The crater was every bit as daunting and unwelcome as I pictured it to be.

Even from a kilometer out I could sense the inexplicable wrongness of the barren patch of city ahead of me. Blackened and twisted buildings ringed the point of ground zero, starting with the titanic hole itself, moving on to a sea of rubble, to blasted and mummified stumps of skyscrapers out to the rest of the city. I'm not a superstitious griffon, but I'll admit fully that I felt like I was crossing over some haunted boundary that no living thing ever should. Yet, even from the air I saw that it was teeming with activity. Life. Trespassers in a forbidden land that stood as a testament to the folly of pony and zebra kind and would slowly strangle the life out of anyone who tread upon it.

Including me.

Serge and I crested an artificial hill, composed of debris so worthless that the slaves had pushed it aside rather than waste more time digging through it, and banked to continue around the perimeter rather than fly over the point of impact directly. Like every other high profile work camp in the city, the crater was surrounded by a curtain wall of decaying fencing two layers thick and topped by razor wire. Unlike most areas though, no guards were obvious. Perhaps it was too dangerous to assign anyone there for extended patrols. Perhaps the slaves were all too weak to try to escape. Either way, it clearly did its job.

Our target appeared to be a small guard shack at the sole entrance to the crater on foot: a musty white, wooden building with a metal roof overlooking the majority of the cavernous hole on its little hill. We touched down just inside the fencing, and the moment my claws touched the tainted soil my brain began conjuring phantom sensations of warmth and nausea. I knew I couldn't actually feel the radiation, but that did little to quell the sensations.

We just reached the shack when we were met by an aging white unicorn stallion shouldering the door open. He steadied the door on its creaky springs and adjusted his glasses before taking in a small, sharp breath. “Yes, sirs?”

Serge presented him with a slip of paper. “Are you in charge here?”

The stallion stopped reading and nodded. “I am. Shutter Flash. How... can I help you gentlemen?”

“That should explain everything,” Serge replied, indicating the paper. “In short, Kasimir Longtalons here has been assigned to you for the next three months for penal labor.”

Shutter's mouth did some interesting things as he straightened up. “Penal duty? You mean he's a Talon?”

“Yes, that's right. By orders from First Lieutenant Freija Ironclaw and Lieutenant Heidi Blackfeathers. Until then he is to serve hard labor at your discretion.”

The pony gave the slip of paper an incredulous look. “Yeah... yeah, um... okay. I'll get right on that.”

Serge nodded once. “See that you do. If you have any questions, please direct them to Lieutenant Blackfeathers.” He turned, locked eyes with me for a long, awkward second, beat his wings and lifted upward to leave me alone with Shutter.

He leaned heavily against the door frame he was still parked in, reading the page with undue focus. I had literally nothing to say to anyone at that point, so I sat silently, doing my best to not look out over the work area I was about to be picking through until my body failed. Shutter's eyes flicked from line to line, to me, back to the paper, to me, and again back to the paper. At long last he folded the paper up in his magic and mumbled, “Prancing princesses...”

This was already getting off to a fabulous start. I pictured that this part would be easy. 'Here, go dig in that hole until you die. Don't come out or we'll shoot you.' What was so hard about that?

Instead, Shutter gave a long snort. “Great. Just great.”

“I'm... sorry?”

He eyed me and snorted again. “Yeah, I bet. What'd you do anyway? I've never heard of this happening before. Oh sure, we get lots of slaves with grabby hooves that get caught, or ones who think they've got the guts to live through this but not the Pit. But this... this is new.”

Again, I just wanted to be left alone. Why did any of this have to get dragged out? ...whatever. He was my new boss, right? “There... was an accident. My fault. Some people died.”

Still propped against the frame, he nodded sagely. “Uh huh. And the Talons think there's going to be another fatality here, but I'm not that dumb.”

“...huh?”

He tapped a hoof to the side of his head. “Oh sure, I might have screwed up and got assigned this little stink heap to watch, but I'm not this stupid. No sir.” His hoof turned my way. “See, they send a Talon out here for punishment. Here. Next thing you know, you end up dead from radiation poisoning and who gets the blame? Hmm?”

“...I...I don't know? Liu-”

“Me!” He beat his hoof against his chest. “Yep. I can see it now. 'Old Shutter Flash put him out there digging with the ponies and he died.' You know what would happen to me if I got a Talon killed? They'd probably dip me in the moat and mount my bones on the gatehouse! Yeah, well, they've got another thought coming if they think they're going to fool me into doing that.”

“I don't understand...” What, was he going to just let me walk out? He'd get himself shot along with me.

“It's real simple. You're a Talon. You're trained to guard things right?” He waved a hoof over the crater. “Welcome to your new post, cadet.”

I grimaced and pointed to my naked self. “I don't have any equipment...”

He chuckled. “Oh, heh, no and there's no way I'm giving you a gun either. Yep, after wind gets out about me handing guns to the convicts I'll get flogged for sure. Hold it right here.” He disappeared inside the shack, letting the door slam shut with a loud, hollow clatter, and returned with something I'd only seen once before in my life but still filled my stomach with almost instinctive revulsion. A slaver's explosive collar. “Put this on. I don't want you flying the coop on me either.”

As much as every fiber of my being resented the idea, I had no choice. It hung loosely around my neck and the latches were so rusted I was more worried about getting tetanus from it than anything else, but a slaver's collar it was all the same. Funny though, it looked like all of the plastic explosives had been removed. Along with all of the fusing system.

“Good. You and I will get along just fine. Now, listen. This thing is rigged to explode if it's taken outside the fence, okay? If you try to run out through that gate, or fly over the fence... boom. Got it?”

I must admit that there was a little grim desire to test that little theory. Either I'd be out of my misery in one instant or I'd show him he was an idiot for putting an empty collar on me. Win-win. Of course, in reality I was so apathetic I just nodded.

“Yep, we'll get along just fine. Now, I'm not giving you a gun, a knife or a sharp stick. You've got eight perfectly good knives at the ends of those toes of yours, so that's what you're going to use if you have to. Most of the slaves here are pretty worn out, so they don't get into fights very often and when they do they're usually pretty tame. Still, it wastes time, you understand me? I've got quotas just like everyone else. If they waste time slapping each other then we all get behind and nobody is happy. Understand?”

The pause told me I was supposed to actually respond this time. “I understand.”

“Great. In that case, here's what you're going to do for the next three months. I want you to patrol the perimeter here. If you see a fight break out, break it up. If you think scaring the life out of a few slaves to keep them in line will work, great. Heck, try yelling at them some if you think they'll work harder. Whatever it is you Talons do. Anyway, do try to stay away from the center of it all. That's where the rads are worst, and I don't have enough meds to waste on keeping you breathing. Any questions?”

I cast another tired gaze out over the crater, catching a glimpse of two ponies triggering a tiny landslide of debris. My heart froze until I saw them wearily claw their way out of the heap and get back to work. “I... will I be staying with the slaves?”

“Don't have any choice,” Shutter replied simply. “There's an old shipping container of some kind on the other side of the yard. Made of solid lead they say. That's where all of the slaves sleep and eat. When you hear the siren go off, your shift's over and you can do whatever you want back there. Got it?”

“Yes... sir.” I took a deep breath and forced the emotions out of my mind again. I wasn't going to survive long if I didn't.

“Great. Then get to work.” Shutter shooed me off with both forehooves and vanished back into his little station.

Yeah. Right. How long did I think I was going to live anyway? Outside the crater. Inside the crater. Three solid months of this would kill anything this close.

I got what I deserved.

My first day on the 'job' started out as awkward and uneventful as I could have hoped for. I spent the first few hours just pacing around the perimeter near the fence, taking it as slow as I thought I could get away with. I knew full well that I wouldn't be getting much to eat anymore and wasting the energy would just compound my miseries when I got hungry later. Perhaps even worse than that though was the boredom I was trying to ward off. I'd be here for the rest of my life, but the difference between seeing the same landmarks 300 times and 30,000 times in that period was pretty substantial. I needed something to keep my mind occupied, else it was going to start drifting back to why I was here. Well, more than it was already.

At least I was so tired that my brain wasn't doing much other than guiding my feet as I plodded along. With each step the collar hanging loosely around my neck shook and rattled, almost lost in the constant rustling and scraping that echoed from the crater to my left. Maybe I was lucky that I had feathers instead of fur there, since that would keep the chafing to a minimum. The tetanus might not kill me before the radiation did, but I didn't want to experience it either way.

I could try flying around instead of walking, but frankly I just didn't have the energy or will. Besides, it drew attention. If Shutter Flash didn't see me and freak out over the fact that I might be trying to escape then it would distract some of the slaves if they saw me.

By this point I was past caring about being put on show. Shutter could parade me around the crater like his new prize for all I cared. It couldn't embarrass me anymore. But this place... this wasn't the place for someone to get distracted. I trudged to a stop and glanced out over the rolling hills of debris. Slaves of a uniform color of grime and soot crawled over the mountain, losing their footing on occasion or dodging falling chunks. This... this was not a good place for me to be. Everything went wrong wherever I went.

Turning my focus to the fence, I pressed on. As depressing as the crater itself was, at least there was life there. The ghost of the city surrounding us was almost haunting and filled me with unease just looking at it. As terrible as the rest of Fillydelphia was, this felt wrong in an entirely different way. It was like looking out over a nightmare where you dreamed you woke up one morning and everyone was gone. The black and blasted landscape was silent and still. Dead. I didn't want to look at it anymore, but haunting as it was I couldn't look away. For reasons I'll never be sure of, I drifted closer and just... stopped at the fence. I held up a claw to grasp the rickety wiring and just looked out.

My heart cut out for a second when my eyes settled on a distinctly identifiable pony skull poking up from the ground. It was as black as the rest of the terrain, no doubt burnt and scorched bare before being covered in ash like everything else. By now it was just part of the scenery... something to be overlooked and ignored like a rock.

I couldn't just ignore it. My tired mind went off on one of its little tangents, trying to picture what that pony had been doing when the balefire bomb went off. Again my heart responded poorly when it dawned on me that a skull that small had to be a foal's. It was just a child. A little colt or filly that was trapped in the city during the end of the world that hadn't been lucky enough to get into a stable. What had he or she been doing? Were they huddled up in terror as the sirens blared? Blissfully ignorant of their impending death and taken out too fast to feel any pain? Or... since there was a skull to even see, had they instead been further away and wandered here to die in the coming days from injuries or radiation poisoning?

My eyes blurred and my throat ached as I looked down. My beak rattled against the links in the fence on the way down and I pressed my head against it to hide my face from any who might see me.

I just couldn't handle any more. Again, like in the prison, I let the dam burst and just cried. A grown griffon shouldn't cry, but I didn't care. There was no room left inside me for any emotions. I leaned against the fence and just cried. Was it over that poor little foal who'd been dead for two hundred years? Was it over Ida who'd been dead for two days? Was it over me and my stupidity? I didn't know, and I didn't care. I just cried.

As much as I felt like just sobbing into the stoic and uncaring fence for the rest of my sentence, I managed to pull myself together and resume my new duties. Nobody noticed, cared or had the guts to come approach the big scary griffon that was experiencing a string of emotional malfunctions, so at least I didn't have to worry about anyone pointing it out. Time to get back to work being the big scary griffon that intimidated ponies into working.

Despite the fact that I'd been charged with watching the ponies picking through the crater, I was doing my level best to pay attention to everything but them. The burnt landscape surrounding us wasn't much better, which really left just the encampment's fences as my last resort in a search for something to take my mind off of things. As you can probably appreciate, it didn't offer much relief. By the third or fourth time I'd made my way around the perimeter I finally recognized the sole anomaly bolted to a strip of corrugated tin strapped to the fence: an air raid siren.

I must have been more frazzled than I realized, since I'd seen one almost every day for the past what... ten or fifteen years? Oatsfield had one at its center, which I was told was installed during the war but had never been used. They kept it there to use as a town rallying call, like for raiders or worse. It was never used as long as I'd been there either, thankfully, and I couldn't help but wonder what it sounded like. Was it a piercing, shrill sound? Or a low pulsing-

My strange daydream shattered to pieces as I heard ponies shouting behind me.

“It's mine! I saw it first!” a mare pleaded.

“Let go! I need it more than you!” a stallion shouted in return.

First day on the job, again, and already there was work to be done. I bounded over a fallen pipe too rusty to be reclaimed and skidded around a pile of rubble to find the two responsible: a lemon coated earth pony mare and a sky blue earth pony stallion. He looked like he'd seen quite a few better days in his life, as his fur was missing in patches all over his body.

I flapped my wings hard for show and slid down a little embankment of mud to get their attention. “What's going on here?” I demanded. As much as I tried to sound imposing, it came out as little more than an angry croak.

Both ponies froze and dropped the sparkling piece of... whatever it was. Something with spell matrices in it at least, and undoubtedly worth something. The bigger mare shot an accusing hoof his way and said, “I found this thing and was going to grab it, but he's trying to take it from me!”

“I saw it first,” he whimpered.

“No, I did!”

The stallion coughed and dug his hoof into the soft ground. “I saw it yesterday.”

“So, why didn't you get it then, huh?”

“I-I didn't know it was a spell thingy...”

“Well then, too bad, because now it's-”

I growled and flared my wings, which to my mild surprise shut them up. “Enough. Why are you even arguing over it? One of you just take it and move on.”

The stallion groaned and said, “I've only got a month left before I'm done here. Just one more month... four weeks. I'm getting really sick and the quotas are getting tougher... but I think I can make it. I just need this and my quota for today will be met.”

Lemon mare snorted. “And me? I've been here for a week but what about when I get to your point? I can hide it somewhere for later and I'll be set.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “And I found it.”

Oh, great. Quotas. Of course. I groaned this time and stepped forward to examine the piece of technology. It wasn't anything I recognized, but maybe I could find some way to split it between them. Turning it over and around, I could only tell that it must have had some charge packs in it somewhere to still be glittering like it was, and there were some removable chips of some kind. I yanked the three cards out and fooled with the case for a minute before giving up on removing the charge packs.

“Hey... you can't take it from both of us!” the mare shouted.

“I'm not. Here.” I thrust the cards her way and presented the rest of the spell board to the stallion. “Now you both have a piece.”

The stallion looked down at his new prize with a little grin. “Oh, thank you...”

Miss lemon pouted at her smaller spoils. “But it's not worth as much. We'll have to keep looking for crap... and why does he get the bigger piece?”

“Because I said so. Now, the more time you spend standing around here, the less you get done and the more rads you soak up trying to meet your quotas. Just be happy you have anything at all and get back to work. You'll both be happier in the end.”

She didn't seem overly pleased with my impromptu ruling, but she must not have had the guts to challenge my complete lack of authority. “Fine.” She slid the cards into the ragged pack on her side and turned to leave.

The other pony did the same, albeit with that grin still on his face. Maybe he'd just played me for a fool after all. Whatever. It didn't matter. One thing did though... “Play nice, both of you. Now that I'm here, I don't want to see anymore arguing over stuff like this or stealing from each other. Understood?”

“Yeah... fine...”

“Yes sir, thank you!”

I blew out a deep breath and scaled the slope of mud and crushed concrete to get back up to the perimeter fence. That wasn't going to be the last time I had to break up something like that, and I was certain that there would be many, many more arguments in my near future. At least maybe I helped a little just now. Whether or not that pony was telling me the truth, I still tried to do what I thought was right.

That... was about all I had left to give anymore. I might as well.

The sound of the air raid siren blaring through the dull white noise of ponies picking through trash somehow managed to be everything I expected and nothing like it at all. I nearly jumped out of my feathers when the horn roared to life, carrying a rising and falling pitch so strong I felt it in every bone of my body. I didn't even remember falling over, but I found myself using the fence as a brace to claw my way back up to my feet. Couldn't they find some a bit more subtle to use as a shift alarm? Now that I knew what it was, I recognized it as something I'd heard every night all the way over at the Talon base!

Had it really been that long already? Peering up at the eternal cloud cover, I guessed it had. The clouds were beginning to turn a rusty shade, this time from sunset more than from pollutants since there were no furnaces for kilometers, and the muggy air was beginning to cool slightly. Maybe that would be the only perk of being away from the industry... it wouldn't be too hot to sleep. Yeah, right. Like I planned on actually sleeping.

I was starting to get hungry though. Shutter Flash said the old shipping container was where the slaves ate and slept, so if I cared to do either that's where I needed to go. If it really was made of lead then it would be the only real shelter from the deadly radiation too, which I cared the most about. As it turns out, having a fatalistic attitude and not expecting to survive something tends to not last long when you have a chance to really think about it, and my survival instinct was kicking in pretty strongly.

A procession of ponies preceded my own trek toward the shelter, most of which I didn't recognize. Only lemon mare really stood out in the crowd. That was good. I knew these ponies would be dying often, and the less I knew them the better that would go, as awful as it was. There was simply nothing I could do to help them.

The entrance to the shelter had already formed a long line by the time I got there, and as we slowly worked our way closer I saw Shutter Flash up ahead stopping each slave and taking whatever they'd found. With each plink of metallic scrap in the huge bin, he noted something down on his yellowed notepad and signaled for the next to come forward.

By the time it was my turn I was beginning to worry that he'd expect me to present something as well, but fortunately it seemed he was a pony of his word and just nodded me through. I passed a small radiation hazard sign painted onto the side of the shelter, ignoring the joke if it was one, and tried to find somewhere to just sit down for a minute.

The shelter itself turned out to be, shockingly, everything he promised. Ironically, it appeared to also be an old train car, or cobbled together from a dozen transport trailers, and easily had enough room for all of the slaves to spread out and have a little personal space. Two extra floors of space had been rigged together from stripped pieces of the far wall of the container, exposed to the poisoned air but at least not in direct line of sight of the radiation. None of the living spaces appeared to be personalized at all. Either the slaves really had nothing, or the turnover rate must have been every bit as bad as I feared, since I had little doubt that most of the new slaves came here rather than risk the Pit. All told there couldn't have been more than a hundred slaves there. Far fewer than I expected for a work area this large.

Unfortunately, if you put a hundred tired, unhappy and desperate ponies in a room together, bad things are bound to happen. I had scarcely managed to find a spot to plop down in before I heard shouting coming from the opposite side of the shelter. Ponies were beginning to fan out to make room for what I feared was growing into a full brawl, and I lurched up to try and defuse the situation before it did.

“Please, I'm so hungry... I don't think I can go on without it...”

“That's too bad. Remember the deal? Give me my part or I'm going to take it all the hard way.”

Oh great. Just freaking fantastic. This again. Well, this time I could do something about it. With a clear path leading to the two grimy stallions, I stormed over and demanded, “What's going on here?”

Both flinched in a satisfying manner, but the bigger one, who I assumed was the thug demanding food, rallied quickly. “...none of your business. Who are you anyway?”

“Security. That means this is very much my business.”

The little unicorn holding a bowl of soupy oatmeal in his magic held a hoof up. “H-he's trying to take my food ration. He threatens us and demands we give him some.”

“Shut up.” The bigger earth pony growled at him and appraised me with his eyes. “You're security, huh? Why bother? Not like we're going to escape or something. Where's your gun anyway? Oh, and a bomb collar too, huh? Look, just because you're a griffon doesn't mean you can get away with passing yourself off as a guard and think you can boss us around. You think you're the first griffon slave to come through here?”

No, this couldn't be easy, could it? “It's complicated, but I'm part of Talon Company, first platoon. Back off.”

He stomped a hoof down. “'Complicated?' I'm going to make it complicated. You back off or I'll add you to the list, feathers. This is my turf.” He snorted and swished his tail.

“I won't tell you again,” I warned him. Please, please take the bluff.

“Neither will I.”

I don't remember the punch, but I do remember wondering how I got on the floor. My cheek throbbed and my beak didn't seem to close quite right anymore, but I didn't have time to ponder that. Expecting a followup after hearing a determined grunt from my assailant, I rolled over with the help of a wing to spring up. His hoof tore past my face close enough to feel the wind and a crunch and screaming wave of pain in my wing told me where it landed. With no time to focus on that I let instinct take over and raked with my hind legs, catching him on two legs and sending him toppling to the ground with a startled yelp.

He tried to roll over and get to his hooves, but I was faster and pounced atop him. Evading a poorly aimed kick, I wrapped my talons around his throat and pressed the tips in enough that even a thick skinned idiot could tell that I had him where I wanted him. “I told you to back off. Now, you're going to listen to me or I'm going to show you how sharp griffon talons are.”

The pony glared daggers at me, but wisely stayed quiet.

“Everyone else, listen up. Now that I'm here, I don't want to see this anymore. I mean it. I won't stand for you beating each other up, stealing from each other or even threatening each other.” I tightened my grip ever so slightly and cocked my head at the pony below me. “Understand?”

“Yes...”

I dismounted and stepped aside, giving myself plenty of room to dodge any further attacks, but luckily for both of us he didn't try anything. “Good.” I worked my jaw twice, finding the motion painful and stiff. “Now, everyone eat and rest up.”

As I turned away and started searching for somewhere secluded to see just how hurt I was, I was met with an old, white unicorn stallion in my path. “Well now, that was quite a sight,” Shutter said. “That joker has been messing things up for two weeks now.”

“Glad I could help,” I mumbled, trying not to move my mouth too much.

“Yeah, you saved me a lot of trouble, you did. You're going to do just fine I think.” He grimaced. “Try not to get hurt too bad though. Like I said... not any meds to spare, you understand?”

I groaned and nodded. That was how it worked in Fillydelphia, so no surprises there.

“Right, well. Rest up. You did good, but you've got eighty-nine days of this left. You've got to ration yourself if you're going to make it.” He gave me a pat on the back, on the side of my good wing thankfully, and wandered off to inspect the rest of the crowd.

“No problem...”

Eventually I found a spot behind a pillar and flopped down. My jaw hurt but still worked, so I was pretty sure it wasn't broken or even seriously injured. A week or two from then it would be fine if I was still alive. My wing though...

“Um... sorry, but do you mind if I eat here?” A small, grungy unicorn stallion stood to my side. He glanced around briefly, then back to me expectantly.

“No, go right ahead.”

He sank to the floor next to me. “Thank you. Um... for everything. Railroad Spikes has been hounding me since I got here.”

I nodded and opened my jaw a bit wider, eliciting a crisp pop and jolt of pain. “No problem, just doing my job.”

“Well, I really appreciate it. The name's Rusty Rivet, by the way.”

Not in much of the mood to talk here... “Kasimir Longtalons. And you're welcome.”

He went to sip from his bowl and paused. “Um... say, do you want some? I mean, you saved it for me in the first place...”

“I'll get my own in a minute,” I assured him. “You need it.” Not to mention I was starting to feel a little light headed and dizzy.

He happily slurped up the watery sludge, watching me as I examined my wing. “You're not hurt, are you? Is it broken?”

Oh, probably. It sure as hell hurt like it... but I'd never had a broken bone before to compare it to. “It's fine. Just sprained I think.” I needed to find something to splint it with.

“Ah, good, good. So, um... if you don't mind me asking, if you really are a Talon, how'd you end up here?”

...it was going to be a long night...

Not much of interest happened the next day. I don't think I got any sleep that night, for every reason you can imagine, and the day that followed largely consisted of me groggily patrolling the outer rim of the crater, moaning every time I tried to fold my hurt wing and occasionally picking through the outermost heaps of discarded detritus in search of a suitable splint for it. The pain actually wasn't unbearable so much as just distracting and tiring. Every wrong movement was like someone was rubbing sandpaper against the nerves in my wing, and when I tried to rest and get comfortable it seemed that every move was a wrong move.

It was the second day that I'd had enough of the incessant grating and grinding that I was seriously considering using a strip of irradiated wood or plastic to brace the wing. It came down to whether I wanted to accept a radiation burn or never sleeping or resting again, which wasn't much of a choice. I'd just turned away from staring out to the foal's skull again and was examining what looked like the leg of a chair when a rush of air was followed by a loud thump behind me.

“Holy shit, Kaz... it's true.”

My hands went limp and the chair leg dropped back into a puddle of unidentifiable muck. Slowly, I turned and found a solid gray griffoness standing behind me. “Liese?”

She started my way. “I didn't believe them. I told Alfred he was full of shit, but... holy shit. He was right.” Her voice was unusually low and calm. “Is it true? Did you really-” Her eyes flew open and she flew forward to grasp the collar around my neck. “Who put a fucking bomb collar on you? I'll tear their head off and... and... was it Heidi? If that bitch thinks she can do this to my brother-”

“Liese, stop!” I brushed her leg to get her to release the collar. “It wasn't Heidi. It's not even armed. Look... just... you can't help me, okay? It's bigger than either of us...”

Her usual demeanor returned. “You let me decide that.” She raised a talon to my face. “What happened here?”

“I was dumb enough to try to do my new job and break up a fight here. Some pony was bullying others and I put him in his place.”

She popped a knuckle and scanned the crater. “Okay, tell me who. I'll put him in his place for real.”

I waved a claw. “No, Liese... please, you can't make it any better. I'm here because I deserve it. I don't want you getting mixed up in it and suffering because of what I did. In fact... y-you probably shouldn't even be here. You'll get in trouble too.”

She waved her claw back at me. “Don't worry about that. I don't care if Gunther or Heidi yell at me.” Her eyes tracked over me and settled on my extended wing. “...and looks like it's a good thing I came when I did.”

She wasn't going to stop until she found out who hit me, was she? This wasn't some squabble on an elementary school playground. This could easily escalate way above either of our heads. “It'll be fine. I just need to brace it and let it rest.”

“I've got a better idea.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a smaller, unlabeled sack. “Here. A present from Vonny.”

“Yvonne?” My heart skipped as I checked inside. A faint purple glow shined from a vial of liquid that could only be a healing potion. Next to it was a yellow packet of RadAway and two red capped tablets. Rad-X?

“Yeah. Alfred told her I was your sister last time he was at the clinic, and she sent this for you. Honestly, Kaz, do you tell anyone I'm related to you?” Liese tapped a talon on the tablets. “She said she had a few more of these, but try not to go overboard. There's only so many she can have go missing before people get suspicious.”

I held the bag back up toward her. “I... I can't take this. If Stern finds out, she'll have Yvonne's head, and maybe yours too.”

Liese sighed and shook her head in an exaggerated motion that swept her feathers from side to side. “Kaz, you're my brother and I love you, but sometimes you're just really dumb. Take it, or else I'm going to have to force it down your throat, okay? You aren't going to make it out of here without it.” Her shoulders slumped just visibly. "...I'm not going to watch you... y'know... like ma."

For an extended moment I stared down into the sack and at the glowing medications, trying not to think about the last thing she said. “It won't last three months.”

“Vonny is already working on that. Relax. Just because Heidi sent you out here doesn't mean you're alone. I've got your back.”

I rolled the open bag up and held it tightly in my claws. “Thanks...”

For the first time since she got there, Liese cracked a little smile. “It's what sisters do.” She sat back and crossed her arms before asking, “So... it's true then? You really... y'know? Ida?”

It wasn't like I didn't know this conversation was coming, so I'd been somewhat preparing for it. In the back of my mind I half expected to be dead before Liese turned up though. “I don't know what you heard, but it was an accident. Just... another f-fucking accident. I was so sleepy I fell asleep in the air and dropped my gun. The odds... the odds were one in a billion, but the gun went off and hit her. She was killed instantly when she hit the ground.”

“Oh... shit. Kaz...”

“I know. It's just... fuck me, Liese, when is it going to stop? Or when is it going to be me that gets hurt or killed so I don't have to deal with this anymore?” Dammit, dammit, dammit... I wasn't going to cry in front of her of all people.

“Hey, hey... stop that.” To my complete and utter shock, I found myself in a weak hug. From Liese. “You've had some rotten luck, but you've made it this far, right? Just suck it up and move on.”

...yeah, that was Liese alright. “I'm trying...”

She patted my back and let go. “See? Feel any better?”

Not really, but for her sake and my sanity I nodded. If only papa could see me now. What would he-wait. “How's papa?”

“Uh... he's... fine. That should probably wait for another time though.” She started backing away slowly.

Oh boy, what was she hiding from me? “What's wrong? Is he getting sicker? You didn't tell him I was here, did you?”

“No, and no. Just, later, okay?” Liese jumped into the air and pointed a talon at me. “Be a good boy and take your medicine, and I'll tell you next time, okay?” Without waiting for me to answer, she inverted in the air and flapped her wings hard to propel herself over the fence and away.

“Hey, wait! Liese, what's wrong? Liese!” But, it was too late. She ignored me and sped away, taking with her whatever dire news she had and with it my only glimmer of hope.

Well, that wasn't really true. I unfurled the bag and took stock of my supplies again. If she and Yvonne were so intent on keeping me alive, I guess I owed it to them to try. I also owed it to papa to find out what Liese was hiding, and... to ma I think. I couldn't bear to think of how she'd feel if she knew that I could die of radiation exposure.

But rather than think about all of that, I focused on finding that splint. My wing wouldn't set right from the potion alone.

That... was not going to be fun.

Ever tried to set a bone? Your own? With no anesthesia?

Neither had I...

Gain Experience – You gain 500 experience points for learning from what doesn't kill you.