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Labyrinth was puffed with pride. Members of the press were taking a lot of pictures of her and the three dinosaur skulls that were on display directly to her right. The skulls of two juvenile and one adult Tropceritops, a species that science only had one, small fossil of, sat on stand of red velvet. Now, renowned paleontologists were studying the full skeletons of the long extinct animals and it was because she'd discovered them.

"Labyrinth! Labyrinth! Tell us how you made this amazing discovery!" one reporter called. Lab looked anxiously at her mothers and the curator, who nodded at her. Climbing up on a stool, she looked out into the crowd.

Licking her lips nervously; Lab began;

"Well it started not too long ago. My mummy Wisp and I were going out on a massive exploration....."

"Mum mum! Let's goooo!!" Lab's bag were packed and she stood on the front step almost dancing with excitement. This was going to be THE. BEST! The filly had gone to the city planning office for maps of the land Phonycity and the park had been built on wayy before either were a thing. She was using it to plot out places to explore ever since Phonyland had forbid her from climbing into and on the rides. (She still did it anyway, just more after hours now.)

During her research, she'd found that there a rumor of a cave system that ran all the way from one part of the park down to the shore, but no one could confirm. It was then that Labyrinth decide she would be the one to do it.

Flashlight flashlight. Labyrinth fumbled with her bags a little and pulled out a shiny sapphire cylinder. After a moment of fumbling, she cast a strong light beam around. "Yep!"

While she was at it, she checked to make sure she had all of her equipment. A GPS, a small radar that would send out signals and map out the system they were going to crawl though, a satellite phone jussttt in case, and a huge piece of day glow pink chalk.

This was going to be so much fun. Only mummy Wisp would, after much planning, would do this with her. Not that mummy Nocturne didn't love her, but she, and her siblings weren't the types to go explore a un-mapped tunnel underground. Pulling out the ground map, she double checked the area where the start of the tunnel was supposed to be. "Mummy are you sure you know where this is?" The new map and the old map looked very different and Wisp knew more of the area then she did.

Labyrinth adjusted her pack nervously. "O..okay!" She struggled to sound confident. "Here we go!"

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A couple of hours later found mother and daughter pushing through very old under growth. Lab was already a little frustrated and her confidence was wavering slightly. It'd taken twice as long as she'd planned to reach this point because she kept stopping to check between the two maps. She always felt a little bit better when her mummy helped steer them back on the right path.

But now, here they were. Large vines grew over the opening to the cave, and it was a little smaller then she'd initially thought it would be, but it was there, just as she knew it would be.

"Yes!" she pumped her tiny hoof and took out her GPS, making notes of the latitude and longitude of the caves inland entrance on both maps and a notebook. "This is so exciting! Mummy this means the tunnel COULD be real!" She packed the maps and the GPS back in her bag and raced forward.

Lab stopped at the mouth of the cave, peering inside. Sunlight illuminated only about 50 feet in before it became inky darkness. As if in a trance, she slowly walked forward, inching closer and closer into the blackness, her curiosity, her gut telling her something, something was down there waiting for her to find it.

Lab went a little deeper into the cave until her eyes adjusted to the darkness. Standing there, she felt so small in the massive void of darkness, and it made her heart flutter in anxiousness.

A soft blue glow warmed the gloom and the filly exhaled softly. Right then, no time to stand around being afraid of the dark. She had a cave to map!

It took her a few moments under horn glow to find her flashlight, (which she shined directly into her own face and had to stand in the darkness while her eyes readjusted. She swore she could hear Mummy Wisp tittering softly.) her chalk, GPS and the small radar. She marked the GPS degrees on the nearest cave wall with her chalk and shined the light around, trying to figure out which way the cave went. After a moment or two, she discovered it just went further back into what seemed like even deeper darkness.

Hooking the small electrical devices to her saddle bag, she took a deep breath. "W..well..here we go then.."

The mother-daughter journey into the cave system was long and slow. Every now and again, they stopped and Labyrinth took readings of her surroundings, marking their path by chaulk on the walls. Slowly but surely, a map of the underground was appearing on the gps radar's screen.

"We should be coming up on the exit soon.." the filly said, studying the old map with a slight frown. She wasn't going to admit it but she was a little scared now. While it's true they could just double back, the length of the cave was intimidating. "This way I think."

A few feet in the direction the map indicated, the floor began to slant. The little explorer didn't notice until it was too late, her attention above her, looking in awe at stalactites before she noticed her hooves were slipping. A barked curse as she tried to back up but the forward momentum was too great and Lab tumbled down the slope flank over horn and landed with a thump on the lower cave floor.

"C..careful of the floor.." she sputtered out after a long moment.

"Y..yeah.." Labyrinth moaned. She pulled herself back up to her hooves, groaning and shaking off some debris. Well that was unexpected. As her mother made her way down, the filly picked up her flashlight and began looking around.
"We musta dropped a lot of feet, I wonder if we're near the cliffs off the beach now.." She had pulled out her gear and started to get readings when the shape of a shadow caught her eye. Something like an eye shape was projected on the wall in shadow. Lab spat out the flashlight (which she'd been holding in her teeth) and approached the section of the floor the light was bouncing off of.

"What's this.." she blew a puff of breath on the formation and examined it carefully. Her heart skipped a beat and her breaht quickened. No way, could it really be? "Mum! MUM! Come here! Come see! Oh my god!" She darted back and forth from her find to Wisp. "Come come come!!" The filly grabbed a small brush from her bag and carefully began to dust around the object.

"Omg it is it really really is..it is! Mum Mum!" Wisp still wasn't scooting down the incline as fast as she wanted her to. "It's the most amazing find!! It looks like an Tropceritops skull!" Labyrinth squee'd with delight.

Labyrinth rattled off all the facts she knew about the Tropceritops as she dusted and brushed, trying to find the edges of the skull. Excitement turned to joy, more then a skull, maybe the whole skeleton? Joy to revelry; yes a whole skeleton but..? Revelry to shock; not one, not two, but three! Coated in dust, Labyrinth stood way back. A Tropceritops' family bones lay embedded in the ground, frozen in the time where they laid and died millions of years ago.

Tears tracked streaks in the dirt on Lab's face. It was not only the amazement of her discovery, but the beauty and tragedy of the scene. The family had come into this cave, most likely seeking shelter, and it ended up being their tomb. But they'd died together. For the filly, who was feeling rather abandoned with her siblings so quickly grown and out of the home and all the pent up anxiety about this adventure, it was a little too much. She rushed to Wisp and buried her face into her mother's chest and wept quietly. "Mummy, we're going to get out of here together right?" You're not going to leave me right..?"

"Finders, not losers." she repeated with a sniffle. "Finders, not losers, right." She scrubbed at her eyes, wiping her tears away. Ok, enough with this, we've had a good cry, now it's time to find the back end of this cave and to report her findings.

Labyrinth picked up her equipment and wrote down all the coordinates of the part of the cave they were in. She picked apart some of her rope and with some of the climbing stakes (She was prepared for just about ANYTHING) she erected a barrier around the circumference of the fossil site. Satisfied that she'd done the best she could properly mark her find, she and Wisp pushed forward into the tunnel that stretched beyond the cave they were in.

The rest of the cave was fairly uneventful. As the pair carefully made their way through the semi darkness, the hot staleness of the air slowly began to cool and the smell of sea salt started to waft in. Sunlight nearly blinded them as they rounded the corner and found the exit. Labyrinth sprinted out and ended up on the beach. Ah, so it was near the ocean! The other side of the system came out close to the borders of Phonyland property and the rest of Barton.

"YAHOO!!" Lab dove into the ocean in glee. She'd successfully mapped out the unknown cave system AND had made a discovery of a lifetime! As she trotted back out of the cold water, shaking it from her mane, she was determined to not let it be the ONLY discovery that she made. Her lifetime was just beginning. She didn't notice till much later, but when the ocean water washed the dirt from her body, a mark had appeared on her flank.

The next few days were a blurr. After a brief stop by the geological society to drop off a copy of her mapping of the cave system and returning the antique the maps to city planning, Labyrinth excitedly bounded to the history museum. The archaeology head was skeptical of course and nearly lost an arm the way the filly nearly yanked him out of his office. The rediscovery, the confirmation, and the excavation all took months but the here she was now, relating all of this to a enraptured audience of reporters.

"And that's how I got my cutie mark."