Chapters 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.
“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.
Fallout Equestria: Stable 7
Even If It Seems Like We Don't
Author's Note
Thanks to Zemer for helping out with this, and for coming up with the idea.
Even If It Seems Like We Don't
Big Cheese and Fresh Linen are sitting at the Stable's small diner, enjoying a hearty breakfast of food cubes. Linen was going to the water fountain to fill a glass cup when Cheese caught his attention.
“You know, Doc,” she began, “I think I might have cancer.”
“Have you been coughing up blood?”
“No.”
“Extreme chest pains?”
“No.”
“Headaches?”
“Only when Wooden is in the room.”
“Then what makes you say you have cancer?”
“Because I have this giant ass lump on my fore leg that's not going away.” She extends the limb towards the doctor, who pushes his glasses up to examine it.
“That's your pip-buck.”
Cheese looks at the device. “Oh.”
With that out of the way, Linen continues to the fountain to fill his glass. Pushing the lever, he finds his cup filling with a thick layer of cheese. “That's… odd,” he says with a raised brow.
“I know,” Cheese responds, “I've already downed four bottles of beer and I'm not even seeing two of you yet.”
“I was more so referring to the fact that the fountain is producing cheese instead of water.”
“There's more of me coming out of the water?”
“No, there is no water. Only cheese.”
“So… me?”
“No, I mean actual cheese.”
“Yes. I am Cheese. There is only one Cheese and it is me. If there was more than one Cheese then I'd invite her to a sleepover, where I'd then feed her a poisoned drink to keep my position of power. If there's going to be a clone of me, then I'm going to be the one to make it. Then harvest its organs for later in case one of my own fail. Be nice to have an extra liver just in case.”
“Ma'am, don't be ridiculous. It'd be more beneficial to keep the clone alive so that when you need it's organ, it is fresh and ready for transplantation. But that's not the point. I'm trying to tell you that we have a dairy product coming out of the water fountain instead of water.”
Cheese rolls her eyes. “Oh stop complaining and just get some tap water.” She gets up and goes to the sink to demonstrate her point. Turning the valve, cheese starts pouring out of the faucet and spills over.
“Holy shit, Doc, there's cheese coming out of the faucets!”
“Profane exclamation, ma'am, there is.”
Cheese's eyes shrink to pinpricks at the realization. “Sweet Celestia, this is the best thing to ever happen to this place since Wooden got her mane stuck in the reactor.”
“Well, yes, cheese coming out of the pumps is quite the prospect, but I'm afraid it may end in our demise.”
Cheese had wrapped her mouth around the faucet, filling her mouth to the brim with cheese, before she gulps it down and looks back to Linen. “What are you talking about? Cheese has never betrayed equinity.”
“The cheese's allegiance isn't much of the issue, so much as how we are going to survive without water.”
Cheese levitates a beer bottle she was in the middle of drinking, shaking it at the doctor.
“Ma'am, we can't hydrate ourselves with alcohol for the rest of our lives.”
“Sure we can, I've been living off this stuff since I was, like, a baby.”
“Be that as it may, it's-- wait, what?”
“Look, all I'm saying is beer is good and cheese is good. Now we got both at the cost of a little water. Plus, it finally gives me a reason to ban water consumption and begin my beer-cheese diet regiment.”
“Cheese, you cannot ban water. It's one of the essential components to life. Ponies would die without it.”
“Did water save Equestria? Did water stop the mega spells? Did water stop Dad from telling me what to do? Nope! Now if you'll excuse me.” Cheese takes a half-empty beer bottle and places it under the faucet, mixing the alcohol with the cheese.
Fresh Linen shakes his head at the sight and exits the diner. Trotting down the hall, he spies Janitor's rear sticking out of an open panel in the wall. “Janitor,” he calls as he steps closer, “we have a problem.”
Janitor backs out of the opening, head completely covered in cheese. “Tell me about it. Cheese is clogging the pumps. The only good news is that it’s actual cheese and not our Cheese.”
“Cheese is not just clogging the pumps, it's coming out of every water source in the Stable.”
Suddenly, a giant blob of cheese with the loose figure of a pony approaches the two. Stopping in front of them, a tongue protrudes from the general direction of it's face and laps at the cheese around it, revealing a red muzzle underneath. “I went to use the bathroom,” Pie Hole starts, “and the toilet gave me cheese.”
“This is worse than I thought,” Linen remarks. “We can't even resort to drinking the toilet water if cheese starts filling it.”
Janitor looks at the doctor. “Why would that be your first worry?”
Linen ignores him, turning on the broadcaster on his pip-buck. “Wooden Finish, are you aware of the cheese issue here?”
The mare's voice responds with a start. “Issue? This isn't like forgetting to recycle the air in the Stable, Doc. The fucking bitch finally went and started the cheese invasion!”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Big Cheese, who else,” she elaborates as hammering sounds are heard on the other end. “Who else would taint our water supply with the dairy product of doom?”
“Wooden, as… disturbed as Cheese may be, I doubt she would have the prowess to cause something like this.”
“You tell me that when she replaces our brains with cheese. Oh wait, you won't be able to because it'll be too late by then. It's high time we raid the armory and rise up, brothers and sisters.” The sound of a shotgun pump is heard on the other end. “Mutiny! MUTINY!”
“Is that Wooden threatening to mutiny again,” Cheese asks over the comm. “Don't be silly, you can't mutiny against me. We're not on a ship and I'm not a captain. Your mutiny won't do anything.”
“Tyrannical swine!”
“Would you two please stop arguing so we can solve this problem,” Linen interjects.
“The only problem I need to solve is how much cheese I can stuff down my throat,” Cheese retorts.
“So in addition to starting a complete take-over, you're also admitting to cannibalizing your own troops,” Wooden accuses.
“What? Sorry, can't hear you. I'm too busy finding this cheese a new home in my stomach.”
“Oh, you cruel, oppressive--”
Linen shuts off the broadcaster and turns back to the two others. “Right, well they won't be of any use. How do you two think we should approach the situation?”
Pie Hole flaps her wings, sending cheese every which way. “Let's throw a birthday party for the cheese!”
Linen holds his hoof up to shield himself from the cheese projectiles. “I don't think that will work.”
“Why not?”
“Cheese doesn't have birthdays.”
Pie Hole blinks a few times before falling back on her haunches, wailing out in tears. “But-but, there were born and loved by ponies from all over. Why can't they have birthdays,” she asks through fits of tears.
“Cheese was created, not born. You can't throw a birthday for something that wasn't birthed.”
Pie Hole stops her crying, sniffling a bit. “You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” she says, deflated.
“Janitor,” Linen continues, “do you have any ideas?”
Janitor raises his hoof to his chin in thought. “Well, if the cheese is coming from the sources of water, it could be a problem with the water talisman.”
“Then it's to the water talisman we go,” Linen remarks as his pip-buck gives him an update.
DATA>Quests: Cheesing the Enemy – Save Stable 7 from the cheese infestation.
Janitor and Linen trot to the water room, but not before he looks back to Pie who is still sitting. “Um, coming along, Pie?”
In the midst of the conversation, Pie Hole's mind had drifted from its sad state and into a completely new one. One where anything was possible; where any idea could be made real. In this state, she ran around with very gouda friends, who one day took her to a munster of a party. It was here that she met her havarti school sweetheart, Rodoric, and lost her cheese virginity.
Alas, his father, Remoudou, would not allow him to see her again for she was poor and had a bad aftertaste. But this curdling love cannot be so easily dissuaded, as Rodoric defied his father's wishes and sneaked under the cheese of night to see his love. Pie and Rodoric then eloped, being wed in Cheesenadia, where anypony could be legally married at the age of cheese.
They lived together, having cheese-pony children and led a peaceful life in their cottage cheese. But fate would not have their happy life so cheesy. Pie had contracted the dreaded Limburger disease. She fought hard and well, but the poor mare's cheesy resolve was not strong enough to fight it off. On her deathbed, she looked to Rodoric, holding his aged texture and whispering into his spicy flavor. The night she passed, those fateful last words were, “I cheese you.”
Her mind snaps back to reality at the sound of Linen's request. “Coming,” she says happily as she practically bounces down the hall.
=(o)=
Arriving at the water room, the three come to the sight of the water talisman completely covered in a cheesy growth, enveloping the bulky device like webbing.
“What...”
“The...”
“CHEESE,” Janitor, Linen, and Pie say respectively.
Janitor trots up to the growth, gently poking it with his mop. Within seconds, the tool is grabbed with spindly cheese appendages and dragged into the gooey mess, disappearing under the dairy product.
“Okay,” he begins, “there is definitely some magical force at work here.”
“What kind of magic could cause this to happen,” Linen asks in shock.
“I'm not entirely sure, but if I had to guess, something must have screwed up the talisman’s properties, causing it to produce cheese.”
“But how?”
“That's a good question,” Janitor finishes, opening up his pip-buck's broadcaster. “Loop Tie, can you review the footage of the entrance to the water room?”
In response, a fleshy flapping sound could be heard over the communication.
“Loop Tie, are you masturbating to Cheese again?”
“No,” came the startled response of Loop Tie. “I was just, um, playing with my flesh ball.”
Janitor looked at the device in silence for a moment. “Your flesh ball.”
“Uh, yeah. It, you know, bounces and makes flesh noises.”
A few seconds of silence pass again. “Uh.. huh. Well, when you're done playing with your 'flesh ball,' we need you to look at some footage.”
“Ah yes, footage. Um, yeah. Okay. W-what do you need?”
“Footage from the water room entrance, starting from last night.”
“Yeah, give me a sec.” A rapid series of key taps are heard on the other end.
“Do you really have to type that much to pull up some footage?”
“No.. but it makes me feel important.” A few key taps are heard before stopping. “Okay, starting from last night it looks like…”
Flap
“Um, sorry. Um, looks like there...”
Flap
“O-okay, so last...”
Flap
“I...”
Flap
Loop Tie's voice grows distant and annoyed over the comm. “Look, I'll play with you later, alright. I'm in the middle of something.” His voice returns to full volume. “Uh, sorry. Okay, it looks like the last pony to enter and exit that room was Pie Hole. Nopony else came in until you guys just now.”
Janitor and Linen look at each other before turning to face Pie, who is lapping at some cheese enveloping her hoof.
“Pie,” Janitor begins, “what were you doing here last night?”
“Oh, I remember,” she exclaims with excitement. “Okay, so I was making my rounds when I came inside here, and then I thought, 'wow, the water room is cool looking like everything else!' And then I saw the ceiling lights and I went like, 'hi, Ceiling Lights!' And the ceiling lights were like, “hi, Pie Hole. It's a fun day in the Stable today, huh?' And I was like, 'it sure is! I'm having a blast!' And the ceiling lights were like, 'that's great. You're an awesome pony, Pie Hole.' And I was like, 'thanks! You're awesome ceiling lights, Ceiling Lights.'
“And then we talked about flowers and animals and guns and sunshine, but then the ceiling lights were like, 'Pie Hole, why are your eyes burning?' And then I went like, 'wha?' And then my eyes started burning like they were on fire! So then I looked down, closed them, and rubbed them really hard. That's when I saw a piece of cheese on the floor. So then I thought, 'hey, Cheese's name is Cheese. I bet she'll like cheese.' But she was asleep and I'm not supposed to wake her up because she would yell and that would hurt my ears.
“So I had to put the cheese somewhere cold because that's how cheese survives. But I didn't know if the fridges work, since the only working one is in Cheese's room, so I wanted to check if we had a working one in the diner, maybe. But I didn't wanna risk the cheese going bad. So I put it on the water talisman because water's cold. So I put it on there and went to look for a fridge, but then I got tired and slept on the floor.
“Then I woke up and went to go number 1, and after that, the toilet filled with cheese. I must have done a good job cleaning up that it gave me cheese as a reward. So I ate the cheese in the toilet. Then I saw you guys in the hallway and we were talking about the cheese and then I followed you here.”
Fresh Linen stares at Pie, his brain now scattered from the tale and his mouth agape.
In the time it took her to give her explanation, the cheese had enveloped three-quarters of her body and is now slowly making it's way to her oblivious face.
Janitor continues. “Well that explains it. The cheese somehow interfered with the water talisman's properties and caused it to start producing cheese instead of water. The growth was probably a side effect to the tampering.”
“Are you sure,” Linen questions.
“It's the best theory I have.”
“Well, now that we know what the issue is, what can we do to fix it?”
“If we don't want to bother getting a replacement talisman, the only solution is to burn it.”
“Burn it? How?”
Janitor looks around the room until his eyes fall on the ceiling lights. Thinking for a moment, he uses his broadcaster again. “Wooden, we need you down here in the water room.”
“I can't,” Wooden frantically responds, “I don't know when the cheese will strike again.”
“Well, if you come down here, I promise there'll much cheese-smiting. By us. Specifically, you.”
After a moment of silence, shuffling is heard over the comm before it goes dead. Soon hoof steps are heard down the hall as Wooden bursts in, covered from head to hoof in tool boxes. “What must be done?”
=(o)=
“Well that certainly was the most creative use of wiring I've seen,” Linen remarks as he and the rest recount the day's events in the Stable's clinic.
“What can I say,” Wooden responds, “give me some tools and electrical fixtures from the ceiling, and I can make anything catch on fire.” She looks down to Pie Hole, who is bandaged from head to hoof and is laying on the clinic's bed. “Sorry, by the way. Nopony told me the cheese was trying to overtake you.”
“I smelt like burning pony,” Pie exclaims happily.
“I'm just glad we manage to avoid a crisis,” Linen says.
“Yeah,” Janitor agrees, “now things can start getting back to normal.”
Loop Tie speaks over the PA system. “Wow, talk about a 'Cheesy' end.”
The ponies give a heart warming and jolly laugh.
“Heh heh. Uh, I-I don't get it,” Loop Tie interrupts, “what's so funny?”
“You made a pun,” Janitor remarks.
“No, I was saying Big Cheese's flank is obscuring my screens.”
Before anypony could raise a question, a dragging sound is heard coming from outside the clinic. Crawling into the clinic, Big Cheese--who has now grown to an astronomical amount of weight, her entire body now a giant bulge--crawls into view.
“Hey,” she burps, drunk and exhausted from moving. “the fuck happened to Pie Hole?” The question goes unanswered as she passes out.
DATA>Quests: Cheesing the Enemy – Complete +2.63353 XP
Fallout Equestria: Stable 7
And so on the 100 th year did Big Cheese touch the Primordial Star with her horn, thus giving herself an orgasm, and ejaculating the Soup of Life into the Universe. In the great Cosmic Dispersal of Being, the Star grew into the Sun, and Big Cheese became the Brood Mother to all ponies. But only mares were born from her magnificent bosom, because stallions were icky and always told them to be back home before curfew. But the Traitor Moon tainted the gift of Life with her Toolbox of Chaos, and birthed the stallion race out of her unclean--
“Damn it,” Big Cheese exclaims as she pulls her pencil from the paper, “I ran out of room.” She sets the pencil down and levitates the parchment to her eyes, reading over what she wrote down. “Well, at least I got this part of the story down. Now I just gotta transfer it to the computer.” She looks to the terminal in her office,powered on and standing by on the command screen. She pushes the paper into the screen, making squeaking noises as it is being rubbed. “Come on,” she insists, putting more force into her telekinesis.
Suddenly, the door slides open and Fresh Linen runs in, panic etched into his face. “Cheese,” he starts, flustered, “we have an emergency!”
Big Cheese looks at him, face stretching into a look of terror. “Sweet Celestia, it's happening, isn't it?” In a swift motion, she brings up her pip-buck and activates the broadcaster. “Attention, everypony, get a gun from the armory and get into my office, ASAP! This is not a drill. Repeat: This is not a drill.”
Quickly opening a drawer behind her desk, she levitates out a pistol and throws it to Fresh Linen, whose horn clumsily lights with magic as he grabs it in his telekinetic grip. “Don't worry,” she continues on, levitating a sub machine gun from the same drawer, “I got a spare.”
Fresh Linen is about open his mouth to question her, but the rest of the Stable ponies--wearing loaded battle saddles--run into the room, interrupting his train of thought.
“We got the call and came as fast as we could, Boss,” Janitor explains. “What's the emergency?”
“Ponies, those no easy way to say this,” Big Cheese begins, her expression grim, “there's a traitor amongst us.”
All of the group gasps, except for Linen who attempts to diffuse the drama. “Actually, there's no...”
He is interrupted by Wooden, a look of realization forming on her face. “I fucking knew it.”
Cheese looks at her, surprised. “Wait, you agree with me on something?”
“As much as I hate to admit it, yeah. I had my suspicions since we came inside here, but I guess it's true now.” Wooden scans the room of ponies with narrowed eyes. “One of us is a zebra spy.”
Cheese's eyes go from wide to half-lidded as she lets out a groan. “Don't be ridiculous, there is no zebra spy.”
“Yes,” Linen agrees, relieved for the moment of common sense, “in fact, the real problem is--”
“Mole-ponies.”
Everypony looks to Pie Hole upon hearing her outburst.
“Mole-ponies,” Wooden repeats with an air of disbelief.
“Isn't it obvious,” she continues, adopting the inflection of a storyteller, “the Mole-Ponies have been living underground for three-thousand years, and now they're slowly rising up from their dark, rocky homes to feed on ponies, and play jump rope with their guts.” Lost in her narration, she makes hissing noises at the others.
“Pie Hole,” Cheese begins with an annoyed sigh, “that doesn't make any sense. The Mole-ponies were banished to the dreaded Planet Z after Andromeda tricked them into accepting the teleportation talisman, which was hidden inside the Star Rock of Destiny.” She looks at her, eyes furrowed. “I should know. I read the issue.”
“Except in the third volume they came back, when they hijacked a Planet Z warship and returned to Equus, where they then kidnapped ponies and brainwashed them into believing their cause. Then they released them back into ponykind as sleeper agents,” Pie Hole retorts with a glare.
“Bullshit, I never heard of that being an issue.”
“That's because it was a limited edition comic given only to the monthly subscribers; the true fans of the great Space Captain,” Pie says matter-of-factly.
“Fuck your monthly subscription,” Cheese shot back, “I don't need to pay money to be a true Space Cadet!”
“Stop yelling at me!”
“You started it!”
“Would you two please calm yourselves,” Linen interposes in an attempt to stop the argument, a hint of anger in his voice. “There is no traitor, or mole-ponies, or any other ridiculous things of that nature.”
“Okay, fine,” Cheese says, “you tell us what's really happening, genius.”
Linen lets out a sigh, relieved to finally have the floor. “Thank you, now the real emergency is--”
“Hold it,” Cheese interrupts, scanning the room. “Where's Loop Tie?”
The PA system's speakers buzz to life. “Present in the monitor room.”
“Loop Tie,” Cheese speaks into the broadcaster accusingly, “what are you doing in there? There's an emergency.”
“Well… I didn't feel like leaving.”
“Why not?”
Loop Tie is silent for a moment. “I mean… you know, I can see things fine from here, and there's a locked door keeping others out. I just feel much more comfortable in here. Plus I can watch all of you without you accusing me of staring.”
“Damn it, Loop Tie,” Cheese yells.
“I can't help it, I don't like being around others. I feel like they're going to, I don't know, eat me or something.”
Cheese rolls her eyes, an annoyed grunt escaping her mouth. “Well, do you at least have a weapon in there?”
“I have a noose.”
Cheese’s eyes narrow. “Why do you have a noose?”
“In case I need it. You know. For noose things.”
Cheese simply stares at the broadcaster, hoping her confused expression could be conveyed through the communication. “I'm… not going to pursue this line of questioning any further. Just be sure to listen.”
“I'm always listening, ma'am.”
“I know you are,” Cheese says, speaking away from the broadcaster. “Okay,” she continues, looking back to the four in the room, “what were we talking about?”
“If there are no more interruptions,” Linen continues, eying everypony in the room, “we were talking about why I--”
“Hang on,” Janitor speaks up, “if one of us is a traitor, why did you order us to get guns?”
“Oh, that's simple,” Cheese begins, “it's all part of my plan to oust him out of hiding.”
“How's that?”
“Well, the real traitor would want to get the best gun so he can kill us better, right? So I labeled a gun loaded with blanks as the 'Super Special Mega Death Gun.' That way, he'd reveal himself without realizing it.” Her face softens into a bright and proud smile.
“Um, hate to break this to you ma'am, but we didn't see any guns labeled that,” Janitor clarifies.
“How the hell is that possible,” she asks with a fury, “I wrote the label myself and stuck it on a gun found in my draw--” Cheese trails off as she levitates the sub machine gun to her face. Written on a label taped to the weapon is Super Mega Death Gun. “-Er. Well… shit. Now we'll never know who actually betrayed us.”
“NOPONY BETRAYED US!”
All eyes fall on Linen whose outburst caught the ponies' attention, a frazzled and crazed look etched into his blood-cracked eyes.
“If all of you insufferable morons can shut up for five minutes and let me explain myself, I can finally tell you that my medical certificate has gone missing.” He shoots a loathing glare to everypony in the room, continuing to scream at the top of his lungs. “That's what the emergency is, that's why I came in here, so I can get Cheese to get Loop Tie to get the damn footage to my office so I can find out where it went! If I don't have that, then I can't very well treat any of you because I wouldn't have any right to do so!”
Linen wheezes heavily, getting fresh air into his lungs after his explosive outburst.
“Well geez,” Cheese starts, “if that was the problem all you had to do was say it. No need to yell like you're the only pony with problems.”
“Yeah, Fresh,” Pie Hole speaks up, “didn't you hear there's mole-ponies invading us?”
Linen brings his hooves to his face, pushing them deep into his eye sockets in the vain hope that the pressure would somehow alleviate the migraine he has grown.
“Wait a minute,” Wooden begins, “what do you need a certificate for? Your medical license is what gives you permission to practice, right?”
“I don’t have one,” Linen says with a straight face.
Wooden raises a brow. “You don’t have one?”
“No, because I'm not an actual doctor.”
Wooden’s confused expression deepens. “But… you are a doctor.”
“Yes, certified by the Stable after I took the GOAT. We all took it when we got sealed in here, remember?”
“Oh, oh,” Pie Hole blurts out in excitement, “I remember! I made a Hearth's-Warming tree out of all the dots that was on the paper!”
“Oh yeah,” Cheese remarks, her voice changing into a mocking tone, “'the Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test'.” Her voice returns to normal, her tone being replaced with annoyance. “I hated taking that. Felt like I was in school and Dad was telling me not to punch the filly that stared at me weird at lunch. Why did we take that?”
“Why did it choose you to be Overmare,” Wooden questions insultingly.
“Don’t start with me, peon,” Cheese snaps, levitating up her gun, “or I’ll fill you full of blanks!”
“Just,” Linen shouts, eyes clenched shut in irritation, “don’t yell at each other, please.”
“Oh quit your whining, Linen,” Cheese accuses. “If missing your ‘whittle certifwicate’ is such a big deal, then get a copy from the mainframe.”
Linen shoots a puzzled look at Cheese. “A copy from the mainframe?”
“Yeah,” Wooden states matter-of-factly, “that’s kind of the place we go when we lose our certificates.”
“Or if they get burned,” Pie adds, enthusiastically.
“Or if we get them wet when cleaning,” Janitor elaborates.
“Not exactly a hard thing to do,” Cheese explains with a critical eye.
Linen stands there, eyes wide and mouth agape, not a peep coming from him. Within a few seconds his face twists into a maddening smile as he lets out a hysterical laugh. He brings his head back, pressing his hooves into it before swinging it back down and banging the but of his gun against it. His masochistic tendencies continue until he takes one big breath and heaves it back out, frantically panting.
With a bloodied head, he readjusts his cracked glasses and takes calming breaths. “Well then,” he begins, “if you’ll excuse me, I need to go treat my head injury.” He stumbles his way past the ponies and out of the office.
“Well now that that’s out of the way,” Wooden begins, “we need to get back to finding that traitor.”
Cheese looks away with a frown and a shrug. “Eh, I mean… I don’t really feel like trying to find the traitor anymore. It’s kind of starting to get stale.
Wooden’s narrowed eyes dig into cheese. “I,” she begins before her expression softens, “don’t really want to traitor-hunt anymore either. The whole thing’s getting old.”
“So what do we do now,” Pie Hole inquires to everypony.
There is an awkward silence as some ponies kick their hooves at the ground, nopony really knowing what they should do next.
Suddenly, the a chunk from the metal-plated floor between them is torn apart by long, sharp buck-teeth. Emerging from the newly formed hole is a grotesque creature that resembles the form of a pony, with leathery pink skin and a revolting stench. From its muzzle protrudes twitching whiskers and its eyes are permanently shut with a rough crust forming at the edges. It emits a sharp hissing noise, head swiveling violently at the at the ponies in the room, mouth gnawing at the air.
Soon, its hissing stops, now replaced with a short coughing fit before the beast bumps its chest with a bony claw hoof. “Ah, sorry. I had something stuck in my throat,” it says in a gravely yet high pitched voice. “Greetings, Land-Dwellers. I am Chitirrrit, ambassador for the Kingdom of the Mole-Ponies. We've heard of the destruction that has ravaged your land, and we wish to bring you sanctuary in our underground home. There's plenty room and resources for everypony, so there's no need to throw a fuss over--”
“LIVE TARGET,” Cheese yells out, rocketing out of her chair and pointing a hoof at the creature, drawing her super mega death gun at the thing.
Within seconds, everypony unloaded their guns into it, the bullets tearing through its flesh and ripping it apart. Its skin rips open, its blood spraying onto the ground. Its neck explodes, chunks flesh flying onto the overmare's desk. Its head blows open, sending out bits of bone shards and brain every which way. One of its once-shut eyes now dangles by the stem, hanging on to the no-longer-whole brain that is clearly visible in the opening of its skull.
The lead ceases flying, the clicking sound from the guns being the only indicator that the chaos had stopped. The creature, now malformed and mangled, slumps onto the floor with a splat before sliding back down the hole, a trail of blood and meat-chunks following.
The room is silent for a few seconds, the ponies meditating on what they have just done.
“Well,” Cheese begins, placing her gun back down on the desk and sitting back on her seat, “I'm bored. What do you guys wanna do?”
“Eh,” Wooden begins, shrugging her shoulders, “I gotta get back to fixing stuff.”
“I'm gonna read some comics,” Pie Hole happily adds, bouncing in place.
“I'm going to get back to staring at all of you,” Loop Tie announces in a barely audible whisper.
“I'm a janitor,” Janitor states.
The three ponies leave the office, giving Cheese some solitude.
“Well,” Cheese begins, levitating the parchment back up, “I'm gonna finish transferring this.” She shoves the paper back into the terminal's monitor, rubbing hard into the glass. After a few seconds, she becomes bored once again. “Fuck it, I'm going to the diner.” She gets up and leaves, but not before placing the parchment right-side up on the desk.
Stable-Tec congratulates you,
Fresh Linen
For taking the GOAT and achieving the career of
Doctor
Serve the Stable well, resident!
Update: Critical Hit on Mole-Pony's head.
Update: Mole-Pony’s HP reduced to 0.
Update: Mole-Pony's head crippled.
