Fallout Equestria: Rangers North

Chapter 004: Scoring the Steel

AE0090.03.24.1313

“But even the strongest minds can succumb to instinct when pushed too far.”

“I hate needles...” I groaned, hovering the hyperactive, red, fluid-filled syringe over the nearest hole in my armor, “... I hate a lot of things right now.”

Standing in the snow, Doc Hollow watched me jam myself with another potentially deadly dosage of chems. I could not be sure, I could swear I saw him sag inside his heavily modified armor.

“I’m surprised.” the doctor seemed to consider darkly, “I hope you’re prepared for this.”

The syringe clamped down onto the armor and forced itself into my skin. I let out a cry of pain, which was followed by a sudden rush of vertigo. My heart fluttered in my chest, as if I had been running for miles. Eyes going wide, my world swam beneath a haze of red and blue, the world around me stretching out longer than I was certain my field of view could possibly allow.

And then... silence. Where my thoughts had been rushing before, now I could hear but one, small voice.

My vision snapped back violently, the sudden change in perspective throwing me to the ground. Doc Hollow was gone. For just a moment, I wondered why he had left.

“There is no happy end to this.” a voice in my head growled, “He has left because there is nothing else to be done.”

I knew, it knew. We knew.

“Who are we?” I asked the voice. No answer came. It did not matter.

...This would be the last attack before the blizzard hit. Already I could see the enemy forming up on the ridges. They knew time was short. If Rain was right, this was the endall.

We had to kill. Kill to survive. Kill to ensure there was a tomorrow to live for. And it was as simple as that. I looked to my comrades-in-arms, to those who had fought alongside me, who had killed with me. These stallions and mares deserved to live, and I would make sure they damn well did, if I could. If we could.

Red Rain

‘All the world’s a stage.’ I had once been told, remembering some of the past as I shook my head at the scene before me. The sky roiled above us, the approaching RadBlizzard drawing upon the sky like massive curtains that were poised to end our little ‘act’ prematurely.

“If this is a stage, then I despise the script, and its writer...” I mumbled under my breath.

“Say again, Red Rain?” Jack’s voice demanded over the communications net, sounding more hoarse than earlier today, likely because he had been barking orders since earlier this morning.

“It’s nothing, Jack-Hammer, sir.” I responded back with more formality than was necessary, “I’m just musing, that’s all.”

I looked around from my perch, spotting the massive, thudding armor of Jack’s as he turned to identify me.

“I’ll be over in a second.” he said, his voice strained.

I pressed a button on my neck, sighing. This time I made sure my comms were off as I began cursing quietly into my helmet Just cursing. Cursing everything.

“... bucking officers on the ridge... damn it...” I finished just as Jack Hammer plodded up, crushing dead enemy soldiers as he did, completely disregarding their existence.

“Red.” he began, “Something’s bothering you, and it’s not just the sheer amount of death we’re causing and seeing here.”

I stared up at his tank-like armor. It was covered in gashes, blood spatterings, and char-marks. He looked like hell. I probably did too. Even then amongst the hell surrounding us, there was a soft, wise side to him in the way he carried himself within the confines of his armor.

“Yeah... there is.” I admitted after a moment of quiet contemplation.

Jack sat with a thud, taking a load off his legs. His suit let loose pressurized, superheated gasses from the joints in his armor, where special nodules sat between plating. His faceplate dropped and unfolded like backwards origami, revealing a sweating, tangled mess of blonde mane and white pony.

“It’s Shield, isn’t it?” his concern echoing in my head.

I scanned the horizon after he asked, for a moment, unable to see my best friend anywhere. I knew he was alive, though. He had been alive when the last wave had fallen back. He had been alive when Midnight Shear blew up the retreating enemy with a grenade. Shield had been alive when he had cut a swathe of blood and entrails across the battlefield using only a shotgun and his hooves, and before that, when I’d witnessed him end the life of one of our own out of mercy because she couldn’t be saved.

“Yeah...”

Jack’s face echoed my concern.

“We need him, you know. We need him like this, like he is right now.”

I scrunched my nose at Jack, twisting my eyebrows into what felt like the angriest scowl in the history of frowning, and with my anger simmering I began yelling, “We need him to be a killer maniac?” I spat, “We need him to sacrifice everything he’s stood for so far?”

Jack’s face went stoney. His looked away from me and off into the distance.

“Yes.”

“WHY!?” I ask, my voice elevating into explosive exasperation as I gritted my teeth, “Is it not enough that we’ve killed so many today!? Is it not enough that many of our best are dead!? Are you willing, TRULY willing to throw your soldier’s way of thinking completely aside so we may kill more of them!?”

Jack lowered his head to my eye level. He was easily twice my size normally, and with the armor, Jack could squash me like a bug. Literally, and suddenly all of that power was glaring in my direction.

“I am...” he growled, “Because without this trump card, we all die, and nothing will change, Knight Red Rain.”

I flinched at the use of my full rank and name, but I stood my ground.

“Do you even know what’s going on here!?” I asked, positioning my nose literally inches from his, close enough to kiss him.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen. I wondered suddenly why a thought like that one had flashed across my mind. It wasn’t really the time to wonder about random thoughts, though.

Jack heaved a heavy sigh and withdrew.

“I really wish I didn’t.” he groaned, “Rain. Take the shot.”

“Sir?” I asked, initially confused.

Jack raised an eyebrow and glanced at the ridge.

“Oh...” I caught on, “When?”

Jack must have been listening to me on comms earlier. I regretted forgetting about the switch on my side of the system.

Jack stood up, his heavy armor creaking in places where it had dented in a little too much from what I assumed was rocket-fire, “When I give the signal.” he replied, “You will kill all of their officers. We need to end this now.”

Jack turned his head, and began addressing someone on the other side of the comms system.

“You’re ready?” he asked, “Alright. When I give the signal, then move out. We will stay behind and meet up with you in an hour.”

The pony on the other side obviously didn’t like hearing that last part.

“I don’t CARE!” Jack barked deeply into the microphone inside his helmet, “It’s only one kilometer, and a snowstorm is about to hit! No arguments, we don’t have the time!”

The other side seemed to concede, with a condition.

“I will look after Shield. But we need him right now. We need him, or this entire operation will be a complete disaster.”

With that last sentence, Jack began trodding away.

“Isn’t it already a disaster?”

Jack stopped, obviously having heard me. His visor unfolded, allowing him to look at me directly, and I at him.

“Yes.” his frown told me that he would not be allowing anymore questions, “It has been. And I should have seen it coming.”

I narrowed my eyes at my squad leader. He sighed, the heavy shoulderplates attached to his armor sinking lower than I’d ever seen them on him.

“But... that would mean....” I started.

Jack gritted his teeth, glaring. “I’ll explain later!”

We looked up at the ridge, ponies surrounded us on three sides, with the only exit being down a narrow pass heading towards the Geothermal Station. Our enemies cheered and barked insults down at us. They brandished their weapons with menacing, sick grins, even as the roiling, slow-moving “wave” in the clouds above came ever closer, bolts of cloud-bourne lightning crackling and sparking within the incoming storm, casting strange shadows in the sky.

“Crawl up there.” Jack gestured with an armored hoof, “Take the shot. I will NOT say it again. Then cover us as the rest of the wounded are loaded and the AutoSled makes its escape. I had Doc Hollow and his stallions load up the Star Paladin a few minutes ago.”

I nodded, we were out of time. I knew that somehow Jack had exhausted all of his options, or at least I assumed as much. I stuffed my helmet back overtop my head, ensuring that my ears went into the spaces where they belonged, and started a short crawl up to the top of my previous perch. Snow began to drift in flurries down from the sky above.

“Rad-Blizzard” I hissed between my teeth, two-and-two and five finally piecing together in my head. Jack had a reason for everything, even if I didn’t like the reasons.

“I feel like a total ass.” I whispered to myself as I reached the top, setting up the sniper rifle that had been my companion for the past few hours. “How could I have forgotten-”

“There will time for that later.” Jack’s deep voice barked over the comms, his tone softening afterwards, “Take the shot, so we can get the wounded to safety, and start-”

No. I was just numb. Numb from everything. The battle began. Our last battle, most likely. I lined up the next shot, placing it right where the next officer’s ears would be. His crystal armor would protect him from most bullets, but not mine, not if I placed it right. Again I pulled the trigger, and again I barely felt the recoil. I could feel the bags under my eyes. Every shot I fired, every kill I made was a concentrated effort to end the life of a specific enemy. A flutter of excitement surged through my veins as I felled yet another officer. It made me feel ill.

“Keep it up!” Jack yelled through the comms as ponies began rushing down from the ridges above the killing field, “Just a little longer!”

Another shot. I heard it ricochet off the helmet of one of my targets. I saw him fall, and watched as he was trampled. I smiled a little. Then I forced the smile from my face.

“Killing should never bring joy...” I thought with grim resignation, and lined up another shot.

And another. And another. In two and a half clips, all the officers that I could see were dead, lost in a sea of their charging subordinates. But I could see them breaking. I could see them beginning to falter. I chanced a glance down at the field below, where the slush was stained with blood, and ponies fought it out like savages at close ranges with knives, scrap-metal swords, and anything else they might’ve found in the icy mountain valleys and lost way-stations that surely dotted the range.

With the officers dead, the enemy was a messy sea of disorganized, badly trained warriors. I watched as some of the Steel Rangers that I was not familiar with moved between rocks, pieces of AutoSled wreckage, and piles of the dead. Some carried dead Steel Rangers on their backs, others helped the wounded make their way across the killing field and into our last remaining AutoSled. For a moment, I considered sliding back down into the fray and making my way to the turret of the AutoSled, but then I remembered that it was probably essential that the enemy did not know that the ‘Sled was working. If they did, all hope would be lost and the wounded would soon be dead.

My eyes turned to my squad mates, who were battling it out with our enemies in the valley below. Jack was smashing the enemy with his forehooves, crushing them beneath his weight, charging them when possible. He trampled more than he directly engaged. The gaunt, under-fed, under equipped raider-ponies were no match for him.

The sound of explosives cutting the air grabbed my attention. It wasn’t hard to identify the type of weapon, based on the sound. Fragmentation grenades. That was Midnight Shear. His sneak-suit was useless at those ranges. He could not turn invisible, but it made him silent, not that it mattered since he was chucking grenades with a telekinesis spell into throngs of ponies, blasting them away and into piles of little more than pulp and pony-meat.

I quickly had my fill of watching our normally quiet squadmate, and the carnage he was causing, and searched the raging crowd for Shield. It only took a few seconds, since he was standing atop a small pile of bodies, climbing over the ones that fell to his shotgun or the knife he occasionally whipped out so that he could reload the roaring weapon and still fight.

Zooming in, I mouthed “What have you become?” in his direction.

Shield’s eyes were bloodshot, his face was bathed in blood much like his armor. He slashed at a blue pony that crawled up from the bottom of the pile to get at him with a sharpened metal stick. Blocking with what was left of one of his armored pauldrons, lunging at the attacker with enough force to knock him over and riding his bleeding corpse through the air and onto the bleeding grounds below, he smiled as if he was enjoying himself and charged at another pony, a red one this time. With a quick shotgun blast, that pony was leveled in his warpath, with two more falling as well, their faces streaked with shrapnel and fresh wounds. I looked away and lined up another shot, picking off ponies that were still attempting to flood into the valley. One by one. I was certain that this fight would never end. That they would just keep coming. I lined up a shot near Shield. But... none of the enemies around him were moving. They had all... stopped. They were... watching. It was as if time itself had stopped around Shield. It only took a moment to understand why as more and more ponies in makeshift armor slowed to a stop, and began watching the emerging spectacle.

“Jack...” I began, “Ja~ack!”

Jumping down from my perch, landing and slipping in the gore below, I started my rush to the center of the crowd. Blood pooled in the place where I had left an indentation with my body, and then into my hoofsteps as I ran, pushing my way through the crowd. To my surprise, none of the enemy combatants made any effort to stop me, instead pulling away from me as I came through, expressions of sheer terror on their faces.

“What!?” Jack barked through the comms, “Rain, what is it? The last of the casualties are on-board! Doc, tell your driver to move it, now!”

I could only stare at the scene before me. Shield was... he was...

“Rain!” Jack yelled, re-addressing me again, “Rain, what is it!?”

“Sir... you have to see this.” I responded with a whisper, and took off my helmet.

The battle had all but stopped, and Shield was the cause of it. The ponies around me shook in their poorly-crafted armor. Shield was yelling.

“Do you SEE what I did to the last mare-fucker who attacked me?” he snarled and pointed to a ball of gore and fur, “Or maybe you need to see it again?”

A pony next to me vomited.

“Shield... how did you...?” I asked, staring at the pasty, sloppy looking ball of guts next to his feet.

Shield’s visage darkened as he grinned with malice.

“It’s amazing what you can do with a shield spell!” he laughed as his horn glowed a deep, dark red, projecting a bubble around one of the shaking enemies. One of the ponies behind Shield ran at him, jumping into the air for a tackling attack. Shield ducked and drew his blood encrusted knife only to bring his head up and gut the would-be assailant in mid-air, entrails falling to the ground as he impacted, a gurgling, shaking, bleeding mess.

“You buckers never learn.” he smiled.

Shield’s horn began to glow brighter as he focused in on the barrier that he had projected around our enemy. The transparent bubble began to shrink, sending the pony within into a fit of unbridled terror. Shield’s pupils constricted so much that they seemed like little black pinpricks amidst a sea of green insanity.

“Guess it’s time for another demonstration!” he yelled.

“No...” I mouthed, “This can’t be happening.”

My legs felt weak, and weaker still as the bubble shrank slowly, crowding the pony’s legs into his chest and stomach. There would be no room soon. I threw my helmet off and into the slush below.

“Shield!” Jack barked, pushing, notedly instead of simply crushing them, the ponies that surrounded us out of the way as he made for the center.

Some of our scantily-armored enemies began to back away as the screaming intensified. Even I backed away.

“No!” Jack yelled at me, “Stand your ground! Talk him out of it!”

“What do you mean!” I bellowed over the screams taking a step forward as Shield laughed maniacally once more, “He’s lost his moon-damned mind!”

“You’re his best friend!” Jack insisted, commanding me, “Talk. Him. Out of it!”

It was far too late. I heard bones start to crack, splinter. My stomach lurched as the barrier enclosing the hapless pony became way too small. The screams continued, but began to burble and bubble as the trapped stallion’s internals squeezed and shifted helplessly inside the still shrinking prison. Blood and internals burst from his squashed snout as the stallion’s eyeballs burst against the increasing pressure, having nowhere to go. Skin split, letting a surge of intestine and whatever else fill the small leftover space between the pony’s ribs and the last space between him and the barrier’s edge.

Now it was my turn to throw up, which left me shaking in my armor.

Then the screaming... stopped. Shield let go of the spell, dropping the compressed ball of pony to the ground where it splattered in a half-crumpled heap.

“Who’s next?” Shield hissed as his horn glowed once more. “Whoever runs first, dies first!”

I did the only thing that could come to mind. I stepped forward, the taste of vomit still fresh in my mouth.

“I’m next.” my voice demanded, wavering in the sick weakness that had overtaken my body from the sight I had just witnessed.

What was I, crazy?

Shield paused, narrowing his eyes and giving me a look of disbelief.

“Rain, you are not the enemy.”

I stood in front of him, “Let them go.” I snarled, “They are beaten!”

Shield lifted his head up and stared down at me with incredulity, “They are not. There are still murderers here.” His green-eyed, glazed-over gaze scanned the horrified crowd as he continued, “All of the ponies here... they all deserve to die. They killed our own! We did nothing to them, and they attacked!”

I couldn’t deny that. But I still had to try! Jack stared at me from across the crowd. For the first time, he seemed helpless and at a loss. He was right: Shield was my best friend and I knew him better than anyone. We had always been side-by-side, for longer than I could even remember. Saving what was left of Shield was now up to me. Or it would have been, if not for an explosion that ripped across the back ranks of the crowd, sending the already scared-witless mass of ponies into a screaming frenzy, one that was so hectic that even Knight Fallen Shield, my brother-in-arms-gone-batpony-shit-insane, could not make out a target from as they made their way into the ridgeline from where they had poured from.

“Get back here, cowards!” Shield roared, picking up his shotgun and wedging it in his teeth, barreling into the crowd. “Yrr wrrll NOFT erkscrap!”

Acting on instinct, my body threw itself on top of Shield, “They are in retreat!” I screamed into his ears, pinning him down, “It’s OVER!”

Shield spat the shotgun out onto the ground, “It’s not over until they are all dead! We are not SAFE until they are all...”

Just as the last of our enemies ran with their tails between their legs over the ridge and back into whatever Tartarus-holes they called home, Shield went pale, his eyes unfocusing. Then he stopped struggling, stopped doing anything at all. I got off of my friend, initially thinking I’d finally gotten through to him. But he didn’t get up. I frowned, and started looking him over. His eyes were closed and was just lying there in the bloody, muddy slush.

“Damn... damn...” I mouthed, turning him over with a shove of my hooves. “Shield!”

Jack plodded over, accompanied by Midnight Shear.

“Is he dead...?” Midnight asked with the same cold detachedness looking around at the scene.

Ignoring Shear, I scuffled through the sick, sloshing mess around Shield, peeling back pieces of armor. There was nothing wrong, other than the cuts and everything else that had been wrong earlier. There lay the problem.

“There’s no bleeding!” I panicked, looking at the wounds where his armor had been shorn off from our extended battle, “There’s no bleeding! If he’s not bleeding, then that means...”

Jack stomped the ground, crushing a dead pony’s face into the mountainside without realizing it. I cringed. When a normal pony stops bleeding from his wounds, it usually means he is dead. That’s what we were taught in basic training. If they weren’t bleeding, they were most likely already dead. I gazed up at my leader, a weight building in my stomach, threatening to drag me down into despair.

“He’s alive, Rain.” Jack flat-toned, “ He’s just... unconscious. Now pick him up, put him on my back, and let’s go. The Rad-Blizzard’s going to hit in fifteen minutes,and none of us will survive if we’re caught in the thick of it.”

My head turned upwards, and I gazed into the green-hazed, darkening sky. I picked up my childhood friend, and pulled him so that he was draped over my back. Jack began to protest, but I glared and started walking. I didn’t care if he was my superior. He might’ve been in command, and it might have been our only option, but... I just couldn’t put my trust in him. Not this time.

“How do you know?” I asked Jack. I couldn’t feel Shield breathing. “How can you be sure... he’s not breathing... not moving.”

Jack started walking as the snow flurries increased in intensity around us.

“If I know half as much about Shield as you do, maybe less, then I know he’s a stubborn stallion, and won’t let death take him so easy. That, and I can see his pulse is weak, but still there on the squad-monitoring program in my helmet display.”

Hope surged into my chest. He was alive.

“But he won’t be alive much longer if we get caught in this blizzard.” Jack reminded me.

Shear trotted up behind us. I guess I was emitting one Tartarus of a field of anger, because he kept his distance. Assuming the dark blue stallion was feeling guilty about everything that had happened, even though he and Shield had saved our lives, I looked back and glared anyways. Jack spotted my laser-point gaze out of the side of his visor, somehow.

“Don’t be so hard on him.” Jack whispered, “He did what he thought was best.”

I didn’t care, and I didn’t respond to the question, instead keeping silent as the snow around us went from flurries to a full-blown blizzard. My anger at everything was just about the only thing keeping me going. And so, we walked. Away from the wind, thankfully. My stomach growled. After all the excitement and fighting that we had been through, I could bet that everypony else was hungry too. My thoughts turned to Broken Shield. Was he hungry?

“What if Shield’s already a corpse...?” I whispered aloud.

When nopony answered, I noticed that the wind had picked up, and was tearing and howling through the mountains like one of those... dragons... before my time. If we ran into one of those, we wouldn’t stand a chance.

I reminded myself that now was not a time for flights of fancy. Shield was counting on me to get him to the Geothermal Station. If I let myself wander... he might die. So I pressed on, the cold biting at my helmetless face, the snow building up between my ears.

“I wish I had a stronger stomach... this cold wind is going to make my eyeballs freeze.” I groaned aloud, “I can’t imagine how Shield’s dealing with it.”

The large, armored tank in front of me was impatient, “If you don’t be quiet and WALK, he won’t HAVE to deal with it for much longer.”

The thought alone tore me down, just enough to let me stumble in the snow. Just as I was about to hit the ground and spill Shield onto the cold snow, I felt a pressure on my chest holding me up.

“Gotcha...” Midnight Shear’s voice whispered just below my neck as he pushed me back to my feet with his head, “... Maybe I should take Shield for a while?”

I grimaced and shook him off.

“Haven’t you done enough?” I asked angrily.

Shear recoiled. He DID feel guilty after all, and I should have forgiven him, but I wanted to wallow in my anger for a little while longer. It felt better against the cold than to be sad.

Jack shook his head, “Stop fighting, now is not the time.” he spat.

Silence began to loom over our party. Jack, our normally compassionate and wise leader was at the end of a frayed rope. I guessed he deserved that right, after all the terrible decisions he made.

“Now, now, Rain.” my conscience began, but before it could finished the thought, I mentally beat the “better me” into submission, insisting that I should be allowed to be angry for a little while longer. At least until Shield was safe, and I was warm and had a full stomach.

As if to drive the point home, my stomach growled again, the pitted feeling growing even stronger than before. Pressing on with my squadmates, I was ever-thankful for the additional strength that the Powered Armor that we wore afforded me, else I might not have been able to carry my best friend under the conditions we were then trapped in. The blizzard had whited-out everything. The clouds, the mountains around us, everything beyond a ten foot radius was nothing but white. I shivered a little. Without my helmet, climate control was nearly useless.

“Stick together now!” Jack yelled over the raging wind, “If you get separated, I won’t be able to look for you!”

I nodded, a gust of freezing wind and snow blasting my face hard enough to force my eyes to squint.

“Shear!” I called behind me, “You alright back there?”

“Yeah, I’m okay!” he bellowed back.

I noticed his voice was wavering, even with all the wind in my ears. He must have been doing pretty awful. I remembered that his suit had little armor, and was full of holes, which made me feel a little guilty about my treatment to him earlier, finally breaking my anger towards him.

Jack stopped and addressed him as well, “You should get up here, closer to me! I can barely see you!”

“It’s okay, I’ll be fine-”

“No arguments! Get your ass up here. We can’t afford to lose you in this snow!”

Shear continued to canter at a slower-than-normal pace. He wasn’t listening. Probably, again, because of how I’d treated him. I could see his head drooped low in the silhouette that the snowstorm afforded my sight.

“Come on!” I yelled against the wind, “Heck, I can barely see you. Y’look like a polar-bear in a bliz-... no wait... wrong joke. We ARE in a blizzard...”

I shook my head. Not the time.

“Shear, we need you!” I insisted wishing that I’d listened to my “better self” earlier, “Come up closer, so we don’t lose you! Look, I’m sorry about what I said earlier. I knew you did what you had to! I just didn’t want to admit it!”

I breathed a sigh of relief as Shear half-jumped through the deepening snow to join Jack and I as we continued our slog to the Geothermal Station. He didn’t say anything, only smiling half-heartedly as he passed me, plodding up beside Jack and I until he spotted something in the distance.

“Sir!” Shear barked over the wind at Jack-Hammer, his ears perked, “Sir, do you see that?”

I glanced forward, seeing nothing at first, until I followed Shear’s hoof, which pointed to the sky.

“What... IS that?” Jack asked.

“A light.” I said aloud, squinting at it as the orange glow of a flying... something... careened across the sky, then dropped with a soft thud into the snow, ten or so meters in front of us, “A beacon, maybe?”

I stared at the glow and for a moment, I could have sworn there was something more standing there, just behind the light, before it disappeared into the wall of snow behind. Broken Shield stirred on my back, mumbling something about wings. I grinned a little. Maybe it was the hysteria from all the things that had happened to us in the past few hours, but all I needed to know was that where there were working lights, there was power. Power meant heating, usually.

“She’s... here.” Shield mumbled on my back, slipping back into unconsciousness.

My grin disappeared as concern rose in my throat.

“Who?” I asked, more to try to keep him awake than anything else.

If he was awake, then he was alive.

“Who is here, Shield?” I asked again, more desperately this time.

Shield only groaned.

Jack shook his head, “He’s delirious. Come on. If they ARE beacons, they might lead to Geothermal #7.”

“Or it could be a trap, set by our strange and previously much more numerous enemy.” Shear added, eyeing the beacon of light with warily.

I had to agree with both.

Author's Note

Finally, after a long deliberation process, I've finished writing about that damned valley! I thought long and hard about what occurred here, and this seemed like the best conclusion to "The Valley" arc, as I like to call it. Sure, they're still in it, but they're going somewhere, instead of slogging through bloody, slushy snow now!

I hope you like Red Rain's brain. He's an interesting one. Right now, he's not his usual self, for obvious reasons, but if they all get out of this alive, you may see more of his internal monologue and strange thoughts than you are now.

Also, poor Shield. I feel kinda bad about putting him through all this. Kind of.