hadriel | Video

[The video turns on to show the outskirts of town, nearby is a fence of sorts made of junk Pratt collected from the Colosseum and some baling wire. It's encircling a fancy new shooting range complete with training dummies and targets and some other items that aren't immediately identifiable.

Okay fancy isn't the right word, everything is made of remnants he found and some of the targets are empty soup cans on sticks but it looks serviceable.]

This is Deputy Pratt. I know we're all busy freezing to death, but if you'd like to take your mind off that, I've finally got this all together. Range is up and running!

It's set up by the orchard, or well.. where the orchard should be anyway.

[He pans the camera towards the orchard to show where it is and then starts walking towards the range. The camera is surprisingly steady, this is someone who has filmed hundreds of Vine videos of him and other deputies doing stupid stuff on slow days. He's a pro at this shit.]

I've got training dummies up front for anyone who wants to get their melee fighting on. But uh.. try not to completely destroy them because I don't have a ton of wood to fix them up.

For the range itself I've got targets at 10 meters, 25 meters, 50 and 100. It's not perfect because I'm measuring this with my feet, but it's close enough. Spinner targets are for guns, and the bigger baled ones are dirt and wood so they shouldn't chew up your arrows too bad.

This thing is a work in progress.

[He sets a can onto a contraption off to the side of the range, stomping his foot on a pedal and sending it shooting down the lane and a little to the left. The camera gets unsteady here as he launches a knife that's far too big for this at the can and it tumbles to the ground.]

Keeps shooting them off to the side, but it's better than throwing something and then trying to hit it.

As for weapons... [He walks over to a large but very battered chest and opens the lid.]

I've got some throwing knives that aren't stupid like the hunting knife I have. A few bows. And some arrows in here. Keep them in this crate because the weather is not kind to bowstrings and you don't want these things snapping when you're shooting.

It's on the honor system because I'm not going to freeze my ass off monitoring this twenty-four seven. So try not to burn it down in the next two days.

[Please guys. He worked hard on this. Don't set it on fire.]

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I'm a cop, I'm supposed to have all this shit figured out all the time.

[Be on top of everything. Know exactly what to do. Be an authority figure. He sure doesn't feel like anyone should follow his lead anymore.]

Pretty sure nobody's got it figured out all the time. Sorry.

[ Even the people who're supposed to. ]

Oh believe me, I know. It's the people back home who aren't convinced.

Earth sounds like a trip.

It used to be fine. Quiet. Peaceful.

And it has a hell of a lot more trees than here.

Yeah? Actual forests and shit? Haven't seen too many of those.

Hundreds and hundreds of miles of them. Basically the whole state until you get too far to the east, then it's more plains.

Damn. That sounds nice. Haven't really spent time in any forests, outside of war zones.

That's the worst time to enjoy a forest. Fighting in them is impossible. The terrain sucks to get a foothold in, there's too many hiding places, sometimes you line up a great shot and the guy you wanted to shoot gets attacked by a bear.

Or at least that's how it is back home for me.

Never seen a bear in person.

[ They look pretty cool, though Ephemera doubts he'd enjoy fighting one. ]

Eh, we were advanced infantry. Hard terrain worked for us. Most of it usually got bombed to hell before the end, though.

I'm sure we'll be invaded by them at some point. That's how this place works.

The forest will be fine. Dead bodies to grow new plants and feed some wolves. Nature will repair any damage you did. Like you guys were never even there.

[Because that's how nature works.]

With this place, nothing would surprise me.

[ Or at least very little. ]

Most of the time. Not so much when somebody drops a planet killer. But I guess even those places survived, if you call that surviving.

Is that like a nuke?

Because even then nature will eventually take it back.

Nah. It's what happens when you weld nine nuclear warheads into a single package. Name's about as literal as they get.

Why would you ever need nine nuclear warheads at once? Isn't one enough to light the atmosphere on fire and kill everything anyway?

I'm not the one who built them. But they work.

[ Do they ever work. ]

War got bad. Stayed that way pretty much until the end.

The end?

[Boy is that a loaded sentence: Until the end. End of what? Everything?]

End of the war. Universe is still kicking, last time I checked.

[Pratt can't even hide that sigh of relief that Ephemera isn't going to tell him the whole of existence blew up somehow.]

I take it you were on the winning side?

More or less. There's a truce and I heard they started rebuilding some places, but I never saw any of it. People just kept on fighting. Different reasons, sure.

[ Same result. ]

I'm not the best person to ask about it, really. Carolina or Washington'd be able to explain it better if you're really interested.

Its what humans do best. Destroy everything.

[ Jacob was right about that anyway. People can't have nice things. ]

Eh, I don't know how much I want to know. It might be too depressing.

[ Another shrug. ]

Maybe. Dunno if the aliens had it figured out any better, though.

[ Maybe that's just being alive. Most people are assholes, even if they're not exactly people. ]

That's fair.

Probably some universal standard of sentient things. My horse would destroy the whole world if she thought it was edible.

You have a horse?

[ He's never seen one before. And is immediately interested. ]

What're they like?

She's an asshole.

[ He says it fondly. ]

But there's nothing better than riding up to the ridge of the mountain right before sunrise. Watch the sun start burn off the morning fog. If it's cold enough you can sometimes see the steam from the forest floor as it heats up.

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