mifjlz: переводы

→There was no question who ‘he’ was. Rampage looked up from where she sat as a surly teenager adjusting the straps on her power hooves. “Safe? Deus doesn’t do safe. He does ‘more harm’ and ‘less harm’. ‘Safe’ isn’t applicable to him.” She then started to put on the metal armor, which was still a size or so too large. I supposed having a size-changing body would be extremely annoying. She seemed to have a system of belts and straps to keep it all in place.

→“So,” Glory asked from the kitchen as she carefully stowed every bit of food we had left into bags, “is he safe?”

→“All right then. Hoo-rah!” the robot shouted as he floated out the hole. “For Equestriaaaaaa!” he roared, dropping like a rock. I gaped and leaned out the hole as I watched him fall. Lacunae looked out above me, and a purple glow surrounded the robot, slowing his descent slowed as he leveled out. He floated over the heads of the glowing ghouls below and head for the wall before I finally lost sight of him in the rain and smoke.

→“If he flies out there and explodes, we know it didn’t work,” Carrion replied. Xanthe looked up from where she made a few checks on the gadget she’d taped to the robot’s side and gave a shrug.

→“How do we know this IFF is going to work?” I yelled over the howling air. Rain was pouring down outside; it looked like late afternoon. Had we really only been in Hightower a few hours? Felt like weeks.

→With that, we started our climb; first up through the shattered windows and onto the narrow sloping ledge of metal that ran around the interior, and then up to the crumbled rubble around the breach in the prison wall. Those of us not capable of flight were assisted by those who were. The three of us with magic flung blazing clumps of detritus down into the inferno below as the air grew thicker and visibility shortened. I kept waiting for something to spring out at us... another flaming ghoul, or maybe the Warden would send his robots again... but for once our only opponents were time and gravity. Finally, we came to the hole punched through the cells and exterior wall. I looked at the inch-thick steel armor plating on the exterior wall as we moved up close to the hole. Hot air blew out around us, carrying a plume of smoke out like a chimney.

→“Yes, Ma’am. Let it never be said the Equestrian Mechanized Corps failed to execute orders!” he announced, and gave a sort of salutelike gesture with his remaining claw. Lacunae and Snips walked over, the blue unicorn holding my sword in his magic as far away from himself as possible as if the blade was diseased and reeking. I slipped it into its sheath with a smile and thanked him.

→The robot sighed. “Return to Meatlocker, tell all those pansy ghouls about the bomb, and warn them about a zebra infiltrator. Hoo… rah…” he muttered sullenly. “Retreating when there’s still hundreds of acceptable targets is just sickening!”

→Xanthe returned with Cerberus in tow. I glanced at the zebra and then at the robot. “You understand your mission?”

→“Flux is good shit, Pink,” Rampage retorted. “Always added a drop or two to my Dash to turn it into Rainboom. Great shit! Got you so high even earth ponies could fly.” Then her grin melted into an angry scowl. “And when they ended up in the ER, they looked like they’d fallen from flight, too.” She rolled her eyes and snorted. “Hey, not everypony can handle the Dash.”

→But getting going would take a minute or two. While most of the RadAway in the store room had been lost, there were still tablets of Buck, Fixer, and Rad-X intact, as well as bottles of water. We all chowed down on the chalky tablets as Rampage passed out water bottles filled with her recycled RadAway and took a drink or two. It’d been ‘energized’ with Flux, which probably meant taint. I swirled the bottle of orangey fluid with my magic. “Are you sure it’s safe to add that Flux stuff? Don’t want anypony growing eye tentacle penises, now.”

→She snorted, looking back at the body. “Softheart snapped. Couldn’t take it. Maybe it was her injuries or something, but she couldn’t let it go. Said she could feel the Angel inside her. Woke up in her daughter’s room with a knife. Finally jumped in front of a subway train. Suicide. Case… fucking… closed.”

→“That’s exactly what my fucking superiors said!” she snarled, jabbing her hoof at me. “But she was killed in custody and I don’t care if it was the Angel of Death or Princess Celestia; a crime is a crime! Then I dug some more and found out there was a whole slew of ponies killed in Hightower. No investigations. No nothing. Others had gotten hit by some sort of mind-sapping magic attack -- all fatal. And nopony was investigating! Somepony was covering it up, but I had no idea who.”

→“What’s wrong with that?” I asked, and got a glare in response.

→“Angel slipped up. Softheart had a kid, and the Angel went after her. Too much for the Angel to resist. Nasty fight. The Angel nearly killed Softheart. Shoved a length of wrought iron fence through her chest. Anyway, I trotted her giggling ass all the way back to Hightower myself. Of course, then Image got involved and we were fucked. I was sure the Angel was going to disappear again. I filed paperwork. I made calls. I screamed my stupid head off.” She let out a long, rattling sigh. “And then the Angel dies in custody!” she spat, stomping her forehooves in rage.

→I used a bit of canvas to wipe the blood off my hooves. “So what happened?”

→The ghoul rolled her eyes. “Because she was fucking ministry. Fuck… don’t you get it? Back then, if you were with a ministry, there were a million special rules about what we were supposed to do. We caught Nurse Candy, then handed her right over to Fluttershy who ‘Pinkie Pie promised’ us that they’d make her better.” She hissed in disgust. “Three months later she was out and doing it again. Only this time, she knew how we’d caught her and changed her habits. Softheart drove herself nuts trying to stop her; she loved kids. And the Angel loved toying with us. The Angel would leave notes on the bodies of her victims to me and Softheart.”

→“Mhmmm. Real piece of work. Turns out she was an M.o.P. nurse. Snapped under the pressure. Thought it was more merciful to kill kids than let them live in this world. So we finally caught her… and we handed her over to the M.o.P.,” she muttered bitterly.

→“Now?” She looked surprised. “Well now you take your armor -- you paid for it after all -- and go fuck yourself for all I care. I’ll make sure she gets incinerated. Windclop will auction off her stuff for the town. Somepony else will come and sell barding. Life goes on,” she muttered darkly. “That’s how it goes, isn’t it? Somepony gets murdered and great if you can catch ‘em but ‘oh well’ if you can’t.”

→I popped out a finger and scratched out a booger, making her squirm in disgust when I flicked it away with a grin. Freakshow that, Willow. “So… now what?” I asked, stepping away from the body a little.