//------------------------------// // Chapter 5: No Church in the Wild // Story: Fallout Equestria: Begin Again // by the runaway //------------------------------// Fallout Equestria: Begin Again Chapter 5: No Church in the Wild “Ha! Now that’s what this wasteland needs! More women with spunk, and explosives!” |*| Cast the First Stone |*| As if some holy and uncorrupted city in the mountains was burning, to spill its smoke into the valleys below, tides of mist came to pool over the Equestrian north, and flooded the sky. We watched as three figures pushed through the white curtains at the wings of the toll and its stage, with guns strapped to their sides and belts of ammunition hanging out of their saddlebags, all ready to survive a sour deal. They were dressed in coats of thick, tanned leather, with their soft spots covered by armor hauled from the Equestrian wreckage and shades of dust that told of a wasteland wandered. But it was not their clothes, or their stone faces, that made them seem so dangerous, that named them: it was the chains. Equestria was quiet now, as even the flies that crowded its roads had become still for hearing the toll of link against steel link, and of hooves churning up the dust. As the three Slavers crossed from earth to asphalt, having steered themselves around the toll’s tall fence, the natives became wild, as if roused by the beating of a war drum, or the chanting of a naked priestess. They were dogs, growling and pacing circles, drawing runes into the road, with daggers and spears clenched between teeth or strapped at side. Though one party of devils remained unafraid of the other, as they stood before the toll, like a wall of clear shields before a mob, unshaken by the jeers of nervous animals, but wise enough not to step into the fence: into the mouth that swallowed the road. Caliber poked out over the ridge’s lip, getting as close as she possibly could to the scene below, like a filly pressing her face against a television screen. I lowered myself into the dirt beside her, with Okavango caught between my belly and the earth, and watched those two latter-day evils meet. The toll booths stretched out before a small office, which sat at the highway’s southern bank. We hadn’t been able to see behind its faces of ashen cement and scratched windows, but now watched its doors burst open. A buck stepped out, and the office seemed to lurch, as if his weight had been pushing it into the soil. I might have called him a giant, as he towered over the congregation of animals around him, all in uniform, for the red insignias that bloodied what cloth could be found under their spikes and scrap. A stream of ponies followed him out onto the road, and injected some color into the country’s veins. They shrank away from the lights, and only kept in step for brutish orders, which were loud enough to be heard from our perch. Their bright bodies were withered and naked, stained with the same dark colors that ruined the tank’s armor, almost like it was their own blood. I counted two bucks and a colt, but even they could be forgotten for the mare that came stumbling out after them. I begged for her to be the last, but a filly, a little blue smudge, soon followed, as if this show's director wanted to press salt into my wounds. The bucks might have been kept in a museum - polished and shut up in glass cases - for how scarcely their bodies had been spoiled, if only for the sake of longer price tags. But even the love of money hadn't been enough to see the mare and her filly spared. And so they had been used, again and again. “Caliber, we can’t ignore this.” I checked my weapons, and might have leapt from the ridge, as if the earth below could not break a hero as it would anyone else. But the mercenary stayed quiet, as her face was empty and unmoving, like that of a china doll. "Caliber," I whispered, thinking that she hadn't heard me. “We can’t help them.” She didn’t look up at me. “Our orders-“ “Forget our orders!” I was fighting to keep my voice low, to hold it down, though a part of me almost wanted them all to hear me. It wouldn’t be long before those ponies were sold into chains, passed from savages to Slavers, like toys between children, or bread between the starving. “We have to help them.” “They aren’t worth it.” I wouldn’t have believed my ears, had her words sounded any less forced: like she was reading someone else’s lines. “Damascus built his little empire on a balefire bomb, and I’m not about to set it off. If those messengers don’t make it back to the Coltilde - with their Slaves in tow - then the boss, and Charon, and every other merc in Hell who has enough honor left to dig in their hooves, is getting put down for it. There’s a gun pointed at Cerberus… and I am not about to pull the trigger.” Those two kings of cardinal sin came together then, and I could almost see the deal, simple and crude as blunt force trauma, being struck between them. The piecemeal family was trapped, with wire walls rising at their sides, Raiders pacing behind them, and open shackles ahead. All gave salty looks to the little filly, who couldn’t have known who to fear most, and shook like a ballerina on a broken coronet. “We kill them all," I said, as if I'd found a way to cheat, to step over the lines of some old but unwritten law. "Nopony has to know that Damascus had anything to do with it. The Coltilde - they'll think that something went wrong with the deal - They’ll blame the Raiders!” I said, in a rush of words. “We couldn't win that fight. And odds are we only get that little girl stranded here at the toll, or bleeding out on the highway thanks to some stray bullet.” She looked me right in the eye now. “We aren’t going to do a thing: I'm not laying down any cards that we aren't holding. This is bigger than us… bigger than her.” Like an army turned in on itself, my thoughts clashed, fighting for an answer: a champion. And my heart leapt as the beginnings of an idea were stirred up in the dust. "No it's not! I have a grenade!" Her mouth edged open, like a bedroom door after curfew. "If we toss it over into the toll, we could start a fight!" This was beautiful! Ingenious, even! "We kick the thunderhead, and let those Slavers cut it to pieces. We just need to get the family clear, and ride out the storm. Then we're out of here! ... This is it! This is the plan!" I was frantic now, knowing that, if those chains drew taught, we could do nothing to save the family. She stared at me, long enough to see me bouncing on the spot, as if skirting madness. "No survivors," she decided, finally. “We have to wipe them all out before this is over: even if they turn tail. And if they force us to, we’ll run ‘em right into the sea.” I was about to hug her, before she frowned, finding another flaw. “Those slaves are gonna get caught in the crossfire. As soon as the Raiders start shooting…” “No, they can’t,” I said, as if anything but absolute victory was impossible. “You’ve been watching the toll all night: How many of those Raiders have anything more than a knife?” “The big one… and maybe one more back behind the gate,” she answered slowly, as if the same idea was now running wild in her mind. This was happening; we were going to save them! “Fuck,” she sighed, cornering herself. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck… you’re right.” “I know!” I cried, almost giggling, even in the face of the war that I'd just tipped us into. “We can't let this happen.” This passing of lambs between two petty Gods. “It’s simple.” “It usually is,” she said, looking back at me as if I'd rewritten the laws of the world. “Get down behind those rocks over there.” She nodded towards a small parapet just beside the highway’s northern bank. “I’ll throw the grenade as far as I can. Try to hit it with your magic if it falls short.” I nodded, glad that I would be going deeper into the belly of the battle, if only for the senseless feeling that I would be more likely to survive it: that I could stand firm as all the new world's violence pressed in around me, and make myself a savior to spite my Stable. “Good, that’s the best we can do short of strapping some kind of explosive charge to your robot.” Okavango made the kind of beep that had once acted as a mask over the dirty underbelly of language. “Once it blows, wait for the den to come running: They’ll force the Slavers back into cover, and it won't be long before they're beating themselves blue against it. Get those prisoners out around the fence, then take ‘em North a ways before heading back.” She marked the same post as she had before. “Some of the Raiders are bound to get it in their heads that chasing Slaves is more fun than chasing Slavers…” “I’ll handle them,” I interrupted, acting like I’d been born and bred for this. “What about you?" “We might not have time to meet up before we need to start picking off runaways, but I’ll find you as soon as I can. Just make sure you convince those prisoners to wait for us. I’m not doing this for them to go drifting off into the wastes, and a morning like this is bound to swallow 'em up when our backs are turned. I’d ask you to stay with them… but I’ve got a pretty good idea of what your answer would be.” I managed to linger for a moment longer, and put my hoof on her shoulder. “Thank you for doing this.” “You got me here, honey… I have a feeling that Damascus has big plans for you, and we’ll both be damned if you haven’t blown one hell of a loophole through my contract. Besides: I like you, Lamplight. There aren't enough mares crazy enough to go cutting into a slow dance between two devils, just to kick it up into a Charleston with Death himself.” She paused to brush my hoof off of her shoulder, though, from her, the gesture was almost affectionate. “Thank you.” *** *** *** For the mist that hung all around us, it seemed like this bubble of atmosphere was all that remained, with the toll, the rutting demons and me as the last of Equestria’s broken parts. And, after skipping between patches of grass on my way down the ridge, like a filly over a floor turned to lava, I took up my post. Okavango bumped into my flanks, and I almost whinnied, as he was a like an ice cube against my skin. He beeped, as if picking up on some wordless conversation, as I mimicked a filly with a spider down the collar of her shirt. We were, of course, the masters of stealth. I grabbed the spritebot, and bunched us both up behind the stone, knowing that my nerves were anything but in my control. I was afraid. As those five, lonely white bars on my Pipbuck had no more hope than driftwood rafts caught in an angry, red sea. As I whispered orders to what I could only hope was an obedient security officer, I saw Caliber's hoof touch the sky, lighting the fuse to this rescue. The grenade went sailing, looking to be guided up by the glare of the streetlights, and only began to quiver as gravity dipped its fingers into the mist, and plucked it out. I cast a ramshackle cradle around it, and then jerked my head towards the toll, as if steering a star. It hit the toll like a meteorite, as if the galaxy itself had seen fit to punish the Raiders for all their moral squalor, and even past the stone, the banks of the highway and its fences, I saw the explosion, though it was more easily heard. Their howls shook more for anger than agony, and the Raiders charged out from the gates like thoroughbred runners in a track race, set off by something far more devastating than a gunshot. I kept my blinds up, and only listened as rifle fire and pounding hooves spilled into each other. The red was drained from my Pipbuck like the color from an anemic body, as the highway ran dry. I swung around the rocks, and saw the road, littered with bullet casings, ribbons and hoofprints, as if some military hero had just gone by, cradled at the heart of a parade. The prisoners stood, shivering like animals caught in a frenzy of headlights and air horns, and I skid into a hero’s pose beside them. "Welcome to rescue!" They'd only just recovered from the shock of a passing battlefield, and I almost had to shout, raising my already giddy voice, to turn their heads. "Follow me!" Strangely enough, and instead of celebrating me for this sudden turn from their path into slavery, the family huddled closer into themselves, with colt and filly penned in by the bodies of their parents. I thought to be a little more diplomatic then, as even in the fresh, white light of the dawn, there survived saplings of distrust and despair. "The Raiders won't be gone long." I nodded towards the warzone. "We need to leave." I wasn't exactly being played on by the horns that had broken down city walls, and it seemed that, if anything, this rescue's first roadblock came from a slowness to trust. "I'm here to help." One of the bucks stepped forward, after whispering something to the sheltered children, and spoke. "Lead, and we will follow." He swung the colt onto his back, even as the mare did the same to her daughter. The second, childless buck nodded, and I guided them to the highway's northern bank. As our runaway caravan tumbled free of the toll's fence, which was laden with corpses, I heard a shot ring out from behind me. Without breaking my gait, I looked over my shoulder, and tried to make a headcount. Four followed, while the buck unburdened by any cargo of children was sprawled on the lip of the asphalt, and had already begun to slide into the dirt, as if his own blood was lifting him like an army of fire ants. The mother spun on her hoof, with that little blue filly bouncing on her back, and ran to him. Doing what I hadn't the heart to, the other buck took her tail in his mouth, and dragged her away. She fought him for a while, as their children jolted from side to side, but soon turned to follow, though the shine running down her cheeks made it seem as if she'd just been pulled from a river. Okavango prodded my side, and steered me away from a pillar of stone that might otherwise have knocked in the head of our caravan. Behind us, there was only gunfire, and I looked forward, into the mouth of the valley's soft and welcoming East. I kept running, searching for a place to hide them, some fold in the earth that I might tuck them into, and felt as if my heart was being beaten like a drum. Eventually, I had the family settling into an alcove between a hillside and its stripped bones of rock, thinking that the Raiders might already have torn everything on the highway to pieces. Now, I had to get back, before they pinned Caliber to the top of the ridge, and swatted at her like a bear under a beehive. "Wait here: I'll be back." The mare was really starting to get to me, as her tears might have been coming from some sour and bottomless well. Still, I knew that the filly clinging onto the back of her trembling body, and the buck who stepped forward, as an ambassador to the family, would see her smiling again. "Thank you, I know that you’ll find us here before the Raiders do... that is, if the Stars continue to be so kind." While my head was light and my eyes were lit, for how good it felt to know that these ponies would not come into the belly of the Coltilde, it was a little frustrating to have due credit stolen away by the stars, of all things. What did they need with my brownie points, anyway? "Your friend is with them now," I said, forging a fake religion to staple onto their own. "He'll watch over you." That seemed to go over well, and I felt like a missionary making sense of some archaic and alien faith. "But, as guardians go..." I added, looking up at Okavango. "I think I can do you one better." *** *** *** With every hoofstep south, the gunfire grew louder, though their echoes rolled through the entire valley. The Slavers had done well to survive for so long, and though the Coltilde might be swelling with pride, I felt dread like a millstone around my heart. If there were scales measuring the strength of either side to this primordial war between us and them, it was beginning to seem like they’d be tilting any way but ours. All of a sudden, I felt myself being knocked clear off of my hooves, and my body was sent sprawling through the field, only to settle under pillars of dust and colorless flocks of grass, like a statue falling from the walls of some abandoned city in the plains. It took me a while to stand, as if I had to pick up the pieces and put myself back together again, and only then did I come face to face with my attacker. A Raider, whose eyes boiled over and whose body was a sickly shade of my own unpolished silver, walked in strange and erratic circles around me, ready to pounce. Her knife stood, buried halfway to its hilt, in the dirt between us, having missed whatever burrow it might have carved in me. My body ached for the impact of that amber clad savage, but I did my best to meet her eyes, ignoring the pain. “Fuck it!” She screamed, though the joy in her voice made the cuss sound like a cheer. “I'm gonna eat your heart out!” She bared diseased gums, from which crooked teeth, cruder than prehistoric tools, jutted like the breakers of a black sea. Drawing any weapon would mean a race between her hooves against the earth and my magic on the trigger, and her body was already coiled, as if it needed to pounce. I had to get that knife. She caught me eyeing the weapon, and lunged, kicking up enough dust to be stirred into a small storm. Our bodies came together in another collision of wasteland sinew against Stable cushioning. I drew my pistol, and swatted her away with it, though she was quicker than the stench of so many untreated diseases had promised, and smashed into me, shattering the fledgling telekinesis no differently than she might have pushed a baby bird from the edge of its nest, before it was ready to fly. "A little girl on girl, hoof to hoof..." Her eyes were mad: yellow and wide, their edges smeared in dark bruises like too much cheap mascara. "This is gonna be fun!" The knife meant nothing to her now, as the mare's hunger for brutality had taken the reins, and whipped a freewheeling love for violence into her. I threw myself against her with all the strength I could gather, hoping that generations of malnutrition and wantonly transmitted infection might grant me some deep, unshakable advantage, as if we were, not only soldiers stepping out from the ranks of opposing armies, but the children of two different species. She didn't step out of my way, and took on the weight of my body with a broad chest and gleeful eyes, as if we were lion cubs rolling in the grass. She slapped me across the scars of Acheron, as our hooves clicked together and our bodies locked. She snapped and spat, biting at my face and teasing my wounds with avian parcels of disease, to poison me just as the balefire bombs and their fallout had Equestria. She pushed her muzzle into the curve of my neck, and bit down on the collar of my father's shirt. And, after nuzzling me into a state of desperate, girlish panic, she tilted her weight and dropped me over uncertain hooves. The ground hit me hard, like it was taking the side of this native and neighbor, and then threw up a cloud of pallid dirt in the place of confetti, as if to celebrate my fall. She straddled me across the middle, pinning my front hooves down with her own, and rode me as I tried to wriggle loose. I saw what might have been the despoiled sister of romance in her eyes, and knew that she wanted to tear the skin from my face, to pull away my flesh with stolen and abhorrent kisses. After getting a leg free, I wasted no time before guiding it into the mare's stomach, like a battering ram. She retched over me, and her breath was like old meat and curdled dairy. But I hit her again, despite the smell, and managed to roll free for all the fetid air that had been beaten out of her. I was back on my hooves before either of us had really recovered, and found myself standing perpendicular to the wheezing raider, with my face beside her mottled flank. Her cutie mark was a heart, vivid enough to have been pulled from some lawless organ vendor's shelves, with a fork sticking out of it. I reared up onto my hind legs, kicking against the earth as if to scold it for the bruises coming to bloom on my side, and swung my Pipbuck down across the back of the Raider's head. There was an unpleasant crack, as her leather cap did nothing to stifle the blow, leaving metal and bone to touch but for the mare's scalp. Her limbs fell out from under her, and she collapsed. As soon as she was still, I rolled the Raider onto her back, and pinned her down just as she had done me, with a little less of that barbaric romance. Now, my breath swept down at her in clean, smoky plumes. Her mane lay sprawled about her head, like ink, and blood trickled through its strands, to flood over the unfilled spaces, and color them red. She was wheezing again, and her warm, ugly breath split the storm that spilled from my own mouth, making me shudder for its foulness. We both knew what would have to happen now. I looked to my Pipbuck, buying time so that she might absolve herself, and wondered if the cracking sound had come only from the mare's skull, as the device's metal casing was unspoiled but for a spattering of blood. Still, I wasn't about to beat her to death, and knew that, even though she needed to be put down, I couldn't go that far. I had to give her a little mercy, if only for my sake. After reaching out with my magic, I found the laser pistol that she had beaten out of my grip. It had skittered through the dirt a ways, but I got a glow around it all the same. I floated it over, and looked the Raider straight in her urine colored eyes, hoping that some new world sickness could excuse this madness, could explain how an entire city's worth of ponies had become so lowbred and foul. She began to giggle, to cackle maniacally in the face of death: before my face. I pressed the gun's square barrel to her forehead, but could do nothing to stop her from looking at me, as her eyes seemed unable to see the weapon that filled the space between them. They wouldn't leave me and, as if the Raider knew that her stare was burning itself into my mind like a brand, she wouldn't stop laughing. Maybe if she had stopped, maybe if she had just talked to me. Maybe then, I wouldn't have done it. I pulled the trigger. She died too quickly, and, like a light going out, and I couldn't say for sure if I had missed it. The beam spread like wildfire though a field, and made a feast of her flesh, to leave little more than an empty plate. I cast the pistol aside, and watched as, from between her eyes, a red ring of light was pulled across her smiling face, boiling everything it crossed down to a dry, black pulp. Her eyes boiled now, truly, as the hungry decay was drawn wider and wider, eating her away as if from the inside out. For a short and discomposing time, I could see a skull behind her melting face, whose eyes were red and whose curled mouth was far wider than even the Raider's, as she laughed circles around the brink of the end. Her voice was in the air, echoing on even as the fires died, and the last thing to be seen, buried under all that cinder and soot, was her collapsing smile. Her mane had become a bed of brittle needles, as the red ring cooled around her neck, like an inflamed metal collar, to leave the rest of her body entirely unspoiled by this irreparable destruction. It almost looked like she had been decapitated, as if some passing thief had taken a liking to her head. The wound around her neck had cauterized, and so she could not bleed, and left no stains on the earth... only ashes. I climbed off of the body and holstered my laser pistol, already trying to shake away the images that, when knit together, remembered my first kill. The Raider's combat knife rose from the soil like a growth, and it took me some time to get it loose. Once I had it uprooted, I strapped the thing across my father's vest, and carried on towards the south, knowing that I was in a kind of quiet and mechanical shock. Still, I had to finish this… An incredible pressure came to prick my chest, as if I was to be picked up on the end of some divine needle, and lifted from this little war. But soon, even as a bruise came to warm the space between my shoulder and my heart, I knew that I'd been shot. There was a bullet, caught just beside the scripture that lined my father's vest, and I felt an odd need for a sharper, more distracting kind of pain. This blunt aching only served to pull me partway back into the world, numb and colorless as it still seemed, and let the music of battle flood my ears once again. I was in another fight. I threw myself behind the very pillar of stone that Okavango had steered me around, just as another bullet was swallowed up into the dust. With my laser pistol beside me, I brought myself to bear, and swung its iron sights over the body of a muddy red Raider, who shared the weight of a rifle between his hooves and his mouth. Counting on the luck that was lacing my Equestria expedition, I took a shot at the weapon. The buck yelped as the pistol's beam colored his rifle, turning it into a brand of brilliant orange. And he forgot me for struggling to cool his scalded tongue, lapping at the mist as if it were more precious than purified water. I swept up his superheated gun in my telekinesis, and sent it soaring into the north, like a clumsy and lead-feathered bird. He had his fill of air, and looked to me with those same wild eyes, as if all Raiders found joy in being disarmed, so that they might fight like bulls locking their horns. After deciding that the world would not wait for me to go through the same dance twice, I leveled my pistol, and emptied its clip into the buck. Some of the beams glanced off of his dull, metallic armor, but most set rings of fire that spread across leather and skin. By the time he had pounced, his body was limp, as muscles built from unholy labor relaxed, to leave him as little more than a great, dead weight. I didn't even think to step out of the way, and so his body crashed into me, and I collapsed on hooves that might as well have been replaced by roller-skates. We fell to the ground together, and I had to pull myself out from under him no differently than I might have from the rubble of a collapsing city, or the wreckage of an airship. When it was over, I limped back to investigate his rifle, thinking far less of the second soul that I had turned loose into this pale morning. The rifle had softened into an almost malleable state and, as the gun cooled, it became welded to the stone, as if to leave a monument to the dead Raiders. I left it, and hurried on to the disquieting battle. *** *** *** There were no signs of Caliber beside my parapet or the ridge, and even the slave, whose emancipation had been so short and so bitter, hardly gave me reason to pause. I couldn't know what customs that star-struck family might have put in place to send off their dead, and knew better than to stick my hooves where they weren't welcome, and stir up the temper of the religious and their favorite translation of God. The bodies strewn along the highway looked to be replicas of the two that littered my own dirt road, as if there were only a few models making up the army called Raider. It was almost quiet now, as the horde's roar slowly died beside it. And even the fallen chieftain, whose body rose above the massacred drones to lead them even in death, seemed peaceful, but for the bullet wounds that had left him looking like a termite hill. Even now, he frightened me, if only for knowing how much it took to bring him to his knees. I counted two dead Slavers, drifting somewhere in the graveyard that had been turned on its tombstones, and emptied out along the highway. Scattered around them, there were well over a dozen corpses, and gunfire still lapped up against the toll every once in a while, like the horns and headlights of faraway cars. The hollowed out raider encampment was almost eerie now, as every decorative corpse became that much harder to ignore, and bulging eyes stared down at me from their posts on chiming meat hooks and sagging fences. I followed the only voice that was left, though it was little more than a whimper, and went after it if only to forget the ponies that had neither my luck nor the family's astrological guardians. My Pipbuck marked off two hostiles, which were unmoving and lonely, somewhere towards the gateway's southern mouths. I peeked around the side of the last toll booth: my laser pistol shaking at my side, with a fresh clip to feed on and a cradle pieced together from the scraps of nervous magic. The first figure was a Raider, with a hammer breaking up her smile. She was beating nails into the hooves of the second, binding them to the candy striped toll bar. Her victim was naked, but as I looked at his cutie mark, I knew that he could only be the last surviving Slaver. Lines of red trickled down his drawn out body, though even they were not enough to disfigure the manacles that filled his flanks. Just as I realized that, in the back of my mind, I had ranked Slavers, no matter how broken or how naked, far lower than the wild and widespread ponies that had defeated them here, I spotted a few familiar splotches of color coming to a blossom in the East. Caliber, who came onto the stage as a blur of red and blue and buttery yellow, was running at full tilt, and beat the broken road as if to cobble it together again. She had my father's automatic in her mouth, and, even for how watery her colors had become, I could see her eyes growing cold, and locking onto the only other survivors of the toll booth war. The Raider turned, as the hammering of hooves came to drown out her torture, and was greeted by two narrow lines of ballistic gold, that drew margins in the air and faded before being filled. The first bullet tore through her cheek, and left her face in ruin even before it burst out in a flurry of torn skin, while the second dug into something far more solid, and knocked her weight back against the toll bar, to leave her bent over it by the spine. The bar seesawed for the sake of her slumped corpse, and the pinned Slaver was hoisted into the air. He screamed as those tireless fingers of gravity fought the silver needles that had been pounded through his hooves, to treat his body as the rope in their tug-of-war. For all the wrong that his sane, and yet counter-Equestrian faction, had sown, I had to do something to stop this animated definition of the word agony. I hurried out of cover, and pulled the mare's body to the ground, almost forgetting that it was anything more than a weight on the scale. Then, I lowered the bar and brought its prisoner to rest on the road, even as his howling boiled down to doglike yelps. It was over. Both sides had been whittled down to their last heartless soldier, and now we stood, like puppet masters before a mess of unstitched limbs and tangled string. "That bitch," he panted, even as Caliber caught up with her bullets. "I had her... I won. But then she did something with her legs, you know?" He was talking to the mercenary as if they knew each other: as if she cared enough to listen. "Knocked me clear off of her, had me stunned until the second nail was in." "I'll get right to work on setting up a rematch." She turned and looked me over, if only to measure how much trouble I'd gotten into without her. I tried to do the same, but she wore her wounds no differently than she might a uniform. "You alright?" I nodded, a little awestruck for how collected she seemed. The mare wasn't even out of breath! After running like that: I'd have been done, ready to retire. Equestria would have had to reclaim itself. "I had to hunt down a couple of runaways: started making tracks east almost as soon as the explosion went off," she said, with one hoof prodding the freshest corpse. "But with this mare dead, I figure there are only two left." The Slaver groaned. "Not counting Hang 'em High over here." "I handled them," I said, not without a little smudge of pride marking my voice. "Good work." I began to skip a little inside, though it was strange to be commended for taking a life, even after spending so much of my time learning to save them. Still, the unfilled hooks that swung from the toll, pleading to be filled, made it all too easy to justify what I'd done. "Let me know if you want to talk about it later." She added, likely watching my eyes as they bounced between swollen faces and headless horses around us. "For now, all I really want to hear is you." She punched his chest. "So start singing." The buck only wheezed, as if she had already beaten the words out of him. "You're going to die here." Her voice became flat and hard, as she set things straight for the buck and me, as she told the truth. "See, I can't let you leave. And unless you're willing to talk - even knowing that this is the last face that you're ever going to see - we aren't gonna be much help to each other." I had to wonder if she might have lied to him if I wasn't there: to have him chase after his life, like a carrot on a stick, even as she guided him off the side of a cliff. "Now, I don't expect you're going to tell us anything, but for all I know you could have the element of honesty tucked up between that black heart and lily liver of yours." She punched his belly, as if searching for a pressure point, like the button on a talking doll. "So I'll give you a chance." “W-wh-what do you mean?” His black and shivering eyes fell onto hers, and it was clear that he was suffering through his words. “Just turn me loose, and I… I’ll tell you whatever you wanna know.” “And here I thought Raiders were disloyal.” I suddenly felt like a burden, as Caliber couldn't help letting her frustration over what we had done show. She wouldn't get the information that she'd come for, and I worried over what she and Damascus might think of me for having hijacked the mission, for steering it into fantastical heroics, and away from the paper-and-ink investigation that it was meant to be. "Damascus isn't going to get what he wanted," I cut in, as if it had to be said out loud. "No." She hit the Slaver across the face, and I had to wince for the sound it knocked out of him. "He's not. But it's just as much my fault as it is yours." Somehow, that didn't make me feel any better. "You couldn't let the Coltilde have its slaves, and I can't tell this son of a bitch what he wants to hear." “Hey! Hey, listen to me, sweetheart…” The Slaver, who seemed no less confused, struggled to look up at me through his tangled limbs. “I have a family back home… this is just a job!” “Where are your clothes?” Caliber asked coolly, barely giving me enough time to scrape up some pity. “What does that matter?” He twisted away from her again, as there was nothing like mercy in her eyes. “You’re reasonable, right? Tell her to let me go!” “Three of you against more than a dozen Raiders: two casualties for twelve.” She rounded herself in, pacing little circles around the strung-up pony-peddler. “Then you… lose against one.” She poked his slumped belly again. “You must have some story to tell me: Because that doesn’t make a lick of sense.” "Hey! I didn't lose to that psycho! ... She took me by surprise," he insisted, too proud for fear now. "Bullshit," She hissed. "Y'know what I think? I think you were a little torn up about your friends over there." She rolled a hoof out along the highway, though the Slaver couldn't have turned west to save his life. "So you had yourself a little tantrum, and figured you'd make the Raiders pay for turning this neighborly little swap meet - cup of sugar for a glass of milk kind of thing - into a bloodbath." I couldn’t help playing with the idea that we could have let him live, for how firmly he believed that this was the Raiders fault. If he hadn't been nailed down, he might have served as a tattle to this dishonest tale. “Winning wasn't enough. You felt insulted, you were insulted. So you took it a little too far." “What the hell are you talking about?” He squirmed over to me once again. “She’s crazy!” “You wanted to Plant. Your. Stake.” Caliber prodded his chest for each word. “And instead of finishing this fight, instead of killing her and getting to Hell out of Dodge…” Her hoof waved at the west again, pointing towards both the corrupted installation and the mare spattered along the road. “You raped her. Because you were the big winner, and just had to stick it to the horde that ripped your friends to pieces." The buck let his armor fall, and stared Caliber down through dark eyes. "So what if I did?" "We both know she deserved it." She looked up; as if to make sure that I was listening. "You don't deserve any better, jack." I nodded, slowly, letting it make sense to me. "But lucky for you: neither of us are equipped to deal it out." The Slaver’s pleas had been getting to me, if only for how much I wanted to heal his wounds, to pull out the nails. But now, I was ready to see him washed out with all the other wrongs that had been righted at this toll. I knew for sure that, of the two, Raiders were the lesser evil. "Like you're so noble... What are you? A Merc? One of those Hounds of Hell, judging from that mask: Cerberus' own little bitch," he accused, though this only got me to notice the name hanging around Caliber's neck. "Looks like we're good and acquainted now... It sure was shitty meeting you." Caliber had stopped pacing circles around him, and the two just stared at each other, dark eyes locked. “So why don’t we just get this over with, huh? Kill me and start running, because when the Coltilde catches you, they’ll make you wish you stayed a whore.” I could tell that he'd hit a nerve, but the Slaver’s ugly words could do little beyond beating themselves sore against the steel in her eyes. "You need to die like this: From the wounds your little plaything left you. Got to make it look like they forgot you here, that those nails drained you like a fucking maple." “The Coltilde will never know that we had our hooves in this,” I added, almost as a question, wanting to be answered by both sides. “What happens if they figure it out?” "There's nothing to figure out. We just killed two birds with one stone. If the Coltilde had any bridges built with these crazies, then they'll be good and burnt soon enough. And I don't think they have the time to go chasing after escaped slaves or veteran psychopaths." We knew very well that the Raiders were dead, but to anyone else: the toll would seem like nothing more than a battlefield abandoned by its champions. The Slaver choked on his own moist, red laughter. "That's what this is about? You thought we wanted these spearchucking sadists to do our hunting for us?" He became one of them then, laughing even as the fingers of death tightened, and choked the life out of him. "You idiots." Caliber bristled, taking the bait. “You got something to say?” “You shouldn’t be worried about who we can get working for us… You should be tucking your fucking tails between your legs - afraid of who we’re working for.” He seemed to settle in then, knowing that he had her hooked. "I wonder who has you out here, digging for gold so far from where it's buried." His eyes seemed to shine a little brighter then. "Why don't we talk about a different kind of gold? The kind that really glitters... I think we might grow quite fond of one another for it." "Grace." I flinched, thinking that she was going to hit him again. "Go ahead and gather up those slaves. Watching this piece of shit die is gonna be like watching paint dry." "An honest mercenary? Who would have thought..." Even though the Slaver was running out of options, he did well to keep the panic out of eyes. "Maybe I can bait your curiosity, then. There are a lot of things you don't know, that I do. And there are certainly a few things that I could keep to myself. Let's talk." "Lets." Something still didn't fit between them, and I hesitated before leaving them alone together. "What are you going to-" "Can't leave any more marks on him... But those nails might have gone in a little crooked. I really should straighten 'em out." I couldn't bring myself to argue, to climb up onto my soapbox: not after everything she had already done for me. "We'll round up back at the ridge.” I nodded, and felt as if I was giving in, that I was letting some small sin go slipping through the net. "And Grace," she repeated, even as I took to the highway, to obey her and block out the buck's last pleas. "I saw that Slave's corpse." Caliber looked up at me. "It needs to stay where it is: You can't bury it." I felt very sick then, as if the world had spun in a thousand circles under my hooves, to muss up my hair and bring a green blush to my cheeks. But, even as the hammer started clicking and the Slaver thrust his voice up to the heavens, I started to run, blindly into the north, as if to look back at the toll would be to turn myself into a pillar of salt. *** *** *** "It's me." My chest was hollow by the time I came to them, and I had to speak over sharp inhales, as the air irritated my lungs. "Is everypony alright?" The father led them out of their hideaway, and I saw that they were all so dirty that their coats and manes wore bastardizations of their original colors, like the wine-stained rags of a drunk. And, as if to make them a family for more than this uniform of filth, their eyes were all downcast and dark, and I was careful not to stare for too long. I knew the touch of lingering eyes, and had always been tender to it. Okavango floated along behind them, with his speakers blaring some kind of carnival music, and I jumped to see the little colt clinging on to his satellite, laughing as if on a carousel. Even the filly smiled a little as they bobbed past her, and my panic fell to pieces to see her father looking so grateful. "What you did for them..." He started, stepping in close so that we might speak alone, to let the children revel in that era-crossing entertainer. "It's still hard to believe this is really happening." "We're the only ones left to look out for each other, sir." I saluted him, as all of Equestria was watching. We’ll have your country up and running within a working week. There are a couple of parts we have to make an order for - That'll probably run up the bill a little - But she’ll be good as new in no time! "You did more than that. You saved our lives." I didn't know how best to take his gratitude, and so stood at attention, as if he was about to pin a medal to my chest. For acts of singular daring and devotion... "I don't know if it's anything more than luck and a gun that makes a hero: but you've definitely got it." "Thank you, sir." I came out of my soldier's stance, for wanting to look him the eye. I felt very comfortable in the folds of the family's attention, as if it was velvet, though I wasn't used to much more than the sandpaper of suspicious and leering eyes. I couldn't measure the difference, but for how good it felt. "We should head back to the highway. My partner - Caliber - will be waiting." The colt let out a little cry as Okavango wove around me. "Daddy!" I wove the spritebot down, as if guiding a deflating airship down to earth, and was relieved to the see the colt make it back to his father's side unbroken. "They're taking us back to the monsters!" "No, baby: they’re gone now. The Guardians killed them -" I coughed, as if to cover up his choice of verb. “- for what they did to Uncle." He held his children close and, as the mare let out a bloated sob from beside them, I knew which side of the family the dead buck had belonged to. Okavango, the Father and I lead the way, as his children fell behind, to spin around their mother's tired hooves, as if dancing through the pillars of the Canterlot gardens. "If you don't mind me asking - " I began, after deciding that they might be able to put another marker on my map, and scribble some more color inside the lines of Equestria's border. "Where were you all taken from?" "They picked us up while we were crossing the highway further East, before the mouth of the valley." As if stepping onto the road was no different to treading across the tongue of some enormous beast. "We were heading for Calvary, following a path that would steer us clear of all the Locust camps and Buffalo trails, but you can't chart a course around the Raiders: They cross the wasteland like meteor fields." “What’s a Calvary?” “Biggest damn city in the country.” He chuckled, and I even caught the mare smiling a little, though their children looked no more dialed in. “They say it’s towers cut right into the clouds, and its sprawl covers every bit of land from the Plains to the ocean. What have you been living under a rock your whole life?” “A mountain,” I said, not realizing that it had been a rhetorical question, and missing the words behind the look that passed between them then: this girl’s just shy of the other side of sanity. "We heard it was safe there," the mare, whose voice matched the dirtied cream of her coat, began. "Safer, at least. And, after the rumors about Free Rein… we had to get away." I was glad to see her getting comfortable, even if it was for looking at me as some dusty amnesiac, climbing out of the rubble, as if into an alien world. "The Railway doesn't run through Calvary, and that... that makes it paradise." "We'll get you back on your way." I said, making promises of paradise like some street corner preacher. "If nothing else, we can at least get you armed." I couldn't escort them to Calvary, and I wouldn't take them to Hell. But the thrill of rescue had yet to leave me, as if some glory could still be wrung out of them. "Excuse me, Ma'am." The filly whispered, climbing over her words like hurdles built too high. Still, her manners went straight to my heart, and started cuddling. "Are you a shepard?" "Shepard?" I asked, hanging back a little to keep in step. “Doesn’t that make you a sheep?” This got a little giggle out of her, but she quickly looked to her parents as if in need of help to explain something. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.” The Father recited a passage of that homespun scripture, which I remembered through the voice of my mother, as others might bedtime stories and lullabies. “I always thought a Shepard was somepony who watched over a flock of animals.” The russet-colored colt argued. Neither foal was any larger than a saddlebag, and I knew, as ash came into the wind around us, that the Raiders deserved to get their justice in the court of only the oldest and most hotheaded Gods. “But Uncle said it meant more than that.” “Sure, but he got that from his book about the Princesses.” The colt stormed on, explaining for everyone. “Uncle was funny; he called 'em by these fancy names, and thought for sure they were always watching him.” Maybe their Faith wasn't so different after all. “But I think that the Princesses have better things to do than watch Uncle, or at least somepony a little more interesting to spy on.” I smiled, almost forgetting the smell of ash, even as I tried to stand between the children and the mare beheaded by fire. “Like you!” “Now why would the Princesses want to watch somepony like me?” “Like you don’t know!” The colt's voice broke into pieces, as he lifted it over us all. “You save ponies! Weren’t you paying attention?” His sister seemed to remember something then, and started tugging at his side. “Wh-?” He began, but was struck silent as she whispered to him. Their faces dropped, and their eyes went dim, as we walked by the one pony that I hadn't saved. *** *** *** “I need to see him…” The mare said, holding a hoof to my chest as we came marching up to the ridge, though she was careful not to touch me, as if my heartbeat might bruise her. "Honey-" "Him." She forced the word out, as if it was a name to be whispered only under the breath of the brave. "I want to see that son of a bitch dead." I had given up on censoring the new world for the sake of the children, as their parents seemed all too ready to see them wading through graveyards spilt over the highway, or watching as blurry curse words flew over their heads. "I need to see him dead." "Who, Mommy?" The colt was quick to ask, though, from the way his sister was bunched up behind dusty hooves, I could tell that she already knew. Their mother would have me lead her to the grave of that chieftain Raider: that barbarian king, who had ruled under the tattered banner of rape and pillage. “Show me.” She pleaded, turning to me, with a face of glass for the sheen of her tears. “Please.” It didn't take us long to find the chieftain, as the other bodies looked like molehills around his amber clad mountain of a corpse, from which a dozen red rivers had burst as if coming through broken dams. His face was almost intact, caught in a roar that bared teeth as large and crude as limestone. And, as I threw off the helmet that was his crown, we stared into eyes that were filled with sickness and the color red. He had bitten off his own tongue in some final throe of agony, and half of it lay, long and dark and limp, beside his open mouth. It looked like he had suffered. The mare just stared: as the weight of her mane covered eyes that might have been mistaken for two enormous tears, too stubborn to fall. When she finally started weeping, I knew that my shoulder wasn't the one that she needed to dampen, that I should have watched the children, as the father came to hold her as she shook. So, after taking on some of her weight, I walked the mare back to her medicine. They lay down together, and the family let their colors blend, as they crowded around their enfeebled mother. "I'm going to go find Caliber." I said, needing an excuse to leave them alone. Okavango followed as I made my way back to the toll, still buoyant despite how little attention I'd given him. Life was so clean for Cerberus' watchdog, so black and white. If he was playing guardian, it didn't matter that he couldn't protect anypony from the monsters stowed away in the corners of their own mind, the shadows that milked them for tears, leaving them empty, and raw at the edges. If he was following me, it didn't matter that I trotted on ahead, skipping over bodies and patterns of gore as if crossing a hopscotch course, without throwing back so much as a thank you for making the children smile again. It didn't matter that Equestria could have its highways littered with hollowed out demons, all lined up at the toll, as if taking the place of so many tourists and travelers. But, as his speakers fought though that overgrown tangle of static to play me another song: I knew that things weren't so simple, that Okavango Delta saw the world in at least one more color: Little Girl Blue. We stood, with death spread across the asphalt, and listened to that dusty piano, and the tired voice of a singer in an empty theater. I turned to the light of his galactic heart, and as so much flesh gave the last of its warmth to the winter, I started crying. For the girl, and for all that had been wasted around me, I opened up to the faceless, as his song had brought the new world beating against me with all its wrong. I didn't weep, as the mother had, but tears came to leave a silver scar down each of my cheeks. Lights of green and red and starry blue had come to a blur around me, coloring the mist in splotches, like watercolor paint on an immense and irresolute canvas. But they soon became sharp, as my eyes dried, and the melody trickled to a close. Tears could not fall from the spritebot's single electric eye, but he had managed to tear my heart from my chest, and put it back in its cradle even as the music ran dry. "Where're the Slaves?" Even after hearing the crunch of gravel under four hooves, and seeing the plumes of smoke for the heat of her breath, my entire body jolted as a steely voice tapped me on the shoulder. "Caliber!" I sang, and was more than a little surprised for how happy I sounded. The mercenary’s back might have started creaking for the armory that she had slung across it, as even her saddlebags had swollen to the size of prize swine. I looked over to the gateway before the East, and saw a body hanging from its farthest toll bar: limp and distended. The stage was set, and the Coltilde was not likely to pick up our scent through the fetid air, as only a Raider could have left somepony to die like that. "Yeah." The word came out flat, as Caliber was already walking by me. I hurried to catch up, as she drove each step after the last with something not unlike violence. "I don't like this, Grace." I had to wonder what the Slaver might have said to her. I’d seen ponies who thought themselves on the brink of death, though it was most often for hypochondria or the breathing in of ethanol fumes, and I knew how catching sight of the end could retune our voices. "Anything I should know?" "Nah. It's just that... you and I aren't seeing this the same way." And, though she didn't say it out loud, I knew that both of us thought we were in the right, while the other had to be wearing tinted glasses, whether of rose or of ash. "If the Slavers find out what we did-" "They won't!" I was almost laughing, as if the idea was nothing short of ludicrous. "They probably won't: probably! I don't like leaving loose ends, Lamplight, and this operation doesn't end any other way." She sighed, and her breath passed me by like a pale and lumbering animal. "The fact is: a lot of ponies have their heads on the rails because of us, just for the sake of saving four." "That isn't how it works." I couldn't keep up, as the mare never fell anything less than a nose ahead of me. "You can't think of it that way!" She looked back at me, but didn't turn her head. "It doesn't matter how many we saved: This isn't a market. We did what was right, not what worked out to the best bargain!" "Grace -" She began, about to explain some illusory truth me, though the sight of the family, and their picture of something timeless… something tribal, was enough to cut her short. The children met us with welcoming cheers, and I knew that they could not have been abandoned: Not for the price of the world. I'd gathered that Caliber dealt in absolutes, seeing every card for its number and color and suit, following her contract as if it had been signed in blood, and charting her winnings right up against her losses. To her, we had saved four, and risked an entire deck. But seeing them together, even looking at them as a gambler might a lucky hand, blindsided the mercenary, and softened her barren eyes, making her a mare. She looked back at me, and turned her head, smiling just enough. “Hello Shepard," the little blue filly cooed, from between the hooves of her parents. It really wasn't fair to what was left of Caliber's argument, but it was good to see the last scraps of it picked up on the wind, like a crumpled house of cards. "Who're you!?" The colt demanded, in the brash and inoffensive voice that belonged only to children. Caliber stayed quiet, as if she'd never met somepony so harmless, somepony that couldn't be killed. "This is my partner: Caliber!" I stepped in to introduce her, pitching a new comic book superhero to a test audience. "Remember that big explosion?" They nodded. "Well then: if I'm the Shepard, then she must be..." My face fell: I hadn't thought that one out. "She made the explosion!" "Whoa." They drew the word out together, as if it were an ice cream cone, and they had to see who could make theirs last the longest. "Did you do that with your earth pony magic?" "What? Earth ponies can't just make explosions with their minds! If they could then I would've done one!" The Colt shot back, tapping his forehead. "I would've done a whole lot of them!" His sister scratched her head, pushing a hoof through the folds of her dusty mane. "Oh. Well I heard that some earth ponies have magic of their own: and they don't even need a horn or anything." “That’s the magic of being in-dus-trious and hardworking!” The colt sounded out the longer words exactly as Caliber did, and I smiled at her, though she was too stunned to notice. “Not the magic of explosions!” “Alright kids, knock it out. I’m sure that Ms. Caliber wants to keep her magic a secret,” the children’s father excused, but Caliber only drew circles in the dirt, looking more ashamed than awkward, and gave the buck a thankful look. "Right. Well, me and the - Sheep herder? - over here need to figure out which of these guns will get you where you're going." Caliber had clearly made her decision on how we would be helping the family from here on out, and leading them along until we were free to play escort had likely never crossed her mind. "Just tell me where that is, and I can get some kind of loadout ready for ya." "Forgive the children: we're all just a little overwhelmed." The mare gave us both a ghostlike embrace, and then faded back to her husband's side. "Thank you both so much for what you've done." Caliber just stared, waiting for her to pick something out of our menu of high quality problem solvers. "We're going to New Calvary. There's something changing in the North. The Coltilde was gone for such a long time... And I can't live with it hanging over my shoulder." "To Calvary, then." Caliber nodded, and looked over at the rifles on her back. "Were you planning to find a tunnel onto the Starline or follow the road east?" The mercenary seemed all too comfortable with interrogations, and might have pulled out a pad and a quill, to stare out from under a smoky fedora like one of the detectives from True Police Stories. The buck nodded towards the valley's mouth, and Caliber began untangling the bundle of rifles. "Fine. Now, The Slavers will be digging their hooves in over Hellside, so I figure that train's not gonna be pulling its weight along for a while yet. My advice: get out of the valley, and don't look back: Hell's making a fist." “Hell?” The colt repeated. “That’s a weird name.” “Yeah, well there’s this sign - probably used to say Hello and welcome to Cerberus’ House of Cults and Conspiracies - but it’s so torn up now that the only thing left is the word Hello with its head bit off. Damascus’ been around forever: he probably knows what it was actually called.” She shrugged. “Hey!" I yelped, getting an idea, though it might have nipped me in the flank for the sound I'd just made. "Why don’t we hire out one of the mercenaries? I mean, Charon could escort them to Calvary easy." Caliber lifted a hoof, as if to say that I was getting ahead of myself. "No offense folks: But I think we've done enough for ya." Hearing her say that was like a slap across the cheek, as I'd been waiting for those words to come from the Father, or even his sheepish wife. And, though it made me out to be a glutton for gratitude - like a foal holding up an empty cone, asking for more even as she licked the ice cream from her lips - I had to admit: I felt cheated not to have heard it from them. "There's trouble on the homefront, and we got a boss who could end up being anything from a little stirred up, to bent under a guillotine because of what we did here. So no, Hell can't spare one of her hounds just to go on a walk with you." "Besides, I wouldn’t trust a mercenary as far as I could throw one.” She went on, before I could point out the hypocrisy. "Now, just pretend that somepony slapped a sign across my face that says: Quick, take these guns before this idiot realizes how much they're worth!" She brandished her crowded sides to the family, and did a pretty good impression of somepony with a sign posted over their face. Of all things, I was worried about what Caliber's tirade might have done to our reputation with the children, but they only stared up at her with awe and admiration brimming out of their bright little eyes. Then, as the stunned couple hurried to find something that might go on as their new guardian into Calvary, and the foals whispered to each other, I realized that my hero pitch might have gone a little too well. While they had lifted me from scripture, as a namesake to some humble and pastoral caretaker, when it came to a popularity contest amongst children, it was hard to beat someone who had just been rude to their parents. A rebel was a tough act to follow. *** *** *** “Bye Shepard! Bye Cali-Belle!” The children yelled, both perched neatly on their mother’s back, like birds on a wire. Okavango bounced around them, glinting under the sheets of bleached light that were pinned over the mountains, over the very stone that Calvary held up as its shield against Hell and its winter. “Thank you again, Shepard. I hope something out there rewards you for what we can’t.” The Father followed close behind them, passing through the filth of the Raider's den, and beginning along the long, empty road that fell out into the whitewashed East. “When you come into New Calvary: look for us. If we’ve managed to make something for ourselves, then you’ll be welcome to take your fill of it." “Just get there safely, and it’s a promise.” I shook his hoof, as if salutes were too formal now. “Give that filly a better life,” Caliber added, if a little sternly. There hadn’t been any hoofshakes for the mare, and I wondered if she might have left the couple a little afraid of her. After all, mercenaries didn’t seem to have the best reputation, and her contract might as well have been carved into her bones. “I’d die for my children, but to know that you would have done the same… that’s something I won’t forget,” he said, speaking to both of us as Okavango left his foals with one last melody. Then, the buck turned to lead his family out east, with guns and supplies strapped to his body on holsters and saddlebags. They left us with shouts of farewell and thanks, before they were scrubbed up into the white lather that was the East, to begin on their way to New Calvary. “Feeling better?” I asked, as we watched them become little more than smudges on the skirts of the morning. “Feeling damn good.” Caliber let herself smile then, though I had already heard the laughter: woven into her voice like sunlight through the mist. Footnote: Level Up! Perk Added: Child at Heart: Who says growing up is a good thing? You call yourself charismatic but the fact that you get along best with children makes it seem like you’re just immature. This perk greatly improves your interactions with children, no matter how old, usually in the form of unique dialogue options. Here's something you should see.