The Rest of the Party

The whole group met up in front of Rarity’s shop, when she arrived, Rainbow made a show of probably having forgotten something and did a quick fly off to her house only to come back a few minutes later (having gotten to check where the note had said to look and getting whatever it was), like before she was in the erotic camo shorts and jacket with a black shirt, the only difference to her now was the fact she looked armed and had a set of bags around her waist; Rarity was in her rather erotic robe with her staff and bags, after packing one she packed two more with all her ideas of what necessities were. Twilight was in her erotic robe she had magicked herself into earlier with her staff and her scholar’s bag was standing next to the ivory unicorn mare. The next to pop up was Pinkie, quite literally, wearing a loud, and rather erotic, bard’s attire with a backpack on her back, complete with a bedroll atop it, the bag was hot pink, after being reminded of something by Twilight Pinkie rushed off and returned with a set of bongo drums strapped to her left waist and shortbow at her right waist, complete with what looked like at least three quivers poking out from inside her bag. The next to arrive was Fluttershy (who had an impressive DDD-Cup bosom), in an erotic white priestess’s attire, with a white ash staff that had Celestia’s sun atop it while her 3 pink butterflies were on the shaft closer to where it was gripped and a rather large shoulder bag on her right shoulder. The last to show up was Applejack, who was actually in a set of full plate armor that hid her figure (making it rather challenging to get a read on her bust size in this world, especially with the chest dome that all proper breastplates have), if you discounted the area of the breastplate that gave a pronounced look of the breasts underneath while not compromising the purpose of the armor, with a war hammer on her back, arming sword at her right waist, and what looked like a single waist bag at her left waist with an applewood heater shield bearing her cutie mark hanging atop the bag a bit.

“So, what’s the mission, Twi,” asked Rainbow as she landed next to the rest of the group.

“There’re reports of what might be a new dungeon that cropped up nearby,” said Twilight. “Our job is to make a run through it and assess its overall difficulty, that means we’ll be gathering all the drops and checking every potential storage location in addition to making our way to the dungeon’s core to get a read on its attunements. That means no trying to make off with the core for whatever reason,” she shot annoyed glances at Rarity and Pinkie as she said the last part, “newer dungeons don’t have the ability to regenerate cores, and even many of the older ones lack the ability to do so. To date, only 5 of the 30 dungeons that had their core removed managed to regenerate said core but their functionality was noticeably different than what they were like before the core was removed every time.”

Pinkie gave a look of getting caught stealing sweets from the kitchen or pantry, likely with her hand in the cookie jar, and Rarity gave a look of surprised embarrassment, mostly because she was surprised her alternate self had even made such an attempt and embarrassed because was indeed something to be embarrassed about. “Okay, Twi, where ‘re we ‘eading,” inquired Applejack. Everyone made a quick look over their equipment, some even shifting it a bit before Twilight responded.

“We’re headed southeast for three or four days, we can’t take the train because taking the tracks to the nearest location will not decrease our overall travel time by a significant amount and might even extend the total travel time. Once we’ve located the dungeon, marked its entrance, and given it a run through we can help coordinate the establishment of a station, and possibly even community, for future use. The Everfree Forest is not a signifier for what to expect when it comes to dungeons. I know you all don’t need me to tell you that, most of the time, but a few instances have made it a requirement at this point.”

Pinkie once again looked mildly embarrassed when the whole group set off. “No surprise,” said Fluttershy as they were leaving the edge of the town, “Opal isn’t joining us, how is it your familiar managed to get so unruly?”

Thinking fast, Rarity said, “I guess something went wrong with my first summoning her and things just didn’t change after.”

“Makes sense,” said Twilight as they all continued down their trek, “familiar summoning has some aspects we don’t fully understand.”

After Twilight’s statement, they were quiet, mostly (Rarity whined a few times about her legs hurting from all the trotting about), until nightfall where they all made camp. Rarity, unsurprisingly, had a tent that looked like it was a multi-level structure and had enchantments for raising and lowering it. Applejack’s accommodations looked like a high-end but practical basic camping tent; Pinkie’s tent looked more like a miniature version of a circus tent; Twilight’s tent was a bit closer in design to Rarity’s but much less ostentatious. Fluttershy’s tent looked like a miniature temple, surprisingly enough. And Rainbow Dash found a cot she had missed on her original look over her bags and just asked Rarity if she could hang her bed up in the ivory mare’s tent, to which Rarity agreed.

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The next day was mostly eventful, except for the case of a comedic show of half the tents getting collapsed wrong and a diamond dog bandit attack that was solved by Pinkie just throwing cupcakes that caused them to go to sleep on contact there was nothing to really take note of. Yes, the diamond dogs were in some very skimpy harnesses that showed off their parts, both male and female, but that was the end of it. And to be fair, Rarity and Rainbow were happy about it being the end of it.

However, their journey hit a speed bump in the form a cavern they all effectively fell into, it had some sort of magical effect that disabled the ability to fly. So now they were in an unknown dungeon on their way to a supposedly newly discovered dungeon, things were just getting more annoying. Chances were that in order to get out they would have to find what was disabling their ability to fly and shut it down some way, Rainbow didn’t mind because it meant increased chances of her getting to smack on something as hard as she wanted.