Thank you for all of the everything, readers! And a huge thank you to both the person who wrote 'The Hunt for Red October' and the Red Army Choir, who have both helped a LOT in the creation of stuff. But now, onto a new chapter.

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Bourbon's head lolls back as he goes limp as he lets out a single, satisfied breath, a peaceful smile spreading across his face. Dash's eyes start to water as the colt dies in her arms. The defenses he had painstakingly put up, destroyed in a single, emotional moment as he lets this private, deep-found request go.

"Bourbon?" she asks in vein, "Bourbon?" her voice is choking as she asks again, knowing full well that he's dead. She breaks down into tears, falling over top of his lifeless body. Setting the body of her traveling companion/ pain-in-the-flank gone friend, she kneels over him and starts collecting useful supplies. It feels wrong to her, looting her friend's body like this, but it's all a matter of survival in the metro. Morals are a luxury that can't always be afforded.

Standing up and turning away, she starts walking down the off-shoot, back into the main tunnel, pausing and looking back for a second or two at the exit. Turning down the tunnel and away from Bourbon for the last time, she runs down the tunnel, catching up to the rest of the group. Twilight quickly notices her friend's tears, and the absence of the rough black colt.

"Dash, what's wrong? And where's Bourb-"

"Bourbon is dead," Dash cuts off her concerned voice, giving the news a little more harshly than she intended.

The whole group stops, turning around in shock. Could he really be dead? The pony that had shown no fear of anything? The pony who had stood up to a horde of mutants and not broken a sweat? Koldan is the first to break the silence that ensues.

"I'm not very surprised, actually. A pony like him can only last so long in a place like the metro." His voice is solemn, his head lowering as he speaks. A short pause falls over everything. A ringing sound falls into everypony's consciousness, their brains trying to substitute for the noise they are so used to hearing.

"So where are we going now? I have a feeling that you weren't planning on going to Rathaus before you met Bourbon, and now that he's dead… where do we go from here?" Koldan breaks the frosty silence. Twilight pulls out her map, looking over about where they are, and what the shortest route to Central is.

"Okay, I think we could go up this tunnel some more, but go down this passage before we actually get to the station. That'll put us out here, which would mean… Why is this straight tunnel here red when all of the other tunnels are grey?" Koldan looks at the map a little closer, his face paling when he sees the tunnel Twilight is pointing to.

"That's what ponies have started to simply call 'the Red Line'. I'm almost sure you've heard of the Soviet Union?" all the ponies nod, "Well, they're back, and that's where they decided to set up shop. They control all the stations in that entire line, and their security is some of the strongest in the entire metro. They've essentially cut the metro in half." When Koldan finishes, Twilight puts her hoof to her chin, deep in thought.

"Well, we have to get to central as fast as we can, and it's on the other side of this 'Red Line', so it looks like we're passing through. So we'll pass through this station, it seems to be the smallest on this side of the metro, and go up through these stations," she traces a line across six stations, parallel to but on the other side of the Red Line, "and get to Central that way. It seems to be the most direct route, encountering the least amount of resistance."

"Okay then, I guess we'll be off!" Dash says, "To Central!" Her stomach growls angrily. "Heh, after a bite to eat?" The group chuckles, but sets about finding wood, cloth, and anything else that's safely burnable, setting it into a pile.

"Alright my little ponies, stand back!" Koldan takes a canteen with a strange marking on it, and pours a good amount of liquid on the to-be fire. He then steps back, lights a match, and throws it onto the pile, making it erupt in flame, showering the passage with light and heat. They cook, eat, joke around and generally enjoy themselves for about an hour.

"And then, we found ourselves at a dead end, mutants pouring in from the opening, and almost out of bullets," Koldan laughs lightly as he re-accounts the story of one of the many adventures he and Bourbon went on, "And I just look at 'im and say, '-"

"I told you we should have made a right!'" Pinkie cuts him off, finishing for him.

"Yeah!" Koldan says, bro-hoofing her as the group explodes in laughter.

"Okay, okay," Dash says, starting to come off of her laughter high, "I think we should probably start to get going if we want to make it to Central soon."

"Agreed, but you never said, why do you need to get to Central so bad?" Koldan asks, collecting his mess-bowl, water, and 'fire sauce'. Dash and Twilight look at each other, silently asking how to answer that.

"We were sent on a bit of a mission by a… an old friend," Dash scrapes together an explanation that is sufficiently true, but also vague enough to keep it the secret that Hunter wanted it to stay. Koldan simply nods in understanding and puts his pack back on.

"Everypony ready? Forward. MARCH!" The dank, dark air of the metro is filled with light conversation as the group makes its way to the fork in the tunnel. With Twilight as their navigator, and Koldan as their guide, they make their way through the tunnels without hitch.

When they get to the fork, though, they see a familiar, but slightly out-of-place sight. A perimeter post, the same type as at every station in the metro, is located about half-way down the passage.

"That doesn't seem right," Twilight says, scrunching her eyebrows together in confusion. She takes out her map, and looks at the tunnel they are going up. Sitting right at the end of that tunnel, lays something she had missed in the low light she had. A lone station, not marked as a part of any allegiance or confederation on the probably out of date map.

"So, do we keep going, or do we do back the way we came and look for a different route?"

"We're already here, let's just keep going this way. I'm sure that the station here won't give us too many problems."

They continue up the tunnel, when a shot kicks up dirt not but a few inches in front of them, the shot ringing out through the pass.

"That's your ONE warning shot! Get the buck back, mutants!" a high, but still commanding voice calls over the gravel path.

"We're not mutants, just travelers that want to pass through!"

A low, murmuring conversation is held behind the sand bag barricades, and a single figure steps out, a rifle raised at the group. When he gets closer, he pulls out a strange looking bar of metal, and starts waving it around them. As he does this, it lets out a gental, staticy hum.

"Hm, you all check out okay, follow me, and welcome to Standout," his voice is still emotionless and in-charge, but his body language says that he is calmer about having the group around.

"We've had to increase security around here since the Reds started mucking about. Word is they're planning war with Reich."

Koldan stiffens. Was he from Reich? Did he have friends in Reich? What even IS Reich?

Dash looks at him questioningly. Koldan shakes his head, motioning 'later'. They pass the posts, 40, 30, 20, 10, each one better defended than the last. Finally, they reach a large steel gate, humming with some sort of force. When Dash reaches out to touch it, she recoils, her entire arm tingling and numb.

"Electrical gate," the Standout guard says, punching something into a key pad, "It's great for keeping the mutants out. They have such a low electric tolerance. Not quite as effective on combat trained and ready ponies, but it does a job."

As the gate swings open, they see that almost the entire station is military business. Instead of the common tent cities, there are metal and wooden box-like buildings. Inside, they see row after row of double-bunks, with weapon racks in between. Instead of several small eateries, there is a long table laid out along opposite sides of the small station. The only thing that isn't entirely military is the market, positioned in an out-of-the-way corner.

"We have the best Stalker teams in the metro here in Standout. They serve us well," the guard boasts.

"Um, what're 'Stalker teams'?" Twilight embarrassedly asks.

"Stalker teams are small groups of ponies, usually no more than four per team, that go to the surface to collect materials for the station. Most of the stuff, we get it to use it, but some things, we get to sell to the highest bidder," the guard explains.

"Oh," Twilight looks around, unable to see a way to the surface, "How do they get to the surface?"

The guard simply points up at what looks like a crack in the ceiling.

"That blast door opens to the surface, and we have a platform that rises to there, allowing the Stalkers to get up to and down from the surface. Are you ponies going to stay, or are you just going straight through?"

"I think we're just going straight on thr-"

"Do you sell white gas in your market?" Koldan cuts Twilight off.

"Yes we do."

"Then I'd like to go to your market, and THEN we'll pass right on through. Sorry Twi'"

They go to the market, which is smaller than they usually are, but has everything that they could need. After Koldan gets his white gas, which he explains is his 'fire sauce', and Dash gets a few more supplies, they leave the station, passing through a security station where they are patted down to make sure they aren't stealing anything.

They are just barely past the final perimeter, when they hear the slow metallic click of the hammer being brought back on a revolver, and a voice.

"Why don't you just put your hands in the air, and turn around. Slowly."

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Wow, I just realized how quiet I'm making Pinkie, (thank you Akkura for the reminder on spelling) I should probably make more lines for her, the quiet is kind of wierd. Anyway, 'till then: /)*(\