Fallout: Equestria - "Kiss Equestria Goodbye"

Chapter Two: Redmane

“It’s the water. It’s the air. When you’re out there, you can’t escape it.”

Apprehension.

When they’d stopped mumbling amongst themselves, Petunia turned and addressed me.

“Mr. Lucky Charm, it is this board’s decision that you be allowed to continue your studies of Pre-War Equestria with the stipulation that you, in parallel, continue your studies of applied gemstone theory.”

I felt a lump form in my throat.

“It is the assessment of the members of this board that you have shown remarkable aptitude in the manipulation of gemstones and gemstone enchantments, a skill necessary for the proper maintenance, repair and, potentially, the manufacture of magical energy weapons.”

No.

“As for your examination, you passed with flying colors. Very few of Red Eye’s pupils were able to repair even one of the three laser pistols to our satisfaction.”

No!

“While the majority of those who failed at the primary objective of this examination were still found to be quite useful in the eyes of this board, it was the minority capable of restoring the laser pistols to a working state that interested us the most.”

So I’d failed, then.

“You, as a member of this minority, shall be granted every courtesy. Access to the restricted texts of the library relevant to your field of study, increased rations and even a larger apartment in your barracks. If you find any of these things to be a hindrance to the furthering of your studies or require more privileges, you may file a request with your barracks secretary.”

The whole thing had been one giant trick-question, and I’d answered correctly.

“Well, Mr. Charm? Do you have anything to say?”

Head bowed, I swallowed the lump, contorting my facial expression from one of heavy despair to one of extreme relief.

“I assure you,” she laughed rather stiffly. “Your statement will be kept off the record.”

“... well,” I began. “For one thing, I must say I’m rather relieved.”

I felt my gut twist at the lie. Relief was the furthest emotion from my current state that I could think of.

“I studied a whole month for this exam,” I continued, forcing a chuckle myself. “I think I ought to just go and sleep for a whole day, now.”

“Yes!” she chuckled, earnestly this time, in response. “I think that’s a marvelous idea! The exam is concluded, Mr. Charm. Go and get some rest.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Several back-alleys, more tenements than I cared to count, who knew how many city blocks, and slightly less than twenty laspistol-shots later and I’d made it. Where I’d “made it” to, I didn’t know. Honestly, it didn’t matter much. What I’d seen of Fillydelphia had been homogeneous in both architecture and lethality. On top of that, the old street signs had been corroded beyond recognition by regular rainfall, and I sure as hell wasn’t about to risk my flank to read the little inscriptions on the sidewalk.

I scuttled into what had once been a beauty boutique and had just successfully forced the lock on a metal crate behind the cashier’s desk when the first distinguishable echoes reached me. The background noises of the Fillydelphia ruins were... strange. Lively. The sounds of ponies fighting like carrion birds over what slim pickings were left on Filly’s rotted corpse, the implication being that ponies had died, would die and were dying around me every day. I never saw them, or knew them, but they died all the same; they rotted all the same. Ponies died in the Wasteland every day, and the Ministry of Peace member whose saddlebags I now wore had been only one of many.

Wow.

Forcing my worldview back down to a more manageable size, I cautiously returned to my scavenging, accidentally breaking the lock on the other storage box. The ruins had had returned to their softly-humming silence, but my mind had not returned to its tenuous tranquility. In fact, something new bothered me. I realized I hadn’t given so much as a thought to what I’d do if I ever found myself in a faction crossfire.

That was when I heard it.

From down the street came screams of pain; automatic gunfire; dogs barking. Altogether, a death sentence for someone who was doing what I was trying to do. Unfortunately, even though I could hear the noises, I couldn’t pinpoint where they were coming from nearly as easily. Straining my ears, I swiveled them about in an attempt to get a lock on the origin point of the sounds.

… there.

Somewhere about nine, ten o’ clock, maybe? From the sound of it, the person firing the weapon was only a block or two away. Reasoning further, I guessed that the poor soul firing away was probably on the second or third floor. That would be the ideal place to hold out against a horde of the ravening madponies I’d become ever so familiar with. As silently as I possibly could, I emerged from the beauty boutique, tucking a sheaf of magazines and a Sparkle~Cola into my saddlebag, the one not filled with medical supplies.

I felt a little relieved as I noticed the lonely beauty of the ruins surrounding me. The eternally overcast sky reflecting the crimson of Red Eye’s slave pits. Empty buildings everywhere I looked, populated only by shadows and long-decayed memories. Granted it was morbidly poetic, but I was still filled with a strange sense of gladness I’d seen the poetry in the first place.

I regarded the rusted personal carriages that littered the roads with a sort of passing fascination at the fact that they’d endured two hundred years of rain, wind and snow. My hoofsteps echoed ever so slightly as I made my way down the sidewalk, ears perpetually peeled for the hollow growl that signalled that I’d been spotted. It wasn’t paranoia when you’d gone through what I’d gone through; it was fully justified fear and suspicion.

Hmm.

Muzzle flashes reflected off of the broken shards of a window on the first floor, followed almost instantaneously with the echo of near-distant gunfire. Pity. I guessed the pursued individual hadn’t chosen -- or hadn’t been allowed to chose -- their battleground with any particular care. Knowing the loud noises produced by the gunfire would have drawn in every pony monstrosity from the surrounding three blocks, I tilted into a full gallop, levitating my laspistol out beside me. Flicking the munitions slot open, I examined the weak glow of the crystals contained within with a touch of disdain.

Great. I scolded myself, grinding my teeth a little. Should’ve checked before I left the boutique.

Well... I was stuck not knowing the precise number of shots I’d fired. It was “know you have around ten shots” or “take the time to check and let this opportunity slip through your fingers like so many others”. I mused at the self-motivational question; as far as I could remember, I’d only answered it in one way.

My gallop dying down into a canter, I snuck-up against the side of the brick building. This one looked like another apartment complex. As far as I’d observed, all of them had the same basic idea behind their construction: build tenements to accommodate the truly staggering number of unskilled workers that had migrated into the great earth pony manufacturing centers near the end of the war. Ergo, floor after floor of closely packed small apartments. From what I knew of packing large amounts of ponies closely together with relatively poor access to medical infrastructure, I was surprised disease hadn’t wiped everyone out by the time the megaspells hit.

Quietly, I shuffled into the main entrance.

Fillydelphia tenements always seemed to have a wide opening floor for some reason, and there was just something about that sheer intractability that piqued my interest. It’d been on my mind quite a bit since the first foyer I’d experienced. Was there some facet of the climate that necessitated this large holding space? Maybe the hot summers I’d read about; plenty of room to sit, talk, and enjoy a breeze.

Again, muzzle flashes and the moderately familiar sound of minigun fire. This time, the smells and spent casings lead up the stairs.

As I paused a moment to devote a little extra thought to the situation, it didn’t take me long to reason-out that stealth would be of the utmost importance. If the “pony” -- and I assumed “pony” from the wholly intelligible whinnies I’d heard over the gunfire -- was packing the kind of battle-saddle I thought they were, I didn’t want to end-up another nameless apartment-building skeleton. I certainly hadn’t escaped Red Eye’s vise to be killed by some Fillydelphia passer-by’s gun.

Reaching out with my magic, I tested my Stealth Buck tentatively. Flicking it on and off, I sighed inwardly as the matrix failed to respond. Damn. The MEP had been a whole lot more damaging than I’d anticipated. Now I couldn’t be sure whether or not the nigh irreplaceable piece of Pre-War magitech had been irreparably damaged unless I cracked its casing open and mucked around with its insides.

Yeah. Like I’d be able to take a pit-stop for that.

With only the faint clop of hooves on concrete, I moved up the steps as quietly as I could, watching where I placed my hooves so as not to crush the occasional piece of dislodged drywall or ceiling and thus give-away my position.

This time I could hear the gun quite distinctly as its barrels warmed up and opened fire. While I’d had only a few chances to see The Wall’s defenses in action, the sound was unmistakable. It was eerie as I trotted up those steps. It stirred-up memories. Suddenly, the sound of bullets stopped. All that was left was the spinning of barrels.

“Fuck!”

A growl, then the sounds of a struggle. Grunts. Some crazed, some accented and moderately feminine. I heard the thud of a blunt object hitting flesh and a harsh graah as -- what I assumed was -- the not-pony was struck with something heavy.

“Motherfucker!” I heard the mare holler as she was hit or bitten or something.

“Get off!”

I’d seen what those creatures could do with their teeth. She was in trouble and as she struggled, I weighed the pros and cons of helping her overcome her foe. I stood in that hallway for what seemed like an eternity, my brow slowly creasing as a surprisingly potent wave of self-loathing washed over me.

… not again.

I sprung around the corner, laspistol levitated close, and took a mental snapshot of the two parties embroiled in combat. The mare was squaring off against a particularly savage-looking beast-pony with a glowing-green tint to its skin. Unable to reach for a sidearm more well-suited to fighting in close quarters, she’d been fending off its vicious attacks with the long barrels of her minigun battle-saddle.

Judging from the red that stained her milsurp combat barding, it hadn’t been going so well...

… but it wasn’t as though her opponent had gone undamaged. Prominent among his myriad other injuries was a chunk of oozing, glowing green flesh that hung from his left hindleg, looking for all intents and purposes as if it had been torn out by some sort of sharp-toothed animal. A dog, perhaps. Fortunately for me, he was almost completely unarmored, the threadbare remnants of a Pre-War vestment like mine being the only thing even approximating protective clothing that I could see on his body.

Again, the mare smashed her minigun into the glowing pony. Again, the creature was knocked back. Finally convinced of the futility of its current course of action, the abomination switched to circling the armored mare while he decided what to do. I surmised that, on some level, there was intelligence behind the animal instinct I saw at play. How much, I couldn’t say. Whatever was going-on behind his milky-white eyes, the maneuver put him dead in my sights.

Breathing deeply, I took aim.

Pew, pew, zwip, pew!

The shots had an interesting effect on the combat dynamic.

… and by “interesting” I meant “did a fair job of screwing the pooch”.

Somehow, in this strange backwards world, shooting the thing in its unarmored haunch with a magical energy weapon had only served to piss it off. Now it was angry and less than two meters away from me. At this point, the fact that I’d also drawn the attention of the heavily armed and armored mare was trivial at best, irrelevant at worst.

“Fuck.”

I turned, and I ran like the wind. My mind ran contingencies through my head on how best to avoid becoming mealtime for the glowing, ravenous beast that was almost breathing down my neck. I certainly couldn’t take the stairs down back to the lobby. All he would need was to pounce and, just like that, I’d have to kiss my jugular goodbye. No, I’d have to take a different option.

I ran up the stairs.

Fillies and gentlecolts, another stellar idea from Professor Lucky Charm.

Honestly, it was a fine idea for the short-term. I had at least four more flights of stairs until I reached the roof and the gait of my pursuer wasn’t exactly the most well-suited thing to stair climbing. Curiosity getting the better of me for a moment, I wondered what their lope-jump thing was actually useful for besides being intimidating. Taking a tactical pause, I stopped, took aim, and fired another burst at the thing.

Zwip, zwip, pew, click!

… click?

My blood ran cold.

No amount of profanity in the equine language could have adequately expressed the mixture of fear, anger and despair I was feeling at that precise moment. The one weapon I had even a modicum of experience using had run out of ammo right when I needed it the most. I didn’t have time to reload, and I certainly couldn’t call a time-out.

Nope.

I had about one and a half flights of stairs before I’d have to play the shortest game of hide and go seek in my life involving hiding on an empty, flat roof then dying violently in some terribly demeaning and bloody manner.

… and all of this could’ve been avoided had I simply listened to that little pony inside of me that had said:

“Her problem isn’t your problem.”

Last flight of stairs.

I swore to the dead Goddesses if that mare didn’t show up and give me a proper “thank-you” via the violent remonstration of my pursuer, we were going to have some very harsh words.

Telekinesis; door handle; open.

I saw the sky stretch out for miles in every direction, broken only occasionally by a high-rise or water-tower, as I ran for the edge of the rooftop. Unfortunately, I had no time to appreciate its beauty. No, I was far too busy dealing with the ferocious thing nipping at my tail. Faced with my own mortality and violent death, I felt my resolve peel like an onion, layer after layer cleaving off until all I was left with was the tough root base that was only suitable for consumption if you were desperate.

I was pretty desperate, and that tough root-base was what I clung to for dear life. Silent, and out of places to run, I felt a calm fill me. It wasn’t the kind of “sip tea while you read” sort of calm. It was more like a “battle-calm”. The calm a desperate stallion felt when his violent death came to meet him on an empty rooftop somewhere over Fillydelphia.

I whipped around to face that death.

I turned and faced it despite a stomach full of black despair and a mind overflowing with doubts and fears. I knew I was little more than a squishy student without my laser pistol. I knew that if this thing bit me anywhere I’d probably die of an infection even if, by some miracle, I managed to stem the bleeding. I knew it wouldn’t relent until it was dead and broken on the ground. I knew that, even if I managed to get it on the ground, I might not have the strength to deliver a bone-crushing coup de grâce and finish the thing off.

I knew this.

So much for the plan.

Snarling and slobbering, the glowing reaper leapt from its position and lunged straight at me. Center of gravity low, I tried extending a telekinetic field around it; the magic flickered and died before it even left my horn. Too big; too much external stress; too much magical exertion. The descent seemed to happen almost in slow motion, my own actions seeming sluggish as I whinnied, reared up and attempted to bring my hooves crashing down in an ill-conceived defensive measure.

Crack!

With that, he took my legs out from under me, smashing into my left hindleg more powerfully than my right. For a brief moment, I felt the knee strain then-

Crrrk.

The “Augh!” heaved its way up my throat like bile, fire shooting-up my left hindleg. I was completely staggered by the sheer intensity of the pain; mind reeling, muscles and viscera protesting this utterly unfair treatment. As the body of the husk bore down on me, the tears of pain came unbidden, as did the sobs. For somepony whose experiences with pain in any significant amount had faded with the memories of early foalhood, this was a crash-course in the realities of straining your tissues beyond their breaking-point. Finally surging past my leg, the fire pooled in my gut as I tried to buck the hollow-eyed beast off of me.

It was only after several seconds of agonizingly painful, panicked bucking with my hind legs that I realized the beast hadn’t reacted to a single one of my kicks to its guts or ribs. It lay there, stock still; jaw slack with a little bit of glowing ooze dribbling down its muzzle. As fast as my body would let me, I rolled out from under the glowing corpse, smears of glowing ichor leaving long streaks on my coat. Panting and shaking with exhaustion, I struggled to stand on my wounded left hindleg. The monster didn’t so much as stir. Panic and curiosity mixed to give me one last reserve of strength. Stumbling over to the corpse of the beast, I inspected it for cause of death.

Bullet entry-wound.

Base of the skull.

“Thanf’ frr th’ helf’ bakf thrr,” I heard a muffled, yet familiar voice call out to me from the open roof-access door.

… and there she stood. The mercenary mare was there in the doorway, facing me and the fallen abomination, finally allowing me to get a proper look at her. Beneath the combat barding and battle saddle, I could see her coat was a deep charcoal black. She wore no helmet, instead opting for a green bandanna that, presumably, kept her already short-cropped shock of red mane out of her eyes and ears. She had the rugged soldier-of-fortune look down pat, but there was something about her that softened the normally rock-hard visage that had epitomized all the mercenaries I’d encountered before.

It certainly wasn’t her posture, however.

She was at least two-hands taller than me, with the stocky build to support it. She was... intimidating, to say the least. I’d probably have been more frightened if fatigue hadn’t been overriding just about everything else. Toting a heavy battle saddle and decked out in combat barding, she struck me as a hardened Wasteland warrior save for one thing that I couldn’t quite place my hoof on.

My squinted eyes followed her, hoping to gain that last insight, as the strength in my legs drained out, leaving them achy.

She’d just holstered some sort of revolver, presumably the source of the Crack! that had ended the creature’s life, and was now moving in my direction. Looking between her and the fallen glow-beast, I felt another pulse of exhaustion combine with the beginnings of a headache to assault me.

“Name’s Redmane. Pleased ta’ meetcha’.”

Looking at her, I almost managed a pleasant smile.

Instead, my forelegs gave-out from under me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

When I finally jolted back into the world of the living, I found myself on my side, left hindleg neatly splinted, elevated, bandaged and aching considerably less than it had when I’d last been conscious. From my prone position, I could see that Redmane (or at least Red-something) had been watching me the whole time while simultaneously tending to her own wounds. She’d probably known I was awake before I had.

… or not.

Taking a moment to think, I realized her facing my general direction was probably more of a precautionary measure against me being a total psychopath than a real attempt at surveillance. She was busy with her own problems. Problems that involved blood and measures against infection from the festering bites and scratches of the non-ponies. I was only being monitored in passing.

So I lay there.

I breathed the dirty, industrial Fillydelphia air, feeling my left hindleg ache in pulses. My heartbeats. My heartbeats were causing me pain, and those painful heartbeats drove home that I was still alive. In that brief moment, the filthy air became perfume; the deadly water, sweet cold cider. I was alive.

Life was sweet.

“So. Where’re ya’ from?”

I spent a moment longer staring off into space before Redmane’s heavily accented words finally registered. Snapping back from my journey to the center of the mind, I turned to face her.

“Huh?” I began, my vapid stare quickly solidifying into something more cogent. “Oh! I’m... er, I’m sorry. I was... uh. Yeah.”

Redmane lifted her head up to regard me, a little peeved.

“Where’d ya’ come from?”

For a brief moment, I debated telling the truth, lying and playing dumb. The truth was potentially dangerous; if I told her that I was an escapee and she tried to bring me in, I’d be in far more trouble than I’d be able to handle. Lying was almost out of the question; while I had a general sense of geography and location from the time before the war, I had no ideas what settlements had sprung-up in the two-hundred years since.

Playing dumb, however?

“I... uh... I don’t really know. Just kind-of wandered through here and-- well, here we are.”

As soon as the words had left my lips, I knew exactly how stupid and unlikely that sounded.

“So ya’ mean ta’ tell me you, an unarmored and poorly-equipped young stallion, just happened ta’ wander into Central Filly past all tha’ mercenary patrols, Steel Rangers, raider scum, husks an’ Goddesses know what else fa’ no reason?”

In case you were wondering, the exact amount was extremely stupid.

“Yeah. I’m thinkin’ of a word that starts with an ‘H-’ and ends with ‘-orseapples’.”

I tried to cover my flank with a sheepish grin.

“Now, what ya’ did back there, that was nice. Most ponies out here, they would’a left me ta’ die. That put me in ya’ debt. Then, after that, I ran up tha’ stairs an’ I saved ya’ sorry flank. That makes us even. Then I go one over an’ I splint ya’ hindleg with healing bandages. You do tha’ math.”

I could see what she was saying, even if I found her concept of “math” a little annoying.

“Now, that’s not ta’ say I don‘t like ya’ and appreciate what you did; nopony had a gun to ya’ head tellin’ ya’ ta’ save me, but if we’re ta’ take this little workin’ relationship any further, I’m gonna’ need answers. Lots of ‘em.”

A little bit threateningly, she trotted up to me.

“... and no lies this time.”

I panicked a little, then, only catching myself enough to supplant hyperventilation with deep, noticeable breaths. That tipped her off, and she took advantage of my apprehension by taking a different tack, reassuring me from a ‘for the sake of teamwork’ perspective.

“If we’re gonna’ make it outta’ here alive, we’re gonna’ need ta’ learn trust.”

“Trust. That’s what you want?”

“Yeah,” she said before explaining her rationale. “It’s a lot easier ta’ survive when ya’ aren’t worried about ya’ companion stabbin’ ya’ in the back or runnin’ off. Believe me, kid. I’ve been out in tha’ Wastes a helluva’ lot longer than you have. I’ve had my share a’ bad teammates, and I have ta’ say, outta’ all of ‘em, the cowards were the easiest to deal with.”

Clearly she’d already drawn some conclusions and made some assumptions about my origins. From what she’d just said, I feared she was correct.

… at least partially.

I chose my next words carefully.

“Red... mane, right?”

She nodded.

Phew. Bullet dodged there.

Getting to my hooves, I rose to my full height. Scrounging-up as many powerful emotions as I could, I lamented that our heights didn’t quite stack-up, even as she fell into a controlled slouch that said loads about the way she regarded me. I gathered my defiance, trying to instill my next words with the same feelings my memories of service to Red Eye filled me with. I couldn’t be verbose. I couldn’t be too loud.

Brevity. Level tone.

“Lucky. My name’s Lucky... and miss, I’ve been through a lot of shit today,” I opened, hoping to use profanity as a strategic leveler of social status between us. Perhaps being candid would help my position.

“I’ve already spared as much charity as I can. I’m afraid that, if you want my trust, you’re going to have to earn it.”

“Earn it?” she smirked, cocking her head to the side slightly as she raised an eyebrow. “No problem.”

She pointed her right hoof at my splinted and bandaged leg.

“Ya’ welcome, by tha’ way. It’s not like I have medical supplies ta’ spare a’ anythin’.”

I looked back at the bandages wrapped around my joint with the full knowledge that they were precious enchanted medical supplies. Redmane’d seen fit to, more or less, restore my ability to fend for myself...

… but I didn’t think she was about to let me go just yet.

“Think a’ it as...” she continued. “A little bit a’ charity.”

With a neat little swish of her tail, Redmane made an about-face and walked back over to her detached battle saddle to perform some maintenance and, presumably, rest.

Quietly, I resumed my lying-down position and submerged myself in my thoughts. I wasn’t quite sure how to make it clear to Redmane that this was a partnership of convenience and -- I continued in the interest of not kidding myself -- necessity. She was clearly thinking of me as more servile than I actually was.

I am nopony’s slave.

… the shackles of necessity, however, were just as strong as those of iron. I had no illusions of competence; I could not afford to. This was my first foray outside the protection of The Wall and I needed a guide capable of increasing my chances of surviving Central Filly.

I was learning how to fend for myself, I just wasn’t doing it fast enough.

That said, Redmane struck me as too pragmatic a mare to take-on dead weight, which I knew I was frighteningly close to being. Something about me had made her decide to save me. Maybe it had been my choice of armament or the fact that I was a unicorn; I couldn’t entirely discount the notion that she felt sentimental because I’d helped her escape a real tough scrape out of what she’d called “charity”, either. Perhaps it was simply that she needed a moderately tasty looking distraction.

I smirked at that last one.

… then I remembered the dogs.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A half-hour later and I was still trying to puzzle out her motives. The question of what Redmane wanted me to stick around for was a baffling one. I’d made more progress at frustrating myself with my incomplete understanding of pony motivation than I had at actually discerning Redmane’s true intent. I’d just about given up for the moment when she addressed me directly.

“Alright. Break’s over. Swellin’ an’ cartilage should be okay now, so it’s time ta’ get a move on.”

Move on? I’d been under the impression that we were going to wait-out the Fillydelphia night (which, I assumed, was at least twenty-percent deadlier than the Fillydelphia day) in the room she’d brought me to, but Redmane quickly debased the underlying assumptions which had made me think the location we’d rested in was safe during the night.

“Wait. Aren’t we going to wait out the night here?”

“And sleep on tha’ filthy floor?” Redmane scoffed, looking at me with a sort of insincere, condescending skepticism. Apparently she was having a little internal joke at my expense. “Yeah. Like that’s happenin’. There ain’t even a lock on tha’ door... or, fa’ that matter, a door at all.”

Hmph. Somepony was in a good mood.

Then, as swiftly as it had come, the levity in her voice left.

“No. It ain’t safe ta’ stay here,” she said levelly, looking me in the face. “We need ta’ get ta’ one a’ my safehouses before dusk a’ we risk becomin’ midnight snacks fa’ whateva’ lunar damned nasties hunt Filly at night.”

“Now use some a’ that fancy unicorn magic an’ undo ya’ bandages so we can get movin’.”

I obliged, casting my gaze back and undoing the knots affixing the splint to me quite deftly. Letting the splint fall, I levitated the used bandages into my pack while simultaneously stretching my hindleg out. The bandages had done their job, and while I still felt a little twinge of pain every time I put weight on it, I was able to move about the room at a good clip.

“Heh. Lookin’ good, Lucky.” She smirked. I was hardly in any mood to return the sentiment. “Time fa’ a field test. Follow me.”

… and like that, we were off.

Redmane knew the area like the back of her hoof, leading me through sorts of back alleys and short-cuts. Her sense of direction and ability to identify landmarks was impressive, and now that I think about it, her guiding of me through Filly probably saved me weeks of directionless wandering. Honestly, I was much, much safer with her than I’d ever been on my own.

The price of protection, however, was steep. While I felt relatively safe from Filly’s lurking horrors, I also felt like I was constantly being threatened. From the way she’d handled my rescue and the way she used her splinting of my leg as leverage, I could feel her favored “strong hoof” approach pushing me along. It was a real quandary: stay and live, or go and die in any myriad number of unpleasant ways. Honestly, the answer was self-evident.

Her personality still rubbed me the wrong way, though.

I was just about to begin theorizing how to make my laser pistol both direct interface and spark battery compatible as a way to pass the time when Redmane suddenly stopped me with one of her hindhooves. After a moment of tense silence, she motioned for me to walk-up to her shoulder and inspect whatever it was that she’d stopped moving for. As silently as I could manage, I moved parallel to her and took a peek at the thing at her feet. What I saw was a pile of manure. Deadpan, I turned my head to face her.

“Manure?” I whispered harshly, annoyed. “That’s what you stopped us for?”

Motioning for me to be quiet, she mouthed the word husks.

Oh. I mouthed back, face going slack in surprise. Where?

In response, she began sniffing the air.

While certainly I hadn’t been observing Redmane’s every move with the rigor of an arcanist, I knew we’d been travelling for about an hour and that the grimy back alley we’d found ourselves stopped in was somewhere east of our initial position. The monotonous cityscape had remained as tall and imposing as ever, so I felt it was fairly safe to assume we hadn’t moved very far from downtown Filly. Dusk was rapidly falling over the city, shadows growing long as the sun set, paltry beams fading to black, all of it transpiring from behind the perpetual cloud-cover. I stared up into the festering red of the clouds above and looked for the poetry that night usually entailed. All I found was apprehension.

… this hold-up was costing us precious time.

“I smell it,” Redmane whispered as she lowered her head down to my level.

I raised my eyebrow inquisitively.

“They’re nestin’ here for tha’ night,” she explained. “Right in our fuckin’ path.”

… shit.

Literally.

I understood the dilemma. The sun was already beginning to set, and yet we were still who knew how many hours away from the safehouse Redmane had been heading for. Suddenly, like some sort of bad novel, an obstacle crops up in our path and we’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. A real “damned if we do, damned if we don’t” sort of situation. Knowing I’d dread the answer, I asked the necessary question of Redmane.

“So. What do we do?”

Silently, I turned responsibility for my life over to her and watched the command decision tear her up inside a little. She wanted trust? There. Trust. Besides, there were only two viable options: Try to sneak past the husks or double back and try another route. Only one of those would get us to the safehouse in time to lock the door on all the horrors just awakening from their slumber.

Quietly, I wondered if putting trust in Redmane’s ability to make sound logistical decisions still counted as “trust” per se. Was it the same as putting my trust in her...

… or was I cheating?

Hell, should I have even cared?

Ugh.

“I really don’t wanna’ do this, but I think we’re gonna’ have ta’ sneak past ‘em.”

“Fantastic,” I exhaled, exasperated from my internal monologue, as I idly kicked at the ground with my right forehoof.

Looking over at her, I cleared my throat softly. “I don’t suppose you have a Stealth Buck on hoof, by any chance?”

She didn’t answer.

I sighed and forged ahead, making sure to keep an eye out for any husk-pies in my path.

I supposed it was just as well, seeing as I quickly lost myself in sizing-up nearby buildings for their potential to house a husk nest. Redmane was right, though. The distinct whiff of fresh manure, along with several other more metallic and smoky scents, floated on the air. If I just kept quiet and followed my nose, I was reasonably sure I’d be able to figure-out where the husks were bedding down for the night.

Reasonably sure.

Walking out onto the street, I realized how incredibly devastated the buildings of central Filly were. Judging from the skeletal wrecks that stood silently in front and behind me, this had been one of the districts with buildings that hadn’t gotten around to being retrofitted with the magical and mundane reinforcement combo that had made the wealthy high-rises near the epicenter of the blast able to weather a megaspell and two-hundred years of decay and still remain livable.

Somewhere in this mess of rubble and partially collapsed multi-storied buildings was a nest of mindless killing machines simply waiting for us to trip-up and alert them to our presence... and you’d have to be mindless to even consider bedding-down in one of these for the night. Turning my eyes skyward, I stared high into the hanging rubble about four storeys above the ground. Barely illuminated in the rapidly dimming twilight, I saw what I interpreted to be rustling brown-black forms move ever so slightly in the deepening shadows of the large, ruined cement structures. My eyes must’ve thought I was in the mood for humor or something.

I moved on, increasing my pace while watching the ground to make sure I didn’t cause too much of a racket; alerting the husks to our presence by knocking little chunks of concrete around or crunching two hundred year old carriage-glass underhoof was the last thing I wanted to do. It was these little bits of attention to detail that had saved my hide when I’d snuck towards The Wall; to forget them was to impale myself on easily avoided mistakes. Anxiously, I looked over my shoulder for Redmane. Quiet as a mouse, even in all that armor, she kept a respectable distance from me and was more concerned with keeping herself from disturbing any noisy detritus than she was with monitoring my progress or sniffing for husks.

It took us a few minutes, but we made it across the street with little more than the occasional crunch of aged concrete gravel beneath our hooves. I was taken aback at how impressively wide the disparity between the structural integrity of the buildings on this side of the street and the ones of the side we’d just left were; these were piles of rubble, not buildings. Still, traversing them was necessary and I quickly discovered that climbing mounds of rubble quietly enough to escape notice was by no means an easy feat.

We tried anyway.

Like she had with everything else we’d encountered together, Redmane seemed to know a better way past this obstacle. Calmly, she plodded up the hill of wrecked building material as I followed closely behind, she finding her footing with practiced ease and me trying not to start a rock slide or make more noise than a dropped Sparkle~Cola bottle.

In the almost-darkness, the debris that constituted the small to medium sized mounds we were now puzzling our way through began to cast long, creepy shadows. I watched our flanks intently out of both fear and caution, peering over my shoulders and swivelling my ears about. I could tell Redmane was on edge too. Her ears flicked back and forth, seeking any noise that wasn’t our own. The smell was getting worse.

Casting the occasional furtive glance up at the towering skeletons of buildings, I marveled internally at how suddenly the terrain had changed. One cross of the street and Filly had transformed from a ghost-town into a ruinous rubble. I supposed the ages had acted on every part of the ruins in a different--

Trk, tirk, tik, tik.

… what was that?

I stopped flat. Redmane followed suit less than a second later. For a moment, we stood there in silence. Night was almost upon us in earnest, and the two of us were nervously eyeing every shadowed nook and cranny as though a monster was about to burst out of it and take our heads off. We were two travellers in Fillydelphia at night without backup or nearby shelter; we had every right to be afraid. I heard the sound again, this time softer.

Trk, trk, trk.

The chunk of concrete fell close to my hooves, landing with a loud Trk! before crashing to to rest against a half-exposed garbage can. Looking up at where I assumed the rock had come from, the irregular shapes of the ridge, the waning light of day and the encroaching shadows of night conspired to make it difficult for me to figure out if there was anything above us. Instead, I kept my eyes peeled for pony-like shapes and movement.

As I peered up at the ridge, a light wind picked up, throwing ridge dust in my face and the overpowering scent of manure into my nostrils. I closed my watering and irritated eyes, blinking furiously as I tried to purge them of both physical irritants and rancid fumes. Seeing Redmane tuck her head down and bring it back defensively, I assumed she was attempting the same. We stood there, silently vigilant, as the wind finally died down. The dust stopped, but the smell lingered, heavy in the air.

We’re right on top of them, aren’t we?

Any way we turned, we were likely to find their nest or at least disturb their slumber. Anything louder than a whisper would probably get us chewed into a slurry of pony mincemeat. I felt the deep coldness in the pit of my stomach that was fear, but I pushed against it with all of my strength. The world was the path ahead of me. The world was escape. I could think of no worse place for us to freeze-up.

“We have ta’ keep movin’!” Redmane whispered harshly back to me, perhaps sensing my hesitation, encouraging me to soldier onwards as she began her cautious forging of a safe path past the nest. “We’re dead otha’wise.”

… but how could we move past it when we didn’t even know where it was?

Judging from the way the scent of manure only became seriously apparent when there was wind to stir it from the depths of wherever it was, the nest was probably somewhere inside one of the partially-destroyed buildings. Eyeing the four concrete skeletons closest to us, I made a couple guesses as to which one was hiding the husks. The weakening light diffused by the cloud cover, the ruined structures, imposing even when it had been brighter, were even more disconcerting as silhouettes. Narrowing it down, I put my bits on the pair of collapsed apartment and office buildings to my right. Seeing as their exposed structural supports were the least degraded from the two hundred years of weathering, it was a fair assumption that their foundations and, thus, their basements were the least damaged and, therefore, the most habitable, if a bit dank.

I was pretty sure husks were okay with dank.

As quietly as possible, I voiced my concerns to Redmane. She nodded in agreement, but, aside from that, did not respond. I got the message: “Keep noise to a minimum.” As to the issue of escaping the nest, we were making fair progress for a pair of ponies heavily concerned with walking quietly on loose rubble. Hoofstep by hoofstep, Redmane was leading us out of the den. From a pragmatic standpoint, then, my “trust” was certainly not misplaced. She was doing the job that kept both of our hides from being flayed. Now all we had to do was make sure neither of us screwed up.

Yeah. Right.

All it took was just the slightest touch of inattentiveness. A furtive glance over one’s shoulder. A rechecking of the ammo-belt loaded into one’s battle saddle. Anxiety over having forgotten to reload one’s laser pistol...

… kicking a Sparkle~Cola bottle that just happened to be in your path.

It started with a growl.

Both our heads flicked to the right, searching the almost darkness with eyes not yet adjusted to the freshly fallen night. The sound was like it was before; not quite right. It was echoing, and that mitigated some of the perverseness of it... but the memories stirred, and that was enough to make the cold pit that had been stewing in my gut jump straight into my throat.

“... to the right!” I squeaked at Redmane, throat constricted, before I forced my rationality before my fright. “One o’ clock.”

“I see ‘im.”

I reached my magic out for the laser pistol in my saddleba-- it was out of ammo. I’d have sworn more colorfully if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with backing up behind Redmane and weaving my gemstone enchantment spell. I fell into the rote of spellcasting, blanketing and hopefully smothering the churning sea of fear with hundreds upon hundreds of hours of practice.

Breathe in.

Crack! Crack!

I flinched at the sound, but managed to keep it all together.

Breathe out.

“Fuckin’ a’! There’s like ten of ‘em!” Redmane shouted as, I surmised, more husks emerged from or near the mound she’d opened fire at. On account of me having forcefully shut my eyes closed to concentrate, I couldn’t tell whether or not she’d killed the first husk. Her tone, however, told me everything I needed to know about our progress in general and from the sound of it, things as a whole weren’t going well.

“Whaf vuh fhell frre vfa’ doinf’, Ruffy? I neef fome baffupf here!”

Crack! Crack! Crack! Crack!

Chk. Tink, tink, trnk, tink, tink, chink. Shk. Chk.

Find the vertices and will your energy into them.

The roar of her minigun warming-up joined the growing roar of the husks, the cacophony fraying the edges of my concentration. How close were they? How close was I? How close was Redmane?

“Ya’ betta’ be cookin’ up some lightnin’ up in that lightshow back there or I’m gonna’ be pissed!” Redmane yelled at me as I stood there, easiest target in the world. Quite quickly, panic built beneath the blanket of concentration that I’d quelled my fear with. It stoked my efforts, adding passion and urgency to my already strained psyche. I couldn’t cast any faster, dammit!

I felt the dam strain, threatening to break and overwhelm the fragile thought-will-magic-matrix with the very real fear of being eaten ali-

Don’t think about it.
Don’tthinkaboutit.
don’tthinkaboutit

I forced myself to will my overglow into the storage crystals in my laser pistol, listening to the comfortingly regular hum of Redmane’s battle saddle. Whirrrrrrrrrrrr -- Almost there. I was mere moments from fully charging my gems.

Then she opened fire.

It was like being punched in the muzzle, having a needle stabbed into your eardrum and walking into a brightly lit room from a dark hallway all rolled into one. Of course the spell imploded, half of the energy I’d been about to will into the laser pistol lost in the sudden destruction of my concentration. The single layer of overglow receded at the speed of thought, signifying that I was no longer attempting to cast an intensive alteration spell.

I’d only managed half charge.

I didn’t waste time trying to check; it was a gut feeling. I only had around fifteen shots before the crystals went dry again. Thankfully, my levitation hadn’t failed me; at least I could rely on my oldest cantrip. I could sense my magic manipulating it in the air next to my head. All of these things were split-second inferences; they’d become second nature as I’d aged and practiced my hidden talent. Now, I figured, it was time to face the music head-on, eyes forward.

I forced my eyes open.

For a brief moment, the world froze, illuminated by one of Redmane’s muzzle flashes. A quartet of vicious looking husks were bounding towards us, hollow milky-white eyes and gaping, slobbering muzzles reflecting a little bit of the raw light that was being emitted from Redmane’s battle saddle. I knew more were soon to follow. Hopefully Redmane had enough ammunition to deal with all of the ones that chose to follow after us when we started running.

I didn’t think I’d be able to pull-off that half-charge thing again. If it’d been that harrowing just trying it when the husks were waking-up, I didn’t even want to imagine what it was like when they were in active pursuit. Backpedaling, I tried to make my shots count. Redmane was beside me, matching pace, as her long minigun barrels peppered the scene with hot death.

Beside her, my laser pistol discharge was barely a whisper...

… yet, she seemed to be holding back.

Redmane fired her weapon only sporadically as she backed up, retreating and shouting for me to follow. The sound and fury of her fully-automatic weapon seemed to stay the teeming horde with its flashes and ear-splitting noises, mercifully keeping us from being overrun. However, what worked to our advantage simultaneously subverted us; the same deterrents the saddle produced also served to attract more husks from every direction on the ground and, as I quickly learned, in the air.

Can they use magic, too? I mused in frustration as I fired one of my precious blasts at a winged husk that had decided to harass Redmane from above. It proved to be a better shot than I’d anticipated, burning a clean hole in the rotting, winged equine’s neck. Reacting from what I assumed was pure flight-response instinct, it used its last gasp of energy to soar out of sight, trailing an off-colored ichorous substance from its partially cauterized neck wound.

If this kept up, we’d have more than just one nest on us.

“Lucky!” I heard Redmane holler at me as I reflexively turned my head to face her. “We’re runni- shit!”

She was looking in my direction -- almost directly at me -- when she pulled her revolver from its holster. I was barely able to turn my head fast enough to catch a glimpse of the thing swooping down out of the sky before its impact threw me to the ground.

“Lucky!”

Crack!

It was too late, though. I was out.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It was bright.

It was bright and it was in my eyes.

I was a foal in a safe bed, so I woke-up like a foal in a safe bed, languidly stretching in the pile of clean hay that was my bedding. I took my time before cracking my right eye open and catching a glaring eyeful of the sunlight pouring through the small crack in my boarded-up window.

Moments like these felt special to me for some reason.

I’d lie in my bedding and just let the sun stream in...

… for however long that lasted.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

“Fuckin’ a’, Lucky!” the voice softly shouted, words intruding on the edges of my aching consciousness. “Get up! Get up!”

Then I remembered where I was.

On my hooves with a grunt, I winced as a sharp, momentary pain lanced up my left hindleg, simultaneously scrambling for my laser pistol with wide eyes and wild telekinetic grasping. I didn’t scream like I had before; it wasn’t nearly as intense, but it was still hard enough to burn and smolder behind my left eyebrow. I faltered, but I needed to ignore it and push on. I sliced the pain into easily managed chunks, compartmentalizing it until each piece was small enough to deal with on its own. That was how I normally dealt with pain.

New situation, old technique.

“Where are they?” I asked her in a serious and pained whisper. It occurred to me briefly that I’d lost some time along the way, and perhaps with it a bit of memory. The word “concussion” floated around in my head for a bit, but I wasn’t willing to jump to conclusions so quickly. Self-diagnosis was a tricky thing, and I wasn’t exactly flush on examples of what a concussion looked or felt like.

“Scared off a’ somethin’ after ya’ fell,” she interjected, unknowingly drawing a moment of my ire for the precious thought she’d interrupted. “Have ta’ keep our eyes peeled. Watch fa’ tha’ glowin’ ones... or worse, the unicorns.”

I mumbled expletives as the smoldering ache grew in intensity, the jolts of pain from my hindleg becoming less and less noticeable in comparison. This headache was killing me and my attempts at coherent thought. Time and distance were hazy passings, lost to the ache and ring of the concussion. Yeah, I was pretty sure that I had one now, but it was a little late for a “eureka” moment. If simply following at Redmane’s heels had become a chore, I didn’t want to bother with pointless internal gloating.

We went on like that for a long time... or a short while. I couldn’t quite tell while I was in the moment, but of my observations that made it past the haze that had fallen over my senses, they seemed to support the latter explanation. However long it took us, an hour or a minute, the mounds of refuse and concrete stood eerie vigil over my little delirious trot, cast in blood-red outlines and bleak shadows.

Funny how the words come when you’re uncertain.

“Hey Lucky,” she said, suddenly stopping. “Through here; stick ta’ this side. Don’t stray.”

It was dark, and I couldn’t help but be a little bit scared, but I went anyway. The building had fallen sometime ago, I imagined. Perhaps when the megaspells had fallen, or some short time after that. Even to my bleary eyes, I could tell the building and its sideways hallways and offices had had a long, long time for rot to claim them.

“Damn,” I heard Redmane say, looking back at me. “You don’t look so good.”

I tried to respond with an “I don’t feel so good”, but lost it somewhere between the smell of mildew and the sound of water trickling from who-knew-where, driven by some lunar-damned water-talisman deep in the sideways bowels of this hellhole Redmane had decided was of some use as a short-cut or resting place... or both.

“Here,” she said, proffering what looked like a blurry line in her mouth and what I assumed was a syringe of something to keep me going. “Some X. Should clear ya’ head right up.”

I levitated it -- with some difficulty -- from her mouth and into my own, tasting metal and a touch of her sour spittle, as I struggled to recall a map of veins and vessels suitably large enough for injection while simultaneously figuring-out how much of that mental-map was just a concussion-induced mirage. Briefly, I wondered what I was getting myself into with this syringe-in-my-mouth pounding-headache ordeal, struggling to discern the wisdom of me trying to clear it up or at least dull it down with some two-hundred year old painkillers.

Then I stuck myself in the shoulder and pressed the liquid into my veins.

It took a few minutes, but the bleariness and ringing faded, and with them went the aches and pains. Slowly but surely, I felt as though all the fatigue of the past day had been suddenly lifted from my frail body, leaving me at my peak and returning my breath to me. I knew that it was all a sham, though. That my aches and pains were simply secreted away in spare cupboards and under beds, waiting for me to forget about them before they jostled their way out and leapt at my throat.

Didn’t stop me from feeling good.

Still as the grave, I rode the rising high like a hot air balloon rides an updraft, up and up and up and-- quietly, I forced myself down to the world below. The world resolved itself into audible sound and coherent form, the faintest touch of light where the crimson of Red Eye’s Fillydelphia poured into the building through time’s myriad ravages. Little bright red wisps, trickling like blood through bed-slats, spreading out for my eyes to drin--

… that’s enough of that.

Gingerly, I removed the syringe and placed it in one of my saddlebags. Redmane seemed as though she were a thousand miles away, not so much as batting an eye at my conspicuous yet absentminded hoarding. I stood, and eventually sat there in darkness for some length of time, waiting for the drug to return my sense of time and distance to me, if slightly distorted and only for a short while. It probably took a minute or two.

“Feelin’ better?” Redmane asked me, having both returned from her mental journey and discerned via some mysterious means that I was feeling much more mentally coherent. Maybe she’d noticed that I was finally focusing on the now clean lines of her tall, bulky silhouette.

“Much. Um, what happened, exactly?”

“Pegasi husk ya’ hit in tha’ neck came flying’ back with a vengeance. Knocked ya’ inta’ tha’ ground, an’ from there, inta’ dreamland.”

“How long?”

“Couldn’t a’ been more than a few seconds. Ten, give a’ take five a’ so.”

“How come I’m not husk-food, then?”

“I... have no idea. Soon as tha’ pegasi’d finished with ya’, they all just up an’ left.”

I took a little bit longer than I needed, piecing together the scraps of memory and errant behavioral clues fluttering around my fuzzball of a brain, before I finally re-initiated conversation.

“Where are we, Redmane?”

“I don’t know what they called ‘em before tha’ war, an’ frankly, I don’t care,” she said, something in her voice making me think she’d had to recount this to someone before. “They’re ruins, Lucky. Just a place ta’ hide.”

“... and what makes you think there aren’t husks waiting around the next corner to engage us while we’re severely disadvantaged?”

“‘Cause I booby-trapped tha’ path I plotted through this place a little less than a week back. Tha’ only husks we’ll be runnin’ into are dead husks.”

“... oh.”

“Yeah. I’ll be goin’ first, then. Stay close.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Initially, we moved at a painfully slow pace.

Redmane said was fairly sure she remembered where she’d placed her mines and swinging rebar tripwires, but she was taking it slow just to be sure; I didn’t blame her. The strange, diffuse redness of what light trickled down into the crooked corridors we walked played tricks on my eyes, making me guess at which things were shadows and which were silhouettes. If she wanted to take it slow for a bit while she guessed where she’d laid all her deathtraps, that was perfectly fine with me. I was a bit too preoccupied with my not-quite-disappeared headache to be of much use anyway.

As we picked-up speed, I realized that I hadn’t bothered to properly reload my laser pistol. I groaned inwardly a little, ruining the night-vision I’d allowed to develop with the faint glow of my horn as I used it to call the pistol out of my saddlebags. Allowing myself to fall a little bit behind Redmane, so as not to ruin her ability to keep us both out of harm’s way down in these dim corridors, I focused on the storage crystals I’d more fully integrated into the sidearm. When I’d gotten my hooves on it, it had become more than just the mass produced tool it had been before. Now it was mine.

Though I did need to focus on the enchantment, being outside of an immediate combat situation allowed me to divert at least some attention away from the mostly-intuitive magic that I was now weaving. At least I could walk and keep my eyes open this time.

As the glow on my head increased in intensity, so too did my casting require more intense concentration. While my senses were okay on the surface, there was something about the combination of Med-X and light brain-damage that was throwing quite the wrench into my spellcasting. Eventually, though, the weave was right and energy flowed from my horn into the gemstones. In the time it had taken me, though, I’d fallen behind more than I’d anticipated.

All this time, Redmane had been forging a path forward slightly faster than I’d been moving to catch-up with her. We’d both become a little self-absorbed in our downtime preparations, and for that I couldn’t fault either of us. After all, it wouldn’t do for her to do a sub-par job navigating her trap web or me to let my laser pistol sit in my saddlebag at slightly less than half-charge. I only wish I’d learned that inattentiveness breeds trouble the first time around.

When I finally noticed how great the difference between us was, I did something stupid. It’d have been almost unforgivably stupid if we hadn’t both made it out of the building in one piece... but we did, so there was that. When I saw how far Redmane had gotten ahead of me -- two to two and a half meters -- I ran to catch-up to her.

Big mistake.

Redmane had given-up on constantly setting and resetting her traps about ten minutes back, figuring she’d probably need to save her strength for when we finally emerged from the building. Instead of actually clearing the way, she’d begun muttering where the traps were located and how to avoid them at a volume that would’ve been intelligibly audible had I been standing where I should’ve been. Under normal circumstances, I suppose, she would’ve noticed my rather conspicuous absence. Instead, it looked like she’d become preoccupied with something; presumably the something that’d been bothering her earlier when she’d given me the painkillers.

That, combined with my reckless running through a corridor I knew was heavily booby-trapped, was a recipe for disaster. I hadn’t even felt the tripwire until it’d snapped across my hoof and triggered the grenade bouquet above my head.

I heard the three near-simultaneous Chk!’s, though.

“Oh fuck!” I shouted, suddenly dropping into a full gallop. “Redmane! Grenades!”

She didn’t even yell back. All she did was look over her shoulder at me, briefly, then start running as fast as she could, encumbered as she was. I did a temporal reckoning of how much time had passed between my triggering of the trap and how long it’d taken me to cover the distance I had.

I still had a couple seconds.

Senses heightened by imminent danger, eyes trained on Redmane, I watched how she navigated the corridor. Mimicking her as perfectly as I could, I felt the dread and tension build as my internal countdown flickered closer and closer to zero. Just as it ended, I felt that same itching beneath my left hindhoof, albeit lessened by the numbing effects of the Med-X coursing through my veins. Diving behind a filing cabinet that had fallen to the wall-turned-floor, I covered my ears as best I could.

Footnote: Level Up.
New Perk: “Canterlot Canter” 1 Rank Prequisite: Firearms 45 or MEW 45: Like the gentlestallions of old, you’ve learned to make your aim steadier than your heart. Firing (or returning fire)while moving quickly has become a great deal easier for you. Accuracy penalties for using a levitated or mouth-held firearms (or MEW’s) while moving quickly are reduced.

(To the Chapter Hub.)