“Enough to rustle already,” a little girl said in a whisper somewhere into the school desk.
The teacher was telling something, every now and then, creaking on the blackboard with chalk, but Mary, sitting at the back desk, had much more pressing concerns. A hamster's head appeared from a compartment in the table.
“Booooring,” the hamster quietly squeaked, “Wouldn’t it be better to go for a walk? You are missing all your childhood.”
“Mom says that if I don’t study, I’ll get knocked up at 15,” Mary whispered very seriously. “A very important opinion of the person, of course, who turned the whole house into a church, but at least while I’m here, she isn’t doing my head in.
“Let’s goooo, I can’t anymooooore, how long tooooo?”
“Smirnova!” there was a stern cry of the teacher. “What is the ‘x’ of the equation we just analyzed?”
Mary did not even think to stand up, showing disdain with her whole appearance.
“The diameter of your ass, miss Faith!” under the collective laughter of the schoolers, she blurted out.
Although the answer was correct, either because the number turned out to be too big, or the teacher simply got out of bed on the wrong side, but she literally turned red with rage, heading in the direction of Mary.
“Transform now!” the hamster yelled.
Mary even did not have time to ask why - with black splashes splattered all around, the teacher's skin cracked. Stretching it with his hands, as if pushing the curtains, a huge boar crawled out from inside. He stood on two legs ending in hooves. One was covered in bleeding ulcers, the other glittered as if it had been cast from steel. His purple scrotum was dragging right along the floor, which made it at least one and a half meters size, and in place of the belly there was another face that vaguely resembled a teacher.
Grunting ferociously, he scanned the classroom with eyes that each seemed to live on their own - they moved out of sync, like a chameleon's. He coughed, and his saliva, which stank of rotten meat, flew in all directions.
The face on his stomach stirred, flowing like a balloon filled with water, and spat out through something resembled a mouth at Mary.
The spit hit the backpack she was holding, leaving a smoldering hole in it.
The boar, having stopped coughing, wiped its snout with a huge hand, and then hit a wall with it. Wall shattered, and with it the building trembled, threatening to collapse.
The children, up to this point only with interest watching what was happening, screamed. But the tremors had subsided, and the building seemed to be solid enough that the loss of the wall was nothing to it.
Great Oak, give me power!” Mary yelled, holding a brooch with an emerald tree in her hands.
It lit up, and the girl herself with it. Her shoulder-length black hair fell to the floor, dyed a bright green. The school uniform has turned into a pale green Victorian-like dress, with a wide hem covered with multiple lines of gold ribbons and studded with pink flowers. Green eyeshadow, green lipstick, green nail polish, green boots. It seems that from her presence, everything turned green in general.
“This is the Emerald Warrior! We are saved! Hooray!” the delighted children shouted in an unnatural chorus.
Mary stretched out her arms and pointed the brooch at the boar.
“Sakura beam!” a tornado of pink petals flew out of the brooch, which in fact, actually looked like a ray.
The pig, letting out a drawn-out plaintive oink, evaporated.
“Thank you! You are so cool!” the children exclaimed in the same strange chorus.
After a slightly drawn-out autograph session for her fans, which turned out to be the whole class, she finally headed home.
Mary walked, and her green hair swept the ground. Their tips carved green sparks, scattering fireworks around the area, bewitching all bystanders.
“Mimi,” Mary turned to the hamster, stuck out her muzzle from the backpack, “Do people turn into monsters?”
“Of course not! The monster was just pretending to be one.”
“And since the monster pretended to be her, then there must be a teacher somewhere?” - Mary rightly remarked. “Maybe she’s in trouble too?”
“And you think a lot today,” Mimi replied in surprise. “Most likely, she just got sick, because it often happens.”
This answer, surprisingly, was enough for Mary, but before she could relax, something flew past her, even whistling, blowing up the two-story building that stood right behind her.
There was something in the middle of the street, with many folds of fat, layering on top of each other, like a stack of pancakes. On top of them lay a chest, dropping to almost the very ground, more like two garbage bags. Apparently, being not even able to walk, it crawled, sticking a full-length golden cross into the ground in front of it, pulling up to it with a short likeness of arms. A crowned uterus fluttered near the shoulder, and its wings were rapidly moving up and down ovaries. With a spread, the same multi-fold mouth, it gurgled and squelched something, apparently speaking in some unknown language.
“Hey, what's this?!” Mary shouted. “There were never two monsters in same day!”
There was no answer - Mimi, being no less dumbfounded, frantically tried to calculate something on her miniature, alien-looking computer.
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Mary would have been glad to do the same, but the slugpancake was not in the mood for friendliness. He began to hammer on the ground with a cross, and cracks spread in all directions from the violent blows on it.
She looked at the brooch, which glowed a little fainter than before. Although had no other choice, she made the smartest decision after all.
“Sakura beam!” she pointed her weapon at the monster.
The slugpancake simply opened his mouth, devouring everything he was generously gifted with. After that, he pulled out something from under the fold and threw it at Mary, hitting her directly.
The hit was strong, although Mary somehow miraculously remained in place. She fell to her knees, holding on to her belly, and her stomach spewed with today's lunch, judging by the tomato skins.
Before she had time to catch her breath, there was a stamping sound from everywhere. She was surrounded by a crowd of barking bulldogs standing on two legs.
“These are the servants of the evil witch,” squeaked Mimi. “We have no choice, there are too many of them, we will have to use the entire charge!”
Mary raised her hand with a brooch, in which the emerald tree was already more like blue, but the dogs noticed this, so they pounced on her. One grabbed her, while the others began to beat her. They beat her so violently that dust rose from the ground, not even trying to hold back.
The brooch flew out, rolling on the ground, and Mimi jumped after it.
“Mary, together!” she shouted, holding the emerald jewelry in her hands.
“Sacred Oak, we appeal to you and your children,” Mary uttered the words, with breaking under every blow voice. Mimi however managed to adjust to scattered cries somehow, “Help us in a moment of mortal danger, turn these lands into a blossoming forest!”
From the trembling earth, with the music of the wooden squeaking, countless thin glowing branches stretched out, lifting the monsters into the air. They barked and whined, but nature itself was against them.
Only Mary and the hamster remained on the ground in the end.
“We did it!” Mimi exclaimed happily, holding a completely blackened brooch in her hands.
Mary did not answer, she just wiped her bruised eyebrow, the blood from which was trying to get into her eye, and slowly sat down, enduring the pain that every centimeter of her body gave.
From a distance, the sound of trees falling was heard, approaching very quickly.
When it was already very close, from behind the branches, a woman came out in a black mask covering the upper half of her face, and in a tattered black sheet instead of clothes. She surveyed the battlefield and, turning her gaze to Mary, bared her teeth, showing triangular sharp rows.
“It's a witch! Ru...” Mimi's scream was interrupted by the crunch of the woman stepping on her.
She wiped her foot on the ground, smearing the hamster insides on it, and then slowly, bending around something, as if walking through a minefield, went to Mary.
Not that she was very shocked - Mimi had been hit more than once, always resurrecting, so it did not bother her. The problem was, she could not move at all. Not the way it happens when the body is tired, and not the way it happens when she is afraid. More like exactly as if someone is holding her.
Purple handprints appeared on her hands. She screamed, trying with all her might to escape, it even seemed that she almost succeeded, but it seemed to her - she did not move even a millimeter.
The witch came very close. Her head split into two, dangling on slender necks, similar to snakes, each of them approached her ears, and they began to whisper at the same time.
"When did you become popular? Why don't they recognize you when you transform? When did you meet Mimi?" was distributed in one.
"Where did you get your dress? What is it made of? Do monsters exist? Why is your hamster talking?" was heard in another.
The questions went one after another, without stopping. If at first Mary parsed words, then later they merged into one continuous white noise. She did not know how long she sat like that, according to her feelings, time was slowing down and slowing down.
She felled. It was as if she had fallen from a great height, and the white noise was replaced by a loud hum. Just for a second, but she saw the world differently.
“Uee,” Mary almost mumbled as she exhaled.
Belyana, who was holding her, finally let go of her hands. She walked around, and approached close to her face, began to examine her eyes.
“Well,” she said displeased, having finished her inspection, “You completely burned out her mind.”
“Seriously?” asked Karina, stained with someone's blood. “Is that all you care about?”
The girl sat looking nowhere, and instead of clothes, she was wearing someone's skin, turned inside out.
Screams and crying were heard from everywhere. Somewhere it was horror, somewhere the pain of broken limbs under the collapsed buildings. Somewhere they were children, in whose eyes their families and friends suffered. Many tall shrubs around, sprouting through people in military uniform, branching out of limbs, ears, nostrils, mouth and eye sockets, stained with viscera and other bodily fluids. Someone even moaned, living out the last seconds or minutes, dreaming at these moments only of death.
Next to Mary herself lay her mother. Rather, human minced meat. Who said that it was she? Not that she was here entirely, in reality her pieces were scattered around the area, in some places there were enough large fragments among them that she could be identified quite unambiguously.
“What else should worry me?” Belyana asked in surprise. “These garlands?”
“These are not garlands, but people. Like you and me.”
“If someone, I will not point a finger, walked faster,” she said instructively, ‘They all would be very fine.”
“Brrr, it’s still better than letting her keep doing it. An eleven-year-old girl, she said, a religious family, she said,” Karina lamented.
“No, not better. Over the past year, have you seen at least one magician who, of his own free will, can arrange this?” she swept her hands around. “Can you imagine how useful she could be? And now, this vegetable only good to scare fairies.”
“Don’t you think that destruction and massacres are middling measures of usefulness?”
“She could also heal, actually,” Belyana replied calmly.
“That's not the point!” Karina flared up, but Belyana interrupted her even before she began her angry tirade.
“And what is? Is that for you this child is now a monster?” she pushed Mary with a dirty foot, which is why she, without the slightest resistance, fell, and a thin stream of her saliva flowed to the ground. “And, in your opinion, this is a good result, right? Exactly what she deserved?”
“This again will not lead to anything,” Karina sighed, “You just need to turn everything inside out so that I feel like shit.”
“Believe yourself what you want,” Belyana shrugged.
“And why every time this hell ... Why can't we meet someone who would arrange candyfalls and honey showers?”
“Because nobody like this exist?”
“Mood killer.”
They left Mary to lie down and went to her school. Arriving at the place, they found a dollhouse. One wall of the building simply did not exist, which created such an impression. All the people in it stood without moving.
Inside the school, however, they found that each and everyone had been impaled on stakes made from their own spines. From the mixture of the smell of feces and blood, Karina vomited.
“Wow, so, after all, there are limits!” Belyana happily exclaimed for some reason.
There was a shuffling, slightly wet sound. And one again.
Muscles appeared from around the corner. Definitely human, but completely devoid of skin. He was crawling in their direction, but from the blank look it was already clear that he hardly even understood where he was.
“And here is the source of the girl’s clothes,” Belyana commented. “If I were you, I would finish this off.”
“Eh?”
“Her only chance to survive is drooling at the street now,” she threw up her hands. “Who, if not you?”
Karina began to quarrel with Belyana, and it probably would have gone on for a long time, but the former teacher let out a last wheezing exhalation and fell face down into the crumpled tile.
“That's all,” said the obvious Belyana. “Now she will get you from the other world, boo! You only worried about that, isn’t it?”
“Dummy,” Karina answered sadly.