Fallout: Equestria - Common Ground

by FireOfTheNorth

Chapter 5: Life After the End of the World

Chapter Five: Life After the End of the World

My shears snapped together as I picked a squash, catching the bumpy vegetable in my magical grasp. Another snip removed the remainder of the stem, and I walked away from the cluster of vegetable plants before checking my selection’s radiation levels with my PipBeak. I registered hardly any radiation at all—good news, especially since I was still recovering from the massive dose I’d absorbed on the Red Harvest. I was reminded again that even the best of old-world medicine and magic couldn’t fix everything; I was still feeling exhausted even after taking copious amounts of RadAway. I’d taken a sample of the squash before picking it to confirm its edibility once it was cooked, so I tucked it into my saddlebags to chow down on later.

As I finished fastening up my saddlebags, I noticed a small rustle in the tall grass nearby. FITS revealed that there was something alive among the stalks. However, it couldn’t yet identify whether it was friend or foe, and I cautiously drew my shotgun. A low grunting rumbled from the grass, right before an aggravated boar came charging out toward me and FITS switched the pip representing the hog to red. I fired my shotgun at the beast, but it merely shrugged the hit off of its thick hide and lunged at me with its tusks. Using ERSaTS, I jumped out of the way and fired again, the pellets managing to tear off one of its ears. The boar swung around with surprising speed and then started pawing the ground, preparing to charge at me again.

A brilliant beam of red light suddenly shot through the side of the boar’s head before it could charge. It fell over, the new hole in its head smoking. I looked around for the source of the shot and spotted a town in the distance. I managed to fuzzily make out a figure atop a tower, only visible because they were gesticulating wildly. My PipBeak chimed to notify me that a new radio station was available; checking it, I found a low-power short-range signal with no name.

“—lllooooo! Heeelllloooo! Give me a wave if ya hear me!” a voice emnated from the PipBeak as I dialed into the station and I waved lamely. “Hellllooo! Helll—oh! Good, ya can hear me! Bring that boar on over here, will ya?”

The figure atop the distant tower was no longer waving, so I assumed they had been the one to contact me and were keeping an eye on me. I trotted over to the boar’s carcass and hefted it over my back before setting off in the direction of the town. I’d traveled a little over two days from the Pleasure Coast at this point, and I was amazed by the transformation of the landscape as I moved farther into the Commonwealth. Life began returning to nature as I neared the distribution station, and the restoration continued as I moved past the cluster of buildings. Now, a traveler was more likely to see punctuations of burgeoning flora instead of a barren waste. Trees, bushes, flowers, and vegetables were a common sight, sprinkled throughout the spindly grasses that had overtaken the valley wherever they hadn’t been flattened or eaten by wildlife. This was not the first boar I’d seen on my journey, though it was the first that had decided to pick a fight with me. At the start of my trip, I’d kept to the highway that followed a mostly non-irradiated river emptying out into the ocean south of the Pleasure Coast. That route worked well, until I’d realized that raiders liked to placing land mines along the road. Keeping this in mind, I decided to move into the brush alongside the highway. Not only did my terrain change promise more safety, it also provided opportunities to encounter strange plants and foods, like the squash I’d just picked.

The town where the mysterious sniper resided was starting to become more defined. It was a fairly small town that had obstensably become even smaller in the years since the war. Many of the buildings on the outskirts were overgrown or had been demolished, leaving a core around which a moderate barricade had been erected. It didn’t look like it would keep out much more than the local wildlife, but I suppose that was to be expected when the local raiders could simply fly over any wall the townsfolk built. The tower upon which I’d spotted the sniper turned out to be a movie theater’s sign, the words GRAND IMPERIAL displayed vertically upon two sides of the triangular prism. A griffin with a gray coat and black feathers unlatched the town’s gate, which was no higher than a fence, and swung it open as I approached.

“I thought my eyes must’ve deceived me, but no, I was right. You are Doc Silverarm, aren’t ya?” the griffin asked.

“Well, yes, but I prefer just Doc,” I replied as I trotted into the settlement, and the griffin shut the gate behind me.

I didn’t know why the Commonwealth Crooner had chosen to use this stage name the late Mayor Delgado had decided to bestow upon me instead of the one I’d gone by for years, but I was going to have to get used to it the same way I’d gotten used to DJ Pon3 calling me the Wasteland Doctor. Why did radio personalities always seem to have a penchant for bestowing titles upon ponies without asking? I dropped the boar in front of the griffin, who I noticed had a magical energy sniper rifle on her back like nothing I’d ever seen. The scope attached to the weapon was practically a telescope; no wonder she’d been able to kill the boar from so far away.

“Alright then, ‘Just Doc’,” the griffin said, and she laughed at her own joke. “I’m Gina. Welcome to Grand Imperial. When the Commonwealth Crooner said we might see ya out here, I never expected it to be so soon. I also didn’t understand before why he called ya Doc Silverarm.”

“So, I take it you found Radio PC, then,” I said as Gina hefted the boar carcass onto her back.

“Oh yeah, it’s way better than the raider stations or anything ‘Grand Marshal’ Gideon has to say,” Gina said with a snort. “And we can finally listen to more songs than just Roscoe’s collection.”

I walked beside Gina as she led me into town, and I caught the eyes of other griffins. I was bound to stand out, not only because of my prosthetic arm that identified me as “Doc Silverarm,” but simply because I was a pony in a griffin world. A couple of the residents came up to thank me while I followed Gina to a butcher’s counter, where a burly griffin was chopping and packaging meat.

“The usual, Gaspard,” she said as she triumphantly threw her boar onto the counter.

“It looks like you’ve more than just a boar this time,” Gaspard commented as he peered over Gina’s shoulder to get a better look at me. “Is that who I think it is?”

“Yeah, this is Doc,” Gina said excitedly as she pulled me forward, closer to the piles of raw meat.

“Well, we owe you a debt of gratitude, it seems,” Gaspard said. “Those raiders out of DS-7 have been relentless in attacking us.”

“It certainly makes my job easier,” Gina said happily.

“I wouldn’t let your guard down too much, Gina,” another griffin said as he pushed his way through the small crowd that had formed around me. “It’s only a matter of time before another raider gang moves into it. It is a prime position for a sky keep, after all.”

“Way to bring things down, Grant, ya stick-in-the-mud,” Gina complained with a scowl, but I was more interested in what he had said than Gina’s reaction to his pessimism.

“‘Sky keep’? The raiders kept yelling something about that. Do you know what they were talking about?” I asked Grant.

“Of course,” Grant said, perking up. “The raiders who inhabited Distribution Station Seven were, like most raiders, mythologists.”

“Grant’s half a mythologist himself,” Gina cut Grant off, and some of the nearby griffins laughed at his expense.

“Not in the same sense of the word. I simply find them fascinating,” Grant objected with a frown. “Mythologism is a religion that grew out of hyper-capitalism and a mythology manufactured by the advertising and entertainment industry. Somehow, they’ve managed to take old-world media and turn it into a belief system—one that revolves around survival of the fittest and destruction of the unfit. It also speaks of a coming flood that will wipe out the unworthy below, allowing those who inhabit sky keeps to inherit the world in the aftermath.”

“Sounds grim,” I said. It wasn’t surprising that raiders would be drawn to a religion that emphasized might making right, and Grant’s exposition helped explain the taunts and graffiti I’d encountered.

“Oh, without a doubt,” Grant said enthusiastically as some of the other griffins began to back away. “But it’s fascinating, that a remarkably coherent religion could arise from billboards, newspaper advertisements, comics, and movies! I have quite a collection in the theater if you would like to take a look.”

I couldn’t deny having a decent interest in seeing relics from a world before the megaspells, but Gina was silently shaking her head and mouthing ‘no’, and I decided to take her advice. Grant seemed to be a bit of a black sheep in Grand Imperial (a bit ironic, since his feathers and fur were both white). Although I’d like to talk to him at some point about the old world and this new religion, it would be prudent to establish a relationship with the core of the town first.

“Thanks, but maybe another time,” I told him. “I really should get back on the road before too long.”

“Oh, I see,” Grant said, a little bit dejected, but he quickly perked up. “If you ever encounter any old-world media that looks intriguing, could you bring it to me? I’ll give you a good price on it.”

“I’ll keep an eye out,” I promised, which seemed to pacify him.

“Gina, could you give me a short tour of the town?” I asked as Grant left. “It’ll be nice to at least know where I can lay down my head if I ever come through again closer to sundown.”

“Why, of course,” the sniper said sweetly. “Let me show ya all that Grand Imperial has to offer.”

***

Despite Grand Imperial appearing to be a fine settlement, I didn’t stop there very long. I wanted to stay on the road and bring Radio Free Wasteland to the Commonwealth as quickly as possible. After Gina showed off the typical amenities every lasting settlement had, I was back traveling up the valley again. I had places to be, but that didn’t keep me from resting every so often to take in my surroundings, as I was doing now, about a day’s travel from Grand Imperial. Crouched among some spindly bushes, I watched a grazing herd of deer, ones with vines and flowers growing on their backs and intertwined around the stag’s horns. Someday, perhaps, the wildlife of the Commonwealth would cease to fascinate me, but I doubted that day would come anytime soon.

The deer startled as I forced myself up to move on, and they galloped away, darting around an old roadside convenience store. I approached the abandoned building, scanning around for loot if the place hadn’t already been stripped. It didn’t look promising; the store’s windows were completely devoid of glass and it was entirely overgrown on one side. Sometime after the Last Day, someone had affixed a sign over the door bearing a diamond with a downturned wing attached to either side. The store’s interior looked like a cyclone had torn through it, flinging everything every which way. Unsurprisingly, all the shop’s goods for travelers on the nearby highway had been looted already, and I almost left without searching any farther.

A book crumpled in the corner caught my eye at the last second, and I trotted over to pick it up. It was in terrible condition and clearly missing many pages, and the spine twisted as I levitated the dilapidated object. Inspecting the cover, I discovered that it was crudely embossed with the same symbol I’d seen over the door outside. I carefully flipped the book open and paged through the text. The pages were yellowed and were often water-damaged beyond legibility, but I managed to read a few of the pages that hadn’t fallen out. The book appeared to be part journal and part advice on life in the Wasteland. There were some useful tips about survival and trade, and I was always interested in reading about someone else’s life, so I carefully tucked the book into my saddlebags for later perusal and didn’t give it another thought.

***

Another day of travel along the riverside highway brought me to a second settlement, this one built around an old roadside motel; the old “Rest ‘n’ Go” sign was still lit up above the settlement’s gate. The mood here was quite different from the carefree attitude I’d encountered in Grand Imperial. The griffins here looked worried, and their gazes often went to the sky.

“What are you doing here?” an elderly griffin demanded as I trotted past where he was seated under a blanket.

“Just passing through,” I told him. “Do you listen to Radio PC?”

“Nothin’ good on the radio these days,” he complained in reply and shook his fist at an unremarkable point in the sky.

The younger griffin lounging next to him didn’t contradict him or add anything to her elder’s opinion, though her attention was on me. I took this to mean that this settlement hadn’t learned about Radio PC or the distribution station yet.

“Well, I bring some good news. The Commonwealth Crooner out of the Pleasure Coast is broadcasting out to this area now through Distribution Station 7. I cleared out the raiders who were living there, so you shouldn’t have problems with them anymore,” I said.

“Well, good for you,” the elderly griffin said mockingly. “Now at least we can starve in peace!”

“Oh, grampa, don’t be so melodramatic,” the younger griffin said. “It’s not as bad as that … not yet, anyway.”

She uncoiled herself and rose to shake my hoof with her claw. Her fur and feathers were both a dark navy blue, except for patches of white feathers around her eyes and beak.

“I’m Gladys. And this is my grandfather, Hans,” she said, and Hans grunted as she shared his name. “We are appreciative of you taking care of those raiders, but as you might imagine, that’s not the only problem a settlement can face.”

“I’m Doc,” I said as I shook her claw. “What’s this about starving?”

“Oh, we’re still weeks away from being in danger of that,” Gladys said. “Though we need to figure out what we’re going to do. Usually, we get our food from the greenhouse complex up the mountain, but a Dog of War has moved in. Last time this happened, we hired Greta’s Grenadiers to take care of it, but we’re still paying them for that job. The town council’s arguing whether we should hire them again and go deeper in debt, or give up on the greenhouses and look for food elsewhere.”

“What’s a Dog of War?” I asked. “I’m kind of new to the Commonwealth.”

“A mecha-hound,” Gladys suggested, and I shook my head in nonrecognition. “Hmm, a cyberwolf? Basically, it’s a big, nasty robot that’s keeping us away.”

“I seen it in the night, prowling around outside the settlement!” Hans swore as he shook a fist in the air.

“Dogs of War don’t attack settlements unless they’re provoked, and we’ve left it alone since Shaffer saw it prowling around up there,” Gladys told her grandfather.

“I could try to take care of it for you,” I suggested.

“Well, you did take out a whole raider gang on your own. But Dogs of War are a real threat,” Gladys said with concern.

“It can’t hurt to try, can it?” I asked. “Even if I can’t take it out, I won’t lead it back here.”

“Well, okay,” Gladys said, “Just … be careful.”

***

Why was I doing this? Was I compelled by some suicidal force that made risk my life, or did I get some thrill from it? I wasn’t a psychologist (or any kind of doctor, really), so I couldn’t say, but I did know that I had missed this. Maybe I was just driven to help others, heedless of the threat to myself; at least, that was the answer I liked best.

The “greenhouse complex up the mountain” turned out to be a massive facility. It had a tall, blocky central building with “Greenbush Agriculturium” stenciled on the side, surrounded by rows of greenhouses. At least it was accessible by mountain roads and didn’t require me to ride a long elevator or climb rickety emergency stairs to reach it. I had no idea what to look for to find the Dog of War, so I started by picking my way around the facility’s perimeter, keeping an eye on FITS.

The spell detected plenty of contacts, but none of them popped up as hostile. The greenhouses were stuffed with rows upon rows of planters filled with fruit, vegetable, and grain plants, which were tended by hovering robots. I almost shot the first one I’d seen, certain it would attack me, but it didn’t seem concerned with anything other than watering and pruning. The robots went about their tasks unbothered, even altering their courses to hover around me in order to get to their tasks as I moved through the greenhouses.

I was beginning to think that the Dog of War might have left and it was safe for the settlers to come here for food again; that was when I spotted it. It hadn’t seen me yet, but it soon would as it stalked through the rows of planters. It was larger than either a pony or a griffin, but roughly the size of them combined. A faint clanking came from it as it padded along, swinging its head left and right to scan its surroundings. The eyes in its head glowed brightly, shifting between blue and green rings around the cameras, and its ears swiveled independently of each other to take in sounds all around it. Its exterior looked to be composed almost entirely of interlocking metal and ceramic plates, their sharp edges sticking out in places where they overlapped, giving the appearance of a wolf’s spiky fur.

“Warning! Unauthorized access detected!” speakers in the Dog of War’s mouth blared in an electronic voice as it turned its head toward me and revealed long metal teeth lining its mouth. “Reveal yourself and present – Greenbush Agritech – identification in 30 seconds.”

Cautiously, I stepped out from behind the planters where I’d been unsuccessfully hiding. The Dog of War was staring me down, eyes flashing rapidly between blue and red. The other robots, I noticed, were hovering out of the greenhouse. Had they finished their tasks, or had the Dog of War somehow given them orders? If Gladys was to be believed, this Dog of War was new, so it shouldn’t have been able to communicate with the local robots, nor should it know anything about the company who’d built the agriculturium.

“15 seconds!” the Dog of War blared.

I pulled a grenade from my saddlebags; yanking out the pin, I tossed it at the Dog of War and dove behind a row of planters. The grenade went off and I peeked over my cover, already knowing from the red mark on FITS that I hadn’t succeeded in destroying it. In fact, it didn’t seem damaged much at all. There were some plates missing from one of its forelegs, but others were already shifting to take their place and protect the metal skeleton beneath.

“Attack on facility registered! Requesting authorization of deadly force!” the Dog of War said. For few seconds, I thought it might be stuck just like that, until the voice resumed, “Deadly force authorized!”

The Dog of War began to transform before my eyes. Plates and structure shifted to redistribute weight as the automaton shifted from a quadrupedal to a bipedal stance. Through faded and chipped paint, I could make out “Prj.DOW/19” stenciled in bold lettering across a large plate on its chest. The Dog of War’s forepaws shifted into claws capable of grasping, and gun barrels appeared in the wrists. Its snout split open, revealing four magical energy weapon barrels mounted tightly together on a rotating drum to act as an automatic weapon. The robot’s eyes were now glowing a steady red.

I fired my battle rifle at the Dog’s head, but the bullets pinged off the sloped armor and the robot seemed entirely unfazed. I threw another grenade at it, which it kicked back toward me with a swipe of a hind paw. Entering ERSaTS to gain some time and precision, I grabbed the grenade in my magic and threw it back before jumping over a row of planters. The grenade landed at the Dog’s hind paws, but it had already launched itself into the air by the time the explosion went off, landing where I’d been a moment before with a heavy clang.

I was ridiculously outmatched, and all I could do was run and hope for two things: that I could lose the mecha-hound, or that it would lose interest in me. Magical energy beams and bullets struck my doctor’s coat as I retreated, and I altered my course to stay out of the line of fire and put some obstacles between the Dog of War and myself. I crashed through the glass wall of the greenhouse and galloped between the rows, glancing over my shoulder to spy the Dog of War still chasing after me, the red lights of its eyes burning into my brain. Its firing ceased as it jumped into the air and ran along the roofs of the greenhouses on all fours, quickly overtaking me. It leapt over me and landed ahead, shifting quickly back into its bipedal form for combat. It had cut off my escape to the road down the mountain, so I fired my shotgun into the greenhouse next to me and jumped through the falling shards of glass.

Trying to directly reach to the road seemed out of the question while the Dog of War was still in pursuit, so I had to take it somewhere I might be able to lose it. The cyberwolf followed me into the greenhouse, weapons ablaze, some shots catching me but none doing serious enough damage to slow me down. I was all adrenaline, and an intense drive to survive kept pushing me on.

I was relying on the map of the facility in my head, and I zigzagged my way through the greenhouses as best I could until I reached the central building of the Greenbush Agriculturium. With no time to pick locks or hack security, I shot off the door’s lock with my shotgun and shoved my way into the building. Hallways and cubicles blurred past as I ran for my life and came upon a staircase. The Dog of War was still pursuing me through the hallways, having reconfigured its body to better fit the new environment. I ran into the stairwell and slammed the heavy fire door shut behind me before rushing to sabotage the lock. The Dog of War wouldn’t be able to open it without pounding the door down, which it promptly got to work on as I fled up the stairs.

I was four flights up by the time the door was battered down and the mecha-hound began its rapid ascension of the stairs after me. I chucked a grenade down before moving to the window on the landing and carefully prying it open. As the grenade went off, I jumped out of the window and cast ERSaTS so I could close the window with my magic. When the spell wore off, I was still in midair and falling fast. I cast a spell I’d learned in the Library of Arcana to slow my fall, which thankfully worked. I could see the Dog of War rushing up the stairs as I fell; fortunately, it didn’t seem to see me falling. I hit the ground much more lightly than I would have without the spell and ran for the road away from the agriculturium.

I dove into the brush as soon as I felt safely out of range and watched the Greenbrush Agriculturium for signs of the Dog of War. It emerged onto the roof shortly and darted back and forth in its search, but it didn’t seem to have spotted me. Eventually, it raised its head and gave a long howl before transforming back into its four-legged form and stalked out of sight.

***

The whole way down the mountain, I was a little worried that the Dog of War might still be hunting me. By the time I reached its base, though, I was convinced that I’d truly managed to lose it. That had been a terrifying altercation I should have taken Gladys’ advice on, and I didn’t intend to ever repeat it—at least not without a rocket launcher or power armor. Gladys was disappointed with my failure, but not surprised. Word of my attempt had apparently reached others in Rest ‘n’ Go in my absence, including the town council. My lack of success had convinced them to make a decision. They settled on hiring Greta’s Grenadiers to deal with the problem again, and they asked me to take the request to the mercenary company since I was already headed in that direction. It was the least I could do.

That was how, two days later, I found myself at the headquarters of Greta’s Grenadiers, an old mountain lodge only accessible to griffins or via a single cable “elevator.” It appeared that some of these griffins listened to Radio PC since a few of them recognized me, and I was allowed in to speak to their leader.

“I hear you’ve arrived with a job for us,” Gabby said as she gestured me to take a seat across from her as I entered her office.

She was already resting in a plush chair, and I took a seat in an identical chair on the opposite side of the fireplace. Gabby was not exactly what I’d expected from a mercenary company commander. The griffin did have a firearm at her side, but the rest of her attire was more high-class. She held a cup of tea in a claw and sipped from it as she waited for me to give her my proposal.

“The settlement of Rest ‘n’ Go needs help with a Dog of War,” I said.

“Another one?” Gabby asked. “They still owe us for the last job.”

“Yes, they told me to tell you they’re willing to put up collateral for another loan,” I said.

“Well, that’s that then,” Gabby said flippantly. “We’ll take the job.”

“Really? Just like that?” I asked, unfamiliar with things being so simple.

“Just like that,” Gabby said as she took another sip of tea.

“Well, okay then. I guess my job here is done,” I said. “Unless it wouldn’t be too bold to ask you some questions?”

“I hope you will, and that you can answer some of mine. You’re a remarkable pony,” Gabby said as she looked at my prosthetic leg. “I’ve heard of you from the Commonwealth Crooner, but I want to know more straight from the horse’s mouth, if you’ll pardon the expression. First, though, you had some questions for me.”

“I was a little surprised to find you still here,” I said. “Why didn’t you answer Grand Marshal Gideon’s call for mercenaries?”

“If the rumors are true, and it’s to fight against the Grand Pegasus Enclave, I have no desire to lead my mercenaries into battle against them,” Gabby replied.

“You like the Enclave?” I asked. She’d be the first individual I’d met who did.

“Far from it,” Gabby grunted. “But I don’t want to suffer the kind of casualties they inflict. My mother was just a fledgling during the Enclave Rebellion, but she always spoke with dread about the suffering they brought with their power armor and aerial tanks. If Commonwealth and Enclave could just leave each other be, that would be for the best. It’s not our fault their defectors decided to settle here. It’s probably not them that ‘Grand Marshal’ Gideon is looking to fight, anyway; the Enclave has mostly left us alone since the Battle of New Pegasus. Mostly, I’m following my mother’s rules from when she founded her Grenadiers, one of which was to remain an independent mercenary company. Getting too comfy with Gideon is an easy way to get absorbed into the Air or Land Corps.”

“No griffin I’ve met seems to like the Grand Marshal,” I noted.

“I doubt any griffin but Gideon likes Gideon,” Gabby said drily. “Though he’s managed to maintain and increase his power despite that fact, for what it’s worth.”

“Why do you dislike him so much?” I asked.

“All griffins dislike others interfering in their business, and government is the ultimate form of nosiness. While Gideon is the face of that reality, the greater reason he’s despised is that he actually embraces and loves it,” Gabby said. “All the grand marshals since the megaspells fell have been power hungry to a certain extent, but Gideon has been exceptionally good at expanding the Commonwealth’s—and by extension, his—powers. Not that it really matters to most griffins, since the only territory the Griffin Commonwealth’s government controls is the scattered roosts and their environs and a few settlements. The old Griffin Commonwealth united us all but interfered as little as possible. In contrast, Gideon’s government is trying to control everything without having anything to back up its actions. Maybe that’s why he’s so unpopular; he acts like he’s grand marshal of all of us when most of us don’t even care he exists. We might not hate him so much if he didn’t interrupt our lives with obnoxious radio broadcasts.”

“Well, soon the Commonwealth should have something else to listen to,” I said. “Did you hear on Radio PC about my plan to spread the station’s broadcast area?”

“Yes, I did. I suppose that means after you leave here, you’ll be continuing east,” Gabby said, and I nodded my confirmation. “That takes you through Brittle Pass. Be careful—the pass is patrolled by Dogs of War. I’d recommend flying, but that’s not an option for you, so stay hidden as much as you can. The Dogs are most active at night, so travel during the day as much as possible. You can stay the night here and head out again when it’s light.”

“Thanks for the warning, and the hospitality,” I told Gabby. “Are you sure there’s no other way through?”

“I’m afraid not,” Gabby said with a shake of her head.

That was unwelcome news, given how my last altercation with a Dog of War had gone. At least this time I knew to avoid rather than engage.

“Now, I have some questions for you,” Gabby said. “What is it like in Equestria, and what’s the market for mercenaries down there?”

Level Up
New Perk: Tactical Retreat – You’ve mastered the art of getting out of scraps safely and are less likely to be hit while fleeing from combat.
New Quest: Beware of Dog – Make it through Brittle Pass alive.
Athletics +3 (25)
Explosives +2 (104)
Manipulation Magic +2 (21)
Medicine +1 (115)
Sneak +2 (104)
Survival +10 (28)