Fallout: Equestria - A Good Teacher

"You probably don't even hear!.. you won't hear. I'm late."

Waves of light dust rolled over the rusty rails. Catching up with their fleeing stripes with your gaze, you could see how in the distance they made a sharp turn and continued their way in a straight line and finally merged with the dirty yellow outlines of the hills.

Having covered the intended route in less than half an hour, I found myself at the concrete platform of the railway station. Once upon a time, the hubbub of dozens of ponies bustling about in their daily joys and worries could be heard around the area. Now, only an eerie creaking could be heard, coming from somewhere in the yard, creating a mocking semblance of the liveliness of this place, which only emphasized the desolation and destruction.

I hurried across all four pairs of rails. The creaking of my pipbuck cut through the wind noise, sounding unconvincing but still giving me an unpleasant feeling. As if it would be better if I moved my rump a little more quickly as I crossed each new rail line. This computer didn't really tell me how serious my health was, and I don't think it really knew. The "Irradiation" label, with its image of a smiling filly surrounded by a halo of undulating rays, didn't bode well.

Apparently there was no one here. The crumbling asphalt was overgrown with short, pale green grass. Gusts of wind were blowing brick chips off the administration building.

The power of the Ears-on-the-Mow locator was enough to scan an area within a radius of about forty meters horizontally and slightly less in spherical coordinates above and below. Now, having scanned the area, it had identified about a dozen yellow marks and four red ones. This could mean anything.

I stood close to the closed door, trying to listen, but nothing could be heard except the single note of the wind scraping across the disheveled roof.

I walked around the entire building twice, looking into the windows, looking around and checking the locator, but I was unable to confirm or deny the danger.

Empty warehouse shelves stood forlornly behind a broken display case. Broken iron boxes littered the floor.

I telekinetically felt for the bullets in the gun's barrel, made sure the safety was off, and stepped inside. The floor of the room, not unlike the street, was littered with various evidence of the fruitful presence of needy wastelanders.

The medicine cabinet with the Ministry of Peace emblem, which was supposed to be hanging on the wall, was torn from its rightful place along with its hinges and lay on the floor, mangled by the methodical blows of a heavy piece of granite. Whoever was here earlier really desperately wanted to get to the contents.

Nearby, by a concrete wall with an empty notice board, lay a pile of ashes from a fire, discarded cigarette butts, and some rags that had served as someone’s bed.

The floor was divided into several rooms, but all the internal doors seemed to have been burned for firewood and... one tin, homemade door was intact and closed, blocking the way to the room where the creatures marked by the locator were supposedly located. Their relation to the pony race was beginning to raise doubts, but it would be imprudent to deny it. The room should have been too small, given the distance to the outer wall. Most likely, some insects, rodents or birds found shelter there.

Treading as quietly as possible on the corrugated floor, I approached the door and tried to push it open slowly with a hoof. The thin iron door creaked and creaked as it opened into the darkness of a room with a wooden floor strewn with narrow holes. A couple of crumpled sacks lay on the shelves near the near wall.

One mark, a bright red one, slowly moved to the left of the door and stood right behind it, while the others, three more red and eight yellow, remained motionless. A thin layer of stainless metal separated me from the invisible enemy, and now even a kick from my hind legs could destroy this fragile boundary.

I roughly estimated where and how the enemy was positioned and pulled one of the triggers.

If the PP was simply deafeningly loud to my ears, sensitive to modest children's voices, then the gun should be called murderously loud. That is, you could die from the sound of its shot alone.

I staggered and stepped back a little. Gritting my teeth from the terrible flash of headache, I raised the gun, ready to shoot again, but as soon as the moment of complete deafness passed, replaced by a ringing sound, I made out a high-pitched scream. A shrill squeal, characteristic only of psychopaths maddened by fear. I was about to bring the gun to the door and fire a second shot, without leaving my safe position, but then I noticed how the mark jerked to the side. A second later, the figure of a small creature appeared from the semi-darkness, which immediately rushed straight at me with lightning speed...

* MEE-YA-A-AU!!! *

...and just as quickly rushed past, raising its fluffy tail, pressing its wide, pointed ears to its head, covered with thick, three-colored fur.

I didn't even have time to turn around, and the trace of this small animal, comparable in size to half of my front leg, was already cold and I probably wouldn't have started looking, or... but my dear Celestia, it's a cat! If it weren't for the locator, I would never have been able to determine that she was inside the body of the broken terminal. The little coward doesn't even suspect that I know where she's holed up.

I chuckled as I approached the metal case, the removable lid of which was very loose. I had caught her off guard again, but this time I had specific intentions.

"Poor thing, did I scare you?"

Bristling, hissing and flashing its predatory eyes, the ball of fur huddled in the corner at the back of the monitor, where torn cables and fragments of dull energy crystals were visible. I moved away in fear, but did not retreat far and only hid my weapon.

"I have something for you."

Using my hoof, I took a piece of dry dog meat out of my bag and, placing it on the edge, walked away. I wasn't going to eat it anyway. The cat treated the object that appeared in front of her with great doubt and continued to look at me. I also looked at her graceful figure, huddled in an iron box on the table.

I took off my saddlebag and started rummaging through it with my hooves, but after a minute I accepted the annoying fact: I had absolutely nothing interesting, except for old pieces of paper. I was too lazy to make paper toys, and I didn’t know how to do anything except airplanes. I didn’t have any toys. I didn’t even have a pitiful ball of thread, but the situation resolved itself: Just as I wanted to take the unappetizing meat back, just as I pulled it towards me with telekinesis, interest appeared on the predator’s face. The cat stared at the meat, and when I moved the meat again and again, finally pulling it from its place, I didn’t even have time to notice how a pair of tenacious clawed paws pressed the prey to the floor. A few jerks of the toothy muzzle, and the defeated meat was eaten without a trace.

Then the cat sat down again, tucking her paws in, just like I had been sitting! Her gaze changed strangely, expressing the deepest melancholy, so penetrating and sincere, such as I had never seen before in anyone. I suddenly realized that she was looking at my bag. I tilted my head and looked more closely at the worn Stable-Tec emblem with its yellow and blue colors and the number "02"

To my surprise, the cat whined something meaningful, and, taking a timid step towards me, froze as if she were not alive, tucking her front paw in, ready for the next step. I extended my hoof towards her. The cat approached silently and leaned her cheek against my leg, rubbed herself against me several times, and purred briefly. This was too much. I gently stroked the fabulous creature on the back of the neck.

"Were you all alone? Now everything is fine, you can..."

Suddenly the fluffy cutie squealed and disappeared from view. I stood up, blinking in offended amazement and looked around, not forgetting about the locator, which did not display any changes, except for one - I was unable to find that special mark that could belong to the cat. The barrel of the gun lay on my back, slightly lowered to the side, aimed exactly at the place where my new acquaintance had just stood. I inhaled the smell of gunpowder.

"Damn it!"

True! After all, when I stood up, the gun slid down a little. This domesticated purr knows where to expect a threat. But did she really run away just from the sight of a pointed gun? Will she really never come back?

The grain reserves found in the cellar had not been lying around for very long, the wheat was fresh and looked more beautiful than any treasure. "It's not much, but it should last for a couple of days."

The old iron steps creaked pitifully with rust with every step I took, so I moved my feet with extreme caution, mentally bowing to the stairs that had stood for two hundred years.

Having reached the first floor, I again noticed the slightly open door. Through a small crack, a shadow of darkness seeped into the corridor, lurking in the room like a monster.

I unslung my gun and checked the locator. The green monitor on my pipbuck had painstakingly drawn a map in a small radius around me, finding no one, but even that couldn't ease my caution. Even if the device could power on after so many long years of being buried among the bones (where I'd found it, having abandoned my Stable pipbuck under my bed) that didn't mean it was infallible. Who knew, maybe there was an enemy lurking out there in the dark that L.U.M. simply couldn't detect. I wasn't exactly willing to rely on a fancy watch and risk my life.

Current time

Balancing the gun on my back, I walked over to the stand with the train schedule and the map of the surrounding area, about to open the map in my pipbuck and make an update, but then I heard a quiet shuffling sound from the street. Small stone chips crunched silently under someone's hoof.

I turned around, aiming my gun, and time seemed to stop. I managed to see a face that expressed insolence, but also uncertainty and something else... hope? Before she disappeared behind the wall. Holy Celestia, it was a pony! Just like me, which both pleased me and made me shudder.

The blood in me was almost boiling, and my heart was racing so fast that its beats merged into one continuous roar, trying to overtake each other. Carefully stepping to the side, keeping the doorway in my sights, I telekinetically felt for the targeting spell key.

"Hello!" came from outside.

“Well, hello,” I threw through the wall.

"I'm looking for something, and if you don't mind, could you please lower the gun?"
...
...
...

Breathing heavily, I stared absently into space. My legs were shaking. A damp, sticky cold was felt where the blood flowed from my wounded shoulder, making its way under my clothes.

I wanted to drop to the floor and rest, lean on something, hope for help and wait, but I stood firmly, putting my thoughts in order.

On the floor, in a pool of her own blood, lay a dead woman, clearly hinting at my own situation.

Still feeling the magic of the drug, I took control of the situation: It didn't take much intelligence to cut off scraps of fabric from my own cloak, but the wound didn't give in right away. The makeshift bandages fell off several times until I figured out how to secure them on all sides and tighten them. I managed to slow the bleeding enough to keep me from dying in the next half hour, and that was the most important thing.

Having admitted that my cloak was spent, I threw its remains aside without hesitation and looked closely at the dead woman's equipment. Her straw-colored mane almost obscured her dead pink eyes. The sight of her slit throat and the torn wound on her blood-soaked neck made me sick, and I tried to distract my attention with something else. The black jacket had traces of old bullet hits, and these were clearly not my bullets. It is also worth noting that I had never even hit it with my rifle. Over all her clothes, a polished bulletproof vest was worn, with scaly plates proudly emphasizing the contours of her chest. Despite all its beauty, it did not protect its former owner from death in any way; the burst from the submachine gun was critical and decided the further outcome of the battle.

It was hard to hold the shotgun. No, it wasn't even a shotgun. The raider (may Celestia save her sinful soul) was armed with a serious-caliber buckshot gun. It was a real gun. On the hexagonal barrel, some symbols of a techno-magical nature shimmered in the moonlight.

In the saddlebag she carried... "on her back? Just like me. There was a lot of junk. Hairpins, a screwdriver, bottle caps, and empty Dash inhalers! "Wow, four of those? Where did that come from? Do they make them around here somewhere?" There were a few large shell casings lying around nearby, I picked those up too, in case they came in handy.

Overcoming my disgust, I put on the dirty jacket and Stable 45 body armor, secured the trophy bag stuffed with wheat and my other things behind my back, and hung myself with weapons, imagining how I looked. I even tried to laugh, but the ringing notes died in my chest when a cutting pain gnawed through my shoulder, penetrating my entire body.

But neither the pain nor the vagueness of my plans in my head could diminish my joy. This is my victory, I am alive.

Note: New level!

Light weapons. The heavier they are, the easier they are to handle.

Bonus: Two-faced. No one will guess who you really are!

Even using the simplest weapons, you can deal serious damage.