Fallout Equestria
Record of Beryl Wars
By TDR

Chapter 3
Hazy Shade of Winter

It wasn't long before I fully regretted my agreement.

The time I spent with Twilight was stressful enough. Everything I said had the potential to set off another break down and subsequent explosion of power. Still I quickly learned to notice the tell tale signs that I was going off script, though it proved harder to correct myself when that I thought it would. Particularly since I wasn't even away what the script was. Still I managed to keep a disastrous breakdown from happening like I did the first time. And after a few cycles it steadily got easier. The first three days however were a nightmare of my tip toeing through a minefield.

The first day wasn't so bad, it was mostly her ordering me to help her move things and complaining about some one named Rainbow Dash when my injuries forced me to stop. Evidently who ever Rainbow Dash was, they caused enough random injuries that mine fit the scene.

There were a few points where I said something that made her twitch, though I quickly changed what I was saying or just muttered something random weakly and she seemed to accept it. Seemed spike was often grumbling under his breath about things and when I did it it made me more like him. Most of the rest of the day was spent both praising and complaining about the Apple Family and their cooking at reunions. I just smiled and nodded like I knew what she was talking about. I was completely clueless..

The next day was probably the easiest of the three. She woke me up, ate breakfast.....which wasn't much more than some old cereal Trixie had found did a few morning chores then said something about researching the past.

Evidently this involved her getting a stick out of a box and staring at it for most of the day while writing in a little notebook.

I took a look at the note book , reading after her as she wrote. I knew how to read thanks to Lily, but the mares hoof writing or magic writing or what ever , was atrocious. It took me some time to figure out what she was writing.

It seemed to be the story of some Guard pony in training named Jer'rahd Kaisur. Not any one I had ever heard of before, so I didn't think he was that important. It wasn't even very interesting, granted it was pretty cool when he managed to cut the drill Sergeant's hat, but after wards it was just training. Still there were a few things in there that she was writing about I thought to try myself, of course I would have to lean how to use a sword or a knife. What ever this story was about seemed to be a long long time ago before guns.

After she came out of her trance she made a number of corrections to it and then had me look it over. Aside from her atrocious writing there wasn't anything of note, but my saying it was fine made her twitch so I complained about the writing and she seemed to take that better. Still she started reworking it and stayed up long into the night to work on it before she finally went to bed.

The third day, yeah that was the most stressful one. Definitely the worst. Evidently part of the third day was her teaching this 'Spike', who I was supposed to be, a school lesson. I had no idea where the alicorn had gotten a teachers outfit, but with her body she looked like one of those mares in a magazine I found once that lily had gotten quite mad about me looking at. It was kinda a boring magazine too, just pictures of mares posing for the camera in odd clothing. Playcolt or something it was called.

Still Twilight hit me with something called a 'pop quiz. The way she said it nearly made me have a heart attack. Then I remembered that a rad bunny had filled in for Spike for a good while and I relaxed. Particularly since rad bunnies normally don't even talk.

Turns out a pop quiz is just a bunch of random questions about history, math science and a few other subjects. None of which I really knew anything about.

The math ones were easy, I did most of the finances for Lily and I. Who ever Spike was judging by the questions he didn't have a decent grasp of numbers.

Science was a good deal harder except for the parts about gemstones and rocks. I knew about those from helping Lily with some of her projects and because of a book Lily gave me once, showing the common types of gemstones in Equestria. I thanked her of course, but the book was a great big tease as I doubted I would ever have any thing shown save the occasional rough quartz or geode found in the river.

History I had no idea about. I was mostly guessing at that point. Still the story she was writing gave me a couple of names I used. Maybe one of them was right?

Modern economics and current events I had absolutely no clue what so ever on. So that was mostly guessing.

In the end I kept a close watch on her as she graded the test. Every twitch and shift of her features sent me on edge and I found myself looking for the nearest place to take cover if she exploded again. Still evidently my look of worry and panic was mistaken as worry and panic about the test.

“Spike did you just mark down answers for this at random?” She asked finally.

“Um maybe.... just a little.” I admitted not figuring I could make this any worse given her look.

“What did I tell you about that?”

“Ummm not too?”

“Right a educated guess is still better than relying on luck. I figured you would be mature enough by now to know that. We are going to take this again until you take it seriously.”

The rest of the day was more of the same test after test until dinner. And the mare didn't give me the same ones over and over again, oh no. It seemed Twilight had countless random test questions lined up for me. And every time she graded them I felt the panic rise with every twitch and scrunch of her nose.

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Did I say the third day with Twilight was the worst? Yeah no. Not by a long shot. Any time I spent with Scarlet was the absolute worst. She started training me the moment she was freed from Twilight. And by training I mean knocking me around like a rag doll and yelling at me to dodge as she threw things at me that were bigger and heavier than I was.

The injuries I had from when we first met were reopened and added to, the mare didn't hold back in the slightest. This mare was crazy, claiming I needed to unlearn everything and then she could start teaching me. Given I didn't even have a firm grasp of the basics thanks to my skipping most of the military training most villages tried to drill into me. I barely knew which end of a gun to point at some one, there wasn't much for me to unlearn.

The training lasted until Twilight came back into control which usually was only a few hours, and I didn't see much sign of the Trixie side of her unless there was scavenging to be done. Scarlet seemed to think such menial work was beneath her attention and usually went to sleep or just gave Trixie full control of the body to let the blue mare go digging through the ruins. I followed when I wasn't too sore just to learn anything Trixie might point out as well. Trixie seemed grateful for the company and showed me some of the signs of radiation, and what food might still be good or not. I was also shown how to pick locks and access a computer, though I caught on more to the latter than the former. Oddly many of the computers we found seemed designed for something with fingers rather than hooves.

Trixie pointed out that this place used to be a school for foals and dragonlings that worked with them. She didn't know much more than that as much of this place was ransacked. The only parts that were not were the spots filled with a eerie billowing pink mist. Trixie told me to stay away from it as it was some sort of horrid aftermath of the attack on this place. Evidently it wouldn't hurt her, but it could be deadly to me. Again she wasn't really sure as she had never subjected a dragon to it, but she had no desire to start now. She talked to me about odd things. Like the way the world used to be and morality. She always seemed sad no matter what and she always seemed apologetic and submissive to Scarlet. I suppose that had to do with her feeling bad that Scarlet had to share the body, but that couldn't have been her fault, she seemed far too nice to cause something like this odd tri personality thing.

Things continued like this for what felt like months. Three days with Twilight then a few hours with the others. A time that was growing by hours every three days. Eventually Scarlet and Trixie were around for three days as well.

There were slim pickings around the surface of the school, though deeper down in the corridors where the pink cloud still lingered there was a much bigger bounty for Trixie to find and since the Pink cloud did little to her, she could easily retrieve them.

There was one corridor that she didn't go down however. There was no pink mist, but occasionally we would see rad roaches or bloat sprites skitter away from the light of her horn and scuttle down the corridor back into the darkness. The hall seemed to absorb Trixie's light as if something down there was eating it. She professed the area gave her a head ache for some reason and it made it hard to concentrate on her spells when she was near it. The blue alicorn stated she planned to send me down there to look around when Scarlet had finished training me, just to see what might be the cause of it and if it could be removed.

Something about that sounded like a lie to me, but I wasn't sure what it was or why she would bother to lie.

Scarlet didn't like the area either when I brought it up to her later, though the idea of me seeing what was down there after training seemed to change the mares tactics. She went from simply torturing me to actually adding some training in with my pain. Some of it I could even use.

Still after her training sessions when Twilight saw the state I was in she blamed Rainbow Dash all over again for my injuries. At least the pattern was consistent like that.

Even though Trixie and Scarlet were gaining more and more time with each successful Twilight loop that didn't mean they were all perfect. I did screw up a few times before I simply decided to keep my mouth shut.

After a few loops I memorized the first pop quiz answers and got them all correct. Evidently that was something Spike never did. Luckily the desk I was sitting at made a pretty shield from the magic burst. Scarlet cussing me out as she worked to repair the remains of the tree house in the short time she had didn't help matters.

The second time Twilight blew up because I decided to sate my curiosity and ask her about the stick she stared at.

Evidently this was a no no as Spike evidently was supposed to know exactly what it was because she didn't even give a twitch or a scrunch before she lost it. Still not sure how I survived that one, though I woke up with Trixie trying to pull me out of the wall I was embedded in.

Scarlet was less than pleased both times and my training showed that with heaps more abuse.

Still I endured everything because of what the red alicorn had told me. Lily's killers needed to be brought to justice, they needed to pay for their crime one way or another. No one else was going to do it for Lily and who knew how many others. So I had to.

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After about a year of training and Twilight cycles there were about three weeks between Twilight times. Scarlet and Trixie both decided that they would test me themselves by sending me down the corridor.

While I wasn't sure I was ready for anything. I figured I could handle a few bloat flies and rad roaches. Scarlet had me practice with some she had found after all. They might be little, but their bites and stingers hurt.

I supposed I had changed a little. I was heavier and I had shed and regrown a bunch of my scales, mostly the damaged ones from Training and failed Twilight times. I had a bit of muscle as well. Scarlet had given me an old bent machete thing she had called a kukuri that Trixie had found in one of the gardening sheds. The only fire arms practice I had was with an old hunting rifle that was mostly rust. There was only the one box of ammo we found too, so after seventeen shots, gun practice was over.

My aim was crap any way, I could barely hit anything at range, though the guns kick didn't bother me at all. Scarlet complained that I was better suited to a blunderbuss what ever that was.

I still felt gangly, though I had lost my baby fat finally, though I didn't seem to have put on any real muscle as I couldn't left Scarlet's Sparkle Cola sign. My wings were still just decoration though if I jumped off something high enough I could glide for a little while.

Scarlet's training was more focused on agility and taking abuse rather than strength, so I didn't expect I'd be dead lifting rusted wagons any time soon. Scarlet's training was odd sure she was teaching me how to fight and kill, but her way didn't seem like any of the warriors I read about in books. What I was learning seemed more like what most of the bad guys knew in those books. When I asked Scarlet laughed creepily for a while before telling me ' bad; and 'good' all depended on what side you were on in a fight. The ones who killed Lily probably are considered heroes by some ponies.

I didn't like how she put it, but I couldn't argue.

Still despite her malicious way of teaching I was picking up a number of things from her that I thought would be useful. How to hide was a good one, you could blink and Scarlet would be gone, without using magic either.

Trixie oddly was even better at vanishing, you could be looking right at her and something would cause you to blink or she would pass behind something and simply vanish. Scarlet called it magic, Trixie called it stage magic that didn't require any real magic to do. But in either case Trixie didn't offer to explain how she did it to either of us.

What the blue alicorn did do however was teach me how to talk to ponies. She claimed 'ninety percent of most conversations were all about how confidant you were, the remaining ten percent was what you said, though to her confidence was key.'

As I stood at the start of that dark path, a torch in one claw and my kukuri in the other I shuddered softly hearing all the skittering and sickly chirps from down the corridor. I glanced back at Trixie who stood their waiting. Scarlet hated to be near this place because of how it made her feel so she had retreated in the alicorn's mind leaving Trixie to suffer the headache alone.

“This is it Beryl. Trixie goes no further. It is up to you to see what wonders or horrors are below. Trixie would like very much if you came back however.” the blue alicorn smiled softly.

“Alright so a final test then?” I muttered thinking of Twilight.

“Something like that.” Trixie tilted her head as if listening to some one talk , or listening for them. “Seems Scarlet does not wish to say anything. But here..”

A small scroll and a metal rod were floated over to me. The rod had a button on on side and when I pushed it a beam of light shown out of one end lighting up the corridor much better than my torch.

“Oh wow, where'd this come from?” I asked amazed at the prewar tech.

“Trixie found that scavenging in one of the guard outpost ruins she had missed before. The batteries for it were a bit harder to find, but that is called a flashlight. The scroll just has some information on it and a small map. Trixie went this way once when we first came here before she was forced to turn back. It is not much , but it may be useful to you Beryl.”

“Thanks, dunno how I'm gonna pay you guys back for all you've done.” I stated flatly. That sort of thing had been worrying me for a while. Scarlet didn't seem the sort to take my dealing with Twilight as full payment for her training.

“You are not done yet Beryl. Survive and bring back what you find and Trixie might have one lest task for you before you go off for your revenge.” Trixie nodded with a small sigh.

I blinked looking up at the blue mare as her expression turned dark. I didn't think I was going any where for a while yet. Twilight still appeared and needed to be placated. It should have been maybe another year or longer before she was gone completely if she would be gone at all. Maybe it was nothing , but Trixie looked … odd. It was an expression I had not seen on the blue alicorn before. Sadness, small scraps of joy and even annoyance I had seen, but never this.... what ever that brief look meant it reminded me of Scarlet for some reason.

Still it was something I would worry about later. Right now I had a mission. While it might have been stupid, at the very least it would let me prove to myself whether or not I was ready to go after the ones who killed Lily.

I took a step forward heading down the darkened corridor. I had to do this, for Lily.

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You've left the starting area! LEVEL UP! Level 2!
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S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Attributes gained.

Strength: 3 [ We are here to pump 'clap' you up!]
Perception: 4 [ young age and stupid questions have not helped]
Endurance: 8 [ Evidently there is some benefit to getting your tail kicked constantly]
Charisma : 1 [ Dragons are not well accepted in polite society, or impolite society]
Intelligence: 4 [ Well you're not the sharpest tool in the shed, but neither are you the dullest.
Agility: 6 [ Constantly dodging thrown wrenches seems to have paid off.]
Luck: 3 [ You could easily win the lotto... just like everyone else. ]

PERKS

Toughness rank 2 [ 1 for Dragon hide perk , 1 for the abuse you've sustained.]
Sneak Rank 1 [ You are impossible to spot, at night, when no one knows you're hiding.]

Free Racial Perks

Dragon Hide[ + 1 to tougness 20% damage resistance]
Dragon Breath Rank 1 [ You breath lightning. While you cannot yet use this at range, it does extra damage if you decide to bite some one. You are also immune to non magical electricity.What a shocking ability.]