Fallout: Equestria - A Good Teacher

"Share your smile, and it will come back to you more than once"

Having loaded a brand new magazine into my submachine gun, I spent half the night wandering in a certain direction, nevertheless looking around and shying away from the slightest sound. Without a guide, these places seemed completely alien, as if I had never been here. The endless expanses drew me in, draining my strength to the last drop. In the end, I just sat down in the middle of the wasteland, put my bag under my head and closed my eyes for a few seconds.

A sharp gust of wind woke me up, causing me to gasp in fear.
It had already become quite light around me, and without further thought I moved on.

The map was so full of names and notifications that I stopped paying attention to them. I was only interested in one thin line, which marked my last route. The main thing is not to deviate from it and everything will be fine.

By the evening of the next day I reached some kind of dump, crawled under something that looked like a roof, and tried to fall asleep.

I could only guess what other creatures would meet me along the way.

The screeching sound of the opening door made me shudder. I convulsively rushed with magic to the Z.P.S button, and hurriedly, as much as the time slowed down by the spell allowed, turned around, confidently squeezing the PP aimed at the closed door with my mind. The door remained closed.

Looking at her with distrust, recalling the sound I heard a second ago, I realized, " it was only the wind." An ordinary wind, of course, who would doubt it? It was time to get used to it. It was the rusty iron sheets that covered the main wall rattling. In fact, there was only one wall, since on the other side this tent was held up by a stone.

I managed to emit one magical splash, and looking around the ten meter radius of my shelter, I found only stones, only stones and sand, not reacting to my mental touches. Returning, I closed my eyes in another desperate attempt to sleep. " No. I can't sleep." Even partially separated from my body, drowning in thoughts like domes of the force field surrounding me, I still distrustfully embraced the howling of the wind with my ears, making sure that there was no threat. Again and again not believing in my safety.

Finally, I fell out of the S.A.T.S. and lay back down on the warm blanket. Partially covering my trembling sides with my soft and dry tail, I rubbed my cheek, numb from the cold, with my foot.

I didn't want to spoil myself with a bed anymore, even searching for rotten mattresses would have been an unjustified risk. Praise Celestia at least that I managed to stumble upon this construction of rags and boards that would at least somehow protect me from the wind and possible rain. I immediately stopped on this thought when a stream of cold air washed over my neck, and this happened because a hole had formed in the wall right in front of me. The rag was torn off and blew inside. I hurried to collect some sand and, having sprinkled the edge of the rag, fixed the hole in the wall.

The next morning I reached some checkpoint. There was a guard tower, probably (I hope) empty. I climbed up the concrete stairs and found a magazine with a dirty footprint. I barely made out the large print of the title - "Sniper Weapons" - and decided that I would definitely read it later, when I got my glasses.

Having put my bag down on the table, I decided to rummage through my gear, which I managed to find in Frost's things. I had two full magazines for the PP and thirty more 10-MM rounds, which made me very happy. A couple dozen bottle caps, hairpins, a screwdriver, flasks of water, some other useful things in battle like several inhalers with dash and... absolutely no food. We ate the grain yesterday. All of it, without a trace. "What did that mare say, the one from the stall? Tasty saddlebags?" We'll leave this option for the last resort, and now... the cocktail umbrella that I found in the burned-out plane. "How did it get here?" I don't remember taking it when I was getting ready to escape.

I took it and twirled it in the air, so that the red cherries on its white, completely untouched by time figure merged into one continuous strip, and suddenly a strawberry melted on my tongue, sweet jam with saliva sank down my throat.

"I'm sorry, what?"

My attention was instantly drawn to my tongue, which tasted a sweet, soft strawberry. "Impossible... this is crazy!" In the Stable, strawberries were an unspeakable luxury, and suddenly their taste was in my mouth. I began to remember, " When was the last time I got hit on the head?" and closed my eyes, running my tongue around my mouth, certain that the taste that seemed to me should disappear at any moment, but instead it only became clearer.
The rustle of water reached my ears, I felt warmth all around, and softness beneath me, I opened my eyes and froze, amazed by the view of the sea stretching out before me. "The sea... Real!?"

The waves were lapping at the shell-strewn sand. I turned, looking out over the water, and found myself lying on a blue rug, and next to me, on a white plastic folding table, was a glass with the same umbrella I had been studying a moment ago. A wooden toothpick was dipped in bright red juice.

Even though none of this was real, I wanted to feel the almost vanished taste of strawberries again, and I gave in to this desire.

I brought the unusually elegant glass to my lips, took a sip, and, putting it back, looked up. The sky was different. Small clear-blue lakes were visible between the clouds, like sand scattered in a levitation field. The clouds were all moving together from the sea toward the green mountains, at the foot of which stood a multitude of different houses.

A feeling of uncertainty between reality and this vision washed over me. It was warm and cold, fresh and dry. All this sudden obsession seemed to be trying to divide the parts of consciousness, memories, collected in my soul, to divide me, revealing in the meaninglessness of the gray walls surrounding me the greatness of its own meaning, drawing me into the depths of the memories hidden inside this fragile-looking thing.

Above me, at the edge of the cloud, the light intensified, and a bright fireball floated out into the middle

I felt its gentle, warming light on my skin... "Even if it's not real..." , but it's the Sun! And be it a memory, a hallucination or anything else, it's much more real than the pictures in the books. Fighting the burning sensation in my eyes, I looked at the bright golden disk with bated breath.

Suddenly it got dark, something blocked the sun, and someone took my cocktail! I blinked rapidly in amazement, and noticed that in front of me stood a chocolate-colored earth pony, whose white mane looked like a tuft of cotton candy stuck on her head.

Past days began to appear in my memory. Filling out paperwork. Packing luggage, and my snow-maned, chocolate-colored friend, with whom we, tired of office work, went on vacation together.

…but there was some kind of anxiety in the air, a premonition of something bad did not allow me to enjoy the fabulousness of everything that was happening.

A siren sounded from the coastal observation post.

"Hey! Do you hear that? - The pony lying nearby asked, standing up."

“What does this mean?” I said.

Several ponies resting not far from us were talking anxiously.

"…I don’t give a damn about the hostages!…" A menacing male voice sounded. I turned around, seeing a unicorn running towards the shore with a microphone in front of its face. "I know, I know everything, just kill them all! No matter how!"

"Oh, I don’t like all this."

"Get me all the rapid response fighters I have! Immediately!" He continued sharply, typing something on his pipbuck and stepping into one of the light waves that had washed up on the sand.

“Let’s get out of here?” the pony with my cocktail responded timidly.

A low hum reached me. From behind the mountains, winged machines rose into the sky. Everyone froze, watching them rush over the ocean among the clouds.

I could make out the voice of a mare reporting something to the unicorn.

"We... shhh... ...everything is lost!"

"Mini? What the hell are you doing there, Discord?!"

"... we... ...he has..." You could hear how hard and excitedly she was breathing, and something else, like the crackling of crumbling glass or growing crystals.

"What? You're interrupting..."

"…please, no!!!" came a scream, blurred by interference.

The surface of the water, far out in the ocean, rose up into a mountain in an instant, reaching all the way to the sky.

A shiver ran down my spine . "Run."

The inflated bubble turned white in an instant and exploded, throwing out a huge column of water. A split second later, the column dissolved into a growing, blindingly bright emerald fountain of fire. I closed my eyes, feeling as if a needle had been stuck into my eyes, and turned away, feeling the unbearable heat.

"Your!... Mother!..." the pony screamed. "The operation has failed!!! To everyone who can hear me: Get out of here immediately!!!"

A deep rumble sounded behind.

"Run. This second, turn around and run!!!"

And I ran, forgetting about everything.

Smelling the burnt wool, I noticed that I was wearing a robe, which, by the way, did not protect my neck and head. It seemed that my mane was smoking. Damn it.

A damp wind blew, doing nothing to ease the heat. The roar grew louder and suddenly became unbearable, as if the earth itself had opened its throat and roared in pain.

Although I did not know for sure what had caused all this, I could not care at that moment, when the ceiling of boiling water, blocking out the sunny sky, fell upon me. All thoughts instantly turned into an unspoken scream. Thrust into agony, I burst into screams and, finding myself in water up to my head, I immediately felt like I was swallowing liquid fire. The water was devouring me from the inside. It tossed me from side to side on the waves, and gnawed at me like a shapeless titanic monster. With an effort of will, I made a jerk and rose above the surface, and suddenly someone pulled me out of the water.

"Leave her, idiot! We're all going to die!!!"

Someone was shouting something back, but I couldn't hear anymore. I didn't feel any pain, nothing, like I was falling asleep.

I was lifted onto a plane. Somewhere something exploded. Ponies and some strange bipedal creatures were bustling around and screaming, and I just lay quietly, unable to even breathe, feeling like I was dying.

Explosion. Fire. The cocktail umbrella fell at my feet and everything disappeared.

I heard my scream, breaking through the sleepy delusion. My whole body ached from the tension. I turned on my side, looked ahead, and noticed that I was lying in the dark, in a pool of some hot slime, and the screaming crackle of my pipbuck was echoing everywhere. I didn’t understand what had just happened and how I had ended up here, I was worried about only one thought: “ RADIATION!!!”

I jumped up like crazy and inhaled with all my might, immediately regretting it. Some kind of prickly dust got into my lungs, making me cough, inhaling even more dust. I took a couple of steps to the side, leaned my side against the wall, and turned on the pipbuck backlight. There was some kind of puddle next to me, giving off a green glow from my pipbuck.

I quickly tore off one of the sleeves of my cloak, which remained dry, and having made some kind of bandage for my face, I took a breath. Pipbuck continued to scream.

Moving forward in the cave, feeling everything around with magic, I somehow got rid of the slime that stuck to my side, legs and chest. The bandage did not provide significant protection and could not help me, I held my breath.

I felt an invisible wind that was shaking the pitiful spark of my life, threatening to extinguish it. Not a single breath more. My lungs were still burning from the first one.

"Don't breathe... just a little bit more... just a little bit more," I tried to persuade myself. "You're a big girl, be patient."

Suddenly, someone's shadow flashed in the darkness. I stepped forward and couldn't believe my eyes. " Purlyka? What is she doing here?"

The cat's eyes flashed at me and she ran past, disappearing into the loose darkness of the underground corridor. I rushed after her, trying not to lose sight of her tiny silhouette. " She must have found the way somewhere."

A thin strip of the world shone with light as I turned into a small corridor, blocked by wooden supports, with a patch of cloudy sky visible in the ceiling. " Surface! " The cat flew up one of the beams and disappeared into the hole. I tried to grab the edges of the hole, but they were collapsing, and I began to deliberately crumble the ceiling, creating a larger and larger mound beneath me when I finally managed to climb up.

Having climbed to the surface, I began to tear off my clothes and roll around in the sand, cleaning off the remains of the brown radioactive muck. My lush mane had absorbed a serious amount of this mucus, and finding myself at the opposite entrance to the watchtower, I rushed to my things, grabbed a knife, hastily cut my hair as short as the knife's sharpness would allow, and washed my head and face with drinking water, not sparing water for my entire body.

However, even with all my efforts, the pipbuck still didn't stop crackling and I froze, listening to myself. The burning sensation from the dust in my lungs remained, although otherwise I felt quite normal.

"What will happen to me now?"

Frost was right. I will die, death waits patiently for me, knowing I'm not going anywhere. Here, or at the stall entrance, anywhere. Sooner or later I will die. It's very scary. What am I doing here? Good question. If I came to die, then I'd better go back to the stall, where I'm still needed.

Velvet Remedy?.. She left. Left me! Why do I need a sister like that? Let her solve her own problems. Let her go to Discord. Let her go to hell!

The damn rain was still falling. It would make my clothes heavy and stick to my body, restricting my movements, and would easily suck out my precious warmth, taking everything away. Rare peals of thunder disturbed my hearing. As long as it was raining, I had no choice but to wait here.

“Where am I actually and how did I get here?”

I vaguely remembered the outlines of train cars, the stern faces of the city guards, the worried residents. I was going somewhere, but something was wrong. Something united all the ponies around me. They were afraid of me.

I remembered the past few hours as one continuous mess of colors. As if the artist had been so inspired that he painted several pictures at once on one canvas, one on top of the other, and again, and again...

I remember pounding on the door of Stable Two, my exhausted front legs smashing against the cold metal. I remember the door control panel, torn and useless, and the video camera staring at me indifferently the whole time.

I looked at her with pain and annoyance. " This is my house! Let me in!!!"

Did the person on the other side really have no sympathy? Hlamka was right and was probably laughing at me from the sky right now. The situation seemed so absurd that I was speechless and there was nothing left in my thoughts except despair.

At the edge of the pipbuck's backlight, a unicorn skull was visible, cracked and withered.

I wanted to cry, but there were no tears. I wanted to drink, eat, and most of all sleep. My strength was exhausted...

I remembered that New Appleloosa was very close.

The surprised face of the merchant. My trembling hoof reaching for the magical anti-radiation medicine and these words. Sticky, disgusting:

"Get her away from me."

I could have left, lay down and slept, forever, remained bones in the desert, but I made a different choice.

"I will not give up. I will not just lie there and wait for death! I will fight. If I die, I will do it screaming and laughing. That way, my death will not be considered a defeat."

If I had an enemy in the wasteland, now he is gone.

Gunfire roared. Pipbucks croaked with targeting spells. A pony darted around like a shadow, exposing guards to their own comrades' fire, stabbing and sending deadly bursts of SMG fire when and where needed.

It all happened by itself. I didn't remember the details, as if it wasn't me at all, but a completely different mare.

I saw Velvet Remedy's frightened face standing among the dead store guards. She wanted to talk to me about something, but some angry ponies who were with her prevented us. " They took my Velvet from me."

I remember how I was trying to prove something to the city guards who had arrived in time to hear the shooting. I remember how I got into a fight with them, and under the threat of being shot, they drove me out of the city. Whether they believed me at least a little or not, it didn't matter now.

The rain pounded the roof. I could taste blood on my tongue. Something had flowed straight into my lungs, clogging them from the inside. I gasped in fear and coughed, freeing my breath, spitting out some bitter-sweet abomination.

"Oh, what happened?"

I licked my upper lip, moistening the itchy cracks, and rose to my feet. A thousand needles struck my head, and everything went black.

"Ah-h-h Celestia," I moaned, clutching my hot head with my front hooves. I found myself on the floor. I was shaking all over.

"Head, what's wrong with you? As long as you're in pain, you'll be a head, so stop."

Breathing heavily, I looked along the floor in front of me. I didn't want to look anywhere else. The oppressive sensation spread throughout my body, forcing my perception to focus on my stomach. Something inside twitched, bubbled, and rushed upward. Frightened, I rose to my feet, and immediately bent over, mouth open, not resisting, as a stream of liquid rushed through my throat, crashing onto the floor.

It was as if I had been turned inside out. My insides calmed down, but for some reason I didn't feel any better.

My stomach ached from the tension. Warm splashes of the goo still stuck to my legs. Less than a minute later I threw up again, and finally, after that, I felt relief.

The pain gradually subsided, but my vision was still poor.

My mind reached into the bag, dug through several full magazines for the submachine gun, a mountain of large-caliber buckshot cartridges, healing potions and RadAway, but did not find any inhalers with dashes there. " Where did they go?" A belated memory arose in my consciousness, along with a prick of headache: "Indeed, why not? Here you need even more than one... say... THREE"

Did I really do that? Three at once?
There was blood on my face, but it didn't look like it was mine.

There was some kind of weapon standing against the dirty gray wall. I looked closer and saw magical symbols, sparingly emitting moonlight. "Raider's shotgun? Where did that come from?"

The image twitched before my eyes. When I shifted my gaze, the picture was delayed, remaining in the same place for about a second.

Shivering from cold and exhaustion, I just lay on the floor all day.

"Velvet... I found her. She. Was. Here."

Note: New level!

Bonus: Mutation! One of your traits has morphed into something else.

Lost feature: Glasses.

Feature gained: Fast Shot - you shoot a little faster, without wasting time on unnecessary aiming. Something will definitely fly where it needs to. In addition, shooting in bursts now takes the same number of action points as single fire.