It was an incredible stench. The sewers under Dusseldorf were certainly not a place where anyone would want to vacation, but now that it was no longer maintained, it was practically unbearable. I took my last breath through my nose as Fish and Mac lifted the manhole cover, and all my nose hairs were immediately killed. The same was true for my appetite, and I got an irresistible urge to soak my hooves in soapy water for the next few weeks. I had resigned myself to eating with the same limb on which I ran, but there had to be a limit. In those thoughts I was not alone, as Rarity wailed at least as much as I did, just not in an inner monologue.

"Is there really no other way to the stadium?" she asked for what surely had to be the tenth time and made a wide circle around a puddle on the path. To the left of us was the waste water that rushed into the darkness behind us. Fish and Shining had had a heated discussion on the ship, which was followed by another hour inside the meeting room as they had moved off the deck. The discussion had been anything but quiet, but I hadn’t been able to garner anything in the hall. Therefore, I had taken the time and gone with AJ in our cabin to take a nap. I had been awakened in the evening when she told me that there was a new plan. The two had agreed on a compromise after Armor had made ​​it clear to Fish that we were a rescue team, not a combat unit. However, Fish’s point also resonated with us, namely that it would not make sense that people should be placed in a cage where they would practically perish one after the other due to the air. That had been a hard pill for all.

Julian had flown down the hall and wrecked everything in his path until he had calmed down, mostly thanks to a small injury, and had been examined by Twilight. The result had been the same as in humans. Although he was now a pony, while Luna and Twilight prolonged the spell, he had been a human long enough to be exposed to the radiation and for his body to develop tumours. It had been one reason why he finally agreed to the plan of the soldiers. Twilight, in contrast, had remained surprisingly calm and rational. She repeatedly told them that it was not their fault and that if she could do anything, she would do it without hesitation. Rarity promised to do everything in her power to make their remaining time as pleasant as possible. That seemed to extend to entering the sewers as well.

What had surprised me were Pinkie and Hawk. The soldier had only said something about how they had deserved it and remained silent otherwise, which was not like her. The same was true for Pinkie. She remained silent and did not say a sound, which sent a shiver down my spine along with the others. We didn't involve Cadance and Fluttershy since they were both too sensitive. Finally, there were Trixie and AJ, who had both been more concerned about my well-being than that of the humans. It wasn’t that they did not feel sorry, but it was something that could not be helped, as Twilight repeatedly said.

Now we were in the night, in fog and freezing temperatures in the sewers under Dusseldorf. The only light came from our diamonds which, with their soft light, reminded me a bit of the light of dawn. Each of the participants in the mission had received one. We were down here with the five soldiers, Twilight, Trixie, Rarity, and Shining Armor, moving in a single file behind Fish. The troops had a rough idea of where we were since they had seen the maps when they had secured the stadium at that time. It was better than nothing.

The plan was to take the stadium back, free any possible prisoners, and to look for clues to my family. Once that was done, a trap for Nightmare was to be established in order to defeat her. We had to get rid of her sooner or later, as she still blocked our way home. The first part of the plan involved us coming through the channels in the sewers and, from there, to open the control room to the ceiling so that our air squadron, composed of Princess Luna, Rainbow Dash, Night Hawk, and Julian, could intervene. Of course, they had received diamonds and now waited only for our signal, which would be a flare from Twilight, Armor, or myself. Rarity and Trixie had the task to protect the entrances to the sewers in the event of a retreat. Since there should also be a generator in the basement, that was also one of our goals.

“The only other option, Miss Rarity, was for the pegasi to fly us into the stadium. But it was rejected since it would ruin your hair…” Fish flashed the light of his diamond onto the fashion designer.

"Had I known what would be in these sewers, then ..." She was distracted when I put a hoof on her shoulder, which meant that now a dirty hoof print was visible.

"You’ll just have to take a bath when we’re back in the Celestia, okay?" The horrified look on her face spoke volumes, but I could not help but grin.

"You. Will. Regret. This," she hissed at me and turned red with rage. For a few seconds, I really thought her head was about to explode.

"Light is right, Rarity," Twilight joined in. "Please bear it, for all of us." Rarity studied her friend’s face for a few moments, then sighed deeply and shook off my hoof.

"This is still not over," she said as she caught up with Twilight. I looked at Trixie, who only grinned at me and then pointed at her hooves. These were wrapped in a kind of magical aura, so that they seemed to float slightly above the ground.

"I can understand it a little. I've lived a long time in the woods and have to say that this place is much dirtier than anything I’ve seen in that time." It did not help to know what exact kind of dirt that was below, and I missed the boots from my armour.

“Unfortunately, that doesn’t help, Trixie. Otherwise we wouldn’t have been unnoticed in the system.” We went right around a large curve. A little moonlight came through the lid over us, but not so much that it would help anything. We had not encountered any shades so far, which I considered a good omen since one could hear the shades more than well enough.

"We're almost there," Fish said softly before he stopped at an intersection. He poked his head around the corner and ordered the rest of the unit to keep back. "A guard with a pistol." He threw the diamond from his hand to Mac, who was standing behind him, and shouldered his G36.

"What are you doing?" Armor asked, and we all saw how the soldier went to the ground and slowly began to crawl around the corner. He did not answer, probably not to direct any attention to him, and finally began to aim his gun. He exhaled deeply, and the next moment, a shot echoed through the sewer. There was a dull crash as a body bounced against the cold ground.

"Did you have to do that?" Twilight asked grimly. "We could have put him to sleep with a spell."

"He would die one way or another. Radiation, remember?" Fish justified himself as he secured the weapon again and replaced the cartridge in the magazine. "At best, I have done him a favour." We walked the rest of the short path, went past the body, and headed towards the heavy iron door.

"There are always heavy iron doors..." I sighed and gave my sister space to do her work. "How come you know this magic, Trixie?" I added as she began to search the lock for patterns.

"Do not bother me," she only said and began to work with her ​​magic. I looked as Fish examined the body and finally pulled something out of its pocket.

"Who needs magic when you have the key?" He walked past Trixie, who quickly cut her magic, and quickly opened the lock. The door swung open and a dark cellar appeared. “Hold on for a bit, Trixie and Miss Rarity.” The soldiers had insisted on referring to her by that. “You two should protect the basement and the way back. Light and Twilight will see if they can find any information in their commander’s room, and Shining Armor and us will secure the premises and try to open the roof for the others." He looked briefly around to everyone by the light provided by the diamond and then nodded. "Let's go." Armor also nodded and followed the Americans in the cellar.

"Aren’t we trusting them too quickly?" Trixie asked when we were alone now.

"We have no reason to distrust them. They want to get rid of Nightmare just like us, and if we help them with the stadium, we can look for information," I assured her. "If we can get use them to destroy Nightmare, then why not.” Twilight and Rarity followed me, and we were now on our way.

The basement was dark since the diamond did not contribute much light. Rarity had even reduced hers as much as possible. Light and Twilight had disappeared up a staircase to the upper floors, and now it was up to them to secure the basement. This consisted of wide halls and a number of doors, but all seemed to be closed.

"So where do we start?" Rarity asked as they walked down the first of many corridors and eyed every door carefully. She found this entire thing rather frightening, as according to the description of the humans, they were supposed to meet much more resistance.

"Trixie suggests we simply take one of the doors." Rarity nodded and pointed to the first available one on her left.

"I wonder what humans keep in a basement like this. Maybe stage props and costumes for shows. Or even the remains of a fashion show! I’d give so much to see so—”

“Meat.”

"Excuse me?" At Trixie’s interruption, Rarity came back to reality and also glanced through the now open door. The room was covered in ice and on shelves were some frozen meat products. The designer let out a yell, and with a quick swivel of her magic, slammed the door shut. "Those barbarians..." She snorted at the door and turned to the next. "Let's see what is in this room..." She turned the knob of the next door, and hardly had it opened a few centimetres did a foul smell quickly escape. This time it was Trixie who responded quickly and pressed the door back into the frame.

"I believe we do not want to see that..." she said to Rarity. She knew that sound and the smell: decay. In her time in the forest, she often ran into predators on the road and had seen what happened to their victims. This was probably another one of the cold rooms, only it had failed in this case. "Maybe we should look for clues. There must also have one of those generators so it can be protected. Once we seize the controls, we’ll be in charge.”

"What do we look for then?" Rarity was still a little pale in the face from the sight behind the first door.

"I knew from the Light that humans eat flesh, but the amount... This could not all just be for show, right? The stadium would have to be huge." Trixie could understand Rarity’s reservations, but if humans needed to eat meat to survive, it was an evil that they would have to accept for the time being.

After Twilight and I had carefully went up the stairwell to the ground floor, we now squinted through the door into this and saw there were several guards posted. Every now and then the light of a flashlight flickered on the walls, but that posed a question.

"How do they protect themselves from the shades? Flashlights are unlikely to do anything, right?" Twilight nodded.

"It seemed strange that only one guard guarded the entrance when they just had an encounter with another group yesterday. This is not logical. Anyone in their right mind would still reinforce the guards and not allow such carelessness." I could only agree with her. Something was not right here from start to finish. Yesterday there had been so many of them, and now there were so few guards at night that we had almost free reign?

“Anyway, I say we search for that office and disappear again.” We quickly both scurried through the gap in the door, and I closed it slowly so that we didn’t make ​​any noise. We were in the office area of the stadium, where management had probably worked, and it was fitted, to our relief, with carpeting. Hastily, we went behind the first desk to take cover as the light from a flashlight soared above us. The muffled steps of the guard approached.

"I thought I saw something, Mark!" he called to one of his colleagues as he stood by the stairway outside the door. The light scanned the door, went a little along the wall, and then on the carpet. I saw it from our hiding place, just like our pursuer. We hadn’t noticed it in the darkness, as we had deactivated the diamonds, but we had left tracks on the carpet. Dark marks were visible where someone had stepped, and now the marks of our hooves were there as well. I cursed inwardly and briefly thought about magic as the light passed over our heads on the desk.

"There's somebody there!" he cried suddenly without looking further, and a gun was loaded. I had no choice and did the first thing I could and aimed my magic at the iron door and spike erupted from it. That pierced through the guard’s stomach, where the liver was supposed to be and blood splattered to the floor as it retracted. The gun fell to the ground, then the guard, and the carpet slowly started to turn red. I stared at Twilight, who returned the look.

"I… Twilight..." We both looked a few seconds before pulled me in her hooves.

"He would have shot ... He would have shot at us and killed us. We didn’t have time..." Yes, I had seen dead, I had already even killed, but only soulless monsters like changelings and shades. This was a man who only did what he saw fit to survive. He had probably been alone and been so afraid for his life that he did not dare to look at who he was facing.

"Björn? Hey, Björn?" someone called from the distance. "Björn, what's going on? What did you find?" Along the wall shone a light again, but this time much weaker. I looked down to the open eyes of Björn, whose life I had just ended. Was it right? No, but I was forced too, right? In addition, he would have died from radiation in any case, right? And were we not here to defeat them? If that wasn’t the plan... All of a sudden, I was dragged along the floor as Twilight began to relocate our hiding place. I responded and began to move my legs again.

"Damn! What's that?" I did not dare to turn around, but I assumed that he had found the blood on the door.

"It’ll be swarming with guards soon. Where do we go?" asked Twilight when we turned into the corridor by a double glass door. I gulped down the bile in my throat and looked around. On the wall here in the hallway hung small signs for the various departments, such as advertising services, financial services, and so on. It was the sign to the extreme right that caught my attention: Management.

“Through there.” I pointed to the door that the arrow had indicated.

Fish reloaded his rifle again. Every shot that missed in a later battle could decide between life and death. They had arrived on the top floor of the stadium, where the VIP area and control of the lights and the retractable roof would be.

“Are you sure no one heard the shot?” Armor asked again as another guard went the way of his comrade. He had been on the wrong side of the door from the stairwell and blocked their chance to move on.

"He was right there," Lee explained. “For us, perhaps it was loud, but sound wouldn’t carry a shot like that very far. Besides, if anyone had heard him, we would already have visitors." He could see that the pony did not like that as they advanced, but he kept his mouth shut and tolerated it in the knowledge that it was necessary. It was just one enemy less that could spring on them if they had to escape the way they came.

"All right," Fish said when he was sure that Lee was right and that they would remain alone. "Alf and Lee, you stay here and secure the way back. Mac and Pill, you're looking for information, but trying to use as little ammunition as possible and collect every weapon that still looks useable." He then picked up the guard’s revolver from the floor and looked at it briefly. "These kids haven’t heard about cleaning weapons apparently. This thing could be used for Russian Roulette at most." He opened the chamber, letting the cartridges fall into his hands before he stowed it his pocket and laid the gun itself back on the corpse. "Pony and I will look for the controls to the ceiling, so that our air support has a place to land."

"What are we supposed to look for?" Pill asked, keeping an eye all the while to the passage to the right of them.

"Food, weapons, medicine, how many of them they have and where. Just about anything you can find. We do not know if our plan will work, or if we’ll get a second chance. "

"Hua!" the four soldiers said to their captain.

"Hua!" he answered quietly, and the meeting broke up. Pill and Mac disappeared down the corridor, and Lee and Alf went back into the stairwell, pulling the corpse behind them.

"You know that my name is Shining Armor and not Pony," he complained as they took the passage on the left, which the sign led to the lighting controls.

"Far too long. The nickname you have is so that orders can be given quickly and one that everyone knows, except the enemy of course." They walked slowly so as not to accidentally run into another guard. “Are ponies named by the brand on your asses?" he asked. His companion, who had been in his thoughts, started a bit.

"Not really. My parents gave me my name after I was born." That surprised Fish. These creatures lived according to their names? But that was a question for later, if it ever came.

"What I'm saying, even the enemy can detect who is given a command when your real name is used, and they can respond accordingly. Would it not be wiser to use the nickname only you understand?" He really wondered how the military in their world was. Shining Armor seemed tough and well-trained. The same went for the pegasi who had been wounded, but that Blue Light looked like a recruit who had come straight out of basic training and someone who should have continued to train for a few more years instead.

"That's a good thought. The thing is that there haven’t been any major wars for about a thousand years. Yes, we have conflict with a neighbouring country from time to time, but so far there the princesses have always managed to resolve the issue peacefully.” No war? This Albion had to be a utopia, with magic and everything.

"You’re making me more jealous, Shining Armor." Fish grinned down at him. "Better be careful, otherwise I might regret what I'm doing here." He knew exactly how dangerous this was for him and his men. The ponies had magic and could, in the worst case, bring them to safety. It was an argument that he had attached to convince their captain to agree to this action.

"Careful." A hoof hit Fish on the thigh, and he pressed himself against the wall. In front of them, a light slightly moved. Probably another guard who stood at his posts. Slowly and quietly, he moved forward and finally looked down the corridor where not one but two people stood. They stood in front of a door that was their goal, according to the writing on the wall. Due to the slight curvature of the corridor could they spot the second one, and both had their faces straight ahead, directly in their direction. The only reason why they were not seen was that, in the darkness, they probably looked like the potted plants that were scattered throughout the room.

"Any ideas?" asked Fish as he went down into a squat so that he could hear Armor without the need to raise his voice.

"My magic would glow in the dark. So, if I do something with magic, it has to be fast, and I would only use stun bullets or just a shield. The missiles they could dodge but…" He took his G36 from his back without activating the red dot. Even that could betray them.

"I can do it from right here, but I can’t let him leave my sights. Would you manage to cast a spell simultaneously with my gun fire and to hit him?" If they could make it look as if they were just one enemy, it would be a surprise if there were others nearby.

"I’ll do my best." Fish nodded and put his weapon on again, his goal in mind.

"Three." He switched on the red dot and set out his gun. "Two." He looked at one of the two dark figures in front of them probably pointing at something. "One." The horn of pony next to him lit up, and they both fired almost simultaneously at their goals. Only the bullet struck its target’s head and made it collapse to the ground. His friend looked at him and took a step in its direction. Armor seemed to have taken into account that is his magic was slower, as it hit his goal on the shoulder a second later, causing him to collapse onto the ground as well. Just as he set down his gun, he heard a noise behind him where a door flew open. They hadn’t noticed as the person did not have a flashlight, and now a young member of the gang came into view. Even before he looked into his direction at all, Fish whirled and squeezed the trigger of his gun again. A volley of bullets struck their goal, and the victim jerked before hitting the ground as well.

"That could have gone better..." he muttered, and when he was sure that was no one who would come out of the room, he stood up. “Now we should really hurry up a bit." The pony agreed with him and briskly walked down the aisle to the door that had their goal. He checked the knob and turned it to make sure that the door was open. Only the tip of the weapon went into the room, followed by the rest of him. He briefly looked around the room and quickly noticed that they were alone. On the walls were several server cabinets and in the centre were two controllers. In the wall inside the stadium was a large window, but that was closed by blinds. Satisfied, he closed the door behind him and hung his weapon on his back.

"The devices are running, so why was there no light in the hall?" he asked more to himself than his companion.

"To recognize any enemies? If someone were to turn on the lights, they would know that someone was here who did not belong here." That was a fairly plausible answer. "That was probably where there were no lights in the basement as well. You could see anything that moved if there were."

"Now we have to look for the button that opens the roof so that we can prepare for the attack." He went to the front desk and swallowed. "Damn it, all in German!" Shining Armor leaned with his front hooves on the desk to read what was written on the buttons there.

"The same here. Light or my sister could read it." Inwardly, he was annoyed that the two were not here.

"Then we have to see which is most likely." He scanned the console, found some switches in different color, as well as buttons that were blinking occasionally. But two levers that were on the edge seemed to be the right ones to him. In his mind he sang the short rhyme from his childhood, and then chose the left of the two. Immediately an engine roared to life, but it was to be much too low to be the roof. He looked over at the Armor, who pointed a hoof at the window. The blinds slowly came up and gave a good view of the pitch. But it was not pitch what they saw down there, no. It was something that even Fish, as a soldier and a veteran, found his stomach turning. He had only heard the stories from his grandfather.

Author's Notes:

Translated and edited by JBL