Fallout Equestria: Stable 7

Big Cheese's pip-buck plays a loud holotape file of an orchestral band, prompting her to wake up. Stretching out her limbs and yawning—the smell of booze escaping from her breath—she lifts the wrist computer to her face and reads the display.

9:00 AM
STATS>Status>EFF>Hungover: -2 PER, -1 INT, -1 AGI
DATA>Quest> Wakey Wakey: Get up

Cheese lets out a soft groan, looking to her left. Plastered just to the right of the bedroom door is a thick layer of bile with chunks of mushed up white substance sticking onto it. The puke had steadily slid down, now spreading to the edges of the floor.

The door slides open with a hiss allowing a pony through, hauling a mop and bucket. The haz-mat suit obscured his face, the dome helm hiding it behind a dull green tint, though emblazoned on both sides of the bottom of it is the yellow number 7.

“Morning, boss,” he greets with muffled velocity.

“Does it have to be,” the unicorn counters.

“According to our pip-bucks it is. Then again maybe it's not morning.” The stallion wraps his hooves around the mop, getting on his hind legs and pulling the tool out of its liquid soap home. He presses the white braids against the wall, splashing it and sloshing the bile about. “Maybe it's noon, or nine. Maybe our pip-bucks just randomly give us a time to keep us entertained and on our hooves.

Cheese's eyes close to a slit. “What.”

“Nothing,” he says as he pulls the mop from the grey steel wall and sticks it back into the bucket. “It's morning and you're supposed to do Overmare stuff.

“Oh shit, I am,” she states with a facehoof, sliding the appendage down her face as the friction helps in waking her up. She flips her sheets to the side and lifts herself down to the floor where she stands on all fours. The lights do nothing to hide the bags that hang below her hazel eyes and against her yellow coat. She flicks a strand from her red mane out of her sight and stretches once more, letting the joints in her body pop one by one. Doing this, she catches a glimpse of her pipbuck which gives her an update.

DATA>Quests: Quest Completed – Wakey Wakey
Quest Added – Overmare Stuff: Be an Overmare

“I hate that,” she grunts.

The last of the puke stains disappear under the dirty visage of the mop as it flies back down to its soapy abyss. The stallion looks up after finishing his work. “The sound of your joints popping?”

“No, when our pipbucks tells us to do things through this weird quest dialogue.”

“I find it's a good way to keep organized.”

“I find it's a good way to get migraines. You know I needed to use the bathroom yesterday and it gave me several objectives that involved going number 2.”

“I think maybe you were drunk and it wanted to help you.”

Her brow furrowed. “I wasn't drunk, I was plastered. There's a difference.”

“The difference being?”

“The difference being me being drunk is being plastered and you being drunk is being me.”

The stallion stands there in his blue and yellow haz-mat suit. “What.”

“Nothing,” she shoots back as she walks over to the bathroom, levitating a blue jumpsuit out of the closet as she does so, “just be a janitor, Janitor, and I'll be Overmare.”

“Sounds like a plan, boss.” Janitor takes his cleaning supplies and leaves Big Cheese's bedroom.

Cheese herself splashes water onto her eyes, lapping at the droplets that slide down her face. She then brings her head down to the open faucet and takes a few gulps, the tap water trickling down her throat and into her stomach. She takes one more mouthful to swash around her mouth before spitting it back out. Her pip-buck alerts her again as she groans and looks at it.

SATS>Status>EFF>None

“I think I can tell when a hangover is coming down on my own, thank you.”

“I can't,” a voice shoots out from the device, “but thank you for elaborating.”

Cheese rolls her eyes and speaks back. “Loop Tie, why are you bothering me?”

“Because it's the only way I can talk to ponies,” the voice responds.

“The Stable PA System is for that. Maybe you should stay on it.”

“But then you can't talk back.”

“That would make my life easier.”

“But boring,”

“I like my life boring and without any surprises. Honestly, I like my life to be filled with nothing but sleep and peace. Maybe I'll go visit Pie Hole in the security station and get her to help me with that.”

“Then we wouldn't have an Overmare.”

“Stop being right.”

“Stop being grumpy.”

“I'm grumpy because I just had a hangover. What's your excuse for being so nosy?”

“I'm stuck in a monitor room with a bunch of camera and intercom feeds surrounding me.”

“First off, you're not stuck. You choose to stay in there and never leave. Second, stop talking to me and do your job already.”

“Monitor the Stable?”

“That's Pie Hole's job, which you keep usurping by staying in there. Your real job is to be the Stable DJ. I'm pretty sure all six of us would slowly lose our heads if we didn't listen to the same jazz song for the umpteenth time.”

“Umpteenth isn't a real number.”

“It's a real number if I say it is.”

“Are you going to say it now?”

“Yes, by official decree I, Overmare Big Cheese, dub 'Upteenth' a real number, and it's quantity represents stop talking to me and get back to your duties.”

Loop Tie sighs in resignation as the communication is cut off.

Giving a relieved sigh, Big Cheese slips on her Stable 7 jumpsuit and walks out of the bedroom, into her office.

Circling around her desk and to her chair, she sits down, booting up her personal terminal. As it boots up, the PA system comes to life as Loop Tie begins broadcasting.

“This thing is on, right? Well of course it's on, I mean it's kind of always on and some pony would obviously tell me if there was something wrong with the feed, right… a-anyway. Good morning, residents of Stable 7, the date is uh… and um, the time is 9:05 AM. Time to get up from your slumber, uh sleep, w-whatever you wanna call it, and um, you know, do duties. You're listening to Stable 7 PA System and… this is a… a song. It's a jazz song. Again. For the umpteenth time. Oh yeah! Quick news update, Overmare Big Cheese has officially declared umpteenth a number. So um, yeah. Everypony start using umpteenth. Um… okay. Here's the music.”

Cheese sighs as the familiar music plays over the speakers. “It's always good to listen to those same saxes over and over again. It's kind of like having the same thing for dinner eveyday. Oh wait, that's something that happens too. Small food cubes packed with all the essential nutrients in an easily digestible substance. Never mind that we can't get the damn food processor to work so maybe we can have some actual hay fries. Oh no, protein cubes. That's all we need in our diet. Screw eating a metric shit-ton of cupcakes and contracting diabetes. Celestia forbid, we don't have treatments for that. Well I'll tell you something, Mr. Broken Down Food Processor Unit! If I want to fast track my way to a catastrophic liver failure then I'll damn well do it, because guess what. We learned how to clone beer from you!”

Cheese takes a deep breath, realizing that she had stood up on her desk in her rant to the ceiling. Sitting back down, she stares at the terminal she had just booted up. “What the fuck was I doing?”

“Having a meltdown.”

“Damn it, Loop Tie,” she yells at her pip-buck's broadcaster where Loop Tie's voiced chimed in from.

Fuming, she gets down from her desks and heads for the door. “I am going to the monitor room and break that shit open so I can...” She stops mid-sentence as she comes to a realization that she is staring right at. “Where's my door?”

“Hm?”

“The door that leads to my office. It's not here.”

“Hold on, let me see what you're talking about.” In the hallway outside, a camera rotates to the Overmare's Office entrance. Zooming in, it sees a door way with Cheese looking through. “Um.. it's right there. You're staring through it.”

“No, I know this is the doorway,” she remarks to the camera, “where's the actual door?”

“Oh… um, I don't know. Maybe it disappeared.”

“Oh yes, the door that is gone has disappeared. I never would have guessed that without looking at the entrance into my office and clearly seeing that the door is not there. Do you have any other brilliant revelations, Loop?”

“You're staring at the camera.”

She facehoofs. “Just do me a favor and call for everypony to get here now. I need my privacy when I'm working on my… well, Overmare stuff.”

“Like?”

“Like telling you to work your announcing magic and tell everypony get their flanks in here, Loop!”

Loop's voice chimes in. “I didn't say that.”

“What,” Cheese questions.

“Wait, I know,” the new voice of a mare continues, “puking out of everypony's sight. That's what you do in private.”

Cheese's face crumples into a sneer at the quip. “Wooden Finish, if you want to gossip on about rumors, you can go do it to the toolboxes that are your only friends. Until then, you can gladly get yourself up here.”

“Hey thanks, I do find my toolboxes to be better friends. They don't yell as much.”

“Yeah, just like beer bottles. Especially when I break them and use them as knives.”

“So you do admit you have anger issues on top of a drinking problem.”

“I didn't admit to shit.”

“I think this disdain you have between the two of you breeds from a long term sexual attraction for each other," a new voice pops up. "Perhaps angry make up sex is what you two need?”

The new stallion's voice is berated by the two mares in unison. “Shut up, Fresh Linen.”

“Maybe you both need to speak about this to me separately with a follow up session together?”

“Linen,” Cheese retorts, “how the heck did you even get on this frequency? I closed it last night.”

“It seemed to open back up at around 9:00 today.”

Cheese is ready for a retort but quickly suppresses it, remembering the alarm from her pip-buck this morning. “Okay fine, since my comm is open to the public, who else is eavesdropping?”

“Hello,” another mare's voice screeches through.

Cheese cringes before her ears begin to recover from the outburst. “Hello, Pie Hole.”

The rest say their hellos to the mare before she greets back. “Hi, Loop Tie. Hi, Wooden Finish. Hi, Fresh Linen. Hi, Big Cheese. What are we talking about? Is this a surprise sleepover over the radio? Do I need a radio sleeping bag?”

“No Pie Hole,” Cheese shot back, “what you and everypony needs to do is get to my office so we can solve this problem of mine. No 'if's', 'ands', or 'haha, you puked all over your office'.”

“Wait, you actually puked,” Wooden chuckled. “And here I'm thinking I just fucked with you.”

The bubbling rage within the yellow unicorn remains pent up. “Just get in here on the double.”

Within minutes three more ponies step into the Overmare's office.

“Okay,” Cheese begins, “now that you're all here, we can start solving this issue.”

“That everytime you flap your gums, you give us headaches,” the brown earth pony in a stable utility barding quips.

“That you might be suffering from a severe case of anxiety,” the grey unicorn in a stable doctor outfit suggests.

“That there's a mystery to solve,” the red pegasus in stable security barding chimes.

“Pie Hole, you are the only pony in this room that seems to give a damn about emergencies,” Cheese points out. “Good job.”

The security mare smiles. “Yay! What do I win?”

“You get to be the first one to find a solution.”

“I'm first? I'm first! Hooray!”

“Woot,” Wooden Finish says flatly.

Cheese walks over to the excited mare and brings her closer to the doorway. “Okay, Pie Hole, what do you think?”

Pie Hole observes the office entrance, her mind racing with theories brought from facts and certainties. The answer to the problem bounces around her head, ricocheting off every solution it impacts with. In a matter of moments, the Head Chief of Security draws her final conclusion.

“It's a doorway!”

Cheese stares at Pie who beams brightly with self content. The Overmare sighs after a few seconds of silence. “Pie, I can see that it's a doorway. I wanna know where the door is.”

The security mare blinks. “I don't know.”

Cheese sighs.

“Maybe the door realized it was working for an awful pony,” Wooden pipes up, “so it got up and walked away. Hey, maybe it's one my doors now. The doors probably like me better.”

“Okay, 'Ms. Door expert',” Cheese retorts, “why don't you tell me what's happening here.”

“You're being a tyrant again.”

“Overmare. There's a difference.”

“Could have fooled me.”

“Listen, you can help me find out what's wrong or I can have Pie Hole lock you up.”

“Where, in her room?”

“Her room? No, you idiot. The jail cell in the security office.”

“That is her room. She keeps all her stuff in there and sleeps on the bunk.”

“I keep my comics under the bed,” Pie pipe's up. “Umpteenth of them in fact! But don't tell any pony. It's a secret.”

“Look,” Cheese begins, “just help me figure this shit out before I lose it all over you.”

Wooden Finish heaves out a groan. “Fine, fine, if it will get you to stop yelling.” She trots over to the doorway and examines it. “It seems to have no door.”

“Yeah, so fix it or something.”

“Fix what? There's no door.”

“Well you're an engineer, so make a new one.”

“I'm an electrical technician. I fix lights, not doors or non-existent doors.”

“Well then… just do something already!”

“Do what, find your missing door? I'm not a detective. I didn't graduate from a door police academy, get a buy-the-book partner and then pranced about solving door murders. I didn't go searching for clues and finding leads in my investigations that point to a bigger plot to the murder of my mom. I kept telling dad, 'mom died in the war because she was neck deep in zebra shit. There's no door conspiracy against you, dad. On the contrary, there's a door conspiracy against all of us. We made them and now they're going to rebel and take over.'

“I tried telling them, by the way, at least umpteenth times. We didn't need to be looking at zebras, we needed to be looking at the doors. The enemy was right in our sights and we were too stupid to realize it. Well now look, we're stuck in a fancy bunker with a killer door on the loose. You tell me how shooting a striped fucker is gonna solve that, miss Ministry Mare.”

Cheese looks at Wooden with widened eyes, covering her ears. “I said 'do something,' not yell like a lunatic. At this rate I'm going to be deaf before I'm 50.”

“Oh stop whining, you do the same thing to us.”

“Bitch, I am going to bury you if you...”

“Fillies!” Fresh Linen steps in between the two with a stern look. “Venting all your frustrations at each other will not solve the issue at hoof. By my deduction, the door will not be brought back to its proper place through anger.”

“Fine, then you tell me where the door went,” Cheese retorts.

The doctor turns to the open door way and approaches it. Levitating his stethoscope, he places the circular piece to the edges. “Hm. Hm. Yes. Take a deep breath.” He continues to examine the phantom vitals until he turns to the three with his conclusion. “I'm afraid I have some bad news.”

All three lean in intently.

“The doorway is dead. If I had to guess it, the approximate time of death would have to be Umpteenth AM. I'm sorry for your loss.”

“NO!” Pie Hole bursts out, wings flared in a fury as she fights back the tears in her eyes. “I don't believe you! Don't you tell me that there wasn't anymore you could do!”

“Pie, I'm sorry but the doorway has died.”

“No, it can't be true,” she screams in agony. With a start, she shoots forward, flying past the doctor and to the doorway. She immediately places both fore hooves on the edge and begins compressing. “One, one-thousand. Two, one-thousand. Three, one-thousand!” She begins punching the edge with her hoof. “Don't you give up on me, damn it!”

Fresh Linen throws himself at Pie Hole, seizing her in his hooves and dragging her back from the doorway. “Pie, I'm sorry but it's too late. There's nothing more we can do.”

The pegasus starts to fight back against the doctor's grasp but stops. With all the pain and grief now overtaking her, she buries her face deep into his jacket and let's out a wail of torment. “He was so young. He was so young and had his whole life ahead of him!”

Linen rubs her back. “It's going to be okay, Pie. Just let it all out. It'll get better soon.”

Walking by the office, Janitor pokes his head in to see the scene unfolding in front of him. “Is everything okay here?”

“No,” Cheese begins, “my door is missing and on top of that, the doorway is dead. So, you know, I'm having a pretty bad morning.”

“It won't be long now until we have all our throats slit by the evil door,” Wooden says.

Janitor looks at the entrance and steps in, turning to face the doorway from inside the office. Bringing a hoof up to the control panel to the side, he presses the button and the door slides out from the bottom of the doorway, locking into place.

The only sound in the room is the air of astounded silence as the four ponies look at what he just done.

“It was open,” he states simply.

The four then look at each other, exclaiming in understanding.

Big Cheese trots up to Janitor and shakes his hoof. “Janitor, you did a damn fine job solving this issue. As Overmare, I hear by dub you now as Head Chief Janitor.”

“Umpteenth times in a row? Thanks, boss.”

The air of tension and confusion had been replaced with something more. A strange tingling feeling that emanated from everypony in the room, filling them with a satisfying warmth. The strong mixture of happiness, pride, and gratitude reached into their nostrils and filled them with a sense of satisfaction and relief. No more will there be a crisis of missing doors. No more will there be the threat of homicidal doors roaming the Stable. Without fear nor worries, peace was the only concept left in the office as the immense thought of hope filled their hearts. That hope is what rules in Stable 7.

Big Cheese then looks at the ponies around her. “What are you all standing around here for? Get back to your duties.”

Shaking off the sudden wave of happiness, the four other ponies in the room nod and open the door, leaving their Overmare in peace.
“That includes you, Loop Tie,” she says to the camera outside.

“But, I'm already in the monitor room.”

“Well… don't bother me then.”

“Yes ma'am.” The communication cuts off.

Heaving an exhausted sigh, Cheese trotted back to her chair and lounged in it. “Being Overmare is hard.” She closes her eyes, catching a breath as the familiar sound of jazz plays through the Stable. After a moment, she opens her eyes and sits up straighter, looking to the office entrance.

“Where's my door?”

STATS>Perks>Fish Head: Like a pet goldfish, the knowledge of the world extends as far as your bowl, but that's fine as you also have the memory of a fish, so it's not like you don't know what you're talking about, you simply forget the point of the conversation… how did this description start again? You gain +20 to your Speech but suffer -6 to your Intelligence.