What the hay is he doing?!, Dash wonders as Khan walks at the group of shadow-ponies.

Khan is in a complete calm as he steps steadily towards the marching formation. Closing his eyes, he takes a deep breath, looking at the mass of shadow soldiers through closed lids. He starts reciting an ancient chant, first under his breath, inaudible, then growing in volume. The silhouettes stop marching as one, looking at the stallion that still walks towards them and parting, forming a path around him. The ponies look on in shocked amazement. Now in the center of the formation, Khan stops moving. He continues his chant for a few more seconds, then falls completely silent.

"Be free," he whispers softly. All of the shadow figures snap to attention, throwing up a solute. Another all-encompassing flash, and they're gone. Khan walks back to the group, smiling as if nothing had happened.

"Come, my friends! It's still a long way to Central." He passes through the shocked collection of ponies, and through to the station's gate.

"Hold on a second," Rainbow says when they come out of their shock and catch up to Khan, "How did you know we're trying to get to Central?" Khan looks back at her with a satisfied, almost peaceful look.

"You start to figure things out as you get older. All you have to do is figure the right things out." The gate slides reluctantly aside, groaning with the effort, and they all walk inside.

"Would anypony mind telling me what the hay just happened?" Koldan asks to nopony in particular as he trails at the back of the group.

"If I figure it out, I'll let ya know."

The station is in desperate need of repair. Smoke leaks from broken electrics, holes in tents are given up on, cracks spread across the floor from every corner of its area.

"This station is rather unlucky," one of the guards states, looking around the beaten-up area that would probably be a nice living space if it were in better condition. "It's basically IS 'the Front'." Fluttershy winces at the mention of the name. "All hope of getting it in living order has been lost. And it'll probably stay that way unless the war ends."

The air is thick with silence again, nopony quite sure what to say or do.

"Well, I'm going to take a bit of a shortcut through a side tunnel. I hope our paths cross again sometime my little ponies." Khan breaks the clean silence, and walks off.

Koldan sighs. "So what now? It's a bit late to be going into another tunnel, but at the same time…" he trails off.

"Well, if you wanted, you could-" the Red soldier's surprisingly accentless voice is cut short be the ping of a bullet hitting a sheet of metal near him.

"REICH!" He sounds an alarm, scampering behind some sandbags. The others do likewise as a fresh group of soldiers rush up to their positions, aiming at the advancing ponies clad in simple, yet elegant grey coats. The small group of friends is put in the middle of the fray, Twilight aiming her weapon, Dash throwing her AK to Koldan and pulling out her gauss rifle.

"You five! Follow me!" a voice calls out. The friends somehow know that they are the five that are being called. Without hesitation, they go to the voice. They reach a brown colt in a full-face helmet with two pistols at his thighs [A/N: think relative positions]. He motions them to follow quietly and closely, and walks quickly down a small tunnel, reaching a small series of ladders leading to a platform. He starts climbing, waiting on the platform for the rest of them.

"Okay, just a little bit further through here, there's supposedly a Reich planning room. If we can get there, we may be able to take some of their officers," the colt explains quickly, drawing one of the pistols and turning to face the door leading off of the platform.

"Ready?" Dash taps him on the shoulder to indicate 'yes', and he kicks the lock and handle down, then bucking the door itself open. There is a surprised shout as he does this, followed by two quick pistol shots. The group enters the small room, and looks at the seemingly insignificant space, then at the door.

"Okay, you two," the momentary colt leader points at Rainbow and Fluttershy, "stay here and guard the entrance. The rest of you, with me." All the ponies nod as they comply with their orders, even though Dash groans a bit at being assigned guard duty.

The colt points his pistol at the lock on the next door, blowing it out and kicking it open, entering the next room, quickly followed again by Twilight and Pinkie. This room is empty, save for some ammunition, which is quickly pocketed by the colt. He breaches the next door. Stepping inside, Twilight sees his pistol kicked out of his hand, and a booted hoof kicking out his rear right leg. He grunts in pain, wincing as he falls to the ground. A pony steps between him, and Twilight and Pinkie, aiming a pistol at each of them. Twilight turns to see the muzzle of another pistol, and another pony between her and Pinkie.

"Jetzt, jetzt, jetzt. Was haben wir hier?" The pony between Twi' and the immobilized colt says.

"Huh?"

The pony sighs. "What do we have here? Just where do you think YOU'RE going?"

Twilight panics.

"Dash! Flut-" her calls die in her mouth as she turns to see both Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash led by gunpoint to the rest of them.

"Yeah, Twi?" Dash asks, defeat in her voice.

"Red Kommandoes," the same captor starts, taking off the helmet that had hid his face, "Six of them! Boys, I want you all to know: We're going to be rich." The colt laughs humorlessly, pulling the crippled leader to a corner, putting his gun's barrel to his temple.

"Sir!" one of the others call, "Shouldn't we call the Gestapo? They're worth more alive."

The leader of the captors thinks for a bit, then sighs, holstering his pistol. He mumbles something under his breath about 'Dummkopfs' and 'Schweinhunden Gestapo'. Pulling out a wireless communicator, he toggles 'call'.

"Anfordern eines Gestapo-Agent in der Nähe der Front zu Bereich 4,93. Dringend." [A/N: This is the last full German sentence that I will write (in this chapter :P), I understand some don't like foreign language-heavy chapters.] He sighs again.

"Those agents are absolute creeps." His face contorts in disgust when he says 'creeps'. He walks over to the crippled colt that had led them all here, looking at him for a moment, then kicking his helmet off. The colt under the helmet's face is contorted in pain. His darker brown, close-cut mane is pressed against his head with helmet-hair. He has a bandage around his forehead with a large blood-stain on it. Come to think of it, he looks a lot like the colt in Fluttershy's…

"Nikola!" Fluttershy cries when she sees his face, tears welling up in her eyes. The group of long-time friends looks at her questioningly, unused to outbursts from the timid mare. He looks up at her, really looking at her for the first time.

"Fluttershy?" His face melts, a soul warming smile spreading over his look of pain.

Fluttershy runs to him, collapsing beside him and falling into his arms, holding him close. The tears fall into his flat mane. Rainbow is the first to understand what's going on, 'daww'ing more than she ever thought possible.

"Care to explain, Dash?" Twilight whispers, so as not to ruin their 'moment'.

"That colt was Fluttershy's coltfriend that she met when she was a field medic," Dash starts, Twilight's eyes widening, and her eyebrows popping up. "She thought that he had died in some battle, because she got a letter with a note from him and a death notice, and she was crushed, of course. I saw the picture she had of him and her together, and asked her about it earlier today… Was that really just today?" she shakes her head, laughing lightly, "Time travels weird, when one is on the road with friends. It feels like so long ago. So much has happened."

Eventually, Fluttershy leaves the embrace, looking into her coltfriend's glistening eyes.

"I sought I vould never see you again! Vhat happened? Vhere have you been? I received a deas notice and-" She is cut off when he leans forward, pressing his lips to hers briefly.

"I didn't die, I vas just re-stationed to Redwall station, zen redirected again to ze front, here. How have you bee-" Their re-union is cut short as the Reich captain clears his throat loudly, reminding them of where they were. They fall silent.

"The agent should be here any moment, and when he, or she, gets here, nothing at all out-of-line will be tolerated!" The sound of approaching hoofsteps makes the captain look up from the group and listen. He smiles devilishly.

"Ah, here she comes now, actually. Agent approaching: Ach-TUNG!" All of the Reich soldiers snap to attention as the door swings freely open again. The agent walks in with an air of importance and dignity. The old friends stare in astonishment at the sight.

"What the hay? Is that Rarity?"

---

I probably won't be able to post at all during the week for the next week or two or three because of an 08,00 to 20,00 marching band camp, but I'll try to post on the weekends. I'm sorry if the whole over-use of foreign language ruined the last chapter for you, I have gotten negative feedback on that, and it will NOT happen again*. Thank's as always for reading! Be sure to keep being awesome! If you didn't see the whole 'Fluttershy reunion with coltfriend' thing coming: neither did I! Bro-hoof! /)*(\

(*in this story, I'm sure it'll happen in other stories, if I ever put them up :D)