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Reciprocity: A Metro 2033 and MLP Crossover

by MrSing

Chapter 4: Chapter 4: A Little Moth

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A Little Moth

“Hey, Sergei, are we there yet?” Sasha’s voice was the only thing that disturbed the silence as we walked through the tunnel. Our footsteps and the noises of our equipment all seemed to be swallowed up by the walls, like they were protecting the peace they had kept for decades.

“No,” answered the veteran with a weary voice, not even bothering to check his map or look ahead in the tunnel.

“How about now?” my friend kept insisting. I could understand why Sasha wanted to keep talking. Normally hearing nothing was reassuring. If there is no sound, than it means that there is nothing there to threaten you, but for some reason this silence felt oppressive. Like it was creeping into our minds and slowly silencing our thoughts too.

“No,” was Sergei’s response once again.

“Is that the only thing you can say?” my friend asked in a joking manner. I felt slightly jealous at my friend’s ability to just shrug of the crushing darkness and silence of the tunnel.

“No, shut up.” The veteran gave my friend a warning glance as he responded.

Sasha sighed as he finally got the hint that Sergei was in no mood for games. He stared at the ground for a few seconds before he suddenly looked up at the stalker who walked next to Sergei. “Stepan, can I ask you a question?” Sasha addressed the man with a sort of awe as he talked to him. After all, it wasn’t everyday that you got to talk to a real stalker.

These men were almost legends to most people, and considered to be insane by the rest. Many of them went up to the surface to bring back the supplies that the metro needed to function. Wood, petrol, replacement parts, ammo, anything that could be of use, they brought it down from the abandoned city. They were rumored to be armed to the teeth and wrapped in protective anti-radiation suits. They were like astronauts in their suits, exploring the new and strange world that used to be ours. And still, out of the hundreds that dared to go up, only a dozen ever made it back with these supplies that were the lifeblood of the metro.

I started to doubt these stories as I looked at the man. Sure, he was strange and capable, but he seemed more like a tired and cynical old man. It was hard to imagine him as one of the legendary heroes of the metro.

“That depends on the question, pup.” The man answered as he was walking in front of us.

“What… uhm… what happened.” I looked up in surprise at the nervous tone of my friend. “You know, when… when the bombs fell.” Sergei let out a disapproving grunt and turned his attention to the tunnel behind us, removing himself from the conversation.

My curiosity was peaked and I started to walk next to them. I had wondered the same thing many times, but the older people in my station always avoided the question when I asked them. They got angry, and told me to mind my own business, or they fell into a depressed silence before they started to recall memories of how beautiful the world used to be. It was sort of a taboo to talk about it in my station, but Stepan was a strange man from a different place.

The stalker kept on walking in silence for a long time. I was about to repeat Sasha’s question, thinking that maybe he hadn’t heard it, but the man let out a small chuckle before I got the chance. “When you ask a question you go for the throat, don’t you?”

Sasha rubbed the back of his head as he laughed. “I guess I do,” he replied.

“I’m not surprised that you don’t know,” the stalker continued as he reached out with his hand and touched on of the many pipes that were attached to the walls. “Many people would like to forget those days ever happened.” He was silent for a moment again and looked up at the ceiling, his flashlight followed his gaze and revealed a spider web of cracks in the ancient stone.

“I don’t know much about how or why it happened. I was just a simple fabric worker, maintaining the machines in a textile factory. I had no interest in the petty politics of the world.” Stepan let out another laugh. “I hated that job. My boss was a jerk, always complaining that I should come in earlier and work harder. He must have threatened to fire me a hundred times, but he never did.”

Stepan stopped for a moment as he brought his ears next to the pipe and started to listen intently. Confused, we also stopped. I wanted to ask what the problem was, but I was captivated by his story. I didn’t dare to interrupt him and maybe squander my and Sasha’s only chance to hear this tale. And, more than I wanted to admit to myself, I didn’t want us to stop talking. In the darkness and silence of the tunnel, it felt like nothing else existed. Like the universe had ended and this tunnel was all that was left. No matter how much I tried to convince myself with rational arguments, I couldn’t stop the insane idea creeping into my head that we also would stop existing if we stopped talking.

“That job did save my life, though,” the man continued as he softly knocked on the pipe a few times with his knuckles. “I was about to enter the metro in the early morning to take the train to my job, when suddenly the sirens went off.” The stalkers expression darkened as he brought his ear to the pipe that hung above the one he had tested earlier. “At first the people just stood there, confused. We thought that maybe a test was going on, or that a mistake had been made.”

He led out a tired sigh and was silent for a few seconds. His voice sounded steady and emotionless as he recalled the story, but I got the feeling that he was hesitating for a different reason than to catch his breath. “That is, until we saw the missiles being fired from our city. People started to scream and panic, pushing each other over as they headed for the entrance of the metro. If I hadn’t been so close to it already, I doubt that I would have made it through that crowd.” He knocked on the pipe again, louder this time.

“There were some soldiers standing next to the door, armed with their automatic guns and cold expressions on their faces. They were screaming for us to enter the metro as their commander was looking at his watch, calmly counting down. I was just approaching the great escalators that lead to the underground station, they were still working in those days, when I heard the commander speak up.”

Stepan looked down at the ground, for a moment he had forgotten the pipe he was apparently so greatly interested in. I hung on his every word and forgot the place we were in as he told the story. I felt a chill running down my spine as he continued the horrible tale.

“I first heard a few shots being fired behind me; I can only hope that it was at the skies. The screaming stopped for a moment and I could hear the commander giving the order to close the doors. We all just kept walking down those escalators, keeping our thoughts to ourselves as we pretended that nothing was happening behind our backs.”

“And then we started to hear the sounds.” I felt my heart jump up in my chest as the man banged his gloved hand against the pipe. The unexpectedly loud noise somehow echoed in the tunnel that previously had muffled all our sounds.

“With every bomb that fell, the ground shook more violently.” Stepan hit the pipe again, even louder this time. I could see the dust that had been gathering on the ancient pipe fall of in ghostly clouds.”We were all holding our breaths as the screams outside grew louder and more desperate and the explosion came closer and closer.”

The old stalker hit the pipe one more time. “After a minute of this, an explosion almost knocked us all over and all the lights went out. And all we could hear was silence outside.” Stepan laid his ear against the pipe and was once again silent.

After a few seconds he stood up, and I could see him look at the tunnel behind us as he squinted his eyes. “What happened after that is a story for another time, because now we must run for our lives.”


I could hear my heart pounding in my ears as I ran as fast as I could. The wooden railroad ties under my feet became a blur as I sprinted through the tunnel.

A monstrous scream came from behind me. The deep growling noises of the things that were following us echoed all around the tunnel.

With every howl they let out I could feel my fear growing. Panic and ancient instincts were pushing away any thoughts that I had, my mind felt like a broken radio that could only give of static noises. Acting on one of these instincts, or maybe out of simple morbid curiosity, I glanced behind me.

As soon as I saw them I regretted it. Their broad shoulders were covered in sickly patches of brown fur and their bodies were riddled with scars. Their claws and freakishly long teeth were reflected in the weak light. Drool was dripping out of their jaws as they leaped at us on four legs with their mouths wide open, howling and panting in excitement. But the worst of all were their eyes. They were blind with no spark of intelligence or thought, only an insane hunger filled them. They were gaining on us with frightening speed, and there were dozens of them.

I felt a scream escape my mouth as I looked ahead again. My fear gave me unexpected strength as I started to run even faster.

The sound of a shot was accompanied by a flash of light beside me. I looked to my left and saw that Sergei was firing his revolver blindly behind him. “Shoot them! Shoot them!” he screamed in voice that was filled with anger and fear.

The tunnel was soon filled with ear deafening explosions of noise as we all followed his example. Every shot I fired sent a pulse of pain through my wrist as I held my revolver behind me in an unnatural position. I was probably hitting nothing more than the walls and ground, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was for these creatures to leave us alone. Images of us being eaten alive filled my head and chilled my heart.

Soon, too soon, I could hear my gun clicking as the cylinder opened on an empty chamber. Still running, I opened one of the many pouches of my armor and fished out a few bullets. As I desperately tried to reload the weapon I felt the bullets slipping out of my hands and falling on the endless tracks under my feet. I let out a curse as I kept on running, still holding the now useless gun in my hands.

“To the left!” I heard Stepan shout. “We’re almost there!” I hadn’t even noticed it in my panic, but our tunnel was about to intersect with a much larger one. As soon as we went around the corner I could see marble archways revealing a large room. A station!

We quickly clambered on the platform and ran over the yellow and white tiles. “There, to the doors,” Stepan pointed at a hallway that led out of the station. I could hear the howls behind me growing louder as the mutants felt in their primitive brains that we were getting away.

I could feel broken glass cracking under my boots as I ran past one of the giant chandeliers that had fallen on the platform. My lungs were burning as I dashed towards the hallway, seeing that my companions had already gotten there. Stepan wasted no time as he closed the door the moment I was through.

“Yuri! Sergei! Don’t let them get in!” The stalker commanded us as he started to frantically rummage through the debris that lay everywhere in the white hallway. “Sasha, help me find something to block that thing!”

Before the stalker was even done talking, I had thrown myself against the door and desperately tried to find some grip with my boots on the tiles. Only a second later I already felt something huge colliding with the metal gates. The unrelenting force of the demons behind the door made me slide forward for a bit, allowing one of the beast to reach through the opening with its long arm.

The demon started to swing wildly with its limb and I could feel his three dagger-like claws bouncing of my armor as I looked away, hoping that my helmet would protect my head. Suddenly the creature let out a yelp of pain and retracted its arm back behind the metal gates. A metallic scent filled the air and I saw a dark liquid sprayed over the floor. Sergei threw his knife, coated in blood, on the floor.

Sergei and I wasted no time as we pushed ourselves against the doors, closing them shut once again. The creatures continued to ram the doors with their bodies and I could slowly feel them pushing me forward, centimeter for centimeter. “Hurry up! We can’t hold them much longer!” I shouted.

“I’ve got it!” Sasha exclaimed as he ran to us. I stepped to the left making room for my friend as he pushed himself against the middle of the door and began to fiddle with the door handles. After a few moments he stepped away from the door. “Okay, that should hold it,” he said while he breathed heavily from the chase.

I stepped away from the door, seeing that Sasha had jammed an iron bar between the handles. “Don’t relax yet,” Stepan said while aiming his assault rifle at the entrance. I ran next to him and grabbed the shotgun from my back, pointing it at the door while my hands shook from the adrenaline and exhaustion.

No one dared to speak as we stood side by side, all watching the door with our fingers on the trigger. I could see the door shake as the howls grew more frustrated. I don’t know how long we stood there, cringing every time as the beasts slammed themselves against the metal gate. I had no illusions about our chances. If they brook through they would overwhelm us in seconds. Four armed man we’re no match for two dozen mutants.

After what felt like ages, I heard the sounds of claws scratching on the tiles behind the gate. Their frustrated howls grew fainter as they left the station.

The sudden feeling of safety seemed unreal. I could almost convince myself that I hadn’t just been almost ripped apart by those nightmares that stalked the surface. A feeling of relief and gratitude filled me and I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. I looked at my friend and a grin started to form on his face too.

Sergei looked at us with an annoyed expression on his face and spat on the ground. “You guys think that that was funny? We almost died!” He turned to face Stepan, shaking with rage. “And what were you doing?” He poked the stalker on the chest with an accusing finger. “Banging on those pipes!? I thought that you knew enough about the tunnels not to start making noise like you’re ringing a dinner bell!”

Stepan frowned as he looked at the door that had saved us, ignoring Sergei’s accusations. The wrinkles around his eyes betrayed his age and concern. “Those aren’t supposed to be here, something is wrong.”

Sergei threw his hands in the air. “Okay, fine, be like that!” The veteran brought his hand to his face and sighed deeply, visibly calming down. “Let’s just get going again.”

Despite Sergei’s prodding, the old man kept staring at the door. Slowly, my laughter died down. There was something in the words of the stalker, something in the look in his dead eye that sent a chill down my spine.

Finally, the man looked around him, at the small hallway we were standing in. “Let’s go, Moscow is waiting for us.”


The hallways were a true piece of art. Diligent workers and artists had crafted the most beautiful ornaments on the walls, and every twist and turn of the hall revealed more beauty. Stylized drawings of fantastic animals I had never even heard about were painted in black and white on the tiles of the walls, and miniature humans were sculpted in the marble on the ceiling. The artists had captured their essence so skillfully that I half expected them to start gossiping among themselves about the strange visitors that had entered their hallway. The years of neglect had done almost nothing to tarnish the beauty of this place. It was a testimony to the greatness of the old world.

I regretted it, but I couldn’t find it in me to give these works of art the appreciation they deserved. Stepan’s words had left me with a confusing, almost overwhelming mix of emotions, and I found it hard to concentrate on the world around me. My imagination ran wild with terrifying visions of dark shadows with teeth and claws that stalked the surface, but I could also feel excitement building up in my chest. I had heard so many stories about the city all my life, and now I would finally it see with my very own eyes.

Sergei hadn’t taken the news as well as I had and was vividly discussing with Stepan, claiming that it was too dangerous and that Sasha and I were too inexperienced. The stalker couldn’t be persuaded however; he simply took out his map and showed the veteran that now that the way had been cut off, there just wasn’t any other choice. We just had to deal with the cards we had been given, he claimed.

Sasha, on the other hand, was all but jumping up and down in excitement. The prospect of treasure and adventure on the surface had apparently made him completely forget that we had been running for our lives a few minutes ago.

“Yuri, can you believe it? The surface, we are actually going up there!” He grinned broadly as he looked at me with an excited gleam in his eyes. “No one back home is going to believe this!”

I wanted to answer my friend, but I suddenly felt a wave of cold air washing over me as the hallway filled with a putrid smell. I coughed violently and could only barely hear Stepan shouting: “Quick, gas masks!”

I held my breath as I grabbed my own mask, feeling my lungs burning for clean air. I struggled as I tried to subdue the couching fits that shocked my body, not wanting to breathe in more of the deadly gas. Finally, I inhaled a deep breath of filtered and safe air, and allowed myself to cough out the poison in my lungs.

Stepan pulled out his assault rifle and almost ran around the corner, leaving us behind to reluctantly follow him into what could only be trouble.

As I glanced around the corner, I saw Stepan standing next to a bunch of rags that he prodded with the end of his gun, but that wasn’t what caught my attention. I instead looked at the ancient blast doors that guarded the metro from the outside world. Their original red color was barely visible under the rust that had accumulated on the seal that protected mankind from the surface. What I saw chilled my heart more than the immense cold that made my breaths visible in the air. I could see the escalators that reached to the surface behind the doors, someone had left them open.

I couldn’t believe it. Who could have done this? It was basically a dead sentence to everyone in the metro. I could almost smell the vile poison and radioactive dust that was leaking into tunnels again, slowly choking the metro. And the mutants! What kind of creatures had walked past those doors into the station? How many of those deadly horrors had spilled into the tunnels?

My thoughts went back to my home. Fear gripped my heart as images of mutants overwhelming my station filled my head. I closed my eyes as I tried to calm myself. There was nothing I could do. I had my mission and I would fulfill it, no matter how wrong it felt not to rush home to help defend. ’Just… just don’t think about it. They can handle themselves.’

I walked over to Stepan, curious as to why he had taken such a great interest in a bunch of rags. I reared back in shock as the stalker turned pile of cloth around, revealing the ashen face of a corpse.
As Stepan finished patting the corpse down he slipped a few rounds of ammo in his pockets.

He looked around and smiled as he saw the horror in my eyes. “What’s the matter? Never seen a corpse before, pup?”

He stood up and walked past the opened hatch, dragging a corpse that had been hidden behind the doors back in the station. He wasted no time as he started to check the carcass for any worldly possessions.

“What happened here? Why did they do this?” Sasha spoke up. His voice was hoarse and muffled.

Stepan crouched as he picked up a bag of mushrooms, holding the rotten meal in the beam of his flashlight. “There’s your answer, pup.” He smiled with no joy in his eyes. “Hunger killed these men.”
He threw the spoiled meal away. “I’ve seen it a million times before. Pups fancy themselves to be stalkers and go to the surface, spending all their bullets on armor and guns. Then they find that the surface is a bit too hostile, the treasures buried too deep, and their stomachs start aching. And along comes another man, fresh from the tunnels and packed with food.” He gestured at the corpses in the tunnel. “Well, you can see how this ended for the both of them.” He sighed as he started to walk to the escalators. “It’s too bad that they didn’t have the decency to close the door on their way out.”

“Wait.” I stood by the bodies as my companions started to follow Stepan out of the tunnels. “Shouldn’t we… well… bury them?” I tried to look Sasha in the eyes, hoping that he would understand, but he avoided looking at the corpses and instead focused on the escalators. He looked desperate to get away from this scene as fast as possible.

Sergei turned to face me. “Yuri, there simply isn’t time for that,” he said in sympathetic tone of voice. “The living need our help more than the dead. Let these tunnels be their tomb.” I wanted to protest, but I couldn’t find the energy. Besides, Sergei was right, the sooner this was all over, the better.

I glanced one final time at the frozen bodies, wondering if I would be the last person that ever saw them. If they would be here for all of eternity, amidst the great works of art.

I pressed the large plastic button that would close the hatch as I slipped between the doors. The soft hiss of the hydraulics accompanied us as we walked up the broken down escalators, while an icy wind cut through the many layers of clothes under my armor. I could hear a loud clang as the doors closed behind us, sealing the metro from the poison of the world.


I had heard so many stories about the surface, but I doubted that even the most talented poet could ever hope to capture the openness of the sky with human words. There was a thick sheet of clouds covering the city, but in some places they would drift apart for the briefest of moments, and I could see stars.

I felt like I could finally let out a breath that I had unknowingly been holding my entire life. The infinity I could see behind those clouds scared me, but also enticed me. There were no paths here, no limits.

I must have stood there for at least a minute, gawking at the sky, before I could feel Sergei’s hand shaking my shoulder. “Enough sightseeing, we have to go,” he said. His eyes were filled with melancholy as he looked at the frozen apartments across the street. “It’s not safe here, not anymore.”

I wanted to ask Sergei if he had seen this place when it was still filled with life and sunlight, but that look in his eyes stopped me. He seemed so sad, as he surveyed the necropolis with his gun. How old had he been when he had last seen people laughing here without a care? I didn’t have the heart to ask him.

Sasha was even more awed than me, if that was possible. Only Stepan’s harsh warning about monsters that plucked careless people from the streets seemed to be able to bring my friend back to reality. Of course, this was at the price of him pestering the stalker constantly with questions about the mutants that wandered on the surface.

We carefully walked the streets under Stepan’s guidance, navigating between the hundreds of cars that were hastily parked in front of the metro and clogged up the streets. With pain in my heart I tried to ignore the occasional half-eaten corpses as we made our way across the dead city.

I knew that I should have been more vigilant, but I couldn’t help but let my mind and eyes wander as we walked slowly over the frozen streets. The ticking of my Geiger counter sounded like a macabre clock, which slowly counted down the days of our lives that we lost, as we cooked in the radiation.

The word across the metro was that we would have to wait fifty years until the radiation would start to drop. Most people clutched that number to their chest as a beacon of hope, if we only could hold out for so long, things would get better. But as I looked around me, I could not see a single living tree or plant. What kind of world would we set foot in if we could hold out so long, if we could drive back the mutants, if we could survive the poison, if our minds could finally understand what phenomena like those in the star filled tunnel were?

My former bravado with which I had claimed that we could retake the surface again, seemed foolish and naïve now. But what else could we do? Give up and wallow in our sorrow?

I was forced out of my thoughts as something incredibly strong collided with me. My feet slipped on the frozen stone beneath me and I fell. Wildly swinging my gun in front of me, I was ready to shoot down whatever monster had attacked me.

I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks as I saw that the horrible mutant that had attack me was, in fact, a lantern pole that I had walked into head first. I decided that the most hostile environment known to man was, perhaps, not the best place to start contemplating the faith of humanity.

Careful not to slip again, I used the deceitful lantern to get back on my feet. “I’m okay guys,” I said as I looked around for my companions.

There was no one in the street.

“Guys?” I glanced behind me, thinking that I perhaps had passed them while I was lost in my thoughts. There was nothing but snow covered cars and the stained walls of apartments to greet me.

I felt the familiar waves of panic building in my stomach as I nervously glanced around me, hoping against hope that I had somehow failed to notice where my friends were.

“Is anyone there!?” I cried out against the sharp wind that carried my words away along with my warmth. My shout was answered by several blood curdling howls in the distance.

As fast as I could I began to maneuver between the vehicles and frozen puddles, barely keeping my balance on the frictionless ground. The hairs in my neck began to stand up as I heard the metallic groan of a car as something heavy landed on it. The howl that I had heard earlier was repeated a dozen times stronger behind me.

I didn’t dare to look behind me as I darted across the streets, making twists and turns as I went around corners in random directions.

The sound of breaking glass came from right next to me as a mass of teeth, claws, and wings landed on a car, crushing it like a plastic cup. I threw myself on the ground, right in time to see a claw flying through the air where my head had been a second ago.

I rolled on my back to face what would surely be my death. And, in a strange moment of clarity, I looked at the creature and it reminded me of a gigantic bat. Instead of getting ready to plunge its teeth in my neck, the demon looked in the distance, and a cloud of fog escaped from its monstrous jaws. Its blind, milky eyes focused on me for a second before it led out a paralyzing shout and flew away with a few mighty strokes of its gigantic leather wings.

I lay there for a moment, shaking in fear on the ground, as I was unable to process what had just happened.

Then I felt a pressure building up in my head. The overpowering smell of ozone filled the air as a blue light flooded the street behind me. The building headache clouded my vision as I tried to get up. My boots, once again, were unable to find any grip on the frozen stone.

I slowly felt myself being sucked toward the source of the blue light. The hairs on the back of my neck slowly started to rise as a strange tingling sensation spread across my spine. I looked behind me as I was frantically searching for anything I could get a grip on.

There was a large blue sphere, seemingly existing out of pure light, slowly drifting toward me. Sparks of energy hit the stone walls of the grey apartments and left behind black scorch marks as the icicles that hung from the roofs exploded in clouds of vapor.

My headache and fear started to overpower my mind as I felt myself slowly being dragged to that horrible tear in reality. In some primal part of my mind I knew that if I touched that sphere, I would instantly stop existing. I would be destroyed so completely that even my people back home would start to doubt that I had ever existed.

Vaguely in the distance I could hear voices calling out my name. I glanced behind me and saw three silhouettes standing a thousand miles away. They seemed worried, and were trying to reach out to me, but they were too far away. I felt a wave of calmness spreading over my body as my stress started to slowly dissolve. My head felt like it was filled with cotton and thinking became difficult

I looked up to the sky, hoping to see the stars one more time before my death, but the clouds were in the way. Somehow it didn’t matter that much anymore.

Finally, I could feel the sphere engulfing my body. I closed my eyes, accepting my fate. At least it didn’t hurt.

Next Chapter: Chapter 5: A Walk in the Park Estimated time remaining: 5 Hours, 49 Minutes
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