Author's Notes:

Just wanna say: The shameless self promotion group may be the most 'friendly' group ever. Posted my fic and got 5 dislikes for self promotion and got called a racist for basing the Yaks off of Pakistan. (Even though in the show they obviously are. Because after all YakYakistan is literally Pakistan with one letter changed. I mean it doesn't get much more obvious than figuring out what the red button does.)

Food was the first thing on the agenda. In open fields like the outside of the Everfree, food was plentiful. Whether it was good or not wasn't exactly the point. Grass, leaves, bark, and insects made for a meal when you were stuck in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't that long after I had left the Everfree that we were in the grassland between Canterlot and Ponyville. Patrols here were only done by air, which meant that avoiding detection was a matter of duck and cover. The helicopters were primarily older Prussian ones, or Gyrocopters occasionally. We kept it on a low, making sure that whenever we moved there was something we could get under, normally trees would do but we needed to see the trajectory of the aircraft.

The distant sound of the rudders always kept us on high alert, so we moved carefully. The M16 was empty so I figured it was best used as a walking stick. The slow pace we kept made catching up easy if we needed to break off, which was common for Bellona. She had never been outside of Ponyville and tended to stop and stare.

"You know if you keep stopping like this I might as well pick you up and carry you. It'd probably actually be faster."

"Sure it would, I'm only stopping for a second."

"If by second you mean fifteen minutes than sure you are. It's a problem and we need to keep moving."

That low and sturdy rumble of propellers was growing less and less distant, and to me that was an issue. We weren't in a need for a rescue, and most certainly not by them. I don't even think it'd count as a rescue, since I'm pretty sure a rescue needs to take you to somewhere better (to any extent) than the danger you are currently in. I'm no Voltaire, so I don't know.

It was at this point that Bell's constant stop and go began to annoy me, and I actually found that dragging her by her tail was faster than waiting. This worked for a little while until we stated going uphill. Once the hills started, the dragging stopped. There wasn't much to look at anymore, and we weren't that far from Canterlot anymore, one day at the most. My guess was that we'd be roughly three quarters of the way there by nightfall. From there we'd gather some time to find other ways into the city than just strolling through the front door and then we'd move at that nightfall.

The fast beat of rudders was still audible in the distance, telling by the bass they were certainly moving away from us. I had no doubt in my mind that there would be foot patrols sooner or later, so I always kept an eye out for places to scuttle into and hide. The mountain became steeper and steeper as we walked up it, rocks tended to jut along the way. That was when we ran into the wall.

More of a cliff, but it was still a problem. The Earth had given out right on the railway. It was old and weathered into place, it must've been done during the war to cut off supplies in and out of Canterlot. It was a smart move, but now we needed a way around it. My first idea was to see if I could get up and just vault it, but that didn't work. I waited for some time before it hit me. There were toppled trees, which had been down and rotting for a long time. I slid one over to an angle against the boulder. I climbed right over and Bell followed.

There was a tunnel on the other side, which probably was the reason they chose here of anywhere to blow the line. I could see a light at the end, so I knew that there was an end to it. We walked down the dark, cold, and damp tunnel for what felt like an eternity. Each step echoing back and forth through our ears. It was, other than that, silent as hell. It reminded me of something.

The worst word by far in the English language is 'Alone'. Murder doesn't hold a candle to it and hell is a bad synonym.

I kept moving, thinking that at least I wasn't... alone. I had somepony with me, and that was what counted. The tunnel, however, gave the illusion that I stood in the middle of nowhere with no way but forwards. It was pitch black save for the few yellow reflective signs. We pushed on into the dark as we walked towards the light. I was uneasy with the affair, I knew that this cave would collapse on my head in a matter of minutes. This fact hadn't occurred to my companion. She acted just as she did before we walked in.

Her face was stern, looking forwards. The light struck only half of her face, exaggerating the light under her eyes and creating dark black blemishes that were not there. It was like looking at a painting, a moving and gentle painting of a pony staring forwards. I almost felt like she was scared.

No, she was more than scared, she was terrified.

She was talking to herself, generally comments like 'It feels like there's no end'. My thoughts were something similar, but more along the lines of 'If we spend too much time in here there won't be an end'. The rudders, however, ran directly over us. It small rocks fell from the ceiling of the cave, it'd come down soon. We were close to the exit, then the side we came from caved in. I made a deadbolt and didn't even have to tell her to do the same. We were out of the cave in a second, and it fell all the way in.