"What 'n tarnation 're y'all doin' here?" Applejack says with a wide smile as she walks over to her old friends.

"Well," Dash begins solemnly, hanging her head a bit, "unfortunately we're here for some pretty serious business. Has word of the 'Dark Ones' reached here yet?"

Applejack's eyes widen and she nods slowly, her outstretched arm falling slack halfway into shaking Twilight's hoof. "Yeah, why?" she answers, her voice shaking a little bit.

"They're why we're here. The bastards first showed up at our station a while back, and now we're all, y'know," Dash cuts off, putting her hoof out in an explanatory motion, "'cause apparently we have a pretty ridiculous ability to find each other without trying, and we all found our way here, and now you," she taps Applejack in the chest lightly to emphasize, "are our guide."

Applejack stares at Dash in shock for a few moments, struggling a bit with the information. Finally, she looks down and to the side, shaking her head with a low whistle, eyebrows raising.

"Well, Ah guess we'd best be a-goin' now then," she says, head raising to look them in the eyes again, "those nasty critters ain't gonna be killin' themselves. Cartridge!" she calls to a white pony sitting in the corner of the room with a long barreled, wood stocked rifle, who looks up from absently rubbing the black barrel with a rag.

He's wearing a black and grey diagonally striped bandana over his muzzle, and lightly tinted glasses, partially covered by his messy, dark brown mane. His old short sleeved shirt is tattered and the original blue had faded. His black pants had flexible padding over the knees, scuffed from years of abuse.

"Stop futzin' around with your rahfle an' get over here, we've got ourselves a job to do!"

He wordlessly stuffs his rag into one of the many pockets of his pants, standing up and lazily dragging his rifle up and over his shoulder. Walking to the group lazily, but still quickly, as if detached from the situation, eyes completely void of emotion.

"Alright y'all," Applejack says, turning to the guards in front of the giant blast doors, "open them doors on up. We got us a new world t' save!"

The skies are a raw grey as the group steps from the confines of the metros, hockey mask style filtration masks secured over their muzzles. They've come up into the ruins of a small city, broken and crumbled buildings extending forwards on either side of them. Walls extend down from the sides of the wide metro entrance, expanding in a 'v' shape outwards. A courtyard of sorts spreads out in front of them, a pathway down the middle and charred, leafless trees in diagonal rows on both sides.

"Wow…" Dash breathes, voicing the thoughts of the group. Their weapons are down, their arms slack with awe, heads all tilted up to the grey expanse, intermittently marred by lightning. Cartridge sighs, his breath fogging in front of him, looking from the group of gawking ponies, to the ruins of the town they came out into, and back again. Exercising his Scottish voice for the first time since he met the five mares, he mumbles something under his breath, and sighs again.

"If we could please move on to something more important than just-" he cut himself off, his ears perking up to the sky and a look of concentration taking over his look of boredom. A rumbling can be heard over the breeze, growing in volume quickly.

"Shit," Cartridge breathes. "Hide!" He dives behind the crumbled remains of a pillar, pulling his rifle to his shoulder, aiming it into the courtyard in front of them. The others follow suit, diving behind anything big enough to hide behind and looking out into the courtyard. As the rumbling grows ever louder, mutants start swarming through the open space. An entire pack runs straight through the dead, dry forest, dozens upon dozens passing through before the last ones pass.

The looks on the faces of the less seasoned of metro-dwellers are ones of horror, as if shocked that so many mutants even existed, and fearing above all else that they would have to face numbers of the beasts equal or even greater than those that they just saw.

"D-d-does that happen often?" Dash asks, shaken even through her experience in the defense force. She picks up Fluttershy, who had frozen in fear, and was still unresponsive, and walks over to the others.

"Eh, more often than I would like it to," Cartridge answers.

"Hey!" Pinkie shouts, jumping into the air slightly, "Where do you come from? You have a really cool voice! Could you talk more? Do you like PARTIES?!" She continues rambling on and on, hardly pausing for a breath through the entire thing.

"Does she do this often?" Cartridge asks, jabbing a thumb in Pinkie's direction. Everypony merely nods. "Oi, this is gonna be one 'ell of an op."

"Hey y'all!" Applejack's voice calls out to them, "Let's be a-goin'!" Falling in beside her, Cartridge simply shakes his head at the still-rambling Pinkie.

"So Jacks," he asks, tuning Pinkie out, "Where are we goin' anywhy?"

"Oh, so the hi 'n' mahty Cartridge, best in 'e business, doesn't know where 'e's goin'?" Applejack says, raising an eyebrow mockingly.

"Ey! 'T's not my fault if nopony told me anythin' other than 'be at the gate in an hour.'," the Scotspony says, raising his hoofs defensively.

Applejack chuckles. "Ah know, Ah know. Anyways, we goin' down t' the lah-bary."

The rifleman stops, his eyes dilating behind their lenses. The puffs of steam emanating from his bandana become shorter and more frequent as his breath becomes almost panicked.

"Yu mean w're goin' to the Library?" he asks just above a whisper. "We're goin' to the buckin' LIBRARY and yu din't think it would a' been a good idea to tell me before we were already on the bloody surface?!" His tone blasts to a yell as he lets frustration loose, turning and kicking a rock across the field, a dull crump ringing out as it crushes against the wall of a half-way leveled building.

He leans his head back, taking several deep breaths, and ending with a deep sigh. Turning back to the others, his eyes have lost all traces of their rage, and returned to their mostly dis-interested state.

"Well, as long as we're up here…" He lets the sentence hang as he simply walks off. "Oh, and girls," he says over his shoulder, "whatever ya do, do. not. look. at. the glowing. red. tower."

---

I. am so. sorry. I really am sorry I always take so long with updates, but now with band winding down, I think I'll be able to update more often. I'm also sorry this is such a short chapter, but I wanted to post at least something. Also, I'm getting lonely. Please review, so I can be less lonely. Thanks for reading, and thank you especially to Akkura, who has been keeping this fic alive for who knows how long anymore. 'Till next time (four weeks or less, I promise), bro-hoof /)*(\, peace off.