner, only to hear something ruble towards him. He plastered himself against the wall on the original tunnel as the sound rumbled in front of him... then beside him as it made it's way towards his point of entry. Kit was frozen in place, No lights, no sounds other then that constant rumbling and it DIDN'T follow the track. The sound had moved too fluidly. Kit made a sudden realization, I'm going to die in here. and that paralyzed him more then anything even as the grinding slowly faded. He could feel the tears forming in his eyes, I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't wan-

An elderly male voice pierced his growing fear like a dart, Calm down, think... It's what your good at.

Think? With death looming just in front of my face? YOU CAN'T ESCAPE DEATH! Kit slowly rocked against the wall.

Fine, die, if you think that's the best course of action... Though I doubt your friends would like that very much.

That grounded Kit, I... thank you. There was no response as Kit reached up and wiped the tears from his eyes, then he noticed the scratched on the back of his hand... then he noticed he could SEE his hand, "What?" he whispered as he followed the light and promptly hid around the corner he was previously scared of as he stared at the... THING that was lowly making it's way back up the tunnel.

The most defining trait was the glyphs that ran along it's whole length, they spiraled from top to bottom, front to back and looked like a series of circles and lines with letters all long both sides of every line. Then there was the fact it was as long as three or four carts and had a vaguely humanoid torso that was topped with a vaguely serpentine head minus eyes, nose, mouth, or anything else that could be considered a real feature. As it moved Kit realized that the creature was grinding the track up and leaving no trace behind it and... and it's tail... body thing was made of boulders that rolled like wheels, or bearings, and Kit couldn't actually see any connecting points that tied the boulders together.

The creature rumbled calmly along it's path, destroying track and illuminating the entire tunnel for about ten feet past itself in either direction and turned down the other length of path that was across from Kit, so he chased after it, Something that big has VERY few predators...

Hopefully.