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Ammo ran as fast as her booted feet could carry her, down a jagged alley lined with broken and toppled concrete. The bunnyfox was struggling with an over full knapsack that dangled off one shoulder. Every step she took sent it slamming against her ribs, stabbing pain racing into her shoulder without mercy. Its weight was slowing her pace to the point that she considered leaving it behind. Dropping it, however, would mean the loss of nearly two weeks of thievery and scavenging. Not dropping the pack might end of up costing her more. For as long as she could remember Ammo had survived this way, always by the thinnest of margins. Her appearance and manner of dress were a testament to her haphazard existence: tattered clothes culled from the wreckage of buildings she explored all up and down the ruined coastal cities. Her weapons were fashioned abstractly from whatever she could scrounge together or steal, the most recognizable of which was a long spear with two blades fixed together by a length of dry treated rope. Even now, under extreme duress, it never left her paw. In these ways, she wasn't all that different from any of the other vagrants that flitted along the coast in an aimless cycle of migration, with one exception: most would kill you for the boots on your feet without so much as a second thought. She preferred to steal them while you slept. About twenty yards behind her, a smattering of gunfire erupted and a reverberating crash made the air seem to tremble. Already weakened by decay, several facades of bombed out old structures had toppled over into the alley when hit by stray rounds, raising plumes of murky concrete dust. Through the haze a trio of figures emerged, sprinting. They were almost uniformly nondescript, their faces hidden behind eerie looking gas masks of varying style and age. As they ran, they fired down the alley with automatic weapons that looked too old to function. Function they did though, the hiss of bullets cutting through the air as Ammo ducked out of the alley and into a small square populated by more rubble and several toppled, headless statues. Another volley of gunfire sent her diving to the ground in a baseball style slide, flecks of slivered masonry peppering her cheeks as the cobblestone ground popped around her feet. "Fer fuck's sake!" Scrambling to make her way behind one of the fallen statues, she pressed her back to the carved stone and, after checking to see that she hadn't been hit, took a moment to catch her breath. From the direction she'd come, angry voices called out to one another, their shouts indistinct and muted as they bounced around in the maze of broken buildings. Through it all, she thought she heard one of her assailants call her name.

---

"Ammo, you really are something else, you know that? I didn't even think it was possible to find this stuff all the way out here." Ammo pulled the tinted goggles she wore off her eyes and turned her head to acknowledge her companion, an mottled brown male otter in B.D.U. style khakis and an over-sized gray vest he'd stripped the sleeves from. A pair of twin daggers were cross sheathed at his back and a .45 caliber pistol rested in a holster at his leg. Despite the array of armaments, he spoke softly if at all and could be described accurately as jejune. They had spent a good portion of that afternoon perched on one of three high retaining walls that looked down into the natural basin where the city lay. Drinking from unlabeled bottles of beer (a luxury in this place) and tossing rocks down into the trees below, neither one really spoke. Occasionally, one of them would spit or belch. Nonplussed at his compliment, she snorted. "Ah, yer' full of it, Rook." The two of had been exploring the ruins of the city of New Delta for nearly a week. The city had lay in shambles for several decades now, decaying like most all of civilization under the harsh summer sun and piercing winter snow alike. It was uninhabitable to all but the most brazen and experienced survivalists, its pockmarked and crumbling interior still serving as a way point between the southern coast and the industrial north. Each day when the sun was just starting to rise they'd douse the small fire still smouldering from the night before and venture out between the twisted girders in search of supplies to weight their respective packs. When they did this, they rarely went as a pair. For Ammo, this chance to make herself familiar with the dead city was a welcome change from the usually frenetic pace with which she moved from dispute to dispute. Rook tolerated these little excursions and occasionally shared her enthusiasm for discovery. In spite of this, she suspected he mostly stuck around for the companionship, himself an infant in the ways of wayfaring to her more experienced adult. "You never did tell me where you got these." The otter said. Ammo shrugged nonchalantly in response to his query. Off in the distance, the crackle of small arms fire scattered a tiny group of sparrows from their wall top perch. They rose in a column, fluttering over the two in the fading sunlight before settling on a destination off to the east. "Ye' ask too many questions, Rook. Just drink yer' beer."

---

"AAAAAMMO! I know you're hiding out there, girl!" Cold fingers of dread closed around her heart upon recognizing the voice calling out to her from the smoke and rubble. It belonged to Krieg. From behind the masked trio he emerged, a stocky wolf with a long, ugly scar running down the side of his patchy, mange ridden face. Krieg, the warlord who controlled large swathes of Greer Junction territory. Stupid and vicious, she'd heard stories for as long as she'd been a wayfarer of his incalculable cruel streak. In fact, all throughout the continent of Old Gatlin, audiosphere recordings of him circulated through a network of recruiters, imploring the gullible to venture into Greer Junction to join his hardscrabble horde. It was under the guise of just such ignorance that she'd gone and done that, intending to fleece the living daylights out of whomever she could of whatever they might have. The venture had paid dividends too. It had, that is, until today. Now it seemed likely to bite her in the ass. "Alright! That's how you want it?! If the thieving little bitch isn't going to come out and take her licks, light her ass up!" At Krieg's command the air was shredded by automatic machine gun fire, brilliant flashes of light penetrating the settling haze as the group of three closed in. They held their guns at hip level, unloading in all directions. Krieg walked behind them, shouldering his own weapon, unkind hazel eyes searching for any sign of the bunnyfox. Pinned in place by the hail of hollowpoints, Ammo bit her lip until it bled and put her head between her knees, waiting for the roar to stop, knowing all the while that it wouldn't until she was dead. * * *"How long do you think we should stay?" Rook asked between sips. As he lowered the bottle from his lips, he turned it against the late September sun, inspecting the world through the slightly smoked glass and bitter amber liquid inside. Rook had been her companion for just a little under two months now, the pair of them traveling down from what remained of the industrial north after hitting the coast in search of a boat. They'd been gambling and stealing their way across the continent, never staying in once place for very long. If it wasn't wanderlust that moved them it was usually the threat of bodily harm in the wake of general trouble making and thievery. Despite her tendencies towards kleptomania and his penchant for drunken fist fighting, she was impressed they'd got on so well, especially considering the manner in which they'd met. "In New Delta? One more night, if that. Ah' think we've probably seen most everything here ta' be seen. An' ah know it's late, but ah' don't mind traveling in the dark jus' so long as we avoid tha' main roads." She felt a pang of guilt for even suggesting they leave under the cover of stars, knowing how much he hated it. Ammo couldn't blame the otter for disliking night travel. No matter the settlement, every tavern was usually good for one or two old rovers trading stories of the horrors that could befall those without the good sense to lay low when the sun set. Some even lived the experiences and wore the scars as proof that they weren't cracked or too deep into a bottle of rye whiskey. Rook turned from the sunset to look at her. "You remember back when we first started running together, that crappy dive outside of Greer Junction?" "I recall ya' puking in the corner an' the bartender threatening to kill us both after ya' filched that corkscrew an' stuck it in tha' wall." "Yeah, but remember how while you were propping me up those two drifters decided they wanted to try and have a little fun with us?" A chill wind picked up, carrying dry leaves along the ground to crunch underfoot. Ammo contemplated pulling her hood over her ears. It would be dark soon. "T'was the first time we'd been in a fight ta'gether, as opposed to slugging it out ah'selves. Like when I caught ya' cheating at poker in Halstead and gave ya' a black eye fer it." "Not the first time." Rook reminded her. Out in New Delta, another report of gunfire perked his ears up. It was distant still but marginally closer this time and accompanied by another flock of frightened birds. * * *They were almost upon her now. She could hear the rubble in the street crunching beneath their boots between bursts of gunfire and grimaced involuntarily at the mechanical clicking of Krieg's lackeys slipping fresh magazines into their guns. Rolling to her stomach, Ammo pulled her knees up under her and placed one paw in the dirt, ready to run for all she was worth. No pack of stolen crap was worth certain torture or dying a dirty death in this fucking square. She retained her spear, squeezing the shaft as she crawled on her belly, prepared to chuck it if that might buy her a few more precious seconds of distraction. It probably wouldn't make any difference, but if she had resolved that if she was going to die, it wasn't going to be cowering. The crack of a single rifle shot cut the tension and startled her to the point of shouting, subconsciously believing it to be the round meant to kill her. She jerked, her scream drowned in the reply of more gunfire, this time aimed across the street at an abandoned apartment, it's windows blown out and cratered. Krieg and his men were spraying the facade as they scattered to find cover, littering the street with shell casings as they ran. Gathering her wits and slowly opening her eyes, Ammo could see one of the masked gunmen was laying at the head of the toppled statue. The rifle had fallen from his arms, a thin rivulet of crimson now oozing from a neat little hole in his forehead. The back of his skull was missing. She didn't know who had pulled the trigger or where from and, frankly, she was hard pressed to care. Pulling herself near to Krieg's faceless mercenary, she reached out for the rifle he'd dropped, it's stock and barrel coated with sticky red blood. "Dun mind if I borrow this, do ye?" Scooting back under cover with his gun clutched under one arm, she sank as several more rifle shots drew Krieg's attention further up the street. Her benefactor seemed very fleet of foot. Twisting to look over the edge of her shelter, she caught a glimpse of the figure Krieg's men were firing at, running between rooms several stories up while her attackers fired their weapons about blindly, hitting nothing for all their effort. Ammo was all but forgotten. Shouldering the knapsack once more, she leapt from her refuge and raced to turn a corner at the western edge of the square, firing back down the street before discarding the gun in favor of a burst of speed. She ran until she felt as thought her heart might give out, only stopping to rest when she could no longer hear the sound of Krieg's infuriated shouts. * * *"Yer nev'ah going to let me live that one down, are ye?" Rook shrugged and turned the bottle in his paw, letting the amber brew inside splash about. "Probably not. You nearly got yourself killed over a bag of rubbish. Pretty funny, if you ask me. Besides, it was a good shot." "Lucky shot, ye' mean. Ye' didn't hit anything else that day an' I can't say I've seen ye' hit anything since. Stick to knives, otter. They're a much better weapon fer a clod such as yer'self." "I'll stick to both. I like having a little insurance." Ammo scoffed and rolled her eyes deridingly but didn't say anything, preferring another drink to further discussion. Down in the basin, echoing up from the wreckage of New Delta, the sporadic gunfire started up again, nearer still to the pair. Between outbursts and popping, angry voices and accusations flew back and forth, the words muffled but the tone unmistakable. "There's vagrants down yonder. Quite ah' few o' dem." Ammo remarked. Rook pursed his lips, looking down into the city, then to the bottle of beer in his paw, then to Ammo herself. It took him a minute but at last he put the pieces together. "You stole this, didn't you?" "Mhm. Yeh I did." "And that's why you want to leave tonight, isn't it?" "Mhm. Yeh it is." Momentarily contemplating their course in light of this revelation, a grin broke the veneer of seriousness that briefly held him, the humor of it all too much to remain stoic. Seeing the otter crack, Ammo raised her bottle with the with neck angled towards her companion in pursuit of a toast, matching the mischief in his smile. When she didn't get what she wanted right away, she shook her beverage from side to side, the ale inside sloshing about until he relented. After they touched bottles with a pleasant, glassy chime, each one took a long draught. "Think they'll figure out who did it?" Rook asked, tapping the butt of his pistol with his padded index finger. "Nah. If they do though, promise me ye'll shoot ah' little straighter this time."