"I don't get it!" Rainbow Dash snapped as she read the text on the chalkboard. "Why would he move closer to the power plant!?"

"And what the hell is this 'foot' he wrote about!?" Daring Do asked.

It was all indeed a very peculiar dilemma and the chalkboard that stood before the team was surely the most confusing lead they could have come across but still a lead nonetheless. The only real solid clue they could understand was that Radius would have abandoned this settlement that he put together ten years prior. Other than that bit of information, the whole thing was baffling to say the least.

Though it was quite odd that a pony stuck in the city for so long would move his home closer to the nearby source of deadly radiation, according to everypony's map, just over sixty percent of the city had been covered meaning that If Radius was still alive, he could not be much further away. Unfortunately, at this point in the day, the group had little choice but to properly prepare for their trek towards the infamous reactor number four which would have to take place the following day.

"Everypony, this is the point where we can be optimistic!" Celestia announced. "I'm about as sure as to why he would go towards the danger as you are but...we're so close! I can feel it, we could find him at any moment! We'll have to continue tomorrow and bring our hazmat suits but we can sleep tonight knowing that we all put in a noble effort!"

"I second that!" Rainbow Dash cheered.

"I'm getting excited to meet the guy who survived here for so long!" Spitfire said. "He'd be the toughest, gutsiest guy I've ever met!"

There were still a few hours left until sunset but the team agreed that it would prove wise to make the proper preparations before tackling the rest of the city. Still though, there was no need to be in a massive hurry to get back to the base as of yet so in order to allow the wingless ponies keep up, Celestia and the other winged teammates decided to take a leisurely stroll back on hoof. Everypony was pumped over the vital clue they had discovered and felt very confident that within the next few days, their objective will have been completed. As they continued to trot back to their camp however, they were about to be reminded that not everything was going to be easy to handle. They would soon learn of a new problem in the form of the same black hearse they saw the day before driving quite fast down a bumpy street heading Northwest.

"Oh, no." Daring Do sighed. "I hope he's not headed to find what I think he is."

"Christ, I think I've seen enough guts for one lifetime." Soarin whimpered.

"Hey, there goes a flare!" Twilight shouted as she pointed in the directed where the hearse was heading.

Wasting no time, everypony flew and galloped with much haste towards the flare signal which must have been fired by either Fredrick or Dymitri to find out what really was going on though in the back of their minds, they in a way already knew. Nopony wanted to believe that another one of the missing workers met the same horrible fate as the first they found but a unlike an ambulance, a hearse's only job is to carry the deceased.

As everypony drew even closer to the scene, they could make out the sight of a green Jeep and a black Rangerover parked next to each other. Once the hearse arrived and parked next to the other two trucks, they saw Fredrick and Dymitri standing side by side both of them looking down at the ground. When everypony slowed their pace down to a trot and approached the two soldiers, their fears were confirmed as the blood stained leg of a man could be seen poking up from the side of a log. Soarin did not dare get much closer as he was simply in no mood to have a repeat of yesterday.

While the coroner who drove the hearse prepared the stretcher, the team very slowly trotted forward to see the extent of the damage. On the other side of the log lay the rest of the man's body and it appeared that he had tripped over it while trying to escape before being killed. Just like the man they found the day prior, what ever it was that murdered him had no sense of neatness as he too had countless gashes and bite marks all over his body and throat. Not only that but his internal organs were not spared as his intestines were exposed and what appeared to be a liver was on the ground just a few feet away. Another sickening display of the pure evil in the monster who was responsible that lurked the in the shadows of the abandoned city.

"Oh, hey, it's the ponies." Fredrick said after he turned around and faced the Equestrians.

As always, Fredrick had a lit cigarette in his mouth but seemed to be somewhat more laid back than usual, possibly because the team of equines had gained a small amount of his respect for finding the first body before he did. Still though, as badly as Shining Armor's cravings were bothering him, he did not dare ask to bum a smoke off of Fredrick seeming how he simply comes across as the type of person you just don't ask that. He also felt that it may be too soon to ask Rainbow Dash for one from his newly acquired pack so he would just have to wait until she felt that it was the right time to allow him one.

"Hello, Mr. Schultz." Celestia greeted. "I see that another one of the missing men has met the same demise as the other."

"Doesn't look like he went quick either." Fredrick replied as he finished his cigarette and immediately lit up another. "I like to think I've seen it all but Christ, this shit's making my stomach turn."

"Likewise." Daring Do added." "It's sickening."

"I'll say. Trust me, I've done my fair share of killing in Ukrainian Army but I always try to make it quick. This...there's just no honor here."

"Hey, comrades, did you find any sign of your own?" Dymitri asked.

"As a matter of fact..." Celestia began. "We did. We found what looked like an encampment at the old grocery store just Southeast of here. There was a chalkboard with a message from Radius too. It said something about him needing some 'foot'. Any idea what that means?"

"A foot? Uhh, the only thing I can think of is this big blob called the 'elephant's foot'."

"'Elephant's foot'? What's that?"

"Back in eighty-six when the reactor went, molten uranium ran through the water pipes and melted through some of the floors. There's a corridor on the bottom level where this one particular gray blob settled and hardened into what kinda looks like...well, an elephant's foot."

"But why in the fuck would anybody need that damn thing?" Fredrick asked, puzzled. "Just being inside the room with it will kill anything in minutes."

While Celestia, Fredrick, and Dymitri continued their conversation, Twilight took it upon herself to more closely examine the body while everypony was distracted with coming up with theories of their own. She recalled seeing the fangs on the dead wolves the morning after Fredrick and Dymitri gunned them down and from what she remembered they were much smaller than the puncture wounds she was looking at. She felt that now would be as good a time as any to compare a particular sample she took and try to put this inconsistency to rest.

Very slowly and carefully Twilight took the lead lined sample bag from her saddle bag, levitated her pair of tweezers out of the smaller pocket and the slowly unzipped the larger pocket. Once the pocket was open, Twilight then lowered the tweezers into the bag where she kept the tail hair and the large tooth she found and retrieved the latter. Now that she had the tweezers with the pointed tooth in its grasp, she could compare it to the depth and diameter of the bite marks on several different areas on the corpse that lay before her. The fang fit into one of the deepest wounds like a perfect puzzle.

Though the tooth being a match did not confirm that it was for certain that of the culprit, it did mean that the wolves were not the killers and the actual killer was still out there. Still, there were so many questions that Twilight so badly wanted answers for. Who or what did the tooth come from? Where was the creature now? Why was it found in the bathroom sink of Radius's makeshift home?

"Miss, what are you doing?" An unfamiliar voice asked, startling Twilight.

Twilight looked up to see the man in the black suit who brought the hearse staring at her with a quizzical expression on his face. The man was the Kiev City Coroner and he had the stretcher with the body bag fully prepared and was ready to hoist the body up onto it to be bagged and tagged. He never expected to have a small equine attempt to try her hoof at crime scene investigations and understandably preferred to have the proper space so he could do his job.

"Oh! Uh, sorry, I was just..." Twilight fumbled as she put the tooth back into the bag "...uh, trying to take a close look at the, um...bite marks."

"Well, that's all well and good, I suppose." The coroner said as he put on a pair of rubber gloves. "As far as I know, nobody has any clue what could have done this so we're at a dead end for now. Would you mind helping me lift him up, please?"

"Ah, of course, sir."

Within seconds, the body was hoisted up onto the stretcher, closed inside the body bag, and loaded into the hearse. The coroner then bid Twilight good day, got back into the long car and headed back to Kiev where he would have the remains of the deceased man released to his family. Now that she had a moment to think, Twilight could take a moment to ponder some theories that she had regarding the tooth being such a close match to the bite wounds on the body she just examined. Still, she felt that at this point it was too early to form a hypothesis and would need to investigate much, much further to get to the bottom of it.

"Twiley, are you coming?" Shining Armor asked. "We're heading back to the camp now."

"Ah, great." Twilight sarcastically replied. "I can't wait to sink my teeth into some more of that packaged cardboard with little colored bits of gel they call fruit."

"Ha! And I thought I was the whiny one lately."

Celestia and Fredrick were finished with their conversation which went much better than others before and now that the body was bagged and tagged, they were to part ways until next time. The only thing for the team to do was to determine what teams would search which areas and go from there. There was not much more of the actual city to search and each day, their starting points got further and further away from their camp. According to all the crossed out buildings and areas on everypony's maps, nearly three quarters of the actual urban parts of Pripyat have been covered.

With everypony back at their base camp, they could all enjoy their dinner that closely resembled hardtack that American Civil War soldiers would have eaten and what was left of the vodka to wash it down. With the new discovery of Radius's old home he made out of a store manager's office, the group knew that they were getting so close. Celestia especially was nearly ready to giggle like a school filly and she had spent a great deal of time thinking of how finding her long lost flame would play out.

Since discovering that there may be a chance that Radius Hoofenschtov could still be alive, she had often thought about if she would still have the same feelings for him as before. After his alleged death, she had never moved on and started dating anypony else, nor had she had any more sexual partners ever since. She simply could not get herself to find another stallion despite several attempts by nobles to coax her into settling down with a member of royalty from another nation. Celestia did not want what would have been a completely loveless relationship just for the sake of having one. She wanted a shy, geeky, super intelligent stallion that she only saw in Radius and it was safe to say that if she ever found him, she would likely fall in love with him all over again.

"Alright, everypony!" Celestia spoke up as the team prepared to head out just as the sun rose. "Just like always, we'll fan out and start where we left off yesterday. "Now that we're getting close to the power plant, pay close attention to your Geiger counters! If you enter any contaminated areas, put your hazmat suits on! If you start to feel sick, head back to the base! I refuse to let any harm come to any of you so take care of yourselves!"

The second the sun poked up over the horizon, the team sprang out the door towards the part of the city where they had left off the day before. Everypony was confident that they would soon finally learn what really became of Radius Hoofenschtov and if he was truly still alive, they would be bringing him back home to his family. Since Celestia had promised his aging parents that if he was to be found they would see him again before they passed, she was more determined to make good on that promise more than anything she had her mind set on.

Once the whole group approached the rendezvous point, each team of two fanned out into their own direction. Big Macintosh and Daring do headed Southeast in the direction of the massive cooling pond that fed the nuclear reactor, Spitfire and Soarin went due South towards the more commercial side, and Rainbow Dash along with Shining Armor kept to a more residential end. Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia directed their search towards an area where they could continue scouting about for their lost pony and collect samples at the same time. An area on Southwestern most point of Pripyat that is mostly fenced off as it is considered the most dangerous and received the brunt of the radioactive vapors that billowed out of reactor number four the day that it exploded. An area where a great deal of contaminated soils and irradiated timber was buried in order to mitigate its harmful affects on the environment. The area that the two brave and valiant princesses were coming within dangerous proximities of was none other than what was infamously dubbed the Red Forest.

Though the actual appearance of the Red Forrest no longer lived up to its name, it was still dangerous and anyone or anypony near there would need to constantly keep an eye on their Geiger counter and heed its warning should the device make any sound. The wooded area was green and the leaves coming in nicely but looks can be quite deceiving. Celestia had seen photographs of the forest back when the explosion happened and the way the leaves on the trees just turned this ugly shade of rusty brown to bright red was a blood curdling sight and to actually be there sent chills down the two ponies' spines. Still though, they pressed on.

Though brave, Celestia and Twilight Sparkle were also very intelligent and knew very well that certain parts of the Red Forest were fenced off and deemed off limits for a very good reason and as such, they had no intentions of encroaching upon them. The fact that anyone caught on the wrong side of the fence by authorities being at risk of facing heavy fines or even arrest was also a good indication on the importance of avoiding it. Celestia however knew Radius all too well and remembered that when he took his vacations from work, he would often take a camping trip to wooded areas as he greatly enjoyed the outdoors and getting close to nature. Why he may go so far as to spend time in a highly contaminated area and put himself in grave danger though was beyond her.

"Uh, Princess?" Twilight said as she nervously observed the beeps and flashing lights on her Geiger counter. "We may want to put our suits on before we go any further."

"I agree." Celestia replied. "If it gets much worse, we would be wise to turn back. Even a genius like Radius couldn't find a way to survive out there for long."

Twilight and Celestia both levitated their own lead lined hazmat suits out of their saddlebags with their auras and within seconds, they were on their bodies and their gas masks on their faces. The suits would be ample protection for light to moderate radiation but only for so long and could not be used again once their limit was reached. To play it safe, the two princesses both agreed that if their devices flashed and beeped much faster, they would quickly head back in the direction they came from.

"Oh, what have we here?" Twilight said as she observed a turtle crawling on the ground. "Wow, look at this weird orange pattern on this little guys shell."

"It's shaped kind of funny too." Celestia said. "Take some pictures. This could shed some light on radiation's affect on reptilian bone development."

"I'll bet. Well, other than the shell, I'd say this guy looks to be pretty nor-gahhh!"

Just as Twilight snapped her third photograph of the small reptile that crawled before them, something happened that startled the two so much that the lavender Princess dropped her camera. right next to the turtle's head, a second one poked out of the front of the shell to join it's conjoined sibling and soak up some warmth from the rising sun.

"Twilight, let's go." Celestia said as she began to trot back into the direction from which they came.

"Right behind you." Twilight agreed as she picked up her camera and followed suit.