Fallout: Equestria - A Good Teacher

"And we forgot the taste of bread, the smell of grass..."

The water gurgled, flowing from the ceiling, enveloping me in its warmth. Soap flickered here and there, obeying my magic. The further, the better my white fur and straw-colored hair looked, fitting more and more into the cleanliness of the shower walls surrounding me.

The door creaked.

"Can I... come in?" Blast said.

I didn't know what to say and just nodded. The pony undressed, went onto the wet floor under the streams of water, and looked at me with a soulful gaze.

“I was so cold, so lonely without you...” she said, pressing herself against my neck, closing her eyes. “Never go alone again. Do you hear me? Don’t you dare. I’ll quit, I’ll leave my post on the outskirts, all those idiots I work with. I don’t care anymore. I won’t let you go alone again."

I hugged her back and we just stood there in silence for a couple of minutes, basking in the gentle warmth of the water.

She rubbed her nose against my cutie mark. The sunny sky, the green meadow and the quiet stream remained the same. As if not noticing that I was really not that, not her pony, Blast kissed my neck.

“Wait, what are you doing?” I asked, feeling like I was enjoying her kisses.

"What are you talking about?"

"I don't know how to say it, but it's all so strange to me. It feels like we know each other, but I don't remember anything at all."

She moved away from me a little, awkwardly crossing her front legs.

“I love you,” she said, moving closer to my face and kissing the corner of my lips. “Please, remember at least this. I’ve been waiting for you to come back.”

Not knowing what else to do, I picked up the soap from the floor and started to work on her jet black back, feeling that I really loved her. Blast also took care of me, gently stroking my body. "It's okay, we're together now, right?"

Sitting on the sofa, wrapped in several towels, wet, clean and happy, we chatted merrily.

"So you say you have amnesia. Okay, (not okay), what should I remind you of?"

I thought about it. Should I ask her to start from the beginning?

"How old am I?"

"Forty-nine."

I moaned. “Am I really that old?”

I grimaced. Blast burst out laughing, fell onto the couch, and continued to kick him with her front leg, trying to distract herself.

“Well, it’s not funny,” I meowed, but looking at her, so beaming, I couldn’t help but laugh. “Okay, well, but seriously?”

"Actually, it's written in your pipbuck."

Seriously? Well, let's say I actually know how old I am. Although, I was no longer sure that what I knew was reality. If this pony, who, as she claims, has known me since childhood, and my cutie mark did not surprise her in any way, and everyone knows that each pony has a unique symbol... just not knowing what to think, I turned on the pipbuck monitor and, opening the SPECIAL system, looked at some numbers and inscriptions:

"Mare. Unicorn. 29"

“Well, it’s not fifty,” I smiled. “Okay, how long have we been here? We weren’t born in this stable, right?”

"Two years... two whole years, Lime. Just look around," she said, dreamily examining the jumble of all sorts of objects in the room. "All this is ours! So many adventures... I just can't believe you don't remember anything. Want some mints? They're refreshing, maybe they'll remind you of something.

"Are you kidding me? I almost died from one drug, and you want to get me hooked on a second one."

"Wait, we have something even better..." she said, flashing under the bed. Out flew several scorched books, some suspicious egg glowing with fiery green sparks, a stable guard helmet... and a memory ball. I read that these devices store memories, but after the umbrella with cherries, such things did not inspire confidence.

"What's in it? They can be dangerous. You can't turn them off if the memory isn't over? What if we get attacked or something else happens?"

"Don't talk nonsense, we're in a well-protected, camouflaged bunker. Even if someone from the surface decides to hit us with a fire bomb, we'll only get a little shaky. Besides, there are two hundred excellent fighters here who..."

"...already drunk to the point of Discord," I interjected, remembering the alcohol feast that was probably going on in the bar right now. "So what awaits me?"

"Well, at least I promise I'll keep you safe. If you really don't remember this ball, just look."

I nodded in agreement, lay down more comfortably on the bed, placed the memory ball in front of me with my hooves, and...

<-========ooO Ooo========->

A siren sounded in the semi-darkness. There was a weight on my chest. Someone's hoof, my hoof, nervously adjusted something on the side of the solid metal plate hanging on my chest. A heavy helmet sat on my head, blocking my view, my neck was shackled by scaly armor. Some kind of flask floated up to my face, and... clouds of desh entered my lungs, everything immediately became clear in my eyes.

A single orange light above a shadowed steel door swung lazily, illuminating several ponies standing in tense silence next to me. Six turrets jutted out of the walls, like motionless turtles with six-barreled machine guns, three on each side.

>Attention... Security system is de-energized. Switching to backup power source...

There was a hissing sound nearby, and someone's metal feet stepped heavily across the concrete floor. A pony stepped forward, clad in armor that gleamed with black metal.

"Alpha Group!..."

"Hearing you we.."

"Just open the door!..."

"We have problems, do you hear?" the speaker was breathing heavily, shakily. "We have problems!..."

"We're inside, we need to unlock the outer door immediately... I repeat... give more power to the door between the control compartment and the entrance corridor..."

It began to get light on the ceiling above us. Little by little, the silhouettes of ponies appeared, looking not stern now, but confused. The armed ones nervously stepped from place to place, trying to choose a convenient position, poking the barrels at the sleepy turtles of the armored machine gun turrets, which already looked alive enough to give everyone standing here a shower of lead at any moment. All the ponies held their weapons at the ready, but fear was clearly visible in their eyes, narrowed by the bright light.

"There is!" a cry came from the radio. "There is a door! Open it!"

Someone flicked a switch with telekinesis and, to the sound of the friend-or-foe system already conducting target recognition, I ran through the door one of the first, following two ponies in black energy armor.

"We need help! Beta Group, I repeat, we ask for help!..."

The hexagonal barrel of a buckshot gun hovered in my magic. Without answering the request for help, without saying a word, we raced along the gray corridor of the stable. A huge armored hatch in the form of a gear appeared ahead, which gradually began to move to the side. As soon as a small gap formed, a pony immediately appeared in the crack, and immediately fell, mown down by a burst fired into his back. He dropped the radio, splattered with blood.

"Help..." he wheezed. "I don't want to die!!.."

Without paying any attention to the wounded man, the six of us rushed with even greater zeal into the opened passage, which immediately began to close, but before we were inside, a metal flask flew forward.

There was a terrible explosion. I was deafened. A bright light hit my eyes. I felt my owner pressing the trigger again and again (even though nothing was visible), jumping from side to side like crazy, and then she bumped her side into the wall and lay down in the corner, covering her face with armored legs. Somewhere nearby a grenade exploded, then another, and something else powerful ... here and there either bullets or shrapnel hit my armor, making me mentally flinch from the sharpness of the blows, but the pony did not pay any attention to this, continuing to fire, already from a prone position.

Slowly my vision returned and I saw two dozen stable guards... dead, torn to shreds, smeared across the floor and walls. If anyone here was blinded, it certainly wasn't all of us. A pony in power armor walked forward, looked us over, pulled the lever to open the stable's main door, and looked up at the camera on the ceiling.

"What are you standing there for?! Reload, re-drug yourself, let's go!!!"

The taste of dash got into her mouth again, and the unicorn flew after everyone, but suddenly stopped. She looked at the locator, where there were several yellow marks. The pony entered the room, pointing a gun in front of her.

“In the closet. Quickly,” she commanded through my lips, looking at several young foals and three ponies in overalls in stable “45.”

They complied, and after closing them from the outside, the unicorn locked the cabinet with a padlock using a hairpin and a screwdriver.

"What are you messing around with there?" said the stallion with a bazooka on his shoulder, standing in the doorway. "Help us to unlock the door to the Overmare's office, we don't want to blow it up."

The ponies stood in a semi-circle around the solid iron-concrete-ceramic door, waiting to see what I would do. I pulled a bundle of wires out of the panel next to it, and then there was a flash of lightning and... "whoa!" The door opened, and I stepped aside, allowing the others to enter.

"Alpha Group... where are you?..."

The radio answered with silence. I walked in. In the Overseer's office lay two corpses, dressed in the overalls of Stable 45. One of them suddenly moved.

“Did we complete the task?” asked the wounded man.

"Keep it up, fighters!" the pony said in a magically amplified voice. The second of the "fighters" was clearly already dead. "Wait for the third group to arrive, you'll be given weapons and..."

The commander saw that they were no longer listening to him. The newly-minted soldier stopped breathing.

"Well done, guys. We need more recruits like these two," I said, kissing the dead man's still warm forehead.

"Were these the last of the rebels? The rest are not on our side?"

"Yes, boss, we want to know if it's okay to kill everyone?"

"The answer is negative. We need to find the Overseer, - the stallion repeated into the radio. - Cleanup team, receive, find and capture the Overseer alive. I repeat: Capture the Overseer alive and unharmed. Kill only those who resist!.. Lime!"

The leader called out to Khlamka at the moment when she (I?) was completely immersed in a wall box filled with all sorts of equipment.

“Here!” the pony responded with my voice.

"Don't get lost! The fun is just beginning."

The two ponies clicked something on the overseer's terminal, and a warning sounded from the speakers in the office:

>Attention! Security system disabled!...

The stallion in power armor radioed the command for the second group to begin their actions. Everyone froze in anticipation. My hooves held the shotgun, and a cloud of magic added new rounds to the drum.

Suddenly, surprise and swearing, some orders were heard from the radio, and at one moment the airwaves exploded with clanging and roaring.

"What the?.."

>The security system is on.

- What do you mean bitch?!!

The bandits repeated the operation.

>Attention! Security system disabled!...

And again it sounded:

>The security system is on.

One of the stallions swore and looked questioningly at us, then back at the screen, which was flickering an indifferent green.

“They’ll die there!.. Do something, you freaks,” someone growled.

The guys at the terminal nervously typed commands into the console, but every time they managed to switch the system to the "Disabled" mode, an indifferent voice came from the speakers: "On."

Everyone froze in anticipation of something.

"Over..." the commander began, listening to the air. "Answer, come on."

The answer was silence, no one responded.

The commander bursted into a barrage of curses. "...Do you even understand what you just did you freaks?"

"WELCOME, GENTLEMEN!" came a strangely happy mare's voice, suspiciously similar to the one that had just issued system messages. It did not come from the radio, but from the same speakers from which the caustic "On" had come. "Sit back, we will now read out the list of news... you are in my Stable, degenerates. Whoever came to us with a weapon will die from it."

Everyone stared at the unicorn in black power armor.

"Listen here, cow: when we catch you... you will have to study what warm welcome means on our terms," even though the power armor helmet hid his face, I could feel him smiling from his voice. "You will have plenty of time to study"

No one answered. She must not have heard, or the silence was intentional.

The group of bandits raised their weapons in front of them excitedly. An earth pony in silver power armor, with a dark ruby on his chest, switched something on his three-barreled machine gun. The barrels retracted, revealing a single flamethrower muzzle. A small fuse lit up inside the black void.

The steel monster stepped towards the door, and when it didn't deign to open, he glanced sideways at me. Without saying a word, Hlamka ran up to the door and kicked the control panel with a spin, smashing it to pieces. The door opened, but only halfway.

"Come on, hurry up! Let's get out."

One of the commanders, squatting on his belly, was about to squeeze under the door, but only after bowing his head, he stood up, cursing at the door's construction and cursing me for not being able to make the passage normal. Pouring curses at me, he turned around with mechanical grace three hundred and sixty and kicked the long-suffering door control panel so hard that he not only smashed the remains of the panel, but also knocked out a significant part of the wall. Coming out through the hole at full height, he turned around to face us, and everyone hurried after him.

One of the lightly armored ponies stuck his weapon under the door, not wanting to wait in line, and crouched down, about to crawl through, but suddenly froze and sneezed. At that very moment, when he was supposed to stick his head forward, the door hit the floor with such force right in front of his nose that cracks appeared at the point of impact, and the top of the door was torn from its supports and hung, leaning on its side. Everyone froze, looking at the camera in the corner. Someone fired, the camera hung on the wires in shreds of plastic and metal.

"What were you saying there, about preserving the sacred door of yours?" the pony in silver power armor turned around, with the word "Hammer" and a burning skull with red eyes on the back of his helmet.

Carefully passing through the hole, Hlamka looked at the sparkling torn wires. Everyone understood that they were in enemy territory, but where to expect danger from now - one could only guess.

In the corridor ahead, a face in an armored helmet stuck out from behind an overturned Sparkle-Cola machine. Random bullets whistled past the armored commanders. A familiar sound came from my pipbuck. The world sparkled with the contours and numbers of the S.A.T.S., aiming at the enemy. The head was chosen as the target, all that was left was to use the attack, but a running "Hummer" suddenly appeared in the field of view, and the stable guard did not seem to understand that shooting at it was useless. The power machine jumped over the Sparkle-Cola machine on the move, slamming the stallion's armored side into the wall. His comrade got it from the power hooves, and he might have managed to run away, but the flared flame clung to him tightly, forcing him to scream in death agony. Even if he, battered, remained alive after such a raid, with broken ribs he will not be able to shoot much.

We stepped over the groaning, gasping stallion and headed deeper into the stable.

<-========ooO Ooo========->

Someone was crunching something. I opened my eyes and looked straight ahead, seeing Blast popping a few balls of popcorn into her mouth. She looked at me, and I looked at her, just like a game of "who can out-stare who?" Okay, let's try this.

Blast crunched on her popcorn and took a sip of Sparkle Cola, still looking at me. She blinked.

"What?" she asked, throwing her leg to the side. "Believe me, it's an amazing sight. The way you jerk from side to side, and kick the air with your legs."

I saw an open pack of aromatic chips on the table in front of me, and licking my lips, I rose above the bed, and taking some with telekinesis, I ate it with pleasure.

"I've watched that ball many times," Blast continued. "I also listened to the broadcast when you were there."

"How did we even manage to get inside?"

"You saw the ponies who opened the doors. What's so hard to understand?"

"Well, I mean, why? What could make a citizen of the stable let armed bandits in?"

"You did it. I don't know how, but it was you who went into the wasteland for long nights with only a radio, and returned to our village without strength."

I thought about it. I could see the night hills of the wasteland, the crumbly earth under my feet, the cool wind. I imagined the figure of the radio hovering in front of me. For some reason, I began to think that all this was about me, that it was my real memory, but I was also sure that I had simply made it up based on Blast's words.

“I think I’m starting to remember something...” I said, stroking my face with my foot. “It feels like I remember all of this, but it’s like something has changed in me.”

"Certified, compassionate psychologist Still Blast is listening!"

"Oh, stop it, I might be trying to catch a flash of insight and understand who I really am..."

She smiled, and I thought even more. Junk... Raider, drug addict, likes to look at the fillies' groats and get drunk. Mary... the teacher of Stable Two, however, is already a drug addict, raider, about the fillies' groats we still need to reason about, although this topic is juicy in every sense, even too juicy.

I tried to remember Stable Two. Gray corridors crawled through my mind, a school with hordes of foals, a cafeteria and an apple orchard, and then a wasteland. Carrion-eating dogs, that guy who had the misfortune of traveling with a fool like me, and a wooden peasant house. An attic, a rumpled bed and an empty portrait. Of all the things I remembered, only the wasteland seemed even remotely plausible. Did this Velvet Remedy really exist? Had I ever even been to Stable Two? What did it all mean?

Doubts...

“Listen, I need a mirror,” Blast dipped her foot into a nearby pile of trash, and boom! There was a mirror. I looked at my reflection first. Everything was unchanged, except for the bruises that were healing from another portion of healing potion. I pointed the mirror at my cutie mark. “There! Look! I’m definitely not going crazy. I’m the teacher of Stable Two, and my name is Mary, not Trash. You can see my cutie mark, right? Every pony has a unique symbol! So why are you still trying to convince me that we know each other?”

"Because your name, Mary, is just another attempt to distract yourself from real life. Listen, I've been through this before, and I'll go through it again. If necessary, I'll make you remember what you need to remember! And about the cutie mark, you know, I realized a long time ago what your special talent is. You have no inner world. You are a soulless creature who doesn't give a damn about everyone around you. You always do what you want, with whomever you want and how you want. That's probably why I fell in love with you, idiot me. Let me love Venik in front of you tonight, and you'll watch. I wonder what will come of it. Come on, you don't believe that you're Junk? Take a close look at this symbol! What do you see?" Blast took the mirror, letting me examine my cutie mark. Green meadows, a clear stream and a golden sun in the sky with rare clouds.

“Now just go and look at the wasteland,” she continued. “It’s quiet there now, of course, we’ve cleared the perimeter as best we could. But usually, dear, wherever you go, it’s such a mess that you could shoot yourself. So what I’m getting at is: if your mark meant anything, the world would be at least a little better than it is. But since you don’t care about anything, including me, know that you’re an empty shell, a puppet, you probably don’t even know whose will you serve and what you want from life. You’ve come up with another load of nonsense and are trying to live by it. Go ahead, go ahead.

In a stupefied stupor, I looked at Blast as she, almost on end, shouted some nonsense in my face.

"Do you really want to know what I think? Well, even if I really am nuts thinking I'm a teacher, I'm not a lesbian! Maybe I was your lovey-dovey pony before, but now I've completely lost my mind. I'm certainly not a super-fighter for justice in the wastelands, but I do have some ideals. So, could you do us both a favor and go love yourself? Literally. If you think I'm going to moan be yours in bed right now, you are a complete idiot. Go find yourself a stupid guy and love yourself with him until you lose your pulse! What a nightmare it is to listen to your chatter. Honestly, I've always dreamed of getting home and having a good scream.

I waited for her to answer. In fact, although I spoke confidently, I was now truly confused. I had forgotten not only who I really was. It seemed that I had forgotten everything. Everything had become meaningless and fiction. Reality was different, harsher and more immoral than one could even think. Trying to figure out what to do next, I breathed heavily, looking at the black pony, on whose face, two lilac eyes burned like small lights from under thick bangs. A smile slowly crept across her face.

"Now I see that you are mine. The real you. You know, you don’t have to love me yourself. If it’s such a favor to you, then why bother? What just happened between us is enough for me. Welcome home, Lime. I’ve been waiting for you. With all my heart.

Note: New level?

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