Fallout: Equestria - A Good Teacher

by Thunderbrd

Rating: teen
Tags: Violence, Sad, Thriller, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Other, Fallout
Length: 49849

A unicorn raider with broken sense of reality and her survival in the wasteland

Shooting, drugs and sex. A unicorn mare comes out of her nuclear shelter, and life happens. Nothing special, in the style of classic post-nuclear war, with a taste of radioactive isotopes...

This is a story for those who are tired of crowds of unique unkillable characters, very easy-level enemies and first aid kits with ammo under every rusty bucket.

Notes on the story:
"I won't give up. I won't just lie there and wait to die! I'll fight. If I die, I'll do it screaming and laughing. That way, my death won't be considered a defeat."

Published 2024-07-09 14:30:01 UTC
Last updated 2024-07-12 08:39:31 UTC

Chapter 1: Intro: A road of her legs

Holding the gun in the snowy-smoky light of my magical thought, I stood by the wall and pushed the door with my foot. For about a minute I listened to the breath of the wind, and only then I did dare to look inside.

Before me appeared a pile of rubble from the upper floors, covering most of the room. If there even was something valuable here before, now it would be unreasonably difficult to get to it.

I walked down the corridor and came across a staircase to the second floor, but having climbed only halfway, to the window, I decided to abandon this idea. There was no further way: the ruined staircase bared its red needles of reinforcement, threatening me for excessive curiosity.

Come on, two bags of grain is already very good, what else do I expect to find in the ruins that is more valuable than food?

The window captured my attention. Time had not been kind to it: the frame had rotted, crumbled, and now lay quietly in the shards of its glass. Nothing lasts forever. Everything, except perhaps time itself, sooner or later comes to an end.

I stood right by the window. The same clouds with their grayness. A strong stream blew around my face, pressing on my glasses, ruffling my mane. I brushed my hair out of my eyes and looked into the distance, at the path I had taken. Everything was getting dark outside. The clouds stood above the black wasteland like a stone ceiling, greedily absorbing the heavenly light, leaving us with almost nothing. They seemed so close that they were pressuring the entire world beneath them with themselves, while in fact they were hovering in the sky heights, so far away that all that was left was to reach out to them in a senseless attempt to touch their silent greatness.

Going back down to the exit, I decided to go into the waiting room, where once upon a time there were many intertwined voices, carried away by the bustle of life, a life from which only emptiness remained, and only the wind disturbed its dead silence.

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, from the street, I heard a quiet shuffling. Small stone chips crunched silently under someone's hoof.

I turned around, shifting the gun, and time seemed to stop running. I managed to see a face that expressed tension, but also uncertainty and something else... could it be, hope? Before she disappeared behind the wall. Holy Celestia, it was a pony! The same as me, which, both, awakened joy in me and threw me into flatterful fear.

My blood was almost boiling, and my heart was racing so fast that its beats merged into one continuous noise, trying to overtake each other. Carefully stepping to the side, keeping the doorway under gun`s sight, 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?"

She can't see me, can she? This wall is still standing for a reason, it would be hard to shoot through it.

“Let’s say so. What next?” I said, swinging the gun in the direction of the empty dorway. “Shall we part ways? If you don’t mind.”

"Of course, you can go, but I still have some work to do here – a quest..."

"Okay," I said, wiping the pipbuck screen where the marker displaying the location of the interlocutor had frozen. No words could express how happy I was that her mark was green.

"A stupid quest to be clear. Where have you ever seen an elite intelligence officer tasked with pulling a cart! A ca-a-art damn it."

"Oh yeah!" I said, laughing almost sincerely, lowering the gun. There was still a wall separating us. A concrete and brick, reinforced wall. If this is exactly the condition needed for a heart-to-heart talk with a random stranger, then I don't mind. "Where are you from? I'm from Stable Two."

Did I really tell this secret to a stranger? Admitting that you are a shy rag piece who can't see beyond her own nose and believes every word is better than saying that your whole life has been spent in the comfy walls of a nuclear shelter.

"Really?" she said, and then the unicorn's head appeared from behind the wall. I flinched in surprise, but didn't have time to raise the gun, or maybe I just didn't want to shoot?

The pony looked at me searchingly, and then disappeared. Could I shoot? There was a muttering, and then the unicorn continued out loud: "Oh, yeah! I thought the Second would never open. If our people find out, my wallet will be a little lighter... You know, why don't you come with me? We'll drag the cart, it's easier together!"

The unicorn entered the room. I tensed, but I didn't see any weapons. Following the sleeve of her black armor-plated jacket to her pipbuck, which glowed a faint green monitor, I saw the Stable-Tec emblem on her flak jacket.

"Stable 45?"

"Yes. We unsealed it recently… we founded an outpost in a village nearby. Of course, we don’t have patrols yet."

"Wow. They don't have patrols. I'm one of the first here, you know, and it turns out you're already exploring the wasteland."

"You have a serious gun," she praised my gun. I looked at my barrel, lowered almost to the floor, then at my companion, behind whose back I could see an unusually wide, shiny metal of some kind of weapon.

“Who are you anyway?” I asked.

"I used to be in security and finally ended up in long-range reconnaissance. You can brag about that kind of work, freedom and all that. But in reality, it turns out that you're constantly dragging something back to the base. You find it, and then you drag it. In short, it sucks."

The grey pony gestured actively, expressing boredom.

"To tell you the truth, my stable didn't open. I ran away," I admitted. Hearing this, she beamed.

"Oh, so that's three times better! First, I met you. Second, I don't owe anyone any caps now, because I haven't lost yet!.. And third, you'll tell me how to get into "Stable 2" or just take me to the Overmare so that we can form an alliance between our stables."

Her pink eyes expressed complete confidence in her good intentions.

"It's a whole day's journey to the Stable. I'm looking for my sister, she's probably in trouble."

I shifted from foot to foot, looking back at the window under the ceiling and the iron table that stood against the wall.

“We will take care of your sister and everyone else, but first we need the canisters.”

What in Celestia's name does she mean? What does it mean, 'take care of everyone'?

"Look in the neighboring wreck. However, I don't think you'll like the junk you'll find there."

"Do you have any empty flasks? And don't say junk. My name is Junk. Quite a name, believe me. It's annoying. Okay? Let's go."

"And I am Mary…" I doubted. The unicorn looked at me steadfastly, gesturing to me to come closer. The mark blinked yellow, and then turned green again. Her mark blinked yellow! It could mean anything. "I am truly sorry, but…"

“You’re so boring,” she interrupted.

A quiet flash from the pipbuck monitor bathed the unicorn's silhouette. The familiar click of the S.A.T.S. (or Stable-Teck Arcane Targeting Spell), indicating the acceptance of the action, sounded from an unfamiliar distance. It was the click of not my aiming spell!!!

Overthrowing the heavy iron table as a shield in front of me, I fired my gun. At that very moment, a return shot clanged. Large stones hit me in the back.

“Are you still alive there or something?” the mare asked in an innocent voice.

Without saying a word, pressing myself to the floor, I snatched the submachine gun, and raising it above the shelter, I clicked the trigger extremely briefly, orienting by the position of the rapidly approaching red mark. The weapon jerked, screaming a few shots, but I could not see the result of my attack, and all attempts to bend my gaze over the horizon would be useless.

I looked at the ceiling, past the metal surface of the table that had become my protection. The radiation counter on my pipbuck was clicking nervously as I pressed it to the table. "Shut up. Shut up. Shut up..." I whispered through clenched teeth, holding the gun convulsively, shaking it in the direction of the blip reddening on the locator.

Something metallic fell to the floor. The mark froze. Did it really hit?

“How are you?” I asked into the ringing silence.

"All ok. Let's continue. Come on, you first, come out," the opponent responded.

“Yeah, and then you’ll want a child from me,” I quipped.

"So, I'm waiting!"

"Just don't say I didn't warn you."

There was silence for about a minute. Understanding came to me. She also has a pipbuck, which means she sees me in the same way with a red mark on her locator. She sees me, which means she can aim!

"Come on. What, you weak, huh? Are you scared, you creature? Just a sec... Just wait, wait..."

There was an electric crackle of magic, and the next moment everything around was drowned in light and thunder. All my hair stood on end, and the table became so hot that I had to move away from its sparkling, fiery red surface.

It was her lightning!!!

I felt a blow, gasping in fear I touched my head but couldn't find my helmet. Through several bullet holes, an overturned iron shelve was visible, from behind which, with a cocked shotgun, a pony was cautiously peering out.

Stupidity. No, madness: to rely on Celestia or Luna, to ask for their help, in moments like this. When the metallic death clanged again, causing the table to shudder almost imperceptibly, piercing it without the slightest resistance in the place from which I had just cleared out. No. I could thank only myself.

I started digging through my bag, trying to find something that would magically be my salvation. Jackpot! I had a pink inhaler with a combat drug in my hooves. Without thinking, I took a drag.

Immediately, I felt a surge of strength and confidence. My hearing returned, pain in the back of my head became louder, but I didn't care anymore. I knew exactly what was happening.

The table was still hot. I lifted the edge of the helmet above the table. A moment later, the helmet was blown off by buckshot. Its half, with a fragment of broken protective glass, was found in the corner of the room, riddled with holes. Well, it had served its purpose.

"Are you completely unhappy with my company? Why don't we both go away alive?"

"Why don't you just die? You're annoying me," came the reply.

I activated the targeting spell, and, using only the acceleration of reaction to aim, without rushing to limit my actions with the program, I looked out from the shelter, raising the gun.

My chances of making a headshot in this dash, even from ten meters away, looked ambiguous. However, the combat aiming spell also has a special function that allows you to simply shoot at the silhouette of the enemy.

In this case, the chance of a successful attack increases a lot, and it is practically impossible to miss. It is impossible, just as my enemy could not miss, having already aimed at my face at that moment. Green light, the click of her targeting spell... and only Celestia knows what miracle helped me to cancel my aim and fall down.

I was kicked by the shoulder, and found myself on the floor. She got me...

At that moment, I decided I had never felt pain before. She had hit me. Shot me like some kind of animal! I wanted to scream, but that would only please the enemy. Instead, I raised the gun above the cover and fired one shot.

Grimacing in pain and frustration, I tried to load a new cartridge, but telekinesis wouldn't obey. Half a dose was clearly not enough, but I didn't have more.

“You fight well, sniper,” a mocking female voice sounded.

I licked my shot shoulder and pressed it with my hoof, dropping blood and tears onto the floor.

To hell with the Stable, to hell with the cart with this damned fuel. Was it really impossible to come to some peaceful agreement? What the hell does she want from me? My weapon? If so, why didn't she try to kill me right away? Maybe she needed my trust? Then what the hell?! Damn it

The table couldn't hold the hit again, my bag got caught. From the large holes left by the buckshot, the grain started slowly raining onto the dirty floor. I wanted to cry, and I cried.

Stable 45 - Friends. Stable Two - Home... empty thoughts, empty hopes. Now only one thing mattered: The red mark displayed on the screen, which began to approach almost imperceptibly.

She came closer, which means she came out of hiding. She is vulnerable.

I growled, blinked away tears, and, having inserted a cartridge, raised the gun, firing a volley from both barrels. A terrible recoil pulled the gun out of my magic, and it crashed into the wall. The red dot jerked from side to side, but remained in sight, having approached to a critical distance. Without missing the moment, I grabbed the SG, and waving it, pressing the trigger all the way, I shot a burst across the horizon.

A heavy shot pierced the table, and the floor tiles in front of me shattered into pieces. The enemy mark returned to its original position. I silently placed the empty pistol on the floor.

"Hey! Scum?! Do you have a healing potion there?"

"What does it matter to you?" I yelled.

"I want to make sure you kick the bucket. Catch!"

The grenade rolled past me on the floor. There was no time left! I threw my telekinesis at it to throw it back, and then groaned in frustration and relief. It was an ordinary tin can!

— BOOM!

The mare laughed hysterically.

Adjusting my glasses that had fallen off, I carefully peered out between the legs of the table, battered by battle. Surrounded by various rubbish, the iron cabinet was still lay, with the imprint of a cloud of shot visible in its rusty wall. The mare remained in hiding, not even peeking out.

The floor beneath me was stained with blood. Leaning on my healthy shoulder, clenching my trembling jaws, I looked at the dropped cartridges and touched my knife. If there were no more bullets, I would have to fight.

For some reason, I was sure I had hit her. I couldn't tell if I had actually hit her, because I hadn't seen it, but I was sure I had. Just hit her, that's all. Maybe she was bleeding out right now, and... and would die!.. Before I. Probably. Or she could have attacked. In that case, I would rush into battle with what I had.

With each minute of waiting, my head grew heavier and heavier. I began to feel blood pooling behind my ears. Instinctively feeling my mane, reaching the back of my head, I felt a burning sensation from touching the marks of bullets sliding across my head. My shoulder was in worse shape, but it seemed to barely hurt. I would hold out. I would survive.

“Do you have foals?” I said unexpectedly for myself.

“No. And you?” she answered unnaturally calmly.

"Actually, I was training other people's foals in my stall. I had no time for it."

"Stable... to be born and raised in a Stable?! People like you are the envy of everyone! It's me who doesn't have the opportunity to have children."

"Why?"

"I once caught a candy in my tommy. So hard that it went right through. My former employers patched me up somehow, but they said that this is it. Now I'm as sterile as a stable toilet! No need to worry about the foals."

"That's terrible! I'm sorry. I'm sure you would have had wonderful foals."

"Pity? Ha-ha-ha. Better shut up and listen. Even if I wanted children with all my heart... even if I could, isn't..." here she coughed, "madness? To raise them in this nightmare."

“Probably…” I agreed.

"And it would seem, why live then? But you still have to live for some reason, otherwise the bastard with the scythe will get whats his."

"Listen... listen to me please!" I begged. "Let's drop this. Put away the weapons and talk nicely..."

She was silent, and I continued:

"If it's that important, I can actually take you to Stable 2. I'm pretty sure they'll let us both in. No need for anyone to die."

"Is it true?"

"Of course! After all, this is my home," I assured.

"Leave me alone" she snapped.

"But why?!"

"You know, I think its easier to gnaw the stable door open with your teeth. That damned armored door, capable of holding back a point-blank blast from a Heat-Megaspell Bomb, one of these they used 200 years ago to obliterate Equestria. Easier to eat through it with your own teeth, than trying to talk down that bitch in charge who's standing on the other side of the console... and calmly watches from the cameras as you and your friends die right in front of the door."

I briefly looked out from behind the table and saw her again for a moment. The blonde pony, wounded in the neck, looked straight into my eyes with hatred and contempt. In any case, at this moment, she was not pretending.

"I don`t believe you. This is a lie" Her horn was glowing? I tensed.

"Tell me your tales when you get to Heaven, along with Celestia and your dear friends from Forty-Fifth. You're more useful dead. Bye!" the bandit shouted. Behind me, the trigger of my empty submachine gun clicked. "Damn," she growled in frustration. My pistol hit the back of my head. I turned around for a second, seeing the pale white telekinesis of the enemy disappear around it.

The unicorn screamed and charged. I waited. The pony rounded my protective table and charged at me, her deadly horn, entwined with magical sparks, aimed at my chest.

Despite the speed of her actions, she had a certain predictability, as if she attacked only because it was necessary.

Clearly understanding what to do, I stepped to the side, kicked the unicorn in the chest, causing her to recoil and attack again, and, dodging the expected attack, swung the hidden knife towards another lunge of her natural weapon...

The unicorn tried to intercept the knife as soon as she noticed it, but the blade had already entered her throat to the base. The aggression on her white face was replaced by surprise. With her mouth open, the mare looked at me in fear when I, gritting my teeth, pulled the knife out.

I stepped away from the dying unicorn, letting her fall to the floor. The flickering glow of her magic tried in vain to hold back the gushing stream of blood. Finally, the pony went quiet, her pink eyes grew pale and the mark turned yellow, and after a couple of minutes it disappeared without a trace.

"Hush now, quiet now, its time to lay your sleepy head"

I felt almost no pity. It was just what had to be done. Either me or her.

Chapter 3: Prologue: Reasons and Recklessness

Two days ago

My true hope dissolved into silence, heavy and empty.

"For Goddeses's sake, what have I done?!"

My gaze rushed in panic to the huge armored door of Stable Two and drowned in darkness. But I knew she was there. Locked, a line between me and all life. Madness, but it seemed that with her whole appearance she was speaking to me:

"It's not too late to go back. You can give up on this idea."

Somewhere in the depths, a carefully wiped blackboard gleamed clean in the silver-metallic light. In the middle of my classroom, there was still a row of small desks, populated by light-colored foals who waited and hoped that I would support their curiosity, restlessness, and thirst for new discoveries.

It was gratifying to mentally examine familiar faces, but it all seemed so unreal that even my own imagination rebelled, beginning to change, acquiring completely different features, much more in line with reality.

"Boring, is she really not coming today?"

"Isn't it great? Now you can do whatever you want!"

My perfect sense of time could not lie, a minute ago a signal should have sounded above the low lifting door - the electronic clock showed nine thirty in the morning. I should have been there half an hour ago.

Watching the children from behind my desk, only occasionally looking out, I saw one of the students timidly rise, take the first book he came across from the shelf and go to the teacher's desk. Right here! I moved away from the edge, not knowing where else to run, pressed myself against the inner wall and froze. Little hooves quietly clicked on the floor.

"She's not there."

"Can you imagine that? The teacher hiding under the table. What a laugh!"

Someone snorted uncontrollably.

"We still need to check."

I desperately wanted to ask him to stop. To shout, "Just don't look under the table! There's no one here, really, no one at all!"

Actually, it wouldn't be a lie.

"Hello!"

A toothy smile appeared on the silvery face of the colt. The violet eyes, shining with joy, immediately drooped.

"Nobody is there."

The foal sat down at my table and began to read importantly.

"A long, long time ago, in the magical land of Eque-estria..."

I knew these words like the back of my head.

"Boring. Where is our teacher? It was much more interesting with her."

I took a step forward, another cautious step into the alien darkness, and my hoof brushed against something soft and cold and damp. A dim green light seeped from the device on my left foot, trying to illuminate the scrap of steel floor next to me. It was barely enough for me to recognize the blanket beneath my feet, worn thin by time.

I stopped and felt a light push on my shoulder.

A voice sounded in my head: "Take this, I'm unlikely to need it, but it could save your life."

The helmet attached to my neck swung, reminding me of itself, of the guard who had allowed me to leave.

I remembered why.

"Are you seriously going outside? Velvet Remedy? That psychopath, Littlepip, also promised to bring her back, and where is she?"

"I'll go after her, now. If you want, you can come with me, but I'm not forcing you and please don't interfere. I already have enough problems."

"So, that's it! There are clear instructions from the Overmare regarding such a situation."

"I'm not going to wait for the search party to come out! We could lose track of her completely!"

"To tell the truth, I've always liked Velvet Remedy's songs too... but going outside?.. Seriously? Is she worth it?"

"Yes."

"I wonder how many more crazy fans will throw themselves into Discord's mouth to return our nimble bird? Or do you think this is all a fun ride?"

"Not exactly. For me, everything is different... If Velvet listens to anyone, it will only be me."

The cozy semi-darkness of my room hid me from the bustle of everyday thoughts, not allowing the particles of other people's opinions that lived in them to discuss every second of my actions, and I didn't want to hear anyone but myself, considering what I was about to do.

On the island of light in front of me lay a worn, tattered notebook.

Prohibition. Law. Crime. Harsh and menacing words.

I couldn't even imagine what truth awaited me on these pages. The anticipation of something unknown inspired a slight delight, and drew me further, without even needing an explanation of why, Discord-damn it, I was taking such a risk. No one would come in here. The door was password-protected, no one would disturb me.

The cover of the book was skillfully decorated, as if it was already beginning to tell a story. A world flourishing under the hard-working hooves of ponies, embraced by the wisdom of goddesses - Princess Celestia, keeper of the daylight, and Princess Luna, guardian peace of the night... but what kind of a title is that? What does this "Fallout Equestria" even mean?..

Suddenly, an unpleasant signal was heard, meaning that someone was unsuccessfully trying to open the door to my room. I almost jumped up from the spot in fear. Blood rushed to my head, my legs pressed together. I looked at the closed door. It could be anyone! From cleaners to Stable loyalty inspectors, and the latter had an electronic card that allowed them to open any door without resistance...

I quickly hid the book under the blanket and, trembling all over, went to the door.

"I know you're there. Please open the door quickly."

Now I was flying, starting to type the password as I ran. That voice could only belong to one pony. The pneumatic door opened with a soft hiss, and Velvet Remedy darted past into the darkness of my room.

"Quickly, hide me!"

Without thinking, I opened my wardrobe for her, and closed it when the unicorn squeezed herself behind the door. The sound of running ponies' hooves came from the hallway.

"I see her!"

I froze. The last thing I wanted to do was let her down, after so many days of separation. I was ready to lie with any words, just to scare off the unwanted company, but, fortunately, the ponies rushed past, not paying any attention to the unlocked door, and soon fell silent somewhere in the labyrinth of corridors.

"They're gone," I said, opening the closet and stepping back to let Velvet out. "Towards the dining room, I think."

"Wonderful! Thank you, my gold."

"If you need to go..."

"They’ll be looking for me for at least an hour, and I’ll have to go through the entire Stable to get to my room... Can I spend the night at your place?"

"Ah?"

"If it won't cause any inconvenience, of course. I know you're busy preparing as usual."

"Inconvenience? You disappear for a whole week, then appear out of nowhere, and are going to disappear again? Ah! What's the rush?! I want to spend at least a little time with you," she smiled in response and securely closed the door with one click of the button, which returned the default password lock. With slight fatigue, I sank onto the bed. "What a joy that we won't have to go out."

She leaned over and suddenly hugged me, lightly touching my nape with her nose, and pressed her neck against me. Her graceful, smooth black throat was very close to my cheek. I imagined a song being created in it.

"How about reading? Tell me a story."

A book floated to me. That very one! Velvet sat down next to me.

“To tell the truth, I haven’t even opened this one yet...” If we're going to break the law, do it together! Excellent...

“Come on, let’s begin,” the black unicorn said furtively, understanding my excitement. I listened to her whisper, repeating it in my mind over and over again, enjoying that charming side of her voice that no one else knew.

I touched the book with magic and froze for a moment, stunned. The clouds of our magic touched! I saw, understood her soul. She was like water, warm and pleasant. The deeper I went, the warmer it became, and there was no resistance, only understanding and kindness. From the feeling of such closeness, I lost my composure. A small tremor passed through my entire body, tears of joy came from my eyes.

"I love you, sister."

With these words, I opened the book, and ancient symbols flashed before my eyes, carrying us somewhere into the darkness, in which only by holding on to each other could we stand...

"A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria... …there came an era when the ideals of friendship gave way to envy, selfishness, paranoia and the greedy division of territory and natural resources. Countries took up arms against their neighbors. The end of the world came much as we imagined it. No one cares about the details, the reasons – as always, are only in ourselves. The Great Purge took place: dark magic, a nuclear spark struck by a pony’s hoof, easily escaped control. A rain of flame from mega-spells poured from the sky. Entire lands writhed in agony, sinking to the bottom of boiling oceans. Ponies were almost wiped off the face of the Earth as a species. Their souls became part of the radiation background that enveloped the world with its blanket. Darkness and silence reigned on Earth…
Not long before, huge underground shelters, also known as "Stables", were built, where thousands of specially selected ponies were able to take refuge from the horrors of Armageddon... "

We have forgotten that day for the sake of the common good, but the heart remembers. We lost the sky that day, and the earth that night when we fell asleep in the stables, under her blanket.

“They knew. They knew everything,” I said.

"My room... My life here in the stable, in this cage we built to lock ourselves in, could be summed up on a single piece of paper. I don't know whether to be happy or angry that I was lucky enough to get here. I'm alive, but is that really life? What happened to my family that there was no room for? I feel like a doormat. The goddesses have turned their backs on us... Or died. It's too late to do anything about it. Dead, like everyone else in this abandoned world. And you, if you keep filling your pretty little head with these lousy thoughts, will go straight to the Overmare! I'm talking to you, writer. We don't need all these details."

The next page was torn out, and I had to flip through more than a dozen more torn, crumpled pages.

“Nobody wanted to listen to the reproaches of conscience,” Velvet exhaled.

I leafed through the damaged part of the book, turned over a whole page, it was blank, and the next one was also blank, and more, and more blank pages. Finally, the text appeared:

"I'm looking at the ceiling now, and I can't figure out who I am? What good have I ever done? My whole life in the Stable, as far as I can remember, I kept track of the equipment that was sent in for repairs, written off from the warehouse. I feel used. Useless. As if everything I did was worthless.

Is that all we can do? Sit here and hide?

Something strange is happening to me. At night I often see lights in the darkness, thousands and thousands of lights, all together they look at me with pity. And inside there is a fire, my own. It warms, but it seems to slowly fade, as if I am no longer a pony.

Before the bombs fell, I lived one day at a time, in fear, not imagining or afraid to imagine what surprise fate would prepare for me, but I lived, and here, locked up, my life is no longer a life at all. Most of all, I dream of seeing the Sun again.

I hear voices. Sometimes angry or pitiful, less often calm, but all doomed. They are alive, there, on the surface, we must help. I can't do this. Someone could have stayed, I feel it. I'm going to the surface."

We looked at each other anxiously.

Next were the marked entries:

" The first day:

Horror. Dead ponies everywhere. Especially at the entrance to the Stable.

By the river, a lame foal was running away from a huge lizard, I shot the lizard. The kid`s back legs were badly damaged. The left one was completely torn off, and the other one was badly wounded! Blood was pouring out like a stream. I used my healing potion. Although he will not be able to walk normally without one leg, it helped, now he will survive.

I have no bullets left.

Begi...

It burns! The rain burns like boiling water. I found shelter under the ruins of a bakery.

I still remember how my mother bought me pies here. I had to wait in line for a long time, but in return, I could play with other foals, and there was such a wonderful aroma everywhere... now there is none of that. I will leave my new friend next to me, I can't leave him alone.

This damned acid rain has been falling for five hours already.

Second day:

I brought the foal to the Stable, but the door is tightly closed! No one responds to my knocking and shouts, and I can't open it from the terminal either.

Why did they abandon everyone? Why can't they let just one more pony in? I'd happily share my room with him, and... there would fit at least a dozen more!!!

What should I do now?

We returned to the ruins of Ponyville and met a group of travelers.

I'm already fed up with the crackling sound of this stupid gadget on my leg.

I overheard something: it seems that my "friends" managed to find a good supply of canned goods under the rubble of the dining house, but since they don't say it, it means they are not very happy to share.

They demand that I let them into the Stable! But I can't, in Celestia's name, I can't, no matter how much I want to!..

Nobody trusts me anymore. Except the foal, of course, where else would he go?

They seem to have figured out that I stole a pack of dried cabbage. We better get out of here and fast.

We got off somehow and fell behind, now there are only two of us. Me and the foal.

We went to the mountains, towards the swamps, but it was almost empty. The hooves sank into the wet ash.

There is no food anywhere! My apple supply is running low and the grassy meadows are dead. Occasionally there are bushes that are more or less edible, but the taste is terrible. I doubt they will be of any use. I have tried gnawing on the dry bark of the surviving trees, but that is also nothing.

Hurray! Managed to get some canned goods. How do we open them...

The taste is disgusting. Is this fish or something?! It's all rotten. If I eat another piece, I'll definitely throw up.

Everything inside me is on fire.

Some flying creatures attacked. I ran for two hours, carrying the foal on my back, until they finally left me behind. We were very tired, resting right on the ground, under an overhanging rock. What if that acid starts pouring from the sky again?

It would be better if we continued to walk with those marauders.

I've been watching the sky, the clouds for a long time, and it... they never change. It's scary, but I had to agree. It hurts me to write about it. I can't, Celestia, I just can't. This is not my world. It couldn't change like that! I don't believe it.

Day three:

I woke up with my stomach trying to get out of me.

Tried to eat my saddle bags. Oddly enough, it was delicious. Natural material, but they were too tough to chew.

The screen of my fashionable watch says that I am sick, but in my opinion it is much worse that we have run out of drinking water. In these reservoirs it is like pure mud. We need to go back to the river"

The last two pages were smeared with a generous amount of spit, which soaked into the paper and dried.

i feel like im dying.the whole world is spinning.what a joy that i dont have a mirror.wouldnt want to see what my mane has turned into.

are you happy now?did you get whats yours?

the door to stable two is closed.

ill leave my diary on the threshold of the door.maybe someday these ignorants will open it and understand that there are those who need help"

Returning to my thoughts, feeling the softness of the bed, I did not know what to push off from. Everything immediately appeared before me in a different light. Stable Two is our home. Here we were born, here, in safety, we will spend our lives. Like cowards and traitors, abandoning their world to destruction.

I could almost feel the egoism in the air. Whatever I tried to grasp with my thoughts, everything led to a desire to satisfy my own interests that instantly became disgusting to the point of nausea.

With Velvet, I felt stronger, above it all. When we were together, nothing was scary, and we were going to do this together - get back to our world.

Then, having expressed all our enthusiastic ideas to each other, having roughly discussed the list of what might be needed and what could be obtained secretly, we went to bed in silence, words were no longer needed. But now, alone, cautiously stepping toward the bright side of the cave, I could hardly agree with this, or justify my naivety. Now that everything had turned out so strangely.

Gradually getting used to the darkness, I was able to make out the collapsed walls around me.

Something caught on my hoof. A stick. A wooden block with a sign covered in rocks. "These are bones!" Skeletons lay scattered everywhere!.. everywhere I looked. Why did they die? Starvation and radiation, I suppose. Did they just stay here and die... hoping for help from the Stable?

"I'm sorry"

I said a short prayer for their souls to Celestia and hurried towards the light.

If the story is true... what's out there? Velvet saw it and didn't back down. Maybe everyone was dead, no one was left? Then she'd come back, realize we were wrong, and come back. But that hardly seemed like a strong argument to her.

"Stop! I need to talk to you. Everything we know is not true, that is, not the whole truth."

"What are you talking about?"

"The world outside is dead! You know that very well. We can't go there. It's dangerous."

"It died. Because. We. Allowed it. You kept it to yourself and kept quiet?"

I felt so much pain in Velvet's quiet voice. It seemed like she was screaming. I had to convince her, everything depended on it.

"We're needed here. I didn't think about the school foals that night. I can't. I'm sorry, I just... we really should get back before we..."

She looked at me sadly.

She just looked! That already made me shut up. Her turquoise eyes seemed to ask: "Are you really the one telling me this?" In response, I stood my ground, asserting my position. Looking at her again, I was forced to shamefully lower my gaze to the floor, unable to look into those eyes for a second.

"For the first time in our lives we have a chance to do something really good, and... oh, Mary, for goddesses's sake, are you really..."

"Please, listen to me. We could die there!"

"We will all die someday."

"I'm scared. I didn't want to say this, but I'm afraid of dying. Everything there is burnt out and radioactive! Do you even understand? How could anyone?.. There are enough people here who care about us."

There was a long pause. I didn't like this silence and I continued:

"I'm not going anywhere. Understand me correctly, what about my students, my school?"

She looked down and said barely audibly:

"Stay in the Stable, don't do anything. I can understand, it will be better for everyone. But you, please, understand, I can't live like this anymore, I'm going outside."

"Wait!.. I need you.." but she left, not hearing or maybe not wanting to hear. "I really need you."

I couldn't stay in the stable any longer. Not now.

Moving forward alone, I cast aside any thoughts or feelings that would persuade me to return to a quiet life. I was determined to find Her, to ask for forgiveness for my stupidity, and it didn't matter much whether we returned home or stayed, pursuing the original goal. The main thing was that we would be together. Then and only then would everything be right again.

My only sister, I swear I will find you! I will find you and never let go of your trust again.

In front of me was a staircase leading outside. I approached it. My eyes were squinting from the bright light. My heart, like a tiny butterfly, was anxious, fluttering in my chest.

I am going with you!

Chapter 4: Plastic Heart

Two days later…

"We are not the masters of this world. Not anymore. It has become no one's."

Someone approached me with a sharp jerk. I jumped to my feet, my eyes wide open, and instantly felt the floor with magic, raising my weapon. Looking for the attacker, my gaze darted around the room, frantically trying to hit the S.A.T.S. key with my hoof, barely restraining the desire to fire a burst blindly, even without understanding anything.

But the Locator was silent. The attic window door continued to swing and creak, showing no real threat. Despite the fact that my legs were aching from fatigue, overall I felt rested.

An anxious wind swept through my dark refuge, chilling my tense body to the bone. I sank down on the bed, put the gun under my head, pulled the sheet tighter around me, and only then did my exhausted mind tell me that I would have to get up, go to the window, the cause of the disturbance, and close it.

After two painfully long days on the surface, I finally had a chance to sleep. I wanted it more than anything in the world, but my thoughts were racing and troubling me, replacing the emotional impulses that had driven me for so long.

Clouds of memories, a dark curtain of elusive images that filled my world, advised me to look for danger in the simplest things and sounds.

My weapon, now with only eleven rounds, lay under my cheek like a support. I didn't care if it was hard, I didn't care if it was cold. I needed something I could trust in this world, and the submachine gun had never let me down. If only I had more bullets...

A light rectangle stood out in the slanting roof that reached the floor – a homemade plank window. It was still open. By the windowsill lay a torn saddle bag and a pile of cut dark blue rags that had recently been my overalls, the Stall-Tech overalls that every inhabitant of the stall had. The wind swayed the rags, showing me the edge of the collar, where a yellow number on a blue background was clearly visible – “02”.

I approached. The look of the stable jumpsuit made me think that I had lost something important. Nearby, in a pile of glass crumbs, lay fragments of a vial of healing potion, smeared with fresh blood. Disgust made me look away, but the ugly cut wound on the side, bandaged with the white cloth of a teacher's uniform, reminded me of itself, causing a sharp pain.

In the middle of the thick darkness, on a small island of light, there were broken plastic buckets, rusty tools with rotted shafts, an old-fashioned sewing machine, and a broken-off half of a cabinet door, quite high and quite heavy.

Pain and fatigue made it difficult to concentrate, but it was not at all difficult to press on the frame with magic so that the window creaked as it closed, and the cabinet door, seeming very light to my magical thought, stood on top, slightly darkening the room.

The wind howled over the roof, rushing somewhere to the south.

The mattress that the earthly mare had given me was waiting patiently in the very corner.

"You can sleep as much as you want. But tomorrow, you will have to leave, and do not count on any other help, without you there are already plenty of troubles."

I lay down, magically wrapping myself in the sheet provided instead of a blanket.

From the first minutes on the surface, I began to carefully study this world, and it, meanwhile, studied me in the same way. A strange pony, who came from somewhere in the naive unknown. With my dreams, desires and moral principles, in no way compatible with reality.

Oh, my Celestia, my Luna! Goddesses, what has become of the world we knew? Beautiful gardens and living forests, green meadows and endless intermountain expanses, drowning in soft and silky air for the sense of smell. That is how the world was described in books, but reality told a completely different story.

Everything around looked so empty, dead, meaningless... It somehow had a strange effect on me from within. I wanted to talk about it with everyone I met, and I still haven't found the opportunity to speak out.

A huge clawed paw reached out to me from the crack, I reacted instantly, in an attempt to dodge the blow I jerked to the side, and only a second later I breathed in relief, having fallen out of a deceptive slumber due to my abrupt movement.

All the memories seemed real.

I crawled from the damp floor back into bed, wrapping myself in the warm sheets again. The wound on my side still hurt, but it no longer tormented me, instead, it reminded me that I still had something to lose, something to fight for.

My gaze caught on the empty picture frame, strewn with broken slate. If I wanted to paint a portrait of Velvet, what paints would I choose, and would I even have paints at all?

It was worth remembering how joyful it was to arrange tests for everyone in drawing form. Simple lines were drawn in the gentle rays of the Sun above the horizon, carried by warm winds in the clear sky teasing rare clouds... pencils ran across the paper, forcing the joyful faces of many ponies frolicking in the green meadows under the wings of goddesses to emerge from the emptiness. Pencils brought the whole world to life.

The empty portrait will remain lying there, covered with slates, and it is unlikely that anyone will fill its emptiness.

Self-pity squeezed my throat, tears came to my eyes. I blinked them away, closed my eyes and buried my face in the sheet. Suddenly it seemed that this sheet was Velvet's mane. I wanted to hide in it from the whole world and sob, telling my sister about my pain, to hear her gentle sympathy, to warm myself in her strong embrace and forget about everything.

Now I could understand what had scared that mare from the diary so much. Loneliness was burning from the inside.

"The weak don't survive.", the stallion's firm voice rang out at the sight of the carnage, swarming with dogs drawn by the smell of carrion.

The animals feasted, only looking sideways at us with caution. My gaze darted across the battlefield.

Two fell to the body of the earth stallion. Now the tendon of the back leg was torn off, and the second leg suddenly jerked, as if the pony was still alive! The heart momentarily trembled with the desire to rush to help, but reality made itself known - the pony did not resist and did not even move when his head was separated from him, sloshing dark-scarlet liquid, which the vile creature immediately, greedily swallowed with its mouth. And there, next to the unicorn mare corpse, was a blood-fanged dog, having its reward for being alive.

"Let's get out of here. It's unlikely that there's anything left if this is the work of raiders' hooves."

Raiders... I never thought that a word, a thought, could send icy shivers through you.

Everything happened too fast. All I could do was look at the drooping stump of a neck, exactly where the head of a young guy with that sarcastic but pleasant grin of a seasoned warrior should have been. At that moment, I forever remembered the price of a moment of carelessness in an evil hour. And that look, the look of large lilac eyes with two fiery sparks of either malice or joy, and the obvious question written on her dark blue face: "Do you want to be next?"

Frightened by a couple of precise punches to the chest, my heart beat quieter than silence. A stream of blood had already flowed around my hoof. A tight ring appeared on my leg. A crushingly heavy bag lay on my tired shoulders, and a short, rusty chain roughly pulled me forward.

Go. Go somewhere again...

The chain pulled the front hoof, the tailless mare was walking somewhere in the desert, roughly tugging me along when I fell behind. Each new step seemed like the last. Thoughts crumpled into an abstract lump, causing pain, displacing and destroying each other.

The gun barrel swung from side to side in the bag, looking now at the warning road signs, now at the cars smashed and gutted to skeletons, now at the back of the captor's head. Blue, balding, with her hair shaved short.

Suddenly, like a ray of light, a hope for salvation broke through into my consciousness. How easy it was to press that trigger, but how hard it was to look at the consequences of my action.

A spark of magical thought fulfilled my will and a single gunshot, my first shot, rolled out like thunder, becoming the final chord in the symphony of lack of will, but also the beginning of something completely new, terrible, fast, crazy.

For a moment I stood there with the mare's blood on my face, chained to her limp body, feeling anything but the joy of liberation or victory. The first experience of murder, even a just one... this act awakened complex feelings in my heart, far from pride, inexplicable by familiar, everyday concepts.

The hooves knew everything for me. The bandit's torn bag and the sack from my back, like dead animals, dropped their entrails on the ground at my feet.

Everything happened by itself and the flow of time lost its meaning.

There were cries of surprise and fury. Swift hooves struck the ground, carrying me away. It was becoming increasingly difficult to hold the cold steel of the gun in my teeth, it was becoming increasingly difficult to concentrate the magical thought on what seemed to be such a simple action - holding the trigger down. A little more and my unfaithful heart would have cracked from trying to keep up with the frequency of the thunderous roar of my submachine gun, which was pounding my teeth, trying to get out of my mouth. But at some point, suddenly there was silence, and only my heart, discouraged and broken by surprise by its sudden loneliness, continued to beat less confidently.

I pressed myself against the nearest wall, looking at the locator and clenching my aching jaw. The magic was still a disobedient, shapeless cloud. I tried to detach the empty clip with my front hoof. I succeeded, but the smooth metal slipped and hit the concrete floor with a dull thud. Somewhere nearby, someone's stealthy hooves were shuffling on the concrete floor.

The belt moved, a new clip entered the pistol, and from that moment on I had only thirty rounds left in reserve. No, not thirty! A yellowish metallic sheen at about the "20" mark indicated that I had a little more than half of my ammunition.

I turned around, trying to see the figure of the enemy in the dark corridor behind me, matching the mark, but all I could see was an endless void, hidden by a veil of darkness. For a second, I thought I saw a spark flare up, illuminating everything around me, allowing me to feel and touch everything that was drowning in its light, but a flash of fear from the voices that sounded destroyed the vision.

"Empty! Let's go!"

I tried to shoot at the voice, but the gun was silent. I forgot to feed a cartridge! A barbed rod grabbed my back, trying to hold me in place.

That's it. Again, struck, captured. No! Never!

Instinctively shaking my head, kicking, ignoring the jumpsuit tearing at the hooks, I rushed to the saving window frame, towards the metallic light of day. The rough ground did not welcome my feet, but it was open land and space, exactly what I could wish for.

A stallion appeared in the window. A shot rang out, and glass rang. For a moment I shook my head and closed my eyes, trying to dodge, but only after that, by the fiery pain in my side, I realized that I had already been hit. He was aiming at my legs, otherwise I would already be dead. They needed me alive, I should have understood that from the very beginning and not wasted my bullets. But even understanding this, I could not stand being under the gun for another second and hid behind a brick fence.

"Stop running! Sit down, we'll go down now and drink chamomile tea together."

"Chamomile tea!" someone repeated in a high voice.

Besides, one of them had to be hurt, that was for sure. I just couldn't miss from that distance. Ignoring the pain, I ran around the corner and slowed to a walk, going around the other side of the building, and then I heard hooves hitting the ground. Jumped! Whatever it was, they were unlikely to look for me where I had just escaped from.

However, my tracks could lead them here again. I couldn't jump from the third floor a second time. Damn it, it was all in vain! But I can't run away, they're faster. I needed to figure out where to hide. I glanced at my side. All the blood seemed to have soaked into my jumpsuit.

After passing the hall, I began to examine the fallen furniture and empty iron cabinets, but this was all wrong, too cramped!.. But one rotten table seemed like a suitable shelter. It had fallen onto an open drawer, and if you lifted it up, you could get underneath, and..

"Aaaahh..."

I turned around sharply, shifting the gun. Finding an unarmed, skinny mare on the floor with a shot through the chest, I did not shoot.

"Mom, I'm very cold, ma-ma!"

"I... I'm not your mother."

"Ya-a-a-a!! Khr... h-ha... I can't take it anymore. I don't want to die like cattle. Shoot my head off and you will make me happy. Shoot it off, I said! You dumb bitch..."

The dying pony made a pathetic attempt to kick me.

I backed away, unable to take my eyes off the ragged hole in the gray chest. At that moment, the pony's body seemed so fragile, so vulnerable... my bullet was a cherry thrown into the water.

Without saying a word, I turned away and crept into the parallel room, where tables piled on top of each other allowed me to climb onto the remaining section of the second-floor floor. After walking down the hallway and up the stairs to the third floor, I went into the second door I came to and was rewarded. There was a perfectly intact mail container by the table, with a loosely fitting spring-loaded lid that was big enough to fit into.

There were some quiet words coming from the first floor, but all I could do was watch the red marks on the green monitor, which was the only source of light in the pitch-black darkness of my shelter. Beneath me lay some dried-up paper and plastic bags, pencils.

"...she has nowhere else to go."

"Do you think she chipped in again?"

Two ponies were approaching.

"If so, you'll owe me an extra bag of dope. Hey!"

"What?"

"This door was open."

There was a loud thud, the hinges jingling as something fell on top of my box, shaking me with a small shudder, and then it fell to the floor next to me with a wooden thud. I carefully lifted my leg with the pipbuck and leaned it against the lid of the box so that the pipbuck would jam the lid, preventing it from opening if someone tried to do so.

"One-two... three-four-five," the bolt clanked coldly. "I found you."

And then I felt something touch the wall of the box with my back. Celestia, oh my goddess, where are you?!

"Well? Will you get out yourself?"

I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes.

"You thought we wouldn’t find you, huh?"

They won't shoot! They won't?

"I'll count to three. ONE."

No no no no!

"TWO."

Please no!

"THREE!.."

There was no shot. One second... two... five...

After a minute of silence, a loud curse was heard. Then the door swung and hit the Pipbuck, unable to open more than half a millimeter. The door jerked and grabbed my leg so that even if I wanted to, I couldn't move it.

I can't shoot through the box because I'll probably miss and there won't be much killing power left.

Living in the Stable, reading a lot of different literature, including not very decent books, I was sure that I had studied all the curses and swear words, but one of these guys managed to set a new record in the nomination "The most vile and cynical thing that can be invented"

"You know what? Let's surround it with firewood and set it on fire. A unicorn of Stable production, baked in a mailbox!"

"I won't eat it! Don't even try to talk me into it. And you won't either! If the camp finds out, you'll end up as food for the lizards. Did you forget? As food to lizards, think of it!"

"But I was just joking, so what, can’t I just joke?"

"But fire is a good idea. Did you hear? Now we're going to fry."

"Look what I have. Wow!"

Where can I go now? On the other hand...

I touched the stallion's back, immediately found the hoof of his rifle and tried to jerk the weapon upwards to aim it at something other than myself, but the belt was apparently on his neck, and therefore all I managed to achieve was a flash of headache from magical overexertion. And the stallion only cursed in surprise and, having easily guessed about my participation in the unauthorized movement of the rifle, rewarded me with another affectionate compliment.

As the two fussed around my little fortress, the wound on my side became more and more painful. My questions did not become easier. Should I really surrender to these guys? If they did not eat me, they would kill me one way or another.

I hugged my weapon with my right leg and bowed my head.

No. There was no need for suicide. It would be too stupid to die like that, from my own bullet. No way. I'd rather be roasted alive... or, at the last moment, jump out and try to do something! After all, I still had about ten bullets, and they were talking about this... the wound on my side pricked briefly, and a triple ringing sounded in my head. Damn it! They knew I was still armed. It greatly reduced my chances of a successful attack, but it was worth trying.

The semi-darkness of the iron box was becoming more and more frightening with each passing minute. Now it was my shelter, but very soon it could become my grave. While some objects (probably flammable) were hitting the box from all sides, and the bandits were discussing all sorts of vulgarities about me, I looked at the Pipbuck screen and could not understand what was wrong with it.

"Now shut up."

Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, I was struck by realization - the screen was rippling red!

"Let's run away."

"Listen, darling, we'll be back!"

"Leave her, idiot!"

For about an hour there were shots, dogs barking, screams and running.

Finally, everything went quiet, but in this silence, someone's clawed paws clicked on the floor nearby. Someone's breath sucked in the air. A red mark crawled along the green shimmering glass along a row of five yellow ones. I held the lid of the box tightly. The creature stopped next to me. The world turned upside down. There was an angry growl and, finding myself on my side, I felt someone's claws trying to tear my iron shelter.

The dogs tried to attack my mailbox more than once, but protected by iron walls, I was able to easily shoot the predators, using a minimum of ammunition.

Having put down the penultimate dog with a well-aimed shot from S.A.T.S., I watched as the last remaining creature, tail between its legs, scampered away.

I set off, heading away from where the street was littered with lone dog carcasses, as well as occasional bloodstains and scraps of clothing. Before leaving, I looked around for any abandoned weapons, but there was nothing but three empty magazines and scattered shell casings.

I clenched my teeth into a wide smile and chuckled silently. I was no longer a little filly to count on someone's pity, which meant there was no point in tears. I wanted to cry, but I laughed. Laughed through my tears, albeit timidly and insincerely, but I laughed.

My laughter was carried in ringing waves, breaking the pain, leaving no room for it, and at some point, I realized that in fact, everything is not so bad. I am alive, this is an important plus. I still have some food and water, an army knife and some ammunition, eleven rounds! And with S.A.T.S., eleven successful shots - eleven killed enemies, which is not bad at all!

I smiled, satisfied with my own prudence, and decided that it would be good to eat something before bed.

I'll rest, and tomorrow, I'll hit the road!

I reached into the saddle bag lying nearby. In addition to the water flasks and army knife, I found two pretty apples, a bottle of pre-war tomato juice, some small stone, a pink inhaler with the remains of a combat drug, a rag of someone's flesh, and something shiny, small... a cartridge! I lifted its relatively heavy metal figure, felt the blunt end with magic. Taking the SG, I pressed the lever, separating the black silhouette of the magazine from the rectangular figure of the weapon. With a dull click, the cartridge pushed its brothers deep and remained in their cozy company. "Twelve"

Just two apples hovered nearby, tumbling in my magic like fluff in the wind.

I caught the nimble green side with my teeth, confidently clamped the apple, bit into it and ate it, listening attentively to the taste that had entered this cold world from the infinitely distant, comfy everyday life of the Stallble.

The two-hundred-year-old tomato juice came as an appetizer, leaving a caustic aftertaste. The plastic stopper partially dissolved.

I put the empty bottle aside, washed down the taste with water and resolutely put the second apple in my bag. Better to save it for a little while longer.

If the raiders find us, we'll have to run. If only I could help the locals... but I'm nobody. I don't belong in this world at all. I need to take my sister and go back to the Stable, there's no other option, except death! Velvet Remedy will be let back in, that's for sure, and I'll be with her. As a hero, a criminal, or maybe just a companion. The main thing is that we'll be home again.

Finally it got completely dark.

My eyelids grew heavy and covered my restless eyes, which were distrustfully drilling into the darkness. The nervous tension gradually gave way to a pleasant lethargy, and oblivion took hold of me.

A caustic light hit my eyes.

Grimacing and squinting with displeasure, I got out of bed. Stretching, I awkwardly stood up. My eyes reluctantly opened. Everything looked completely unclear, as if a bucket of water had been poured onto a fresh painting. It was impossible not to think of taking off my glasses, so that now I would have to probe the floor around me with magic in search of them.

I found my glasses at the head of the mattress. My vision latched onto the lenses, instantly clearing, and my gaze dropped to the pipbuck: "10:38."

I wasn't always dependent on them. It's just that at some point I had to admit that the identification marks in the corridors were completely indistinguishable, reading without strong lighting was excruciating, and finding my friends' faces in a crowd was simply impossible. All I had to do was complain to my dad, and here it was!.. A solution to the problem, so simple and effective. But on the other hand, in the wasteland, without glasses, I would be practically helpless. Clearly understanding this from the very first minutes, I kept them as the most valuable piece of equipment.

Taking one last look at the warm bed, throwing the bag over my rump, fastening the fastenings on my stomach, I tucked the SG between the belts, put the helmet on my head and went down to the first floor.

The walls were full of holes and tears everywhere, where the plaster had fallen out and torn through the already torn wallpaper. Roughly stuffed over the old paint that had crumbled onto the floor in blue chips, the wallpaper was not just for show. It was necessary, these fabrics with a repeating pattern of climbing leaves and branches, if only because without them the whole house would be a crumbling skeleton, which meant that it would be equally effective in protecting against the cold and rain.

"I can't believe it..." the stallion cried out. "We were supposed to go together!"

"Oh, aren't you tired of whining yet?" I recognized the voice of my acquaintance from yesterday. A short tail was visible in the hole behind the wall. "I've heard all these excuses of his. He's just a coward! He took the Brahmins "faster". See what a friend you are to him, without your cards."

"This is nonsense! Just nonsense..."

"My dear, go to Tina and play. We need to think."

A tiny pony appeared in the corridor and noticed me. I smiled at her, but the filly, having only caught me with her pale, tired eyes, quickly disappeared, carrying something in her teeth.

"We are left alone. Do you understand? We need to leave immediately!"

I stepped into the doorway almost silently, listening to the conversation, watching their every move, ready to hide behind the wall at any moment.

An earth pony with a cutie mark in the form of a broken trap tried to bring the stallion to his senses and get some answers from him. She also talked about some acquaintances and the need to find a cart.

I looked at the vague yellow markings of a couple leaning their muscular sides against each other. Next to the bed lay some kind of bone spear with hoof grips on the shaft.

The stallion whispered something, and the mare suddenly laughed.

Something strange was perched against the wall. A tightly roped load of a couple of shovels, various tools, and what looked like some kind of food.

A part of gun stuck out from the side. A scratched, battered wooden gun holder with a shiny engraved insert. Two black gun barrels hung down under the ropes. It was certainly one of the few truly beautiful things I had encountered on the surface. There were also several red cylinders visible – cartridges, it seemed – in the pockets of the belt, three in all, but if the gun was loaded…

The earth mare suddenly straightened up, her ears perked up.

I froze and was about to back away, but I didn't dare move, afraid that in the silence she would catch even the quietest touch of a hoof on the floor. To my relief, she spoke. Here it was, my chance. To the loud words, I went out through the wall and sighed in relief.

"...is everything good with the children there?"

How good it would be to take hold of that convenient hoof with magic, touch the trigger and bring such a lethal weapon to myself, lower it onto my shoulder. With it, I would stand more firmly on my feet.

I already regretted not taking it right away. Yes, it is nobody's, but who cares about that except the owners themselves? After all, it is so easy to do it now. Take the gun and, remaining unnoticed, just leave... and then? Then it doesn't matter anymore.

I don't need to look at it to touch it because I already know where it is.

"Everything is fine, don't worry."

A magical thought emerged from my horn like an invisible wave, rolled across the dusty, worn floor, peered around the corner, past a pile of plaster, climbed onto the bundle and grabbed the gun. I pulled, the barrel gave way, but the shuffling was unavoidable, and it was too late to retreat now.

"You!.. What?!.."

I was already running towards the exit, carrying the objects in front of me. The wound was protesting, demanding that I be careful in my movements, but I hardly had such an opportunity. Without stopping, looking back at the overturned chair in the distance of the corridor, I saw how the earth mare jumped out and began to catch up with me with strong jerks!

"Just you wait, you ungrateful rag!"

The look of those eyes burned my soul with fire, constraining my movements, forcing me to stop. But I rushed forward, feeling the hooves of the earth pony with my bruised places, which were about to reach me.

The door is already very close, a few more jumps, but then what? Will I escape from an unarmed mare, racing through the desert? If I manage to escape at all.

I turned around decisively and raised the heavy barrel of the gun, aiming.

“Hold!” I exclaimed imperatively, hoping that the mare understood perfectly well what would happen if I pressed on one of those hooks now.

She dug her hooves in, riding on the petrified ground, took a step back, and, having evened out her breathing, froze. For a few seconds, the earth pony simply stood there, looking at me with fear and confusion.

“Why are you doing this?” she said with unexpected bitterness, as if betrayed by a very close friend.

"I just... I just..."

The question was like a shot to the chest. I couldn't find a place for myself from shame. After all, they sheltered me. I should have helped, but was my situation better? Don't I need help? And Velvet? Celestia, Luna, I beg you, let her wait for me, let her live. Every hour, every minute is precious!

This simpleton is holding me up.

The steel surface of the barrels sank to the floor by itself, but I resolutely aimed the gun at the mare. Under the sight of the weapon, the saddened face shuddered in fear and somehow changed, acquiring meaning.

Celestia, my goal is more important! It's not just about one or several lives. Velvet is special, and I... didn't do anything special! I just need this weapon. I didn't steal it, I just took it for a while.

That's it! I just borrowed it and then I'll return it, right?

Stupid excuses! Why was I ready to kill an innocent pony then?! For heaven's sake! Is this piece of iron worth killing...

A frightened face appeared from behind the wall.

Oh, Goddesses. Could I really do that? Kill a young mother for my own gain? No, I didn't want that at all, I just needed to scare her. But what if she didn't stop, what if she attacked? Would I let her beat me black before my eyes, or just kill me? No. I would pull the trigger, wouldn't I? I would fire that damn shot, leave her dead, and I would live.

The mare is standing between me and Velvet now, and if necessary, I will move her out of the way!

"Don't move! Please, listen, I just have to get my sister. She's in danger! I really, really need..."

“Scu-um!” she interrupted, and then, as if she had hit an invisible barrier, she fell powerlessly, sobbing uncontrollably.

I couldn't find anything to say and ran away, and the earth pony continued to swear incoherently and cry loudly. Leaving the supposed pursuers far behind me, I raced through the village, in which almost not a single house remained intact. The stallion stood senselessly on the threshold next to his friend and looked after me with a tired look.

Someone else could attack me here, I was on guard, but the locator went completely silent. No red, no green marks, nothing. Emptiness. Just like in my head.

Having moved away enough, I switched to a calm step and found a place for all the objects.

After walking some distance in a daze, I came across the remains of a crashed plane. Looking at the rotting rusty metal frame, the bulky wings, it was hard to imagine how so much iron could have risen into the air. In addition, its bottom, sides, and the entire machine were riddled with multiple traces of impacts from energy-magic cannons, and the engine compartment had been damaged by an explosion.

"Fool! You have ruined it all!" a sharp cry, full of despair, rang out.

I looked around in fear. My ears, deceived, protested that they had heard nothing. It simply seemed that there was no one alive here, nor could there be. The wasteland stretched out as far as the eye could see, and nothing was visible except for the frail houses, at such a distance that it was only possible to distinguish them from the horizon by remembering their gloomy outlines.

A barely audible sound penetrated the silence in the air - the quiet clicking of the pipbuck - a signal of a dangerous level of radiation contamination, which had managed to tire me out a lot lately. Too often and for completely unpredictable reasons, the dosimeter needle shuddered, rushed along the yellow surface, just as quickly overcame the orange field, reaching the red one and, having barely touched the dangerous area, returned to the very beginning, to the beginning of the green sector, to lie down for a new jump.

Hard ash stuck to their hooves. The rusty, peeling metal ceiling hung overhead, threatening to break its rotted supports and collapse at any moment.

There were some charred bones lying around in the cockpit, among which I noticed a very unusual skull. Similar to a pony's skull, only much smaller. No, this one was definitely not a pony.

In the burnt-out cabin, from the inside of which only a couple of charred chairs remained, on the floor, among the ashes, one strange thing was found - an open cocktail umbrella with a picture of a couple of delicious cherries. I stuck it in my hair and, imagining how I looked, laughed. Nothing more stupid could have been thought of. Still laughing, I put the umbrella in my bag. And suddenly I noticed that the iron began to tremble, making a weak ringing sound, as if echoing myself.

Suddenly the air was filled with the smell of burning. Someone's screams reached my consciousness, drowning in the crackling fire, the hum of the engine. Even with my eyes closed, I continued to see the darkness and the creeping streams of smoke, forming a solid veil. Colorless clouds played in time with the hot fire running along the smoldering upholstery, and in one moment, the whole world drowned in emerald light, a moment before the mixed sounds were displaced by the nearby rumble of something terrible.

Almost falling over, I held my breath, trying to listen, but nothing changed. The gloomy seats crumbled into ash, the front frame without a hint of glass, and the increasing crackle of the pipbuck, drilling into my falling asleep consciousness.

Even after half an hour, I still couldn't shake off this stupid feeling that I had done something wrong. But I also knew that this instrument of war would more than once become an argument on my scales of life and death.

The wind carried distant, half-forgotten voices. Perhaps he was whispering something to me on purpose, or perhaps I was simply going crazy, mistaking his howling for the timbres and fragments of words of ponies who definitely could not be here.

A strange hum reached my ears, coming from everywhere, but clearly with a specific source. It was like the roar of a siren, distant and intangible, smoothed out by the endless relief of broken rocks, emphasized by a low, continuous rumble. It seemed as if the titanic mountains, rising in a ridge from Canterlot itself, were moving, talking to each other.

The pointed paper figure was floating in a bright glow, gliding with thin, strong wings along the air current that was beating from behind the iron bars. Happy laughter was heard, and joyful children's eyes appeared before me like green lights from under a disheveled straw mane.

I came to my senses on the edge of the cliff, having managed to keep from falling. In front of me was a river bed, about twenty meters deep. If I tripped and rolled down the steep slope, strewn with stones, I could get seriously injured.

I carefully began to descend, walking along stable ledges, keeping my gun at the ready.

I walked along the smooth rocky bottom. The constant static of magic pressed on my head from the inside. I extinguished the magic, putting the gun under my belt.

On the opposite bank, water gurgled from a wide crack. It ran along the mirror-like brown marble, flowing into the distance as a wide stream, glittering with the reflection of the cloud cover.

I stepped into the water, feeling the pleasant cold on my hot feet. The water fluffed up my fur, washing away dirt, saturating my skin with moisture. I leaned down, broke the surface with my lips, and began to drink. Plain water tasted sweet. I didn't care about the pathetic radiation dose I would get. In any case, even if the pipbuck was gurgling, it was calmer than usual. Once I had drunk, I wrapped a handful of water tightly in magic and washed my face with it.

I rinsed out two empty flasks and filled them.

The wind chilled my wet face.

Where am I even going? I'll get out of the riverbed, and then what? Discord. There's no telling how big this wasteland might be. I could wander for weeks... Damn this war!.. But what if there, far beyond the horizon, where no one can reach, there are still lands untouched by bombs? What if the Sun shines there, life grows green and blossoms? I may never know the truth unless I go there myself...

Now I have a goal. I have to find out where my sister went and the surest way is to get to the nearest city and ask the residents. But how to choose a direction, and how to be sure that it is the right one?.. Those ponies said something about a city, maybe... no, that's exactly where they were going to go! How stupid, just idiotic! I could have gone with them! What if I go back? What if I manage to get back and find them?! I won't lose more than an hour, but...

"Scu-um!"

I can't just move on and forget about it, but I can't go back either. How can I look these ponies in the eye after all this? Do I really dare to hope that they will forgive me and accept me again, as if nothing happened?

When I am with my sister again, we could go on a journey and find a better world for ourselves.

There was a rumble. I raised my head and ran to the other bank. Huge boulders were falling from above with a crash. I climbed the crumbly slope and sat down safely, holding my ears with my hooves. In the place where I had just stood by the stream, a heap of earth and boulders had formed, falling from the very top.

Now the stream is blocked up, but the water will still find a way for itself.

I walked along the smooth bottom and reached a gentle slope, washed by water. In early spring, when the snow melts, the water flows into the riverbed here and the once mighty river comes alive in full force.

Looking back down at my path, I noticed a strange creature. Hiding behind piles of rocks, I hoped that it would not notice me. But as soon as I began to watch, I immediately realized that this colossus was trampling where I had just passed. It was coming for me!

I watched my every step, so that Celestia would save me, and in no case would I push any stone down. Having moved away enough, I ran without fear of giving myself away, only occasionally looking back at the edge of the cliff.

The endless wasteland called me.

I had to keep going until I came across a railroad. All railroads connect to New Appleusa. There should be some kind of signposts along the train tracks to help me find the right direction.

I felt a tremor underground. Something huge appeared a few steps away from me. Resisting the urge to scream, I fell to the side in shock, kicking the ground with my feet in an attempt to stand up.

The terrifying mixture of a dragon and a dog stood on two legs, with its back to me, seemingly not noticing me. From its half-open mouth full of bulky fangs, where my head would easily fit, came quiet trilling croaks and low growls. Long, pointed ears rose, rushing forward, and I froze, silently taking out my gun. My heart was pounding wildly. Would I be able to put THIS down with one shot (from both barrels)?

The elastic skin stretched over the steely sinewy muscles of the thin legs. The heavy spiked tail lay behind. The front paws, hanging down to the ground, pressed hard against it with monstrous claws, holding the main mass of the body.

I found a trampled hole nearby, and judging by everything, it was not that beast at all, but another similar one. So there could have been others. Only now did I notice the scattered crumbs of crushed bones and traces of many claws, which definitely could not belong only to this monster.

I started to back away. Glancing now at the dog-dragon, now at my feet, every second my gaze caught the red mark that marked this creature on the locator. The creature fell silent. I turned to the ground, going around a fragment of someone's hoof. All those strange sounds it made resembled speech, but what did that matter?

I thought I heard someone talking, sharp and short, but I couldn't tell where it was coming from. Breathing quickly but quietly, I looked past the gun barrel floating in the snowy light of my thoughts to the muscular back of the beast.

A caustic look from a pair of dark eyes pierced me right through.

I raised the gun and hit both triggers with magic, but they didn't move, no shot followed. What discord!?.. I pressed again, again and again, but the triggers were stuck and the weapon was silent. Silence rang, and only my heart pounded loudly with blood in my ears, and only the monster stood silently in front of me. Stuck?! Broken?! No, just the safety catch.

The creature only moved its ears, becoming completely quiet, seemingly not even breathing.

It didn't attack! I was still alive!

I also froze and slowly moved the gun to the side, as if imitating the monster, hoping in this way to preserve the current state of affairs, that is, for everything to remain as it is. After all, I am alive. I want this fact not to change.

"You there! Hey? You idiot, what are you doing?" someone hissed. I turned around in confusion. Large gray stones were scattered across the hilly landscape. Where are you?!”/i] Among them, almost indistinguishable from the other rocks and debris, lay the ruins of some building. "Come on, come here!"

I recognized the stallion's voice and noticed the swish of a dark hoof among the fallen beams, reddened with rust. Moving away from the monster, I sped up with each step. It was absurd, but it seemed that if I didn't look back, nothing bad would happen.

I made out individual words:

"…what if yes?!"

"...look...just a flower!"

It was hard to make out any intonation in the broken whisper, but at least I knew there were two of them, and sure enough, the locator showed two yellow marks.

I stepped behind a strip of broken wall, meeting the wary gaze of a young earth stallion, and crouched down next to him, discovering an equally elderly unicorn, dressed in a military uniform, sitting on a refrigerator that had grown into the ground.

"Um... hi," I began, holding the gun to the side. However, I had no problem aiming it, and this time, the safety was off. My faith in friendliness and mutual assistance had died in agony the day before yesterday, on the very first day. "What are you two doing here?"

"What are you doing?!"

"I asked first. You were following me, weren't you? What do you want?"

I don't trust the locator, it never gave me accurate information. What if they suddenly decide to, I don't know, eat me? However, it's easier to negotiate with them.

"Listen, you!"

“I don’t need problems,” I said.

"Then don't get under our feet, okay?"

"I'm just passing by. Oh, thanks Celestia you were here."

I tried to ask them about what kind of creature was sitting there, by the cliff, whether they had met a black unicorn, and how I could get to the city, and which way was best to go, but the ponies did not take me seriously, discussing something of their own, stallion-related.

"Quiet, don't mumble. Did you hear that whistle? The dog should be out by now."

"Pretty girl, let her stay with us."

"This one?" the stallion pointed his hoof at me. "What are you thinking?! She's a mare!"

"That's exactly it!" the unicorn smiled.

I felt sick.

"Oh, come on. Make sure she doesn't shoot me in the back of the head and don't get distracted, otherwise we'll miss the moment."

"I have to go..."

"Well, well, well, get out of here then, roll. Have you checked the bag? Unfold two more."

"What are you, thieves?"

"Well, she's definitely crazy, I told you."

"We all survive in this world somehow, baby. We need the shells from their eggs more. We can make armor from them. Go on, go your own way."

"That's what I want! Show me the way to the city, please."

The stallions looked at each other and pointed in opposite directions. Are they making fun of me?

"Information costs money. Give us something valuable and we'll take you safely. Well, after the fact, of course."

The earth pony nudged the unicorn with his hoof, and they both grinned at me.

"Are you hurt?"

"Scratch…"

On the one hand, an escort is great, the three of us will not get lost, but trust these guys? And pay? And what to pay with? All I have is my apple, flasks and... a weapon. No, somehow it is too unfair. Parting with one of the guns, and at the same time waiting for who knows how long until these two sort out their affairs, not knowing whether their help was really worth the cost? I still prefer to keep mine.

"Ooh, look, she's staring out here."

The stallions, as one, looked out from behind a fragment of the wall riddled with rebar and sat down again.

"Is he listening to us?"

"Forget it. We'll wait for the alpha to come out."

"Do you think it will be soon?"

"So why are you here? What are we even waiting for?" There was silence for more than a minute. "No, you know, I'll get where I need to go myself. All the best to you."

I wanted to get away from here and quickly, but some strange premonition prevented me. Something told me that next to two seasoned stallions who dared to stick their nose into the throat of death itself, I was safe. I looked at the shiny engraving on the butt of the gun, running my gaze over the outlines of the timber wolf, lurking to catch up with its victim...

"Although yes. If she came out and waits, then she'll come running. I bet she's already pissed all over the ground under her feet, the queen, damn it! Agh-ha-ha-hra!"

The boys laughed. They laughed! So stupidly and so loudly!

Horrified, I checked the locator. There was still a significant distance between me and the bright mark. I stood with one foot on a pile of brick debris, looked out warily at the monster, and, finding it in its original place, immediately returned to the cozy ground.

"Don't be scared. Don't you understand yet? The dogs are hunting. It's spring! And put away your gun already, you're making me nervous."

I didn't object, but it was strange, is it really that important? Is it really true that none of these creatures will attack? They are red... Damn it all! It's time to get out.

"Where are you going?" the unicorn called after me when I had already taken a few steps away. "Keep your head down. I'll help you get out of here alive, the main thing is, don't do anything stupid."

"We've been stuck here for an hour already. Damn it, I feel uneasy somehow."

"Don't get upset, everything is under control."

The unicorn looked so dirty and ignorant that he'd probably only seen good books in campfires and probably used magic mostly to pick his nose, but a moment's sympathy gave me pause.

Safe or unsafe... after all, it costs me nothing to do what he says, if it can’t harm me in any way or put me in a risky situation.

I yawned weakly, feeling like I had been breathing less than I should have.

The unicorn snorted, blowing his brown bangs off his face, and smiled crookedly at me. I looked away from his face, which did not suit him at all , and still, his forehead wrinkled from exhaustion and obscene grins, his shaggy mane and a pair of motionless brown eyes seemed to freeze in front of me, like some kind of obsession.

My gaze inadvertently dropped to the locator. There, on a screen similar to a radar scale, an almost imperceptible green dot was displayed. Well, that's me. Two marks next to each other, yellow and green - males. The unicorn was marked in green? I wonder what that could mean, maybe a special personal sympathy. Red on the edge, motionless - that very "queen" they were discussing. But what is that?! Unexpectedly close, a large mark clearly stood out in red against the green background, crossing one coordinate line after another!

I was jerked from the base of my hooves to the tip of my horn. For a few moments I just stood there, unable to even breathe. My eyes wide open, I peered into the gaps left by the collapsed sections of the floors, and finally saw there... nothing. I could already feel the butt of the gun in my mind, ready to grab it, but some strange uncertainty prevented me from acting, as if I was faced with a dilemma. I longed to see the enemy, to immediately understand what to do next. I needed at least something!.. I longed to see.

Finally, I took a breath and stared at the unicorn, who had been talking all this time.

"...I swear on my mother! Don't get all worked up, cutie, I'm..."

My horn sparkled faintly. I only had to blink – and the whole world disappeared in a ringing splash. I was sucked underground, into the emptiness of the dark depths, carrying someone’s booming voice from above, as if from under the water. Stones broke and crumbled. Someone’s mighty lungs emitted a drawn-out snort.

"...or are you afraid of rubbing your tender back?"

It was coming!

The unicorn covered his face with his hoof.

"Mentals addicted eye-mumbler," he muttered, probably thinking I couldn't hear him. "Look at the way she's looking at me, the damn drug addict."

I needed to turn around and run. I backed away, but my steps were awkward and timid, as if my feet were stuck to the ground and froze in exhaustion after each movement, like when you get into a bad dream - you run with all your might, knowing that something is about to overtake you, and still it is simply impossible to move from the spot.

They don’t even suspect that now... Now it is!.. goddesses.

"There it is!.. Something is coming here! Danger!"

"What?"

“We need to get out of here!” I chattered, looking around.

"Stop being hysterical, everything is fine."

"Nothing is fine!"

I lifted my leg with the pipbuck and waved the monitor in front of his face, noticing that there were now three red marks.

"Look! We're surrounded."

My heart was beating in time with the seconds . The air smelled of stone dust. I took out my gun and exhaled. Come on, I'm ready. Besides, I have company.

The stallions were positioned a couple of steps away from me, standing in a jack formation, side by side. The maned earth pony had a blade clenched in his teeth, the blade pointing to the side with its shiny line, the unicorn was levitating a powerful pistol and a threateningly sharpened iron rod. Time froze in silence. I was suddenly showered with earth, and something flashed nearby. I turned around and dove into the Z.P.S., but when the spell took effect a moment later, the gray figure had already disappeared somewhere. The spell highlighted the stallions who were hesitating with a yellow outline as possible targets. There was nothing left to do but cancel the attack.

The ground beneath the fallen door shook and then simply exploded!

"What the?!"

A huge creature whirled over me. I hurried to activate the targeting spell again, but then the heavens burst into a thunderous roar, so furious that it seemed its owner was demanding silence from all that exists, touching my very heart, squeezing it with terror. Stunned, I fell to the side, almost dropping the gun from the shock.

The claws cut through the air, there was a metallic screech and the roar stopped. The gray tumbleweed fell very close, raising clouds of dust, and this mountain rolled along the ground right at me, emitting animal roars. I barely managed to jump back, immediately clicking the button with an unambiguous name on the pipbuck.

"F-e-e-e-e-e!! - the unicorn screamed at the top of his lungs, clinging to his friend. Cretin! He has a gun, he better shoot already! Meanwhile, S.A.T.S. began to gain effect, stretching out his voice, stupidly and unnaturally lowering the intonation.

When all the surrounding objects finally began to glow with different signatures, and red outlines appeared in the clouds of dust, I was already doubting my intentions. There were two creatures, and they... they were fighting among themselves?! Not paying any attention to us, and in particular to me. This changed everything. The need to shoot immediately disappeared. Now I simply did not want to get involved, and it did not matter what or who these horrors were fighting over there.

The mouth of one of the dogs snapped its teeth in an attempt to reach the neck of its opponent, clearly superior to the first in size and strength, who had firmly dug his claws into her shiny chest. Wait a second, armor? What?!

The stallions had disappeared somewhere. It finally dawned on me that I was in the wrong place. I started to back away, and when I realized that no one was looking at me, I just ran away, without even turning off the S.A.T.S.

Thirty seconds later the spell wore off and I had to move on my own. Listening, I was convinced every time that the fight was going on without me. I hadn't done anything bad to them, had I? Thank Celestia for that blessed fuse.

I slowed down, looking over my shoulder at the sweeping blows of the paws, when suddenly a sharp pain pierced my horn. A black moment of senseless oblivion flashed, the earth rushed towards me, as if on command, my feet pushed forward, stopping the fall.

Behind me, a cloud of black smoke rose, rising above the figure of a hellhound, on whose shining, torn steel armor, even from fifty meters away, streaks of blood could be seen. In front of it, in a limp heap, lay a creature that I at first took for a black hill, and only after looking closely could I see charred flesh and roasted skin, burnt to the ribs.

The winner looked around with an unseeing gaze, threw the iron pole over his back... Oh really?! It's not hard to imagine what would happen to me if I got shot, if you look at that giant, a raging mountain of muscles just a minute ago, which now lay motionless as a burnt carcass. This is too much. If the creatures can shoot from energy-magic weapons...

When it seemed that nothing connected me to this hellish place anymore, and the wasteland plain began to sing with new colors and mirages, I suddenly wanted to turn around. One of the stallions appeared at the hole. He was dragging two bags filled with something. Shells for armor, okay. A few seconds later, the unicorn appeared. The guys threw the bags nearby and went down into the cave again.

Taking one last look at the shaggy unicorn dragging a couple of unrolled sacks, I had no doubt that I had nothing more to do here, but some weariness beckoned me back to their stupid company. I must have gone crazy, but… Discord! What am I doing? Maybe I should invite him for a glass of cider?

“I didn’t just leave the Stable yesterday to risk my life so stupidly,” I whispered under my breath and trotted towards the water tower I had spotted on the horizon.

Well, the day before yesterday, but who needs to know about that anyway?

Note: New level!

Stealing, why not?

Chapter 5: The Second Between Death and Life

"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.

Chapter 6: It Is All Your Loneliness

"...I just said that you should find friends, nothing more."

The fluorescent lights played in the wet tears that obscured my vision. Every minute, hordes of foals rushed past along the corridor, demonstrating with their whole appearance how one should really spend time during recess at Stable 2. But I, despite the general joy, cried uncontrollably. Leaning against the wall, dropping quick tears onto the clean floor.

And the reason for this outrage was very simple and could easily pass for a pass to a party of broken hearts and hooves: I fell in love and turned out to be a complete fool, and he... Argh! Stallions! The only thing he was interested in was this stupid tournament of some video game, and he brushed me off like an annoying bug. Celestia, Luna, it was unfair! Just pointlessly stupid. I'm better!

However, I found myself alone, in the corridor, behind the door.

Everything added fuel to the fire. The taunts of the nasty radio magic teacher coming through the wall, the loss of my favorite shipbuilding magazine and that boring but so fascinating in its mystery textbook on magic... Even laughter! Every time laughter came flying in from somewhere, I sobbed, choked and began to sob with renewed vigor, like a little filly.

"Forget about him already," said the silver-furred unicorn, looking sympathetically from under her tangled chestnut mane. "Who is he that you should cry over him?"

"Did they kick you out, too, *sob-sob*?!"

"They let me go," she said in a malicious tone, beaming with a smile. "For the entire next lesson. Don't be sad, let's go to the cafeteria instead. The earlier we come, the earlier we leave.

"I'd be happy to, honestly! But forgive me, Gast, I-I... I still have to apologize. And... I'm an idiot! Damn it. What a fool I am, I forgot to grab my bags."

"Bummer, friend."

"Uh-uh-uh" I howled in frustration. More than anything, I didn't want to go back to the classroom full of mocking ponies for my things.

"You know what? I'll take your bags myself, well, at the end of the lesson. Apologize? Ha! What else, maybe dance them a friendship dance? Pffffff! No way! They should apologize to you! The stallions will get treated the way they treat us!"

“Uh-huh,” I sniffed.

"Well, don't be sad, I'll be back soon. I promised dad something."

I was alone again and it seemed that only apple ice cream could save me from this hopeless situation. I reached out a hoof to wipe away a tear that had made a new path for itself, which made my cheek itch, when suddenly someone gently touched my thigh.

"Miss Unicorn? Can you help?" the tiny unicorn pony, her turquoise mane barely reaching my chin, said softly. "I was wondering if you might have some..."

“Otherwise, everyone we asked was too busy,” came the voice of an equally young filly, the color of an orange, from behind. She made a strained, serious face and, deliberately lowering her voice, said: “No time” or “Sorry, too much work.”

I adjusted my round glasses, looking at the earth pony's light orange fur, her slightly darker and richer thick bangs and the thick braid lying on her shoulder.

"...you can't get anything out of adults, they're always busy. I mean, you're not so old that you don't have anything to do, are you?"

"I don't think so. Of course, I'm happy to help."

"By the way, I'm Mango! And this is Quiet Sparkle."

"What is your name?"

"Mary."

"What a strange name, why did they call you that?" the little unicorn babbled.

“I don’t know,” I said shyly, shrugging my shoulders.

"Well, let's go, Miss Mary."

As the children led me along, a pony named Quiet Sparkle told me in a charming childish manner about her brother, a paper airplane, and, in general, everything became clear.

When we arrived at the scene of the emergency, I saw a small white unicorn with a pink mane, whose horn sparkled with dull sparks as it desperately tried to reach the paper toy. The unicorn was balanced on the shoulders of an earth pony, who was standing on his hind legs against the wall. The wayward flying machine itself was not just under the ceiling. Its white figure was high up in an open ventilation pipe, stuck to the grate. It was pinned by the flow of sucked-in air.

It was scary from such a height. My hope to solve the problem hid in my mane at one moment, on the back of my head, which is why it began to itch badly. My hoof itself reached out to scratch the mane, but I held back. The children were counting on me.

Gradually the thoughts lost their form and dissolved, rushing towards the horn as a single mass. I felt a tingling sensation, as if a thousand tiny needles, barely touching the surface of the horn from the inside, played and shimmered in waves at the behest of my magical thought.

I reached up and the further I moved away from myself, the smaller my thought became, the harder it became to rise higher. I timidly touched the edge of the paper wing, with effort pulled it towards me. I only managed to move the toy to the side, and even this trifle was difficult.

I needed to turn it nose down. I tensed up, and the sharp end slightly deviated from the grate. A jerk, and both wings were already gliding through the air on their way to the floor. Gradually descending, the paper figure felt more and more obedient. Finally, I lowered the airplane to the delighted faces of the seven foals crowded around me, and everything became wonderful...

The collar finally dried out and there was no longer any discomfort in the feeling of coziness. Despite the fact that without the main component - the helmet, this clothing could not provide significant protection even with an extra bulletproof vest, I felt good in a leather jacket and thick jeans. In the end, the most important advantage of the pants was that they hid my cutie mark from prying eyes, so unnatural, strange for the outside world.

The omnipresent clouds had lightened, losing most of the dirty gray that framed their titanic silhouettes. It was midday, which meant there was plenty of time. The hills on the horizon blocked my view, making it impossible to see the rest of the route even from the roof, but I didn't care. The updated pipbuck map led me around a cluster of train tracks that would make a great ambush spot.

I was walking towards my intended destination, hoping to get there by evening, when I suddenly heard a strange sound behind me. An electric crackle, a hubbub and... rhythmic low beats that sounded like a drum roll. Music! It seemed like someone was having fun. I didn't try to figure out anything specific in this confusion, but turning around, noticing an incomprehensible silhouette in the distance, I hurried to hide between large stones that had gathered in a half-meter crater.

The engine roared, heavy electronic music began to sound clearly, rolling around the area with bass beats and someone's indistinct singing. At the edge of the background, someone's maned figure flashed for a moment from the cloudy shroud, and then disappeared behind the stone horizon. Gradually moving away, the music died down without a trace, leaving me in silence.

I didn't even want to know who it was.

"Look! Look at her! - I rejoiced, spinning around in place."

No matter how hard I tried, the white mound of cereal kept running away, taking the picture on my side with it. All this foolishness made me dizzy and I staggered and fell onto the clean floor.

"That's wonderful! I'm so happy for you!" came the soft voice of the unicorn, on whose velvety black side the singing bird was hovering. "If you sit still, I can tidy up your mane."

"Nonsense! I won't dress up too much and I certainly won't wear a dress."

"Well, why not?"

"What if my friends think I want all the attention to be on me?"

"Okay, you look good as is. But now," something moved in my hair, "now it's even better."

I blinked and looked through the hovering mirror at a slender, pretty young filly, in whose golden-straw hair, near her ear, a living apple blossom had appeared.

"Oh, what... He's magnificent, thank you!"

She smiled tenderly and went out, leaving me to look at the picture on her side, drawn, it must have been, from the most beautiful dreams of my imagination: a clear Sun in a blue sky, illuminating with its rays the green hills and the smooth stream among them.

"08" - a yellow number on a blue background struck the perception. And then the next one - "29", and after it - "98", "13"... A shallow ravine, stretching along the city wall, was dappled with faded fabrics of blue and yellow overalls, stained with blood. "19"... "89"... "77"... "45", "45" and another "45", and another, and another!

Hundreds. I was afraid to guess the exact number, standing at the edge of a ditch littered with the dead.

"...so many Stables!.. Even foals. Gracious Celestia..."

I looked, running my gaze over the bodies of the dead, mostly dressed in blue and yellow overalls. I looked in search of a single number, but could not find it. Some of the bodies were in rags, some were naked, the rest were hacked and shot beyond recognition, and there was not a single overall with the number "02", which explained one simple truth. It made it clear that the door of Stable 2 was not left closed to everyone for no reason.

There were very fresh bodies here, in whose eyes the white bellies of carrion-eating worms were just beginning to shine, and there were also those that had lain for several weeks or years, or maybe more. There was not a shred of skin on their disfigured bodies, and of their faces there remained only smiles, the eternal smiles of skulls.

In less than an hour of trotting, I reached a settlement surrounded by an impregnable ring-shaped wall made of wagons, unlike that iron junk in the north of Ponyville.

Chewing on a cigarette, a sullen stallion on a wooden tower, reinforced with sacks and barbed wire, pointed a heavy machine gun at me. It was like a question: " HELLO, WHO ARE YOU?"

I lifted my right leg and waved in greeting. He grinned and pointed the barrel of this terrible weapon away, gesturing towards the gate. It was easy to guess how much killing power was hidden in this high-tech accumulation of metal, from which hung a long belt of large-caliber cartridges. For several minutes, I did not leave the feeling of shock experienced at the moment my gaze met the blackness of the barrel. It would be stupid to look into the city of raiders and leave unharmed, and then, just like that and without any reason, be shot here, on an island of civilization and order.

I walked through the open gates past several perceptive guards and, meeting what I thought was the most friendly of them, spoke up:

"Excuse me, ma'am, I'm looking for my sister."

"She wasn't here."

Sister clearly didn't show up here, otherwise why would the initially interested ponies I approached with questions all shrug their shoulders hopelessly and dryly say that they don't know anything and wish me luck?

Stopping pushing my problem on everyone I met, I trudged down the street. In the end, I was just tired. Velvet wasn't here and that was it! I had to move on. Anticipating the full weight of the road ahead, I winced and decided that I simply had to catch my breath.

The brightly lit bar was filled with the loud laughter of noisy groups of drunken workers. Glassware clinked, dirty jokes were told, and someone even tried to sing across the melodic voice of a mare pouring out of a speaker at the bar, where a red-haired barpony was spinning like a top around a group of armed guards choosing the tastiest snacks.

A sparkling clean glass with an amber drink was on the table. I took out the PP and put it on the table, feeling freedom and lightness in my chest. The magazine was tightly wrapped with black tape, hiding from prying eyes the shameful fact - the lack of cartridges. The previously formidable weapon was now only good for throwing, or hammering nails.

I was haunted by the intense gaze of the bristly Earth stallion sitting at the empty table near the speaker. He had been watching me since I had arrived. I tried to ignore him, but when the whiskey finally ran out and I had to stand up, the mysterious pony nodded his head invitingly to the next seat. I couldn't object.

"You're not from around here, are you? I know every pony, and you're not one of them. Where are you from?"

"What is this all about?"

"I talk a lot, where are my manners! Besides, my dear: we can fix this! - he smiled. - Mallory, pour this filly at my expense."

"I'd be happy to, but actually I've already had a drink..."

"Don't you have anything to talk about, or maybe you have urgent matters to attend to? Don't refuse! I'm offering this once."

"Well, okay, thank you," the barpony smiled good-naturedly, putting two glasses of excellent whiskey on the table. "I'm looking for one particular pony. A black unicorn with a white mane with colored streaks, she looks about twenty years old..."

I described Velvet's cutie mark in detail. My interlocutor whistled.

"No, such a bird has never flown to us, but it seems that I know what you need and I will gladly tell you."

I drained the glass in one gulp.

"Really?! Will you help me?"

"Of course! After you visit my shop. I see you just came from the wasteland, you'll probably want to exchange some things, right?"

A guard with a long scar running diagonally across his face stood at the thick iron door of a lonely carriage, looking sideways at me with his grey eyes.

“Is this a store?” I asked.

"Are you looking for trouble?" he muttered through his teeth.

"And what?"

A pair of guard mares emerged from behind the carriage. The stallion spat at my feet.

"Are you looking for trouble?!"

"Not at all! I came to buy some cartridges."

"Ah, well then come in, why didn’t you say so right away?"

…?

"That's what I said."

“She’s with me, let her pass,” the salesman said.

"Let's start with what you would like to buy."

The low sales counter in the freight car was rich in some military medicines, boxes of cartridges of various calibers, especially cartridges from the box marked "12.7" were found in almost every box, piled up a little here and there. In the most visible place was a slightly open case with an oiled machine gun belt "7.62x54". Nearby, a dozen dynamite sticks were stacked in a neat pyramid.

"What are those twelve and seven for?"

"You can shoot from a machine gun, or hit from a sniper rifle, whichever you prefer. By the way, between you and me, one pony who liked to stock up on these cartridges really offended me. It's absurd, of course, but in my opinion, sniper cartridges can lure this thief here, and then... my security will take care of everything."

"What did he do?"

"He stole the caps from me. All of them, regularly. Then he bought them from me with the same money. With my caps, do you understand?! I'll personally break off his filthy horn when we meet. Okay, if you see him, say hello from me, or give him a bullet in the forehead. You'll get a reward for the second. Well, are we going to decide something?"

Behind the stallion's back stood two high-explosive rockets, proudly leaning on their plumage.

"I don’t even know... Do you have any healing potions?"

"Unfortunately, the last one was taken yesterday."

I looked around the assortment with doubt, when suddenly I noticed the red cylinders of shotgun cartridges, and then something even better – a box of “10”

"Ten? Good choice. With magazines for the gun, the price is double. How are we going to pay? Do you have caps?"

I have three guns, so what's the problem with getting rid of one? I took the heavy shotgun off my back, and also placed the stolen shotgun and two pipbucks on the table in front of the stallion.

“I can’t decide about this gun,” I pointed at the shotgun, “is it possible to get some ammo for it?”

The stallion briefly looked at the weapon I had obtained and shook his head.

"No, girl, that's an eighth caliber, no one uses that stuff anymore. Antique, old stuff, damn it. I'll be surprised if it even shoots."

“I should know,” I said, touching my shot shoulder.

"Let's do it this way: I'll take this bucket from you for thirty "tens", the double-barreled shotgun for forty-five and both pipbucks for thirty. In total, you have one working barrel, three full magazines and another fifteen rounds in reserve instead of three empty barrels. Deal?"

On my leg was the pipbuck of the raider, whom I sent to the goddesses. Her model turned out to be more perfect, and not at all as worn out as my "watch"

"Two magazines and sixty rounds. Instead of iron, give me some caps in change."

"True, you'll need them, it's getting dark. No matter how much your friend needs "help", I assure you, you shouldn't be wandering around the wasteland at night, otherwise you'll need help. However, you can find something else important to do, can't you? Ponies like you and me can take care of more than just ourselves, you know what I mean?"

"What are you hinting at?"

The merchant looked around suspiciously and spoke in a half-whisper.

"One wandering zombie trader completely got on my nerves."

"And what?"

The merchant enthusiastically told me about the threat to honest citizens, about some kind of conspiracy, which he, of course, would not be able to prove, but "serious matters require decisive measures." Trying to convince me of his rightness, and to taint his competitor with all mortal sins, the earthly stallion wholeheartedly promised to reward me with cartridges, money... Celestia, canned peaches? Is that possible?.. In the name of the Moon, two hundred years!..

"You were commissioned to take care of this Velvet. I don't know what she did, but since you know your stuff, why not take on another easy job? - The absurdity of the situation almost made me sick. I stood up firmly, collecting my thoughts. - Well, what? Don't refuse. Take her away quietly and come back, I won't remain in your debt."

"You guessed wrong, I'm not a mercenary. Better not drag me into this, I don't want to take unnecessary risks. And it seems to me that you're not interested in her death out of heroic motives, huh? Find another fool for the dirty work."

"Okay, okay, hush. I was just suggesting. Take the ammo and get out. I mean, yeah, I promised. Give me your leg with your bracelet, - my head was spinning with excitement. My heart skipped a beat and I handed him the pipbuck. - Yeah, that's where Old Appleloosa is. They saw your friend there."

"Really?! Is she there? Is she there now, or has she already left?!"

"I don’t know, girl, moderate your ardor until tomorrow, you need somewhere to spend the night, right?"

“Somewhere, not-at-your-home,” I shook my head, feeling myself spinning from the two glasses of whiskey I had warmed up.

"Of course, of course, I know a great hotel here..."

I handed him a sealed bottle of Sparkle Cola.

“If only there were ten of these…” the merchant grinned.

"Damn you!.. Why is it so expensive?"

"Okay, I get it, there's a cheaper one. Add your change and the room is yours for the night."

"Agreed."

We went to the other end of the city and entered a dilapidated building.

An unfriendly security guard with a carbine on her back took the fee and led me to the second floor.

As I walked, I remembered a stupid tune from some song: "Carbine, carbine, my mother has more than one, more than one, more than one"

The stallion stood at the exit all this time, smiling, and when I finally found myself in my room, legally paid for with my money, on a real bed with a real mattress and a real blanket, I no longer cared about my headache or the conversation between the salesman and the guard, which had somehow gone too short and well. Who cares? If there is money, all other questions disappear. Did I mention money? Yes, my room turned out to be completely dark, and apparently no one had provided lighting.

As I tossed and turned under the blanket, I kept feeling like someone was looking at me from the darkness. It seemed like I actually saw someone's shadow flicker, but the pipbuck only showed the guard's mark and nothing else.

I couldn't fall asleep for a long time because of the obsessive desire to inhale some of the pink substance from the breathing inhaler, which, although empty, still emitted a familiar invigorating smell, it seemed too good to just throw it away.

"...so what if she's pretty, she's a weakling. What's the point of her messing around here? For that kind of money? - someone's whisper broke through the drowsiness."

"…we will get much more than we paid this goat."

What the heck?..

"She's waking up!"

Opening my eyes in surprise, standing up, I only managed to catch a glimpse of the key in the earthly stallion's teeth. At that very moment, a rag covered my face, the scent of lemon hit my nostrils, and everything turned black.

A quiet spark hovered in the darkness, illuminating the outlines of the waves of the seething stream. It froze, and then dived into the water and rushed into the depths, trying to illuminate every nook and cranny of this underwater corridor.

"Mary! Can you hear me?! What's wrong with your eyes?!"

I froze, looking in confusion at the fair-haired, green-eyed filly, whose face showed genuine concern.

"Wait, don't distract me. I think I know where the right turn is here."

“What is she doing?” the foggy words reached his consciousness as the golden light once again floated along the water purification pipe of Stable 2.

I approached the iron filter grate and was about to slip through it when suddenly something rocked in the air pocket on the surface. It was a toy wooden boat.

"Found it!"

The wind tickled my fur. Something soft moved under my chest. I winced, tried to get up, but all my legs were tied and I just dangled upside down, catching a stone with my horn.

"Ouch"

"Discord take you," someone cursed beneath me. "Come on, wake up! I'm too lazy to drag her along."

"Don't wake her up early, or she'll start kicking."

"Yes, she’s already wriggling on me, sliding to the side, the fat mare."

"You said she was weak?"

"Try it yourself for half a day... on your own fours."

"If you haven't forgotten, I'm carrying the gear. Okay, we'll make it to the dacha and stop."

The cork popped, the familiar sweet smell of lemon crept into the air. Someone was saying something, someone's hooves were clicking on the stones, but falling asleep again, I was no longer aware of what was happening.

Note: New level!

Stealth. In your case, the ability of opponents to sneak up on you without being noticed. Let's see what you do now.

Chapter 7: Welcome To Paradise

"Stop fighting if you want to stay alive"

The black silhouette of a unicorn appeared from the darkness. I knew that she would come, and would be ready to meet me. Yes, she had tracked me down. But she could not know that I would be waiting for her.

The pipbuck made a small, barely audible sound, and the targeting spell sent out a pre-prepared attack. The pony staggered, shaking her head as if she had been slapped, and then fell. I caught something strange about her. Her face, it seemed familiar. The locator left no room for doubt, my shot had been damn good. I approached, pushed her shoulder, turning her body on its back, and took a step back.

Blood-soaked golden hair covering half of a snow-white face, a swollen eye with a greenish iris, and an old, already rotting cut wound on the neck. I involuntarily swallowed. I would never have believed that... no, it just couldn't be!

"This is my face!!!"

My heart gave a single, strong beat, trying to help me get going, but no amount of effort was enough to even move. I remained motionless, lying in a cold, sticky pool of my own blood, able only to accept the darkness that surrounded me.

Kicking my legs and screaming silently, I tumbled out of my sleep, finding myself lying on the concrete floor. My wounds were aching.

My attention was drawn to a strange sensation on my neck. Before I had time to figure everything out and feel the collar that was constricting my throat, I suddenly heard that there was someone nearby.

It was dark, only the light smoke from the fire pulled out fragments of the surroundings in glare. Some furniture, a window, and someone's intent gaze of a pair of eyes, in which flying sparks were reflected.

“Congratulations on being accepted into slavery,” said a male voice.

“What?...” I whispered in a sleepy voice, as if nothing had happened.

"You're my slave now, and don't even try to escape. I just have to press the button here," he pointed to his hoof, "and the thing on your neck will send your head to the moon."

I didn't move, trying to understand the balance of power.

"Never try to run, and follow us until we get to the place. If you want to survive. Are the rules clear?"

"Wait, I don't understand? I have to go! I'm the teacher of Stable Two, and I only came here to pick up my sister. Are you a case..."

"Shut up!!! Listen to me, dumb meat! I'll tell you, I don't care who you are or where you're from, I don't care about your personal problems" he was coming closer, I opened my mouth trying to object but I couldn't utter a word, and involuntarily backing away, I leaned my side against the wall and sat down, "you're mine now! And you'll do as I want, or you'll die and go to be food for lizards. Choose right now, because I don't want to spend efforts on you if you immediately run away and end up without a head like that chicken that was before you. You have a BOMB on your neck! Do you hear?!... you..."

I didn't hear any more. The stream of curses deafened me, I had nothing to say in response, and I didn't want to chatter. I felt that my weapon was not nearby, it was clear that it had been taken away. I could try to take the weapon from this pony, and then the detonator from the collar. If only I could distract him...

"...You will do what I want, when I want."

I closed my eyes, cast a short spell, emitting a flash of blinding light (this was supposed to disorient the enemy), and then concentrated on the device, trying to pull it away, when suddenly a heavy hoof crashed into my face, " Why isn't he blind?!" The blow knocked me off my feet and wincing in pain, I fidgeted with my legs in an attempt to get up.

"You bitch! Come here. I'll pet you now."

Another blow landed on my forehead, just below the horn, causing sparks to flash before my eyes. I opened my eyes, shielding my face with my front legs, tried to use magic on the blurry spot in front of me, and received a blow straight to my wounded shoulder.

I screamed out loud, falling into the depths of hell. Barely recovering from the nightmarish burst of tearing pain, I was choking from a new wave of blows. Finally, I had no more strength to scream. Sobbing softly, I curled up in the corner, begging Celestia for this to end.

Something snapped on my horn, and the whole world at that moment distorted, rose up and washed over my horn in a wave that drowned out all free thoughts. However, the prayer was apparently heard, and the beatings ended. Pressing myself against the wall, I was shaking all over, and looked at the pony who had power over me. He could say anything now, and humiliated, I would submit.

"Now you have a new jewelry and don't even try to take it off. Now try to surprise me with your tricks."

Yeah, he said the same thing about the collar.

I closed my eyes, lowered my head to the floor, fighting off a wave of nausea. My thoughts were completely empty, a black silence, broken only by the complaint of the places I had hit. I stopped feeling what I saw in front of me with magic, and immediately blinked, but the image remained the same. The spot of the fire was inaccessible to me. I looked at it, and I could not feel it with magic, touch it, feel it. All free magical thoughts ended with an oppressive sensation in the place where the iron ring had bound my horn. It was as if I had gone blind, and this was much worse than losing my glasses.

"Do you need this?"

I heard a ringing sound and stretched my leg forward. Feeling my glasses, I tried to take them, but I managed to do so only on the third try. Throwing them on my face was also not easy. I fiddled for at least five minutes, afraid that the pony who had captured me would get angry again because of my inept handling of the hooves. My fussing could irritate him, but the stallion simply sat down near the fire and put some garbage there. It smelled of burnt rubber.

A cigarette flickered in the darkness, and then I noticed the second stallion, who had been silent all this time. He came up to the fire and muttered something, sitting down next to me. Then the first one stood up, took some kind of rifle off his back, and walked off into the darkness.

It became quiet. The sleepy bandit looked indifferently at me, then at the fire.

I spent the next half hour thinking, trying to figure out how I got myself into this mess. The satisfied face of the stallion from the trading wagon immediately came to mind. Oh, how cleverly he twisted his tongue, how harshly he sought benefits for himself, and how easily he ordered me to be removed. An extra witness to his personal affairs. It was not hard to guess that these two found and curbed me on his tip.

I looked at the pipbuck with heavy eyes. It was the middle of the night. With everything going on, namely two thugs and an explosive thing around my neck, the smartest thing to do was get some sleep.

But sleep did not come. It was cold. The concrete floor was sucking the life out of me. I looked around and found a piece of wood in the corner of the room, pushed it closer to the fire and lay down. I needed to sleep. Tomorrow I would think of something...

The booming roar of gunfire shook me out of my sleep.
"Window! Window, bitch!"
The slave trader stood in the doorway, throwing his weapon somewhere into the darkness. There was a crunching blow, and a piece of something smelly fell at my feet. The brute partner raised a heavy hammer, preparing to strike again, but everything seemed to be quiet, and there was not even a wind. Suddenly, I felt some kind of rustling, thin fabric swayed next to me.

I glanced at my pipbuck and oh my! Someone's red mark. And that someone was standing right in front of me!!! I suppressed the urge to scream and only backed up a little, touching the barrel with the extinguished fire with my front hooves, moving away from the supposed enemy again and again, until I finally found myself under the window, standing almost right next to the big guy with the hammer. Frightened, peering into the darkness, I felt someone's gaze on me.
"There's someone there," I whispered, and the next second there was an incomprehensible cry, low and hoarse. Someone was running quickly straight at me. The big guy pushed me away, lunged forward, then again, again, continuing to parry and strike, fighting with someone invisible.

A bright flash and the roar of gunshots deafened me. I fell to the floor, clutching my ears.

"A tenacious creature," one of the men's voices came through the ringing, cutting into the ears with pain. "Okay, everyone, get up! In waltz time! Let's go!"

"What's going on? What was that?! - I started to speak, coming to my senses."

“Google, baby, google-google-google,” replied the slave trader.

“Maybe we should stay here?” I suggested.

"If you want to “see” ten more of these, you can stay."

I'd seen ghouls before, but... that was the point, I'd seen them. It was all too weird, but I didn't want to ask any more questions. These two didn't need to shove me in the rump with a hammer or threaten to kill me to get me to obey.

As we were going down to the first floor, the thug and his friend were whispering to each other. I managed to make out only part of what was said, and it seemed that the first one was complaining about the "cadavers" for having to leave the parking lot.

"...daylight reminds them that they were once ponies. They sit in their holes, coming out only at night. We'll make camp when it gets light."

"I'll explain again: We have no food. Especially for you." I looked at him with a sad, tired look. "However, there is something. Here, take a sip."

The stallion handed me some kind of flask and I hurried to drink. It was something sour, with a slight taste of alcohol, but I didn't want to drink anymore, and I even got some strength.

"What is this? An alcoholic tincture, or... no, is this really wine? Where did you get it?"

"You're being too smart, teacher. Now, who are you without your glasses?"

The slave trader pulled the glasses off my nose with magic, threw them on the floor at my feet and burst out laughing.

"Hey! Give it back!.."

"What? Give it to you? Oh, this? Oh, I'm sorry, they seem to be broken. Can't you see?"

"It's not true! Just give them back to me!"

I could only see a dark spot floating towards me, but instead of moving towards the floor as it should have if it was going to hand me the glasses, the blurry figure raised one limb.

"N-no please!.."

I covered my face with my legs, but the blow didn't come. The frame creaked, the lenses crunched and burst.

"What are you doing? What have you... what have you done?! You idiot!!! How am I... how am I going to walk with you now? I can't see a discord without my glasses!"

"Oh, don't worry! You'll be on a leash."

And so it happened. In addition to the collar on my neck, there was now also a rope. More importantly, the world now looked like a drawing by an inept artist who forgot to draw the most necessary details of the environment, and in general, I began to navigate mainly by touch and hearing. Wonderful. What will happen next?..

We were walking all the time. I had time to think about my bad and not so bad actions. I won't say that I judged myself, everything was exactly as it was, it simply couldn't be any other way. However, what happens next depends entirely on me. It was important to understand this as soon as possible, and I was probably late.

The bandages on my shoulder and side were completely worn out, and there had been no bleeding for a long time. The wounds hurt a lot and I had to pay for every step.

I pulled the bandage off my shoulder and shuddered. The sickly greasy, iron-like smell of decaying flesh and blood hit my nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe.
Where there had been a small jagged wound, a purulent abscess had formed, covering my entire shoulder. I peeled off the dried fabric of my teacher's uniform from my side, and my situation was no better there.

I winced in pain and horror and screamed in despair, feeling the nearness of death. A little more, a day or two, the process of tissue necrosis would be unstoppable, if it could be stopped at all.

The scream attracted the attention of my friends. I can't say that I expected their help, that I counted on help at all. I could only pray to Celestia and ask her to save me. The stallions surrounded me and began to examine me. One of them kicked me at first, as if to say, go ahead, but the other did something different. He took out... a knife? My knife? Whiskey... and immediately got me drunk.

Great, in any situation - get a girl drunk and the situation will improve, no matter how bad things are.

"Lie down and don't move, it will hurt."

It hurt. As he worked the knife on my shoulder, scraping away the swollen, rotten flesh, it hurt far more than when I was wounded, because the pain lasted a long time and I could not stop it. The blood began to flow again. Precious scarlet drops dripped onto the sand. However, I did not resist, only occasionally twitching when he went too deep. When he was done with my shoulder, the stallion burned it with strong drink.

"Do you like to fry fillies? Don't forget to salt them..." his friend quipped.
"Oh, shut up," he muttered, cutting off the fused pieces of fabric.

Having finished his work on my side, he cauterized it with alcohol, and then took a bottle of light raspberry nectar from his bag and gave it to me to drink.

"Healing potion!"

Magically, the wounds began to grow fresh flesh and skin, blood vessels lined up like branchy trees, and I felt more than saw that the wounds healed almost without leaving a trace.

It was a victory, a salvation. But was I saved from everything? It wasn't hard to guess that they needed me alive and well, otherwise no one would pay for me. Something had to be done as soon as possible, before we reached the "place".

"Let's go here, it's faster."

Go through a minefield, or a military base captured by raiders? Why not! Although, to be honest, I would go the long way to avoid both. As much as I wanted to stay away from the two-meter poster with the bloody inscription "WELCOME FRIENDS " , it was not me who decided the issues here, and I was unable to convince the stallions to avoid this place at all costs. Although if you think about it, they are cool conquerors of the wasteland here, so let them sort it out.

I was walking on my favorite leash, and almost nothing depended on me now. That is, that's what I thought until a stone got under my hoof, and then another. That if I kicked it hard, maybe I'd hit some mine, it would explode and... more mines would explode. Maybe it would even kill one of us, or attract the attention of the raiders from the base. Maybe no one would pay attention, or maybe... They'd catch up with us and... no. Stupid. Stupid, teacher. Think with your head!..

I didn't have to think long. A shot rang out. The bullet whistled right next to me. Then several more.

"What?! How did they notice us?"
"Run! Turrets, idiot, turrets! They were broken for all 200 years! Have they really been restored?!"

We were running. Through a minefield. Under turret fire. Oddly enough, the edge of the minefield, the edge of the ravine, was already very close and none of us were even hit, but suddenly there was an explosion. I was pushed and knocked off my feet. One of the slavers was lying in a heap on top of me. He was torn and sticky. Dead.

The rope yanked me around the neck, pulled me out from under the remains of the pony, and in a few jumps we found ourselves in the ravine. Even if they pursued us, they would have to cross the minefield first.

The stallion looked at me with a heavy gaze, and I looked at him. He, like me, understood what had just happened.

That evening we stopped to spend the night in the middle of the desert.
The fire warmed my legs, urging the blood with its heat to reach the heart, calming my wary mind.
I didn't want to think about anything. I was just tired and wanted to sleep.

“No...” I muttered in a daze.

“What?” the slave trader responded.

“Don’t look at me like that.” For the first time, I felt small and embarrassed. “What do you want from me?”

"Sex."

"What?" I looked at his dirt-stained tail, at the strange knot-shaped mark, at his strong legs. Brown eyes in a stubbly dusty face looked me up and down with dirty lust. "No... No! We can't... I... you don't..."

He looked at me puzzledly. Yes, I dreamed of a relationship, but it was all too wrong.

"We can't, not here! This is not how I imagined it!"

"Did I ask for your opinion?"

The truth is, I was defeated. Until now, my mind was working to get me out of this situation, not yet fully understanding what exactly I was afraid of, and what all this meant to me. Everything became clear now.

There was nowhere else to run, and I realized that I was defeated. The surface, having found itself expressed in the face of this bad guy, won an unconditional victory over me, turning into nothing my aspirations, interests, and this childish, stupid hope for a happy return to a warm classroom, to my beloved students.

This was the end. I didn't want to continue searching for Velvet. I didn't remember how many days I spent on the surface, all that mattered now was the warm pony in the bed next to me.

Did I really fall in love with him right after what he has done to me?

I was thrown into the sea of unspoken pleasures. At that moment, the feelings of guilt about the stolen gun dissolved, the disfigured rotting faces of the dead, dumped on the outskirts of Ponyville, left my memories. The wasteland itself did not seem such a bad place to me anymore. It was wild, yes unbridled and immoral, but spacious, and alive in every sense. Life went on, albeit in a different form, not in our favor, but it flowed in its own stream, fulfilling someone's plan, whether we liked it or not.

I felt the coolness of the earth on my cheek. "How long have I been lying like this?" There was a strange silence around. " He just left?"

There was a blanket nearby, I crawled onto it. It was cold and lonely in the tent.

"Is that it?"

The body continued to shake in shock.

"So, what is next?.."

I fell asleep without giving myself an answer.

"Who are you now, teacher?"

Good morning. Didn't have a bad night last night, huh, teacher?

How, how can I talk to him now?

I don't have time for this! I'm not here to seduce stallions... Even if he's strong and cool... What Discord? What's wrong with me? I mean, what's the point? You should have been sitting in your stable. Oh, teacher, I thought you were a decent pony.

The air was filled with the scent of sweaty bodies, and a quiet wind occasionally blew into the tent, lifting the cloth walls to reveal a view of the empty plains.

I felt confused. It was all so wrong, but… “It felt so good!”

It's true that we should have sorted out the balance of power. We're now one on one, and that changes everything.

We rested in the tent almost the whole day. We slept, ate canned fruits, got drunk... only I didn't drink. While my friend was lying unconscious, I came up with a brilliant idea. When he came to, it wasn't difficult at all to persuade him to take the collar off his doll.

A simple exchange, or a deal... what better to call it.

The guy's name was Frost. Either he was tired, or rather he felt as great as I did. I have never felt a better feeling than this in my life.

The scent of our bodies, drink, and fun hung around me. Only one thought bothered me despite everything: This can't go on forever.

Exhausted, full and contented, I chattered cheerfully about something, bewitching his mind.

Who's captive here now, huh? I smiled to myself.

He took the ring off me. This nasty, rough, cold ring that had been fettering my horn for several days. I was so happy that I almost sincerely kissed him on the nose, emphasizing my simplicity.

"Now I'll definitely have a child!" a naively jubilant thought danced in my mind. But in general, this is a whole bunch of problems. Back. To the Stable. Urgently.

“You’re not kidding?” I whispered, rubbing my neck where the mark from the slave collar remained.

"We're close friends now, right? So, you can consider yourself free, but it will be better for you to stay with me, because that's the only way you can survive."

The stallion that always seemed rough and harsh to me has changed, for some reason he has become soft, a little kind and sympathetic. I clearly realized that life in the wastelands forces him to be the way I met him for the first time. He is the most ordinary pony. In need of protection, or... friends, he needs a girlfriend, not a slave.

That is why, at night, when I finally decided to run away, pointing my machine gun at my rapist, I did not shoot. No, not out of sympathy. He was simply not my enemy . You could even say he became someone I cared about. I saw something good, something of myself in this tired, happy face of a seasoned robber. Maybe we would meet again someday. It was with this thought that I lowered the machine gun to his motionless feet, turned around and left.

Note: New level!

Bonus: Attractiveness.

Nice appearance and good manners? Excellent!

You can get what you need from a pony of the opposite sex. However, you lose all the experience you have accumulated and forget what you needed.

Chapter 8: Dark Descent

"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.

Chapter 9: A Good Student

"Dear princess... I have learned my lesson."

The terminal of the sound recording equipment was glowing. Several ponies stood silently in the semi-darkness. The soft notes of the piano sounded, forming a melancholy, tired melody. A small pony sang quietly in time with her playing:

Rain will not step away before sun
Rain, rain, go away, go away
Rain, rain, go away, go away

So the first day came, and went away.
The rain-rain didn't go away, didn't go away
Rain, rain, go away, go away

Rain will not step away before sun
Rain will not step away before sun
Rain, rain, go away, go away...

So the second day came and went by.
Rain, rain, go away, go away
It rained and rained, and it rained all out...

The pony fell silent and, bending her head towards the instrument, let the last note sound. Someone clicked the end-of-record key with a well-aimed movement, everyone around breathed a sigh of relief and began to disperse. I met her at the exit.

"Cool!.. Congratulations!" I said, to which she smiled. "Did you make this up yourself?"

"Yes," she beamed, "Actually, I can sing a lot of things, but so far dad says that this is my best song. I want to give it to my sister for her birthday. It will be on the evening broadcast, at the end of the party. There will be a cake, funny hats and dancing. And also on the main screen..."

I woke up cold. My whole body ached. " What's wrong with me?" It was as if there was darkness all around, sticky, thick, surrounding me for so long that it seemed to have penetrated the very essence of my being, becoming a part of me.

I looked ahead with difficulty, and somehow saw that the floor was wet. And I seemed to be all wet myself. The water had found a way through the roof. The rain had stopped, and the silence was broken only by the soft clicks of the pipbuck, too insignificant to make me move. I rubbed my forehead, surprised to find that I was not wearing my glasses. "No wonder, I lost them a couple of... wait, how long have I been lying here?"

In front of me, on the floor, lay fragments of a Dash inhaler flask.

Dash. Even the name was disgusting. "Who in their right mind would even think of inhaling this stuff?..."

The stupidity of my own statement washed over me in waves. I inhaled the... no, I couldn't say crap. Dash was wonderful. The thought of its vapors rolling around in my mouth, down into my lungs, and spreading throughout my body with my blood made me close my eyes and lick my lips. But something was wrong. All those memory lapses, those jumps in events... the drug was clearly the culprit.

Velvet Remedy was here. Right here, or rather, not far away. But why am I all alone then? Isn't this a mirage? Delirium from an overdose of this... eh, deshem... it can't be that my sister left me like that, abandoned me and... didn't help, she had to do something! Anything! Anything?..

“I just wanted to say ‘forgive me’, I just wanted to stay close to you,” I whispered, hiding my face in her hooves, as if hoping to hear her answer.

I noticed my reflection in a puddle. Exhausted eyes, a broken nose, a short, almost to the very root, sparse mane and not at all white, gray fur, in places with spots of long-dried blood. "Maybe she didn't recognize me..."

Little by little, more and more light began to seep through the boarded-up windows, and I thought that it was (probably) morning already.

The thoughts that surrounded me were tearing me to pieces. I found my sister and lost her. I wanted to scream in frustration, when suddenly I noticed that a green mark had been flickering on the locator all this time. The excitement made me just jump.

"Could it really be her?! Could it really be my Velvet... me..."

A cat, an old friend of mine, came out into the middle of the room. I clenched my teeth in frustration, looked at her again, and couldn't find her or her mark! "How did she do it so fast?.."

There was a large rat lying in front of me. I snorted and turned away, when suddenly I heard small steps, and lowering my head I saw the purring cat again, in her teeth there was another rat, as if from a store shelf, similar to the second one. The cat looked at me questioningly, apparently expecting praise. I immediately said a few affectionate words to her and scratched her behind the ear, smoothing her soft back.

On the one hand, I had no desire to do this, but to ignore such care would be equivalent to the worst thing you can do to a friend, and just now, the cat acquired exactly this status for me.

It suddenly dawned on me: I can see normally! Without glasses! In shock, I looked again at my reflection in the puddle and indeed, I didn’t have glasses on, but I could see clearly! Joy and surprise mixed in me.

Having probably been lying around without strength all night and the whole previous day, I still felt tired.

Feeling my mouth with my tongue, I decided that it would be nice to have a drink, and walking around the hut, I found some rainwater in an empty garbage can. The sensations from it were not the most pleasant, but the thirst disappeared.

The coals in the fire gave off a faint glow. The smell of wood smoke and roasted meat filled the air. Oddly enough, I liked the smell. The rats roasted on the fire looked quite appetizing. My clothes were drying on an iron barrel nearby, having undergone an additional "cleaning" from radioactive waste in the rain. Yes, I was definitely going to put the armor on again when it dried.

I made a fire right in the middle of the room, right where there was a trace of someone's old fire. It didn't take any effort to magically concentrate on a few dry kindlings and light them properly so that the large sticks and boards that I managed to find near the carefully boarded up windows caught fire.

I took the cooked meat off the fire, put the spit (actually a piece of rebar) against the wall to cool. Murlyka waited patiently and watched what I would do with the catch.

Suddenly, there was a series of blows on the boards of the boarded-up window. As if not paying attention, I sniffed the meat. It smelled delicious.

"Well, hello to the next step in the food chain!... a meat-eating pony, who would have thought?"

The knock was repeated, this time more insistent.

"Who's there?" I asked quietly. "Actually, there's a door here."

"OoohrrrrAGGGGGGRRRR..." came from outside.

There was only one red mark on the locator, and I was already scared, but was it worth talking about the door? Even though it was locked with a bolt.

I took the shotgun in magic, loaded several cartridges, surprised at how difficult this action was for me in terms of magic control and dexterity in general. The cat looked at the window, standing motionless like a statue, her eyes wide open in horror. The knock was repeated, this time with the crack of breaking boards. Sooner or later the protection would be broken.

"Listen, buddy, I haven't had breakfast yet."

I looked at the rats hanging on the spit and decided not to rush. Putting the shotgun aside, I started eating. The cat also hurried to join in and with obvious pleasure dealt with the rat, which was almost half its height. I acted more intelligently, eating the legs and meaty back first. Having appreciated the charm of the crispy crust and the light aroma of the absorbed smoke, I stopped at the point where it was no longer convenient to eat and I didn’t want to anymore. That’s enough for the first time.

Meanwhile, something continued to break through the boards with a terrifying howl, and finally a rotten hoof appeared in the hole between two strong beams, and then a mouth that had grabbed onto a board. I instantly grabbed the shotgun, caught the moment in S.A.T.S. and was already ready to shoot, but.. "is it worth it? It's a shame to waste the cartridge." The remains of the rat already looked unappetizing, although, maybe.. was it really the smell of fried meat that attracted this ghoul here? Or was it me?

I looked at the black, hexagonal barrel of my gun. The magical runes shimmered faintly, becoming brighter and paler. From the side, one might think that they were simply painted on. “I wonder what they all mean? Maybe some kind of blessing in an ancient language.”

Given my caliber, it's possible, even certain, that I'll attract even more creatures, or worse, live ponies.

With nothing to lose, I threw the remains of my breakfast right into the hole, to the walking corpse for its amusement. There was a crunch and a chomp, and then a growl, even a contented one? I would never have thought that zombies could feel pleasure. To my surprise (or pride), the red mark disappeared. Who would have thought, the poor thing just wanted to eat. No matter who.

After drinking some rainwater from a flask and looking at the jumping dosimeter arrow, I lazily sat down on my haunches. The dead man had gone, which meant everything was ok. The cat had also decided to take a nap. Despite the fact that it was already midday, the idea of sleeping a little more seemed wonderful to me. I was full, there were no problems , "and in general, everything was just great!"

Bursting with pleasure from my own coolness and prudence, I lay down on a pile of rotten things, hugged the shotgun (putting it on safety), and very quickly fell asleep.

After sleeping for a couple of hours, already tired of lying around, I put on a dry, pleasant to the touch jacket, a bulletproof vest and jeans. Looking around, I found a forgotten puddle of pink goo. Without thinking, I easily covered it with sand, and then looked into the bag to figure out what to do next. My supplies looked very nice, although this does not mean that nothing needs to be done.

I closed the bag, leaving the book "Sniper Weapons" in my hooves, and, oh yeah! I could easily read not only the title, but also the first page, the second... but the third was already difficult for me. I could see well, but to understand all these conditional terms, some formulas and calculations, in other words, was boring for me . "Oh, these eggheads"

The only thing that caught my attention and wasn't sadly scrolled through were the pictures of stallions posing with rifles of different calibers and models. " I wish I had one like that... maybe not too powerful, but accurate and... yes! With a silencer so as not to make noise."

Having chewed the last page of text, I closed the magazine tiredly.

*blink* - the pipbuck croaked.

On the screen, at the bottom of the list, a new notification appeared:

"This knowledge was of no use to you."

"What?.. this is not fair!!"

I selected the book in my inventory and tried to use it with the pipbuck.. " maybe he can explain what I did wrong" But the device only gave a dry signature:

"Requires intelligence greater than eight, or light weapons/repair greater than two hundred percent"

"Eight? How many do I have?"

I opened the SPECIAL system and stared at the sad number "6"

I also managed to notice the "Luck" indicator, which, like "Charisma", displayed a suspicious question mark "?", and that the "Irradiation" inscription stopped glowing actively, before I turned off the monitor in disappointment.

"Stupid, stupid, broken clock!"

"Argh... what do you have to do to raise your intelligence to eight? Wow... - I said, about to hit the unwanted pipbuck on the floor, but I didn't have time to finish muttering my displeasure. Someone's voices came from the street. I quickly turned on the pipbuck in its place and grabbed the locator. Four yellow marks. " Four, whoever it was, four is a lot."

I silently removed the barrels from the safety catches. "Yellow ones, by the way?"

Someone pulled the door, but the bolt sat tight and it didn't budge.

"There's someone here..."

"Hey there! Whoever you are, put down your weapon and come out and surrender, and then maybe the three of us won't have to love you in every hole we find in your body."

I thought about it and imagined myself firing a full clip of PP through the door. However, I found something to answer:

“I won’t give up, but as for the second one…” I beamed, “I still have to think about it.”

"Oh... wow..." there was so much confusion and embarrassment in the stallion's voice that I had a hard time not laughing. - Who are you anyway and where are you from?

I looked doubtfully at the shotgun, at my black jacket, and caught the number on the armor plate of the guard uniform of the stall "45". With such an approach, I could not call myself a guard, and what if... what was it that Khlamka said about reconnaissance?

“I’m a spy,” I said crisply, and added, “I don’t need any trouble, and I don’t think you do either.”

"Listen, this is actually our point," the mare's angry voice sounded, "probably her mark was displayed in red." But the stallions, as one, turned green. I wonder why. "Leave on good terms. Are you lighting a fire there? You'll have to pay for the firewood!!!"

I could hear them start talking to each other, more quietly.

"Shut up, maybe she'll want to take a walk with us."

"Oh, you! And you too... what are you doing!" the mare scolded, and the mark of one of the guys turned yellow, and the mare's mark also changed from red to yellow.

I was in no hurry to interfere while they were sorting things out between themselves, I needed to understand who I really was and what I wanted. I didn't want sex. Not that I was against it, but now was not the time or place. However, what about the team?

"Listen," I said when the argument died down, "let's start with the fact that no one is going to kill anyone, okay?" There was agreement from the street. "So I'm going to open the door, and we'll talk like normal ponies."

Opening the door with magic, I held the shotgun and pistol down on the ground, trying to look confident by showing off the weapons. My gaze was immediately met by a steel-cold mare, who was immediately blocked by an overgrown stallion, carrying an assault rifle in front of him like a medal on his chest.

"Wow!.." he whistled, looking me up and down. Two stallions followed behind, and joked among themselves, like, do you even know any other words besides "Wow, what an ass", and the stallion, offended, began to explain that he liked my guns.

When everyone who entered put their weapons behind their backs, I decided to speak, but I was interrupted by one of the stallions, the one marked yellow.

"So, what are you doing here?"

"I slept. There was a dead man hanging around here at night, and I didn't feel like walking. And then there was this rain."

"Wait, wait, my mother mare, where did you get this armor? Are you from the stable?"

"Not exactly like that, I told you, I’m a spy."

"You don't get it? I'm telling you, you're from that gang that broke into and smashed up stable 45 a year ago! What kind of intelligence agency are you from? Rumor has it that not a single resident left alive."

"It's not true, there are survivors. Do you think we should sleep with the same stallions?" I smiled, improvising on the fly. "And then you see, someone slowly got involved and got their own weapon. We've already forgotten that some of our guys were residents of forty-five. But if you drop by, maybe you can ask someone about his daily life in the stable. Someone might even say that he's glad we broke in, like, before that everything was dull and monotonous. Gray walls and all that..."

"Seriously? And I heard that you don’t let anyone in."

"Those who made this up probably shot first and then asked to come in."

"Listen, I already love you. If you lead us and get us into the gang, I'll kiss your hooves. Is it true that each fighter there has his own room?"

The stallions excitedly asked me about the details of the raider life in the stall, and I, recalling my real stall routine, invented a whole world for them, taking more and more control over the situation. However, my opponent finally got tired of this and the mare went outside.

“Where are you going?” asked the bald stallion, who was apparently the leader of the group.

"I'll go stand guard, and you have fun here, otherwise I'm already sick of her."

However, it didn't get to the point of "entertainment". Baldy told me that they were here tracking down wandering traders, and I suddenly couldn't help but think about the contents of my bag. They shouldn't know how many potions and ammo I had. They themselves looked equipped, but it was unlikely that such desperate raiders would have at least one potion for the entire group. Baldy went to rob because his family was kicked out of their home for debts. Light escaped from the city of slaves, where she was threatened with working near RAD radiation until her death, and when she returned, she did not find any of her people and was doomed to starve. Those two also have their own pitiful story. Everyone gathered here by chance, and not because of a good life.

"...So, we are ten minutes away from the main road at a trot. Whoever goes along it, we have to hope for luck. See this?" the stallion showed his leg with the pipbuck. "They were made before the war, he can..."

“I know what it can do,” I demonstrated my identical device, “so that means we’ll wait all day?”

"Not bad if you have a pipbuck... but do you really want to come with us? Cool! An extra gun would be very useful."

Remembering the role of a spy, I began to feel at a loss, because I should have a high mission.

"Eh... yeah, it can be really boring. Sit around all day and watch what happens. Then run to base and report, or by radio if you can get it, but that can be dangerous near cities like this."

I thought that if, as a spy, I really did transmit something on the radio (which, by the way, I didn’t have), then the large city located nearby would be an excellent place where I could be heard and then tracked down.

"At least I’ll have some fun with you guys, and the main thing is that I’ll still be staying at work, watching the perimeter."

"What exactly are you looking for here? City patrols?"

"Right on target, but I wouldn’t want to meet them."

And indeed. The last time I walked through New Appleloosa, I felt strange. On the one hand, they could have simply killed me. But something stopped them. As if they were afraid of becoming like me, afraid of being infected by me with everything that I was. But in the next meeting, for example in the wasteland, it is unknown how the conversation with the city patrolmen would have ended.

What if I was only left alive because Velvet stood up for me? Maybe I just didn't realize it in my drugged-up state. Meeting my sister only raised more questions in me than it solved. I would have liked to talk in a calmer environment, but now I didn't know where to look for Velvet. If I was "lucky" to run into her last time (even if it wasn't at the best moment), now my chances of luck seemed slim.

We spent the next hour sitting around the newly lit fire, but in silence. Some were cleaning their weapons, some were lying around munching on chips, and I was looking at the map in my pipbuck. Compared to my pipbuck, this one had a great many very interesting markers, not all of which I wanted to visit, like the Canterlot Ruins with the caption "DANGER, STAY AWAY, FOOL", or the Blast Zone near Maripony, and many, many more ominous names I had already ignored, and then I found something interesting. Only forty or fifty kilometers from here, an icon in the form of a house - "Base" with the caption "Stable 45"

A pipbuck like this would be a real find for bandit hunters, which once again justified my decision to hide the pipbuck under my sleeve. Yes, it made it difficult to monitor the "ears on top" locator, but on the other hand, I didn't use it that often. Most importantly, not every pony needs to know that I have a pipbuck.

Suddenly the door opened, but instead of the mare, who (as I thought) was tired of standing guard, a well-equipped stallion appeared in the doorway, unlike anyone else present here.

"Good day, citizens, are we chilling?"

“Yes sir,” responded one of the stallions.

"Whait a sec, who do we have here, Trash!: a chill ran down my neck. He was talking to me! But not to me at the same time! "Where did you get so messed up?"

I started going through possible answers. What would a seasoned raider, a drug addict, say?

“Don’t aam.. don’t ask,” I mumbled.

"Have you been sniffing desh again? Why are you drinking it or something?"

“It’s nice to see you,” I began. “Yes, it happened, I thought this time it was definitely the end, I wouldn’t make it, but here you see, I’m alive, and not just alive, look here...”

And I opened the hidden bag for him.

"Woah, did you rob a caravan?"

“No, a simple trading post. Here, take this,” I said, handing the broad-browed stallion a couple of healing potions and a pack of RadAway.

"Why are you so kind?"

"Maybe I'm just glad to see you. At least not alone now."

“Hey, that’s already offensive!” the bald pony responded.

"Oh, don't be jealous, you'll know our friendship-magic," the black-skinned stallion smiled broadly. "In forty-five, we have our own mountain behind our own, and we're happy to share everything."

“E - envy,” said the bald stallion, rubbing the back of his head.

“It’s not free,” I continued, “you’ll owe me.”

"Oh, come on," the guy from forty-five got upset. "Okay, what do you want?"

"First of all, stay with me when we rob the caravan. I'm still suffering from withdrawal, my head is like cotton wool and it seems like my brain is about to rot alive."

"Well, please, I don’t need to get paid for robbery."

"You don’t understand, just please make sure that I don’t kill myself there."

"Ok. But you're really some kind of weird bitch. Stop with the desh or whatever else you're smoking."

Dash and mentals. Does Trash like dash and mentals? Or only dash? I decided to keep quiet about this, as well as about the name of this guy.

It suddenly dawned on me that the cat hadn't shown up all this time, although her green mark kept flashing here and there. Indeed, why would she sit in the room, and in the company of strangers?

I started thinking about the upcoming fight, or what would happen if the fight didn't happen. There would be only one way to calm down four reckless stallions, and I didn't really want to think about it anymore. On the other hand, I had bribed one, whoever he was.

I looked at the "Stable 45" mark again and, marking this point with a marker on the map, decided that I had to get there. Now I have a reason. I'll say that I'm high on cheap, that I'm just tired and want to sleep it off.

Trying to distract myself from my obsessive thoughts, I began unloading and loading Khlamka's shotgun. When I figured out how to remove a cartridge from the chamber, I pointed the shotgun at the wall and took aim, imagining myself pulling the trigger, and then actually pulling it, not without fear imagining what would happen if there was another cartridge in the barrel by accident.

I rehearsed the reload several times, cutting the time spent almost in half. Pipbuck had his own opinion on this matter, and assured me that the shotgun reload with the S.A.T.S. involved could be reduced to one second. I would rather spend the action points on precise aimed shots and reload myself. In any case, there would be no problems with reloading now.

Without a couple of healing potions and pills, the bag became a little lighter, but I still had plenty of ammo, and this meant that I would have to hide the bag if I wanted to go into battle. Do I want to? Maybe just participate, make a few shots, nothing more.

I took a sip of rainwater from my flask. I didn't feel like fighting now, but I had to play out my role.

Listening to cheerful conversations, drowning in friendly laughter and wittily joking off unobtrusive dirty offers, I did not even notice how dusk had fallen. The time was approaching when, according to Baldy, at least some caravan should pass, and my soul was becoming increasingly worried. It is one thing when you enter a fight under fear of death, out of duress, and quite another when you yourself are going to deliberately become a participant in a shootout and murder, and it is unknown who will be left lying in a pool of their own blood this time.

It was like a lightning strike.

"They're coming! Rise and shine!" the bandit girl said in a commanding voice, "Baldy, quickly pack your rifle... you idiot, you found the time."

The bald one, who didn't seem to be the main one in this gang, looked at her with displeasure, ritually inserting some iron thing into the spring, and in a few seconds he raised a working (by the looks of it) barrel with magic. The others jumped up as if they had been shot, throwing the barrels over their backs, and strode out into the street one after another. I took my guns, put my bag on my back and followed them.

It was hard to trot. The shotgun weighed at least fifteen kilograms, and the bag weighed the same. Halfway there, barely noticing the strip of the "big road" in the distance, I fell a little behind everyone and, as unnoticed as possible, left the bag, clicking on the marker on the pipbuck in this place.

The raiders gradually began to slow down, and then they lay down on the ground, moving by crawling. I did the same, not even trying to look out from behind the back of the "forty-fifth" stallion.

“Three,” someone whispered.

"They're coming from Appleusa."

"Stop, there are four of them!.. I think there are children there. So, no one move, I'll do the talking."

The bald stallion rose to his full height and barked:

"Gentlemen, do you know what time it is?!"

"Good evening! I can't say, but I think it's time to sleep, - said one of the travelers, a stallion, I think."

"That's right! And since you're not sleeping, you'll have to pay."

"There are, like, more of us here than you, so give us everything valuable and..."

"We have nothing," the mare said, and her voice sounded familiar. Exactly! It's her! The same pony who... "Scu-um!" My heart sank. I felt small and guilty.

"Really? What if I find something to take from you?"

"Please, no. We've been through a lot... Our food is all we have."

"Whoa, whoa, well, there is something to give! Put the bag down, put it down, and what else do you have in your bag? Put it down on the road."

I shuddered all over. I felt that a little more and... I risked losing my temper and shooting my entire "team" right there, so I spat demonstratively, and swore loudly, and went back, hiding my weapon. Some people were puzzled by this action, but I was firm.

I wanted to have a distraction in battle. To fire a full clip of bullets at a living enemy and celebrate victory, but what is this? "What, excuse me, was that?"

I walked towards my bag, looking at the mark on the locator, empty-headed. I narrowed my eyes, opened the bag, making sure everything was in place, and turned around with disgust at the ongoing robbery, but something was wrong.

Extra marks appeared on the locator.

A group of too many, too many red marks, and all of them moving precisely in the direction of the growing squabble between the ambushed poor and my new raider acquaintances.

"Holy Celestia, patrol!!!" I peered into the darkness in the direction of the marks and saw their silhouettes. There was little time. No more than a hundred steps. I had to warn my people. Whatever they were, they were still friends.

Taking the guns off safety, I climbed onto the sunken vehicle, entered the S.A.T.S., and saw them immediately. Five fighters outlined in red, clearly well armed and trained, against a poorly organized, unsuspecting group of raiders. The outcome was predictable, and I was going to change it.

Having marked the central pony as a target, I launched the program. The canister shotgun clanged with white-hot steel, blazing with fire, illuminating both me and the entire area. The shot was so loud that it should have been heard even in the city, which was quite far away. Not particularly wanting to peer into the result of my attack, I took cover behind the car. Surprisingly, there were four red marks! "Was it me who did it? Now there are different chances, huh?"

As per tradition, I fired a short burst from the pistol blindly, without the aid of a spell or even looking.

The heated swearing among the raiders died down and was replaced by surprise, which quickly turned into understanding. "Bald had a pipbuck, he could have at least kept an eye on the locator!"

Shots rang out from our side and from the enemy's. The road was strewn with all sorts of rubbish, and the raiders who had scattered in all directions had probably already crawled behind the mounds of trash, like mice in holes. Someone was shouting, someone was cursing, and everyone who could was shooting.

S.A.T.S. picked up speed and now it was time to fire again. I took aim, but only after looking out a little, I saw that all four patrolmen had pipbucks! And by the way, they were no longer standing as targets in the open, but were lying down in a firing position, and it seemed that they were keeping me in their sights. This made me immediately hide back and lie down close to the ground. "Well, what can this piece of rust do? Only imitate protection."

Having loaded a new magazine, firing short bursts at the group of enemies, I hoped to at least help the "forty-fifth" and the others get out of there a little. The peasants had long since fled, taking their things, and ours, as one, lay down and continued to shoot back, although, surprisingly, the red marks began to move away and then completely disappeared from the locator and the shooting died down.

I wonder what my shot did to that patrolman that the ponies, confident of victory, decided to retreat? Probably pierced his vaunted body armor and helmet. Ha-ha!

Having made my way to the scene of the shootout, I found something interesting: a radio that was on! Someone must have dropped it. By the way, the body of the dead man was not found. It looks like his own people picked him up. A few short curses and something very curious were heard on the air. It seems that reinforcements were being gathered for the "thirty-eighth precinct".

There was a sign by the road: "38Km to Ponyville"

"Here?! Oh dear!"

Horrified, I turned off the radio and hid it in my pocket. It would come in handy.

I hurried to my people.

"They're yelling about reinforcements on the radio. They'll be here in the next five minutes! Run away!"

"Aaaaaar!! Bitch-a-a!!! It hurts so much, aa-a," Baldy screamed, curled up into a ball. "Kill me, please!!!"

"Stop raving, idiot!!! You just got shot in the leg!"

With the help of the pipbuck's backlight, I saw that the barrel he was hiding behind was riddled with three-bullet bursts, and one of his back legs was covered in blood like a raspberry syrup cake.

"Here, drink, and stop yelling. You will owe me."

Three more healing potions and I myself will be left with nothing.

The stallion awkwardly rose and, dragging his leg, trudged after us. After a minute of such limping, it was decided to carry him. Having handed his gear to his teammate, the black-skinned stallion dragged the poor fellow on himself. The wound on his leg had almost healed, but it was not enough to walk normally. If he became too much of a burden for us, we would have to abandon him, otherwise we risked all death. They probably sent four or more such patrols after us to definitely eradicate the "wasteland infection" from their borders. We did not need to be persuaded, it was enough that they all had pipbucks. What would happen next? Thermal imagers? And we were limited in ammunition, unlike that special forces. I only had thirty 10mm rounds left, which, by the way, still needed to be stuffed into the magazine. Although, there was still some decent reserve for the gun.

It was decided to go to the Forty-Fifth Stall, and how far we would cover during the night was not too important, the main thing was that we would already be far from here.

I turned on the radio and listened with pleasure to how they were looking for us, and how these conversations were becoming less and less distinguishable among the interference on the air.

I woke up in the dark. Trying to roll over, I threw someone's leg off me. "Oh, come on." There was a sour taste of something alcoholic in my mouth. I buried my face in the covers, feeling relief as the heaviness from my entire head gathered in my forehead.

Somehow getting to my feet and turning on the pipbuck light, I discovered that I had been sleeping in a bunch of drunk stallions, and judging by my general state of exhaustion, I hadn’t just been sleeping.

Someone muttered something sleepily about drinking. I turned around, looking at Legkaya, who was lying on the black stallion's belly as if on a pillow. His name was either Vlastelin or Venik. Something was running through my head at the sight of his sleeping face, scattered across the concrete floor. I tried to remember what had happened to me yesterday, but it was vague.

I remembered the running, the pain in my chest from exhaustion, the sweet cider, the tight hugs, and something else that was too... I don't know, special? To do this just like that, with new ponies I had never met before.

If we had such a fun time before going to bed, it's no wonder that no one stayed to watch us so that some creatures wouldn't eat us during the night.

I stretched slightly, coming to my senses, feeling my consciousness and strength returning, got dressed, took the gun, and, still swaying as I walked, tried to find a way out of this room. I was, apparently, in a multi-story building, because after leaving the corridor through the broken door I found myself on a landing with an elevator and stairs up and down.

I didn't want to go down. It was scary, and most importantly, it was quiet. So quiet that my consciousness began to invent sounds for the surroundings.

I stood up. Torn lattice doors, collapsed roof, and here I was... at the very top. Looking at the bottomless hole that started on the opposite side of the building and ended somewhere in the middle of the roof, I wondered how we even came up with the idea to stop here?

I read the latest pipbuck notifications, and the dry technical messages gradually began to tell the story of recent events. There was something about... "oh! Holy Celestia!" It was disgusting to even read such details. I turned off the monitor in disgust.

Next time, if they offer me a drink, I'll hit them straight away.

Sitting on the edge of the stairs, I just stared into the darkness. It was completely silent, and there wasn't even a breeze.

Pipbuck informed me that I had been sitting here for an hour, and I finally decided to go back. It would be much more peaceful to be in a stupid but unstoppable crowd of raiders than to be alone in this vast, boundless darkness, not knowing if enlightenment would ever come.

I put the shotgun on the wall on safety next to my SG, my bag was left there too, and I, right in the bulletproof vest ( “it’s warmer that way”) , lay down to the side of the doorway, next to the sweet couple. Having warmed up to them, I immediately passed out.

Waking up in the morning not the first, taking hold of the too light to the touch pistol-machine gun, I rummaged through my bag, not finding a single cartridge.

The bald man looked very cheerful and happy, as if he hadn't been drinking yesterday, as if it wasn't his leg that was dangling like a piece of meat. And the machine gun with an optical sight that he held on his chest was unfamiliar to me. I hadn't seen it before.

Without talking to anyone, guessing about " what kind of bastard took my bullets?" , I went down to the first floor. Right in front of the entrance to the building where we were staying for the night, a wonderful picture unfolded. Three fresh corpses lay scattered, obviously shot at point-blank range.

"Did I miss something?"

The earth pony, her bloody cloak torn apart by the hail of bullets, like herself, lay with a frowning face, a frozen grimace of pain, her face buried in the blood-stained asphalt. Not far from her lay an inverted, empty backpack. Noticing the small two-wheeled car, I immediately remembered the box of booze and chips that stood in our room. "Yeah, that fits in here."

I walked up to the gray stallion's body, touched his jacket with magic, and a terrible, tortured scream flashed through my mind, muffled by the roar of my submachine gun. That special sound that could not be confused with anything else was imprinted in my memory: the slap of tearing muscles and the cracking of bones as a hail of heavy ten-millimeter bullets reached their target. "I did it."

Now it's clear where my cartridges went.

I closed my eyes and said the words of the song:

— The rain will not step away before sun...

If there was someone nearby, I would never have started singing, I would never have shown myself weak, but there were only corpses nearby. Still singing, I knelt down near the broken window. A cold wind walked through my short mane. The submachine gun lay under the collar of my jacket. Although empty again, it was ready to work (it only needed to be loaded), waiting for its moment.

What will happen to me next?..

"Why are you so sad?" I turned around. Venik, "yes, that's his name," was addressing me. There was some understanding in his gaze, but even more determination. "Pull yourself together, Trash, we'll be on the boss's carpet today. We need to say something nice to him."

"It just feels weird. Ghouls or some other nasty thing will come to the dead. It's time to leave."

"And then I say, "We're just travelers, you can come in and spend the night with us," and then Khlamka sneaks up on me from the flank... chiki-briki and into the queens! There was a lot of shooting, but at least the evening, yeah, we had a blast!"

"Well, what happened next?"

"Am I the only one who remembers what happened yesterday?" Baldy cursed. "Okay, but this is the last time I'm telling this, and anyone who doesn't hear it is to blame: When Trash got drunk and started dancing with a shotgun, and then took her clothes off..."

Burning with shame, not wanting to hear the rest, I ran out into the corridor and up to the roof. "Phew, that's enough details for me."

Now that the iron clouds had lightened a little, there was a stunning view of a forest of houses like this one, many of which had long since fallen and crumbled as if from the wind, as if they were made of ashes.

I opened the pipbuck map and read the name of the city:

"Manehattan"

Having decided which way to go to the Forty-Fifth Stable, I closed the map and out of curiosity clicked S.A.T.S. To my surprise, the spell found its target! Far in the sky, a bird was flying, marked with a yellow outline. The chance to hit was 5%. Not bad for me. Perhaps I really learned to shoot during all my adventures in the wasteland.

I cancelled my aim and went down one floor, to where the collapsed roof lay in pieces on the floor, nailing down the already rotten furniture: tables, sofas, some cabinets... I opened one of them and coughed from the hundred-year-old dust. The remains of some clothes lay sadly at the bottom of the cabinet.

I dug around in it, sorting through the rotten scraps of fabric, and found a shiny chain with the symbol of Celestianity. It was a golden, four-pointed star, like the sun, with a silver moon nestled in its shadow. If it really was silver and gold, this thing was a very nice find.

Fastening it around my neck, lowering the star and moon under the collar of the armor, I felt hope that the goddesses were with us.

Having gone down one floor, I rummaged through the rooms in search of something interesting. The ceiling (which was also the floor of the floor I had just been on) looked completely rotten and sagged. I cautiously went out into the corridor and went down to the next floor. There was a technical room here, maybe for the elevator operators or someone else. The first aid kit was empty, the toolbox showed me only a hammer. "Why do I need it? To drive away admirers?"

"Hold on! The teacher is coming with a hammer..." I muttered. Then I heard voices from below. It seemed they were calling me. I hurried down.

"...and then we won't have to carry so much."

"What are you talking about?" I began. Baldy and Venik were standing next to the box of chips. "Oh, they're not heavy. Honestly, are you hungry? Yes? Then why not eat some carrots? We have a bag full of them, and the chips weigh much less."

"Well, you see..."

"Don't say that carrots aren't tasty. I recently ate a rat and I'm not complaining. They don't want to eat carrots, idiots."

I turned away and whistled, calling everyone to come. As we went down, someone was crunching carrots appetizingly. Someone was Bald. So appetizingly that I wanted some myself and snatched a couple of them from my bag, joining in the merry chewing, in which four mouths were already participating.

Walking through the door, stepping over the corpse of an earth pony, I wondered where they got it from. That it grew somewhere is understandable, but still, how? The earth is poisoned, the sunlight is not sunlight but some kind of evil joke, a dark parody, and all these horrors? Yesterday they were picking carrots in their garden, and then... they met us. How can you even tend a garden when... "my goddess Celestia, have mercy on me, a sinner"

Walking along empty streets, avoiding the emitting skeletons of cars, we made our way through the city.

Somewhere in the ruins, a single red mark was moving behind us, but after a while it fell behind and stopped. I determined that it remained where the corpses lay. Maybe it was a dog, or something else, too small, that it was afraid of us and did not come to the smell of the bodies that lay all night. "It's really strange. If I were a rat or a dog... oh, everything is not about rats." Thinking about rats and dead bodies in general, I looked at the bag of carrots. They were much tastier than meat.

"Wow, what is this?"

"Wow-what-is-this" Baldy called a huge wheel made of wooden stakes, tied together with torn rubber signs, placed on poles several meters high, forming a kind of gazebo, only without a roof, and, oh yeah! Did I mention corpses? There were corpses here too! Lots of them, all sorts, impaled on huge hooks that hung from the "ceiling" that was not a ceiling but rather another mockery.

This whole picture made me think of some kind of art. Contemplating THIS, the desire to get involved with those who built it suddenly disappeared. Now I understood why this thing was here - to scare away unwanted guests.

The locator was empty, apart from the six of us there was not a soul in the fifty meters of the city ruins, which was very pleasing. This was the outskirts, only four kilometers left to the "Base", and I guessed who was in charge here and why it was empty.

"Pony"

We decided to take a break. Not exactly to rest, but rather the opposite, we needed to figure out what to do next, what to say. I definitely needed to think. I was going to go down to the stall, where I (but not me) was clearly known as a dashing scout who had more than once emerged alive from an unequal battle. Khlamka must have an interesting past, and I wanted to figure it out.

Having said that I would stand guard, I moved away so that Baldy could not see me on the lum, and I did not see any of ours. Having opened the archive of records, I began to leaf through the standard digital names. Not knowing what to latch on to, I simply poked at the monitor, touching the number "2017.02.31/M/31/19". A hissing sound was heard from the speaker.

"If you're listening to this, Dipper..." the stallion's voice sounded, " ...then know that you're a freak! Because this is my pipbuck, and my diary..."

Listening to the insistent abuse directed at the eavesdropper, I turned off the recording and immediately turned on the next one. It featured a softer and clearly younger voice:

"I, Dipper Jr., solemnly promise to never touch someone else's pipbuck again... well, did you write it down? What else can I say?"

"You! You've ruined everything, I'll have to..." I turned off the recording. "Who even thought of recording this? This is pure garbage! No secret passwords, no secret ways to get into the Forty-Five stall... boring."

I turned on the recording that was nearby.

"She kissed me this evening. It was like a fairy tale!"

Then there was something about dancing and music, I even wondered if it was so easy to kiss a stallion in Stall Two? "I don't think so." All our guys were selfish and squeamish. Interestingly, these recordings were most likely made in Stall Forty-Five. It opened up an opportunity for me to dig into the history of the stall, which was very tempting. But now I had a more specific goal...

After clicking through a few more useless entries, I thought with my head and did the smart thing: I turned on the closest of the entries I had made.

"I haven't been feeling well lately. I should report on the radio, but..." this time it was Trash`s voice . You could hear how hoarsely she was breathing. "My hooves are shaking, not to mention the magic. I can't even set the frequency properly. It's good that the pipbuck has big buttons. Where can I get a dash? It would immediately feel better.

In general, for myself, otherwise this amnesia will shoot me in the head again: I learned something, and very important. The Brotherhood of Steel has stirred in the area of Stble Seventy-Second. There is no doubt that they took everything out, but that is not what I am talking about: judging by the radio broadcast, they got hold of the plans for the construction of the stallbles!

Ha-ha, assholes! They could have gotten them a long time ago. Everyone knows that there are copies in the Stable-Tech headquarters and in every ministry from Peace to Morality. All because they don’t see and don’t want to see beyond their own noses! They sit there like rats in a hole, playing training simulators, and practically never participate in real battles.

So, plans and a map of all the stalls at BS. What does this mean? We're screwed, girls. We need to prepare for defense or escape, I'll choose the latter, and I'll leave four hundred "accidental" bullet wounds for the heroes. Well, whatever you want, but I warned you."

Great, now I just need to pass this on as soon as I can. Come on, hhere should just be a dash in here somewhere...

The recording ended and the previous one started, but nothing was heard from the speaker except the chirping of night insects. Some grumbling and a yawn were heard? It seemed like someone was sleeping well...

*BOOM*

The bullet whistled right over my head. I jumped up in fright, and convulsively poked the S.A.T.S., twirling the shotgun in my hooves, watching as the spell singled out a black earth pony with a rifle on a battle saddle. She was standing a meter behind me!!! Without unnecessary panic, which could take away precious time, without words, I rushed to the side, inconvenient for a second shot at me, but even before the spell outlined the attacker with a grid with hit probabilities, I completely accidentally noticed that the outline and mark turned out to be green!

"Too late! Four-two in my favor," she said simply, brushing her thick bangs from her forehead to the side with a charming movement. "Start using the locator already, It took me a long time to get used to it, too, but it's really cool. Hey, what's wrong with you?..

"Everything..." I froze, watching her stare at me. She was in the Forty-Five Stable guard uniform. "Fine. Just tired."

"You look like crap. Listen, you need to drink and sleep. Stop traveling so far. Every time I feel like I'm seeing you for the last time."

The speaker drew level with me.

"But I need..."

"First you owe me, and then your "Need". Let's go quickly, if you don't want me to kiss you so dirty."

"Excuse me for what?" I need to listen to the recordings about this urgently. Any recordings at all.

Not forgetting about our friends, we very soon reached Stable Forty-Five. Or rather, the "Base" mark, where there was nothing but a wooden stall of an outdoor toilet. I tried not to laugh, or express any feelings at all, as I watched Blast, ( "Thank Celestia that Broom called her by her name!") climb into the stall, sit down on the toilet, and close the door.

"If you're new," Blast said, coming out of the restroom as the ground began to slide apart in front of us. "Remember: Always cover the sliding hatch with sand after you, or you'll get your ass kicked by me, and then by the patrol and hunters."

Walking down the corridor of the stall with two ponies, in the same uniform as me, leading the "newbies" behind me, I felt more than confident. Now I would sort out all the business here, and then I wanted two " p" : eat and sleep. The possibility of a third " p" confused me a little. I was not ready for this. In bed, I would definitely be found out and I would find myself in big trouble. A lot of questions would arise.

While a bunch of new recruits were tramping around on the carpet at the boss 's , the three of us were sitting at the bar and munching on fried potatoes. I didn't even have to speak, the conversation was happening without me, and very soon there were only two of us left. Me and Blast. Feeling a headache from trying to figure out what kind of relationship Junk had with Blast, I immediately grabbed my bag and happily handed Blast a couple of healing potions, like, it wasn't for nothing that I went... she seemed to thank me, but somehow became gloomy, and left, saying that she would be back soon.

The combat targeting spell knows no mercy. The computer doesn't care what or who is the target.

White teeth carefully held the glass neck of a bottle with raspberry healing nectar. "My last potion!" Small strong legs, illuminated by a yellow halo, drawn in a grid, rushed away, flashing between the tables. Sixty-eight percent... seventy-three... eighty... ninety-one... and here is a definite hit.

The bullet will enter under the front knee. It will tear the young joint and may even completely tear off the leg.

I cancelled the attack and lowered the gun.

"Goddess, I agree. Forgive my doubts."

"You little brat!!! Come on, give it back..." I shouted, rushing after him, pushing aside the surprised ponies. After running for about ten minutes, completely lost in the corridors, having already lost hope of recognizing his mark, I was about to leave, when suddenly I heard a quiet conversation.

"Here, drink this, it should help. Just please don't die."

There was just a pale unicorn lying on some sacks in the hallway behind some wooden boxes, holding her stomach with her legs. Her orange mane was tangled in clumps, and her dull turquoise eyes were so painful that I couldn't help but wince.

“Don’t be afraid... I won’t die,” said the mare, taking a sip of the magic potion. “And thanks for that, I feel much better now.”

The foal smiled and I cleared my throat, enjoying the way he flinched in horror.

"Actually, it's my healing potion! It's called stealing, buddy! It's very, very bad. You should think about your behavior..." I said sharply, and turned sideways, satisfied with what I had said.

But... then I realized who I was, what I had done lately, and where I was. The funny thing was that I was not addressing the foal, no, I was exposing myself with these words. I felt awkward.

"Don't be angry with Melon, I'll pay for this potion," said the unicorn, rising to her feet. She really did look... better. The barrel of some kind of rifle was sticking out from under her cloak. "No, I won't give it up. It's my soul, my love, and my life. Only the grave will separate us."

"I'll just have a look, okay?"

She snorted in displeasure.

"Don't you dare scratch."

I took the sniper rifle in a cloud of telekinesis, catching my eye on the optics, the smooth, polished barrel, and the well-oiled trigger mechanism. If you judge a pony by its weapon, this one was well-shod. I handed the rifle to its owner and thought about it.

"What happened to you? Why are you just lying here?"

"I ate the wrong mushrooms in the cafeteria. They mixed them up in food. I freaked out and broke the display case. Now I'll have to spend two months in the corridors, my room was temporarily... confiscated."

"Listen... would you like to come for a walk with us? As part of the payment for the potion, I'm asking you to give the recruits... and me, a lesson in gun care. Our boys think they're shooting from a bucket of bolts, and that needs to be fixed."

"With joy!"

"And here's another thing. Look what I have! You won't be able to tear yourself away, it's incredibly interesting," I lied, handing her the magazine "Sniper Weapons".

"Wow! It seems like I owe you even more now?"

“It turns out that yes,” I smiled, leaving without saying goodbye.

Having asked the mare to be in the same place this evening, pleased with the turn of events, somehow finding my way around the corridor map, I returned to the bar... or the dining room?

It was impossible to call such a noisy, disorderly room a canteen: Some of the lamps didn't work - everyone was in semi-darkness, heavy music was playing with indistinct, shrill singing. Everyone who was talking was cursing loudly every half word, and in the corner, on a bench, a couple of ponies, a stallion and a mare, as if no one was looking at them, were rubbing against each other just like... "oh my! They're having sex, but aren't they wearing clothes?"

Despite the fact that the two were dressed, they clearly... enjoyed this process... "Hmm..."

I noticed that I couldn't look at anything except the sweet couple, beating each other in oblivious bliss, and tried to distract myself by closing my eyes. After a while, making an effort, I turned away, opened my eyes and... saw a stallion who, having shoved the neck of the bottle into his mouth, as far as it was possible to put it, was gulping down beer.

And in general, everyone around was having too much fun that I felt disgusted.

While waiting for Blast, I bought another glass of hard cider, drank a little, and just tried not to think about anything.

"What are you doing here? Aren't you afraid of getting beaten, Junk?"

"A?"

"You! I'm talking to you! Did dash get high again?"

I blinked.

"What do you want?"

"You, you forgot, huh? You forgot this?" He came very close, burying the scar on his chest in my face. "It seems you don't need your filthy horn anymore, huh?"

“Listen, I’m sorry, let’s come to an agreement?” I began.

"Let's make a deal. Either you leave, or I'll fix your face! Don't you dare sit here like a pile of garbage when normal ponies are hanging out!"

I picked up my cider and started drinking. Suddenly there was a pop and something sticky fell into my mug and onto my nose.

There was his spit floating in my cider.

A split second would have been enough to grab the gun and end his life, but a fight between comrades is one thing, and murder is quite another. Besides, I want to get into character, right? If Junk owes him, he needs to work off the debt.

I stood up silently, and as if I was about to leave, turned around, hitting him hard in the ear. Maybe I should have cursed, to complete the picture, but the blow was enough, and the next second I was simply knocked off my feet. Many blows rained down from all sides, and I barely had time to parry at least half. It was especially painful when he hit the horn. This freak aimed for places unprotected by armor and the face.

Having withstood several blows from the side, I chose the moment and finally kicked him in the nose with my back leg, enjoying the crunch. The stallion simply went wild, and now I already regretted that I got involved in all this, but then a pile of muscles shielded me, pushing the enemy to the floor. Blast fought like a whirlwind, and in a few seconds the stallion accepted defeat and hid behind a crowd of ponies.

“Quiet, girl, control your blows,” said one of his comrades.

“Next time I’ll wear brass knuckles,” the black-skinned earth pony clanked.

"Leaving already? Go ahead, do your lesbian things," someone joked. "Or was he not joking? Oh, my mother Celestia..."

We walked down a corridor that was so full of things that I simply stopped paying attention to them.

"Here, drink." Blast handed me the healing potion I had recently given her. I drank it greedily, feeling relief in my eyes, chest, neck and all the other places that had gotten it. "We beat him up good. It was about time. The bastard had been bullying you from the moment you were taken into reconnaissance and he was shoved into reserve security. Do you remember? Or don't you even remember that?... In the name of heaven! Limey, what did dash do to you?"

Lime. The real name of Junk was Lime. Lime-Lime-Lump... that's how nicknames are made. They reflect the state of their bearer, exactly corresponding to him, and eventually become a real name.

Note: New level!

Darkened soul - you're a bad, bad pony! Do you like it? Lets do more!

Chapter 10: Chronicles of Forty-Fifth Stable

"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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The Last Chapter

A headache flared up and I stood up. I had probably been lying like this, upside down, for too long. The bed was slanted to one side, or rather, one half of it was just lying on the floor, unable to support the weight of the ponies sleeping on it.

“I’m getting up already, yes, yes, now...” I muttered, rubbing my swollen eyes. “Guys?”

The room was empty. Neither Venik, nor Blast, nor those idiot friends, nor even that green idiot were around. Best friends!...

I looked around properly, went around all the rooms, and found no trace of my things, namely the bag with cartridges and money, and my big gun was also gone. My heart made one strong beat and was silent for a second, then started beating again. Am I now... alone? Have I been betrayed? Of course, who needs a pile of bones like me.

"You're more useful dead, for now," the words of a half-forgotten fight appeared in my mind. Come on... I killed her! Why won't she just die and finally leave me alone?

Junk. I killed Junk. Took her place, took her friends, her love, her life? If so, then why be surprised if these friends left me, if they were never my friends.

I looked out the window. The streets of Ponyville were quiet. A lone pony trudged along the road, and I could see the skull tattoo on his face. The urge to ask him if he had seen my friends froze on my lips. Great. My friends…

I sat down on the floor and rubbed my face with my feet. It felt like I was somewhere inside, just refusing to come out, refusing to make decisions or do anything at all.

I could feel my submachine gun with my chest. I pulled it out with magic, detached the magazine, felt the cartridge on the top with my hoof, put the magazine back in. The guy with the skull face disappeared from sight. Did I want to fight? Maybe just die? To die beautifully. To feel important at the moment of death. Aaaaah, no, no, stop it all. What's wrong with me.

"Why don't you just die? You're annoying me."

No, leave me alone. You can't get me from there. This is my life now. Sit still and maybe I'll let you see my kids. That's it. If anything else matters, it's my children. No, not my students, my own, real children. Unlike Trash, I haven't been shot through the belly, that's for sure, and I'm going to have a family. While friends can abandon me, betray me, family is much more serious. Family is forever. I found myself thinking about Velvet Remedy. Was that all a fantasy? Was my whole life a fantasy? I knew that the only thing that mattered was the here and now. The dirty streets of Ponyville. The stinking ditch with corpses. The ever-scurrying lizards, the hunters who wanted to try their luck with them and send their carcasses to the kitchen. I had at least thirty rounds of ammunition, although I was starting to doubt what I needed them for.

A mission... oh, right, I had a mission! I had to fulfill the master's will! That was all that mattered, besides my own life.

Kill the big boss of Ponyville. Alone and without a proper weapon, you're kidding. Do I look like a super pony? Maybe I'll charm.. him.. with my body.. ahahaha... I smoothed my mane (?) with a hoof. The short sticks that were supposed to be my mane did not feel anything that fits the concept of "Beautiful". Let's face it, I have a bad day. The sounds of drunken party from yesterday were still in my ears. No wonder my friends left without me... where could they have gone? To hang out at a bar? To look for prey on the train tracks? Back to Stable Forty-Five? Could I even count on success in the chase? Would they leave the task unfinished?

I didn't even notice how I went out into the street. My heavy legs were dragging themselves along the road somewhere. Some stranger called out to me.

"Hey, baby, want to have some fun?"

"Darling, just leave me alone..." I shook my head trying to clear the blackness before my eyes. Even thinking about romantic company made me feel sick, I'll definitely throw up if I keep thinking about that, and I wouldn't want to part with last night's dinner, considering that I have exactly zero money right now.

Steel clouds hung over the plain of the wasteland as usual. Dead houses sometimes showed someone's silhouettes. Many of the houses were tall, unlike this small hut... and although time had not spared it, this building, unlike all the others, looked well-kept. I was greeted by a sign in an incomprehensible language when I entered.

The grey-heared mare looked up from her book and greeted me. I started looking around to see what goods were there, but all I found were books.

"What are you looking for?"

"Hey, you're not selling anything, are you?"

"Actually, I’m selling these books."

What? Whose idea was it to sell books? They're useless! I mean, you have to read them, it's booooring!... I looked at the brown mare with distrust, followed her grey hair, braided into a braid.

"Seriously? What about, well, weapons?"

"The word is the best weapon."

"Huh? Are you sure about that?" I showed my gun, "I have no doubt that my boy will be a more serious argument than these words of yours."

"Oh, you're wrong, girl. With a word, the Almighty created our entire universe!"

W-what?

At first I had questions, but now I just felt downright funny. Or was this All-Powerful really so well-read that... what kind of magic could do that? I wouldn't mind learning how to, well, create universes.

"And how exactly did she do it?"

“Well, you can read it yourself,” the mare handed me the book. “But read it here, because you definitely don’t have enough money for this book.”

I figured, since I'm in no rush, maybe I should give it a try? After all, this old mare... wait a minute! It was surprising to see anyone old here. I mean, live fast and live beautifully, die young!.. isn't that our motto? Anyone who's in deep trouble, like me. No matter...

I immersed myself in reading for a couple of hours. The story in which a certain KKet told where each mountain should be, where each river should flow, and what the winds should do – looked interesting, but, wait a minute!!!

"Hey, wait a minute, please," I said. "Aren't Celestia and Luna our goddesses? This book says strange things."

"What impudence! Celestia and Luna are just shadows of our world, just like you and me."

Everything inside me was in a frenzy, but I didn't have the strength to argue, so I continued reading. There was something about millennia of chaos, and... Oh! Oh! There she is, Celestia! But... the story seemed unfinished, there was nothing about war...

"Where did KKat go? If she's as "Almighty" as you say, what's the problem with, I don't know, doing something useful for us?"

"You ask a lot of irrelevant questions. KKet decides what to do and what not to do, she is not your little sister so you can tell her what to do! She is our true creator and ruler!"

Give me a break... I don't know about you, but I don't really like being someone's property. What if... what if I learned to, in these words, create universes? Then no one could tell me what to do, if it were my own world. If only I could learn to... live in my own world, and not in someone else's, made-up one.

I tapped my forehead with my hoof, as if trying to wake up, but the dark room with the books and the strange white-haired mare was still there. She looked at me strangely.

"What?"

“I want to learn. I want to create my own world,” I said quietly.

"Look, you can't just..."

"No, I can,"I muttered angrily. "Look here - do you see my cutie mark? My special talent. A friend once told me that I don’t have my own world. Or that I lost it. So what you’re telling me is actually the answer to all my questions. Look closely at my mark. Everything that’s happening here, in this wasteland, this whole nightmare, it’s all completely and utterly wrong! But look here. Right at this Sun and the stream, do you see these green hills? Here, I want a world like this. Will you help me? Or will I do everything myself. It may be more difficult, but this world of your KKat has taught me something, I don’t care about these difficulties of yours, I will overstand them all. Will you teach me or not?!

She smiled from the semi-darkness.

"Lesson one. The world never determines what it will be like. You determine what this world will be like for you. Whether to consider yourself pathetic, whether to fight for life, whether to die, it all depends on you, if you consider yourself a victim, you will be a victim."

"And if I now fire thirty bullets into your chest, what will you, idiot, determine there?"

"Lesson two, don't break the rules. What is hateful to you, don`t do to others"

"Give me a break, I didn't ask you to lecture me, just show me how to create a good world!"

"I already said, it all depends on you."

Discontent was grinding inside me. Now I really did point the submachine gun at her, intending to shoot, to check how she was going to influence the world, but the earth pony only smiled silently.

A cold wind blew around me from all sides. I stood with my eyes wide open, and then squinted from the bright light. These were clouds… the most ordinary ones. But something had changed. There was no small hut, no strange gray mare. Only me, standing in the same position, aiming a submachine gun into the air.

There was a photograph lying on the ground. But not such a colourless, time-worn one. This one was new, bright. Familiar faces appeared against the beautiful blue sky: Blast, Venik, Velvet Remedy... that grey mare with a contented grin.. And me! That's my face! But... so happy, with a beautiful mane... Is that a milkshake in my magic?

We all looked unusually happy in this photo, without a drop of fear or fatigue on our faces... as if this photo was a real window into a completely different world!...

"Hey, why are your eyes wide open, fool? I'm asking, do you want to earn some money?"

"Wa-ha-a!" I blinked. "There was a building here! Where is it?"

“There was no building here... Oh... forget it...” the pony had already started to turn around.

"No, wait! Yes, maybe I want to, but what should I do?"

"Cleaning up Brahmin shit. I pay at the end of each day, plus food and lodging, and for each ton you get one portion of dash as a gift.

Author's afterword:
The teacher immediately agreed as soon as she heard the word "dash". Neither her friends nor that crazy mission to kill the local boss mattered anymore. All Mary could think about now was that strange gray mare! Was she right? Was my world really the way it is just because I was used to seeing it that way?

She didn't know if it was all a coincidence or not, if she made up the story with Velvet just to justify her heroism or banditry, none of it mattered anymore.

"The author (i.e. me) doesn't know whether Mary was actually originally a Junk and made up all her adventures related to Stable 2, or maybe the Teacher made up that she was always a raider when she met Junk's friends. I don't know.

I don't know, just like I didn't know 80% of the events in the book until I wrote them."

Mary knew one thing for sure - she was on the threshold of a new world, her world. Now it was up to her alone how this world will look like.

Note: New level!

Bonus: Worldmaker – it seems you finally understood who is the boss here! Studying was not in vain, it's time to create your own world!

End!

The Real Me: error: : error: : error: :...

Holding the gun in the snowy-smoky light of her magical thought, a unicorn mare went across the room. She stooped by the wall and pushed the door with her foot. For about a minute she listened to the breath of the wind, and only then she looked inside.

She looked at the rubble and left?? "She does not even try to search, huh..." I whispered, wiping my eyes before closing them again to be swept away by my surveillance spell. The magic dragged me on the wall of the building, then through the window, and here I am again, looking at the unicorn mare with my mind. She had a submachine gun and a hunter shotgun.

She walked down the corridor and came across a staircase to the second floor, but having climbed only halfway, to the window, she stopped. The ruined staircase was too much for her, and she went back again.

She was also carrying two bags with something, I bet it was food. She stood by the window, looking at the frame and glass shards. Then she looked out of the window, touched her glasses, and mindfully looked into the distant wasteland. She began to descend the stairs. She was stopping to look around here and there, it seemed that she was imagining something for herself.

She was balancing her hunter shotgun on her back when walking around the main room.

I ended the surveillance spell, and came back into my body. I touched the barrel of my dragon-slayer gun, and was ready to shoot her on sight. She had a stable-tech bag, and stable security helmet on her head. Stable dwellers are never safe to talk to. They were an infection of the wasteland, with their morality and ideas about what the world was supposed to look like, they never cared about how much damage they were causing to the environment and the whole world while trying to fit their standards. They were a remnant of the old world, and they had to either change or die.

I accidentally knocked some stone with my hoove, right a second before showing my face in the doorway. She looked at me with the distant look of a lost child. I felt like her life, the fancy life with all the conveniences from the stable that I never had, crawled into my face from looking at her for just a moment, It scared me so I hid behind the wall. It changed me so much from even a short look into her eyes. I could not shoot.

What am I doing? I need to finish her now! I spoke instead: "Hello!"

"Well, hello," came a response from inside.

"I'm looking for something, and if you don't mind, could you please lower the gun?" I talked as friendly as possible. She was armed, should not it be a reason good enough to kill her?

“Let’s say so. What's next?” I didn`t like the sound of her voice, it was annoying to even listen to her talk. “Shall we part ways? If you don’t mind.”

So if I want to watch her suffer, how do I make an excuse to come closer? I just needed the conversation going.

"Of course, you can go, but I still have some work to do here – a quest..." I leaned on the wall, and casted my surveillance spell. My mind traveled past the doorway, so I could see her face again. Its expression was so different compared to when in eye contact with me. Obviously, she could not see me, so her face was not talking to me, only her voice.

She wiped her pipbuck screen, where my mark was shown as a green one. That thing does not read thoughts, only intentions, or maybe emotions. She looked pleased, so I continued.

"A stupid quest to be clear. Where have you ever seen an elite intelligence officer tasked with pulling a cart! A ca-a-art damn it." I said smiling.

"Oh yeah!" She laughed, lowered the gun, and seemed to be even more relaxed now. "Where are you from? I'm from Stable Two."

Her smile became uncomfortable as she spoke that she is from Stable. That's right, she should be feeling bad about it. Waa-it, Stable Two, it's the one which I have on my map as a sealed one? Could it really be?

"Really?" I asked, broke my super-vision spell, and showed my face in the door way briefly, looking into her eyes. She looked lost again, as if her mind would go somewhere else. Her gun was still lowered. I went back behind the wall, having enough of her face for now.

"For real, I mean..." I muttered quietly to myself. "Oh, yeah! I mean I thought the Second would never open. If our people find out, my wallet will be a little lighter... You know, why don't you come with me? We'll drag the cart, it's easier together!"

I confidently entered the building, holding my dragon-slayer rifle on my back. I stared at her as friendly as possible, keeping my body straight and firm to look cool, I also did not forget to show off my pipbuck.

"Stable 45?" she asked.

"Yes. We unsealed it recently… we founded an outpost in a village nearby. Of course, we don’t have patrols yet." I lied, and would keep lying if needed, all to get more of her real response.

"Wow. They don't have patrols. I'm one of the first here, you know, and it turns out you're already exploring the wasteland." She was chatty and friendly, no way she would shoot me now.

"You have a serious gun," I tried to cheer her, knowing that she probably is not so good with weapons. She looked at it, then at me, examining my equipment.

“Who are you anyway?” She asked.

"I used to be in security and finally ended up in long-range reconnaissance. You can brag about that kind of work, freedom and all that. But in reality, it turns out that you're constantly dragging something back to the base. You find it, and then you drag it. In short, it sucks." At least something could be told without lies.

The grey pony gestured actively, expressing boredom.

"To tell you the truth, my stable didn't open. I ran away," She mumbled. Woah, interesting!

"Oh, so that's three times better! First, I met you. Second, I don't owe anyone any caps now, because I haven't lost yet!.. And third, you'll tell me how to get into "Stable 2" or just take me to the Overmare so that we can form an alliance between our stables."

Or in other words, you guys can kill yourselves (please) and let us take all your stuff along with your home, I hope you don`t mind.

I kept my friendly smile consistent.

"It's a whole day's journey to the Stable. I'm looking for my sister, she's probably in trouble."
Ok, so she is looking for her sister from the same stable, that might be a hint on how to get inside, I definitely will need to find her sister.

The stable dweller mare unicorn looked lost again.

“We will take care of your sister and everyone else, but first we need the canisters.” I reassured her that everything is fine. She did not look very confident though, I felt like I started losing her.

"Look in the neighboring wreck. However, I don't think you'll like the junk you'll find there." She said weakly.

"Do you have any empty flasks? And don't say junk. My name is Junk. Quite a name, believe me. It's annoying. Okay? Let's go." Lets go to hell baby, are you going to start or let it be me? When will you realize that our goals do not go together? That there is simply not enough air in the wasteland for both of us?

"And I am Mary…" Mary. Quite a name, I should stop complaining about mine. I tried to make her come closer with wave of my hoof. She spoke again, making her way out of committing to help me. Of course she did, why would anyone want to be friends with me. "I am truly sorry, but…"

“You’re so boring,” I interrupted. With soft touch I activated S.A.T.S., and as spell went on, I selected her pretty face as a target. The moment my gun fired, her face was not there anymore so the shot hit the wall instead, her rifle fired and missed. How dare she try to shoot back at me? The iron table was standing on its side where the stable dweller mare was just a second ago.

“Are you still alive there or something?” I asked as I felt annoyed still seeing her mark on the locator. I dashed into run to attack. In just a few more jumps I would approach her cover from the side and destroy her with point point-blank range shoot.

A barrel of submachine gun appeared. I shielded my face with dragon-slayer rifle as bullets pierced the air. The barrel, wide enough to keep me safe, got hit. The stable dweller mare did not rush to show herself. Her SG was pointed somewhere but not at me. I heard her mumbling something.

I kicked metallic shelve to the floor, and leaned next to it, brewing slowly. This is just a job, and it needs to be done.

“How are you?” She asked calmly.

"All ok. Let's continue. Come on, you first, come out," I pronounced.

“Yeah, and then you’ll want a child from me,” Waha?

"So, I'm waiting!" I was getting angry. No need for feelings, just do what has to be done.

"Just don't say I didn't warn you." she continued teasing me.

There was silence for about a minute. I felt bad that this is me who is impatient here and not her. This had to change, I had to be better.

"Come on. What, you weak, huh? Are you scared, you creature? Just a sec... Just wait, wait..." I focused on my horn, pointing it into the air, absorbing electric charge from everywhere, and turned around to get more from the other side as well, and then released the lightning into the stupid table-shiled of the enemy.

Everything around was drowned in light and thunder. The table became red from heat, so I shot immediately, trying to get her through the steel. My horn was still glowing with arcane magic. She looked at me through the hole that dragon-slayer gun just made, so I fired again. Good time to take dash if she is still alive. She was, so freaking alive, it was driving me insane. The dash tested good as always.

***

"Please dont! I dont want to die!" the stable dweller mare, slightly wounded into shoulder, was crying and sobbing. I was pressuring her to the floor with my forelegs while holding her guns and a knife carefully in my magic, dragonslayer rifle pointed into her pretty face. Broken pieces of the iron table were scattered around us. Did I, after all, intentionally missed all those times? Was she really worth of so much ammo waste?

I grimaced angrily.

"Weakling. Pathethic, useless creature. I won`t kill you just yet, at least not unless I find out why you suck in life so much that you decided to run away from your fancy life in Stable Two." The mare looked so messed up. Her helmet was crushed, her shirt was covered in blood. I almost felt pity for her except that she was ignorant and self-centered, carrying about her beloved self only just a few minutes ago before I shot her in the shoulder and made my problems into her problems. "Lets go find your sister."

Her face changed strangely as if I did something good to her. "Thank you" she said weakly.

"What for? Its not like I care, I am just really curious to see what she has to say to you. People are not losing each other for no reason"

I let go of her and stepped aside, cautiously looking at her.

"I need help with my shoulder, it really hurts. You shot me so now you have to fix me."

"We will get you some healing potion, meanwhile you need to learn how to stop bleeding well enough. Here, its simple..."

***

We were walking in the desert, she ahead of me, looking up something in pipbuck. I let her carry her stuff and even gave her all her guns back. Her mark was green on the locator. Did I just make myself into her companion? Or her into mine? Does not matter as long she shoots my enemies. I liked the confidence in her eyes, and her clear wish of getting to find her sister, I felt like it was giving me a bigger purpose in life than my regular job-like service in surveillance of Stable Forty-Five.

"You seem to be happy with my company," she spoke "We could have agreed to work together without trying to kill each other."

"You were annoying, I felt like it would be good killing you until I actually tried," I replied.

The war is only possible when there is equality of forces. If one side dominates the other with no chances, there will be perfect peace.

The whole wasteland, full of adventures and interesting people was lying ahead of us, and the day was only beginning.

Next level!
Bonus: Friendship is Magic. The end.

Chapter 2: Dear Princess Celestia... Leave me alone

Two days ago

Among the small debris, on the floor, in the darkness, a small green screen blinked and lit up. The techno-magic computer, a personal life-manager device came to life and automatically tuned to the morning radio broadcast. Music entered the darkness of the spacious room. A quiet, familiar song began to sound. A happy voice leisurely drew green living trees, gentle grass and bright scarlet lights of fragrant roses around.

They bloomed for us. Our roses, our beautiful world. For a moment it even seemed that all this was reality.

The radio stopped singing, the announcer read out the news list. Some were being ridiculed, some were being pitied, and as usual, good mornings were being said. From the conversations on the air, one could conclude that everything was going on quite normally in Stable #2. The nuclear shelter reminded of an ordinary town, if you forget that the sky above your head had been replaced by hundreds of tons of metal and concrete and reliable liquid crystal lamps.

Everything and everyone was as usual, only the bed in this room was empty. The rumpled, unmade bed revealed the owner's carelessness. The lamp on the table beeped like an alarm clock and turned on, illuminating the entire room, revealing no one.

On top of a stack of history books sat a glasses case with a swirling cloud pattern. The case was open and empty. Nearby, among rags smeared with gun grease, was an empty bottle of magic healing potion. There were traces of things being hastily gathered everywhere… and under the table, an open book lay. In the pouring darkness, it was hard to see a fragment of old, hoofwritten text:

"A long time ago, in the magical land of Equestria..."
The wind walked silently along the ventilation shaft in the cold gray walls. Suddenly, the alarm clock, built into the lamp on the table, demanded attention again. This time its squeak merged into a trill, and for several minutes it did not stop ringing, expressing complete dissatisfaction. But there was no one to turn it off, and, finally, realizing its uselessness, the alarm clock fell silent.

The conversations became tense. It became clear that today, someone had dared to take a decisive and dangerous step. Someone had left the Stable, disregarding the law and common sense.

The radio didn't know yet that there was another free room in the Stable Two. And the pipbuck, with no more owner, abandoned under the bed, continued to talk about something of its own, naively believing that someone were listening to it.

Fallout Equestria - A Good Teacher