Fallout Equestria: Lionheart

Finally, it was time for one of the few parts of the day Sparky didn't hate.

Well, once the part he hated was over.

Arriving at the Gun Range was the easy part. It was time to practice with Guns.

Bang bang! Shooty! Fun time!

Sadly, it was mandatory to use Battle Saddles in this gun range.

A Battle Saddle... a harness of leather and metal, adjustable to fit on any body type, within reason. If you were too small or large for one meant for male Earth Ponies to suit you, good luck finding a model in your size. Each one had two guns mounted to the side, enchanted to swivel and pivot up and down and left and right as needed so that they could aim themselves at foes. To solve the 'horses with hooves and other creatures with poor dexterity struggle to reload guns ergonomically meant for Griffon claws and other monkeypaw-like appendages' problem, the battle saddle magically teleported ammunition into its clips from the Saddlebags. The clunky device aimed with the aid of magic, and it reloaded after every shot with the aid of magic. You'd be forgiven for thinking it would fire with the aid of magic, too, and assuming it was designed to give non-unicorns access to Unicorn magic. However, the triggers of these guns were not enchanted. Instead, an awkward mechanical solution was implemented, in the form of a tactically rubberized mouthpiece for the wearer to bite down upon, pressing a hidden button inside the mouthpiece to make the gun fire.

Finding a suitable Battle Saddle sufficient for one of his size was the harder part.

There were many more Small-sized and Medium-sized ones than there were Large-sized ones suitable for a Lioncorn of his stature, and the few present had straps that were somewhat worn and frayed in various places... He chose the one that looked the least likely to fail and fall off his body.

A Battle Saddle...

It seemed like a good idea, on paper.

However, as he struggled to get the device on himself, until a Lion man walked over and offered his help, which Sparky gratefully accepted, he found himself wondering why this device was so clunky and inefficient, and why this Stable had made improving upon it in any major way severely illegal. It was clearly in desperate need of upgrades! This device exclusively aimed and reloaded your guns for you with the use of magic, which meant the only real thing the wearer did was decide where he fired from and when he fired. What was the point of that?! So that whichever rich cunt with his private custom Battle Saddle could still feel like he was contributing something when he fired a gun a magical machine aimed and reloaded for him?

So many cheaters in Gun Gun Murderfest 9001 and Soldier's Duty: Shadows Of Dark War cheated in online multiplayer Team Deathmatches and Battle Royales. How did they cheat? Simple, they relied upon external cheat devices and computer programs meant to simulate the advantages gifted by the PipBuck.

With the "WallHack", shooters could see through walls and use this information to know when their enemies were coming, and what avenues of approach they would approach from, perhaps even figure out what weapons their foes were carrying and what strategy they might attempt.

And then, there was the "Aimbot" cheat. the aid of computer programs that rapidly flailed their guns about to aim in all directions while firing the very instant their cheat programs detected enemies to fire upon. So why were the Battle Saddles not designed in a similar way? What was the point of the great reliance on a mouth-operated trigger that could slip out of your mouth, could get in the way of breathing through the mouth and speaking and shouting, and could be damaged or forcefully smashed in a way that would cause it to damage your mouth?

Clearly, the Battle Saddle had been designed as a method to let quadrupeds, especially Pegasi and Earth Pony, utilize firearms not meant for them. But why, oh why, did the developer of these devices consider his quest to create a metal and leather mechanical alternative to magical telekinesis complete when he submitted a design that required expensive magical enchantments before the stupid device could reload and aim itself? If you were going to rely so heavily on magic for your "Ingenious" mechanical solution to a problem that never needed to exist, why not go the whole hog and make shooting it easier for yourself by designing the PipBuck to aim, reload, and fire guns for you with the aid of magic and no risk of user error?

And then there was the PipBuck. Its compass highlighted enemies, which was bad enough. But then there was SATS, which could turn even the most inept fighter into a champion warrior and expert gunslinger. The Stable-tec Assisted Targeting System could slow the user's perception of time to seem paused while queueing up actions for the SATS program to perform in stopped time. When you had finished telling SATS who you wanted shot and where, or simply telling it who you wanted struck with a melee weapon or unarmed strike if you lacked any firearms or energy weapons due to a lack of precision targeting drivers programmed for melee combat, SATS would take over. SATS would puppet your body and take over for you, controlling your muscles and movements in seemingly-slowed time, making you perfectly execute every weapon slash and gun blast you ordered from the safety of paused time. You could even command SATS to help you cast spells and perform acts of telekinetic might! It didn't matter how inept you were as a fighter, map-reader, inventory manager, or scout when the PipBuck was there to make you the perfect warrior and tell you exactly how many foes there were, where they were coming from, and where you need to go next, and what route to take.

Tunnel vision was a common problem for PipBuck wearers, as their eyes exclusively focused on the compass projected into the corner of their eyes by the GameShark-tier cheat devices on their limbs rather than their surroundings or what others had told them. Everyone down here had heard stories of idiots with PipBucks trusting their GPS (Goal-oriented Positioning System) just a little too much and running into doors, running into lampposts, running into other animals, running into walls, running off cliffs into holes in the ground, running into elevator shafts and dying, running down blocked-off dead-end hallways before calling the police or Tech Support to shout and scream and deny that your sense of direction had atrophied like a never-utilized muscle... Sparky found it strangely hilarious. Almost as hilarious as the ponies out there who had the use of this multipurpose cheat device designed to be so user-friendly that even the densest of pet apes(not to be confused with the thinking ones in this Stable who used to be Equestrians, or the thinking monkeys on other continents) could utilize it as their Cutie Mark.

It was almost as if the PipBuck and Battle Saddle had been specifically designed to let whoever wore one cheat as much as possible, and let those wearing both cheat even more.

Sparky wished he had a unique PipBuck-like device with none of the cheats, and the capacity to turn off the cheats of those he fought. Now something like that... That could help him immensely, should anyone ever take his collar off and let him fight for his freedom.

As a man who loved fair competition, being able to directly purchase power to cheat in contests of skill and strength disgusted Sparky. He wished his Stable wasn't so overcrowded and anti-poor that PipBucks were considered a rare luxury item even as private companies and individual inventors continued to innovate to provide better PipBuck alternatives. He wished his Stable's market was free enough for the animals down here to recognize the superiority of alternate PipBucks and Battle Saddles, financially supporting them by purchasing their products. He wished PipBucks thrown in the garbage were typically scrapped for parts and recycled or given to the poor instead of getting sent down the garbage chute to be incinerated. But alas, everyone was taxed to pay for the Nobles in charge of the government and their love of subsidizing their big corporate Noble friends, and the big corporations loved to sell a mix of unfairly overpriced garbage their richest fans would eat up, and underpriced garbage designed to price competitors out of business even if it meant losing money in the short term.

But finally, once Sparky had two 9mm handguns mounted to his sides with the aid of mechanical bullshit guided by magic, he could insert ingenious mechanical earpieces into his ears that, when the button upon them was double-clicked, ejaculated foam that rapidly became firm, but not hard, dulling the sounds of the world around him. Because fuck rubberized ear protection, magical foam that would retract into its device cleanly when doubleclicked was the future.

Standing beside other friends at the gun range and preparing to fire, Sparky set his sights upon the target before him, a black silhouette of a Lion with targeting circles upon his body. Headshots, neckshots, body shots, paw shots, each were worth a different number of points Sparky didn't care about.

Regrettably, because these paper targets were not individuals, his Battle Saddle's guns could not auto-aim onto them, and so he had to make do with an awkward manual tongue-operated joystick built into the mouth trigger. One awkward tongue-operated joystick that controlled two guns at once... Why couldn't this just utilize a mental command?

Biting down to fire, one gun aimed at the lion's head and struck a glancing blow on his left temple, while the other was way off, striking white background far to the target's right.

“Mmmthrrrfhhckrrr,” Sparky growled around the mouthpiece between his teeth. He meant Motherfucker.

He tried harder to aim with the joysticks, his guns swivelling in their joints wildly... Fuck, why was the sensitivity so high? Why couldn't his saddle utilize one gun in front of him, instead of two at his sides? Why couldn't he cheat at life using an overpowered PipBuck and its auto-aiming StableTec Assisted Targeting System to make his Battle Saddles aim and fire with the superior auto-aiming and auto-firing magical technology of SATS? Who the hell were these machines meant for, animals never meant to hold or fire guns in the first place?

And why was it so fucking hard to aim two guns offset from your position by metal arms? Why couldn't these fucking guns have laser sights on them, to help him tell where they were aiming and whether they were aiming at the right thing or not? Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if you were a tiny little shit with a tiny body and a tiny gun offset distance to factor into your gun calculations, but he was a big guy, for you, and when he struggled with Battle Saddles, he did not feel in charge.

This motherfucker was doing trigonometry to calculate the differential fuckquation of your mother's obesity to get the adequate offset trigger point of the autofellatious gun shooty bang bang direction it shoots in.

Why couldn't these fucking Battle Saddles use bigger guns, like miniguns or shotguns with 40mm shells and up, the sort of thing where precision didn't matter? He was a big fucker, he weighed a shitton, the recoil wouldn't bother him as long as the recoil didn't make the leather sling-mounted saddle-bound guns sway and stretch and leap all over the place. Which they fucking would if they had any significant recoil.

Why couldn't he rent a suit of Power Armour with guns welded to it, to remove the issue of recoil and any give you'd find in adjustable straps?

Why couldn't he just use telekinesis? Why couldn't this stupid fucking Stable turn off its anti-magic gems for the poor for at least an hour each day, or at the very least in certain places besides the floors of the richest Nobles?

This Battle Saddle pissed him off so much, his desire to murder the dipshit responsible for it was so great, his slave collar read it as murderous intent and electrocuted him, but he was silent and didn't flinch or yelp in pain, he didn't want to give any prey animals watching the satisfaction.

Recalling advice his father had given him, clicking the thankfully Video Game Controller-inspired joystick(If it was a longer joystick like those of old arcade cabinets, manipulating a long hard rod like that with his tongue would feel way too gay) in with his tongue, his guns decided to reset their position to the center, aiming straight ahead of him.

As Sparky stared his target dead-on, he bit down and fired his guns.

Each struck the sides of the lion target, one left, one right.

“FHHHCK!” Sparky growled.

A male Wolf to his right took pity on him. “Try clicking the aiming stick in twice, this makes your stick control the left gun, while the right gun does the opposite. That's great for pointing your two guns inward, so they'll both hit closer targets. Like a pair of eyes going cross-eyed.”

“Thhhnks, brvvrr!” Sparky grinned around his mouthpiece as he did just that, clicking his stick and struggling with the stick's sensitivity until after twenty seconds of fidgeting and aiming, he'd finally gotten his two guns perfectly aligned with the head of his Lion target, and fired.

Dead-on, a perfect headshot, he tore right through the target's paper head.

Except not really, the guns had crossed each other's lines of fire too much and both missed their heads.

“Khnnnt...” Sparky sighed.

“I wish they'd let us bring Energy Weapons in here!” Somepony - I mean somecreature – said to his left. "Energy Weapons are better than Guns.”

“No they're not.” Said his friend. Sparky looked over at the two and saw they were a pair of identical red-eyed white Wolves arguing as they both put their Battle Saddles to work firing at the targets before them, missing most of their shots. “Without Guns, we wouldn't have Energy Weapons.”

“That doesn't make Guns good, it just makes them an outdated stepping stone. Like bashing your clothes with a rock in a river to clean them like a dumb wild animal, versus using a washing machine like civilized animals.”

“Your laser flashlights can't even melt rocks.”

“Oh? And guns can?”

“The big ones can break rocks apart. Forget nine milimeter rounds, forget fourty-five bullshit, forget ten milimeter rounds because they're shit, forget three-five-seven and magnum and hollow point, no laser on this dead fucking rock of a world has more badassitude than a fifty-caliber fuck-you.”

“Fifty-caliber anti-materiel rifles have too much recoil, genius. Good luck bracing yourself for the recoil of a gun you're telekinetically holding ten feet from your face. Good luck bracing the leather or cloth straps of your Battle Saddle against that recoil, too, if your fragile metal arms can handle the stresses of G-force and firing that thing while flying faster than sound. Good luck handling the recoil with your teeth when you're firing a specially-designed mouth-operated gun with your mouth like a fucking idiot, since you don't have a horn.”

“Ever heard of Battle Saddles? I've got one back home and it's a newer model than any of the crap they let us use at this range.”

“One, you don't have a Battle Saddle. If you could afford one, you wouldn't be here, you'd sell it and buy two houses, and rent each one to eight or more different animals each to afford taxes on them both and bonus taxes on the second until you have a good enough buyer offer to sell both houses for enough money to move to a floor with lower taxes. And two, Battle Saddles are the stupidest thing ever dreamed up by a mud horse with horn envy. We've both been here long enough to know how shit these pieces of shit are. It's like some idiot started off with a problem: Horses can't use guns clearly meant for Griffons and Monkeys. And instead of redesigning guns to suit pony mouths or limbs wherever possible, or using any of the many magical solutions on the table like enchanting guns to float and fire and reload themselves or giving ponies enchanted mannequin arms able to reload and fire guns better than any Spider bitch, that mud horse decided to dream up a mechanical solution for what was so obviously a magical problem that required a magical solution, he eventually gave up on mechanics and made the damn thing use magic to aim and reload anyway. But not fire, of course, because that would standardize unequal individuals even more.”

The two thought about that for a while before the Energy Weapons fanwolf spoke. “It's a good thing Energy Weapons lack recoil that'll throw your aim off. You know, because they're pinpoint-accurate laser pointers that can drill holes through flesh in an instant, or drill holes through light steel armour after a sustained three-round burst, or spit superheated plasma or bullshit magical energy balls or pure lightning guided by magic or all sorts of other things.”

“Energy Weapon fans need the lack of recoil, because they can't handle the recoil of chad weapons like shotguns!”

“Do you know how expensive shotgun shells are these days? Don't forget about the economy! When you fire a bullet, that's it. The trigger is pulled, the hammer goes click, it hits a bullet right in the little tiny metal bullet anus, and this makes it blow its load of gunpowder, and the gun barrel makes that explosion focused enough to send the bullet flying through the air faster than sound. Do you know what's faster than sound, but doesn't make a sound? Light. Energy Weapons lack recoil, almost all of them take the same types of batteries, these batteries can be recharged at any environmentally-friendly Green Party-endorsed Diesel burning or Coal-fired power station, AND they can be recharged with a Unicorn's magical energy, they're the perfect weapon. Gentle on your body, like a soft winter breeze, and vicious to the enemy, like a fierce and brutal winter!”

“By the fucking Light, I can feel my jawline receding just listening to you speak. It doesn't matter if your laser rifle is silent when it's so fucking bright, if you fired it at night line a proper prone sniper, that laser would be a big bright glowy line that tells everyone right where you are, and where your spotter was if he's near you, and where your whole squad is if you have one. Not even tracer rounds give away your position that badly, and we avoid using tracer rounds for a reason!”

“Who cares if it's bright? Have you ever seen someone get hit by a good laser shot?”

“Yeah, they laugh it off and it doesn't even break their skin.”

“If they configured their Energy Weapon incorrectly by calibrating the focusing lens incorrectly!”

“Oh, did he forget to calibrate the positronic isotopes and the megatron-cuntickler effect on the reversed polari-tiddty of the other nerd shit? Guns don't care about calibration, guns kill, and that's awesome.”

“The average gun fanboy wouldn't know what to do with a laser weapon if they found one, but the chad laser enjoyer could be deadlier than any toy fanboy with a plinking pea-shooter! If they configured it well enough for the range, factoring in thermal blooming and air resistance, they earn the right to pierce through anything that matters.”

“Ever seen a gun user blast right through a Unicorn's magical shield by shooting it hard enough enough times?”

“Ever seen a perfectly-calibrated well-maintained laser pistol destroy a magical energy shield in a single shot? Ever seen a laser strike someone so hard, it supercharges their atoms and damages the bonds holding them together? Every shred of that person becomes its own blazing miniature sun as the poor soul you've fired on starts glowing, screaming, burning alive, turning to ash in a goddamn fuckosecond if he's lucky. If he's not lucky, every single drop of liquid in that fucker's body boils so fast, the result is an explosion bigger and messier than when my overfilled Bad Horse(TM) enchanted condom exploded inside your mother last night-”

“Fuck off,”

“Only this liquid doesn't give life, it takes life, without the need to visit a suicide booth with free abortions. This liquid's boiling, it's superheated, bitch! Steam and magically radioactive goo explodes from the energy weapon victim, and if it gets on any of his friends, it's boiling like acid, so they're fucked, and it's radioactive, too! That can't be good! And if that liquid's magically supercharged enough before the heat boils it away, there's a chance it can supercharge and burn away the bodies of anyone it gets on, causing a chain reaction of explosive bloody meltdowns, leaving behind gore and ash and the scent of charred dipshit where a firing squad used to be. What can a gun do? Oh, that's right, it can shoot one guy at a time outside the Vid-Comics where you're bouncing bullets off walls to hit every baddie at once. One good laser shot can kill a whole squad of enemies at once! Don't even get me started on plasma!”

“Fuck plasma, I can dodge plasma!”

“You can't dodge plasma.”

“Most winged animals can fly faster than plasma.”

“Then whoever's shooting at you would just aim in front of you, leading the target.”

“Then I'll fly around the plasma!”

“Good luck! It's a ball of magnetically-contained superheated fucking plasma! If it gets on you, you're fucked, and if the magical energy in every shot supercharges you, you're double-fucked and so is any dipshit near you. And if the gun's enchanted, it's homing in on you better than any missile, while accelerating. Even Rainbow Dash herself, flying at top speed after a Sonic Rainboom, couldn't dodge plasma from the guns we're making today!”

“Why are we judging weapons based on their perfect conditions now? A twenty-two Little Retardtinydick or whatever the fuck El-Arr stands for-”

“Long Rifle.”

“Then why is it only in short silenced pistols?”

“It's not! You can get long rifles that shoot two-two-LRs too.”

“No you can't, they're illegal on this floor.”

“Energy Weapons aren't.”

“They aren't AS illegal. Yet. On some floors, they're more illegal. But whatever. Listen, even that tiny baby bullet could still kill someone under perfect conditions. And guns can do better than laser pistols under conditions that would permanently ruin any energy weapon! Energy weapons need perfect conditions before they'll fire, and do you know why? It's because they are delicate! They're unreliable! Knowing how to fix them is a rare skill that takes decades of training and practice, but guns are simple tubes that kill shit with bullets. Energy Weapons? They'll stop working if you look at them funny! You can cover an AK with mud and shit on it and piss all over it and it'll still fire perfectly!”

“Why the fuck would you do any of that to an AK?”

“To prove it'll still fire no matter how badly you treat it!”

“We geniuses don't abuse our Energy Weapons to show off, we fine-tune them perfectly for every shot. Energy Weapons aren't designed for idiots, they're designed for geniuses.”

“They're designed for smug idiots who think they're geniuses, which is why dipshits buy them when they don't know how to fine tune the beam frequency or rotate the multiphase bandwith pulser or clean the homosexamalizing lens.”

“That last one isn't even a thing!”

“I know, I'm joking, that's the joke.”

“So what if most people who buy an Energy Weapon don't know how to use it properly? That doesn't mean it's a bad gun, that just means it's so awesome, even idiots who can't handle it want it!”

“At least Guns don't stop working in smoke clouds.”

“Only old-generation Beam Weapons have that problem, because of thermal blooming and dust in the air. Plasma guns don't care what they melt through on their way to their targets. Power Armour? Planes? Tanks? Those stupid fucking Cloud battleships? They don't give a fuck. Guns can only carry so many bullets in each clip magazine thingy, and each gun takes different kinds of bullets, but Energy Weapons mostly use the same batteries, and they store more rounds per shot than any normal gun magazine!”

“You'll need those extra rounds when your laser tickles what it's supposed to drill through because you dilated the beam frequencies wrong and need a few seconds to fix that, seconds you don't have on a battlefield.”

“Actually, I only need nanoseconds to fix it with a mental command from the newest PipBuck models.”

“Do you have the newest PipBuck model?”

“No. But at least Energy Weapons can't jam or blow up on you like guns can!”

“Energy Weapons blow up all the time if their batteries are damaged!”

“That's not the gun blowing up, that's the battery! Energy Weapons have failsafes and standards to meet! Batteries from Lesser Taichi don't have to meet any standards, besides not blowing up and killing the unqualified braindead Zebra inspector someone's boss bribed!”

“Good luck finding batteries that won't blow up down here, because the ones down here, they're made by the lowest bidder.”

“Not the ones I buy,” He said smugly.

“You could buy real bullets for less.”

“And they'd be used up in a single shot, forcing you to buy more. My batteries can be recharged, can you say the same?”

“Energy Weapons aren't user-friendly!”

“Oh, and guns are?”

“Yeah! Just point and shoot!”

“And disassemble your gun after every shot and clean every last part before putting it all back together again.”

“You don't need to field-fuck your gun clean after every shot.”

“You never have to clean an Energy Weapon. No gunpowder, no explosions, no wear and tear.”

“You never have to clean an Energy Weapon, you just have to take it to a professional to get it fixed every time it stops working because you breathed on its delicate internals funny, because nobody who uses Energy Weapons knows anything about them and half the models on the market were designed with planned obsolescence in mind.”

“Don't forget about those new Magne-Weapons.”

“The fuck are Magne-Weapons?”

“Do you even fucking read, bro?”

“Yeah, I read gun magazines.”

“Try reading some magazines about energy weapons. Or try reading books without pictures for once.”

“Suck my ass.”

“No, you suck my ass. Magne-Weapons are a new type of Energy Weapon. We have those, you know, because unlike guns, which have stagnated for the past sixty years, we're not still relying on ancient revolvers to get the job done. We're inventing new batteries, new parts, whole new guns. And whole new types of guns, too. These energy weapons use power from their batteries to power their coils, generating enough electromagnetic energy to silently fire razor-sharp metal discs with enough force to drill right through a pony. Caseless ammunition, which means you can pack more discs into a single clip. The ammo's easier to manufacture than a regular bullet, and if the disc doesn't get too damaged, it can be reused. Silent and deadly, bitch. It's the perfect weapon.”

“Oh yeah? HEY, SPARKY?”

Sparky wasn't expecting to be addressed during this conversation. He spat out his mouthpiece, letting it dangle down around his neck. “Yeah?”

“If you're going to listen in, you can settle this for us. You're a professional repair guy, so you fix laser guns all the time, right?”

“Sometimes, but I usually repair PipBucks and try to sell idiots overpriced garbage-”

“I don't care. Tell me, what's the best weapon type, energy weapon or plasma?”

Sparky hated these conversations... Picking a side between these two idiots meant pissing one off for months. And these petty idiots could be EXTREMELY petty and EXTREMELY idiotic when they were pissed off. “Energy Weapons and Ballistic Weapons are too different to compare them in good faith, and the same goes for Explosives and Melee Weapons. They're better at different things and any competent military operation would keep all available options on hand and use whichever's best for the situation.”

“Yeah, but if they don't have both, what do they rely on, real guns or flashlights?”

“They put whoever's responsible for that logistical fuckup against a wall, solve that problem for good, and get both and rockets before a tank shows up with enough heavy armour to laugh off every bullet fired in its general direction, or reflective armour that bounces away every light shined on it, along with any soft-kill and hard-kill anti-missile defense systems.”

The two laughed.

“There you go again with your tank fetish!” The gun-loving wolf chortled.

“Tanks don't exist outside of fiction!" The Laser fetishist Wolf chuckled. "The Equestrian military never adopted tanks for a reason!”

“That reason is, Twilight and her friends didn't invent them,” Sparky noted. “Equestria fell because of government corruption, cronyism, and nepotism.”

“Actually, Equestria fell because it wasn't Noble enough!” Insisted the gun-lover, like a good little Sheep, despite appearing to be a Wolf on the surface. He must have been mostly Dog, then, broken in and housetrained like a good little pet. ”Everyone knows that! Now that we're happy and safe in our radiation-proof bunker, the Nobles can show us the way to prosperity, harmony, and friendship!”

He didn't feel like bringing up the Nobles and their war on gun rights, just as he didn't feel like getting into a pointless argument with someone who couldn't see reason, and that's what anyone who still worshipped the cub-killing government was. “Yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

Sparky returned to his own gun target as the two idiots continued to bicker about effective gun ranges beside him.

Resetting the orientation of his guns and mentally calculating their predicted firing lines, he wiggled the small joystick with his tongue wildly, struggling to get one gun on-target, even if the other was a lost cause.

And then the male Wolf to Sparky's right, the one he respected, finished off his own ammo supply and left the range, making room for...

“Hello, Sparkly!” Guffawed a great big smug cunt of a Unicorn man, whose name Sparky refused to pronounce correctly. He was twenty years old and bright yellow, with a rainbow pompadour that reminded Sparky of the offspring resulting from the unholy union of a clown's rainbow afro and a duck's bill. “Is it not a wonderful day for me to be better than everycreature else?”

“Hi, Goose,” Sparky rolled his eyes. “What brings you to a cheap place like this?”

“You, of course! How can I prove I'm better than you if I'm not right here beside you, beating your scores at everything you try?”

“Good luck hitting anything, the Saddles they've got us using are pieces of-”

“Are these Battle Saddles not amazing?” Goose grinned as he used his all-black custom PipBuck to summon his custom Battle Saddle onto his back. It was a lightweight set of two shotguns (one with a tactical red laser sight and one with a tactical green laser sight) mounted to arms strapped to his back with diamond-studded black faux leather straps. “They're the perfect size for me!”

“Must be nice to be that small, I'm sure your rich dad appreciates the easy fit when it's his turn to be penetrated.”

The wolves beside Sparky laughed.

Goose growled. “Stop calling me gay, you raging homosexual! That's it, you and me, right now, Sparky, for two hundred thousand bits! Whoever gets the best score with our next five shots wins all that money, and bragging rights for a month!”

“You're on,” Sparky growled without thinking, using the back of his right paw to guide his Battle Saddle controller towards his mouth, where mighty jaws that had known the taste of many needy bitches clamped down upon it.

Goose took aim at the target before him with his Target-Assisted PipBitch Cheat Device, hitting it dead-center in the chest with his two shotgun slugs. “Beat that.”

...Fuck.

Sparky realized he might have made a mistake.

Aiming carefully and fucking with his own control stick, he continued to struggle to aim-

Goose fired another shot, hitting his own target dead-center. “Beat that!”

Sparky spat his Battle Saddle(TM) controller out of his mouth. “If you insist."

Sparky casually unhooked buckles on his Battle Saddle until he was ready to take it all off and let it all slump onto the ground beside him, before his long white lion tail tipped with a golden star plucked one pistol from his Battle Saddle. Readying the gun before him, lining up its front and rear sights as he squinted and sucked in a deep breath before tightening his core muscles and handsomely sensual abdominal muscles and pectorals, his tailhairs pulled the gun's trigger, sending a bullet dead-center into his target's left eye, and another into his target's right eye, and three more into his target's mouth to make a smiling face out of the holes. Releasing the magazine, letting it fall, Sparky tossed his gun into the air, snatching the mag and scooping bullets from the Saddlebags of his Battle Saddle into the mag before holding it beneath his descending gun, letting the gun fall neatly onto the mag.

Sparky's tail held the top of his gun to his mouth, where he bit down on it as his tail pulled the gun forwards until he heard a click. Releasing his mighty jaws, the retracted chunk of gun sprung back into its usual place, and the reload was complete. Once again, the gun was ready to fire. “Beat that.”

Goose stared at him in shock. “Th-that's cheating!” He stammered.

“Oh, so it's cheating for me to use my tail, but it's not cheating for you to use that auto-aiming cheat device?” Sparky pointed with his tail at the PipBuck on Goose's arm.

“This isn't cheating! It's a tactical advantage! There's a difference!” Goose insisted.

“Yeah, a device on your arm that controls your entire body like a puppet on strings whenever you tell it to perfectly shoot a target, that's just SO fair. It's like passing your videogame controller over to your big brother whenever you get to a hard part you cannot beat!”

“It's not like that at all! It's super fair!” Goose insisted. "It doesn't aim for you, it just slightly helps you aim!"

“Really?” Sparky raised an eyebrow. “Even if you admit it only slightly helps you aim, that's still admitting you're accepting outside aid from a magical device. Your dad bought you the device, so that's outside help, and the machine takes control of you away, so it's doing the work for you. They don't let athletes in the Ponylimpics use drugs, or have their friends compete in events for them, or use PipBucks to puppet their bodies perfectly for a reason, you know!”

“This is fairer than the Ponylimpics!”

“Really? So if there was a pony out there who couldn't fight, or navigate her way out of a wet paper bag, or accomplish literally anything without outside help in the form of drugs or her PipBuck doing over ninety percent of her job for her, with her friends doing the rest for her, would she be cool? Even if she'd be nothing at all without her PipBuck and friends?”

“Yes! She's just using the advantages fate gifted her. That's not cheating, that's being smart!”

“If I was born with the ability to use telekinesis, supremely powerful telekinesis so amazingly strong that I can toss debris around like it's made from cardboard, and lift myself, and lift others, and even lift adult Ponies in Power Armour effortlessly, and lift and juggle boxcars, and pick locks from the inside, and hold liquid together to form a bulletproof shield around myself, would I be cheating if I used that almighty telekinesis to handle every challenge I couldn't get drugs to make easier for me, even this one?”

“No, you'd be using what's natural for you, just like I'm using what's natural for me!” He pointed down at his PipBuck.

“Really? So when I use the abilities natural for my people, in the form of my prehensile tail, am I cheating or being smart?”

He growled while thinking. “...Cheating!” He eventually decided. “Because you didn't earn that tail like I earned by PipBuck, you were just born with it!”

“That PipBuck program was designed during the war to help amateurish conscripts with skills far beneath those of the typical soldier shoot well enough to pass the standards set for them, and it failed because a ton of conscripts didn't meet the physical or mental fitness requirements anyway, but the standards were lowered for them as special training units were created to try and drill basic concepts into the heads of dipshits. Equestria's policy during the war was to get as many ponies into the battlefield as possible regardless of quality or training or equipment, because those in charge believed training wasn't necessary to become a great soldier. That device keeps track of maps and your objectives, keeps track of what you have on you and what's stored inside it, it repairs items for you by consuming other items, it tells you where to go, it tells you what to pick up, it tells you where to plant explosives whenever that's part of your mission, it tells you where to deliver packages, it tells you who to shoot, it tells you where the enemies are coming from and how many there are, it even helps you change your fucking underwear for crying out loud! It's the most cheaty cheat device possible, just like the Battle Saddle that reloads aims guns for you! Combine both, and you're relying on outside help to know where to go, relying outside help to know what to do every second of every day, relying on outside help to aim your gun, reload it, clean and repair it... You're a goddamn puppet! You're an attack-dog, blindly led by your PipBuck like it's your leash and collar! You purchased those cheat devices with your daddy's money! You didn't earn your advantages through hard work and exercise, they're not truly yours, you were just lucky enough to be born with access to these unfair cheats, and it's sad that you don't know the difference! Now pay up, you lost the bet.”

Goose begrudgingly held out his PipBuck with the Money Transfer app ready.

“I don't own a PipBuck,” Sparky held out his bare arm, before turning his paw up. “Give me a stack of paper money.”

“But you wear one when you're repairing shit!”

“Yeah, it's borrowed from my company. They think I'd look too poor to be trustworthy if I wasn't visibly wearing one of these cheat devices.”

“Can't you just buy one anyway, you cheap fucker?” Goose wondered as he fucked with his own PipBuck.

“I've got two jobs and an adopted daughter, and I'm a meat-eater. Food is expensive and the economy is managed by politicians who want my kind gone, so no, I don't have the money for a decadent little luxury item I'll never actually need, even if it would be useful for booty calls.”

“Here, take this.” Goose spawned two fat stacks of thousand-dollar bit bills from his PipBuck inventory screen, each one secured by its own twisted rubber band, letting them fall to the ground before turning around and walking away. “Unbe-fucking-lievable.”

Taking those two wads of cash and storing them under his Trucker Hat before aim with the gun in his tail, Sparky prepared to fire at his target again, wondering what to shoot at next.

He fired at where he imagined the target's cock to be, upon noticing a laughably and unrealistically small targeting circle there worth 69000000 points.

He aimed at it anyway and fired, missing by a hair, hitting paper to its upper-right.

“Damn,” He muttered.

Some woman screamed behind him, and Sparky was glad he wore earplugs meant for shooting as he decided to put his gun down and turn around slowly, because his earplugs took the painful edge away from her constant shrieking.

“What do you think this is, a movie?” The Sheep in charge of the gun range snapped, a fifty-something hag with a pantsuit with six stolen-valor medals on her chest, a military camo-print handbag, and a fucking AR-15 on a bandolier slung over her back upside-down. The bandolier bore pockets for the entirely wrong ammo type, and Goose smugly sneered at Sparky beside the sheep he'd brought here. “You can't shoot guns with your tail!”

“My people can,” Sparky noted.

“My people can't!” She shrieked. “You can't just show off your ability to do things with your tail, it'll make those who can't do anything with their tails feel uncomfortable! This is supposed to be an inclusive space!”

“Yeah, stop flexing! Your success is failphobic, because it makes those who fail feel bad!” Cried Goose. “It's about the notes you don't play, and the shots you don't take!”

“What is that even supposed to mean?” Sparky asked the bitter salt machine disguised as a person, and her current enabler, the one who had given her what she saw as an excuse to start yelling words.

“Shut up, you limp-dicked candy-ass turd-gobbling cocksucker!” Shrieked the Sheep. "Your dick's so tiny, you couldn't even use it as a rudder in water!"

He stared at her for a few seconds. “Are you done?” He asked.

“You're a faggot!” She snapped. Because she was a bigot, and a terrible fucking person.

“I find shooting like a normal Lion way more comfortable than trying to make do with these stupid equalization machines, sue me.” He rolled his eyes. “I get that they were designed so rookie conscripts with less than a week of training were more likely to shoot something at the front lines besides themselves or their friends, but why are these the only thing we're allowed to use at the gun range? What's the bloody point of a gun range where we practice using devices that aim and shoot for us? Why do we need to practice using yet another impractical auto-aim cheat-machine that takes all the individuality and skill out of shooting when we all already have the StableTech-Assisted Targeting System in every PipBuck that can make us perfectly aim guns, perfectly swing melee weapons, perfectly swing paws, and use whatever else we want?”

“You don't have the StableTech-Assisted Targeting System. You don't even have a PipBuck!” Goose pointed out.

“Yeah, mine's in the shop being repaired,” He rolled his eyes. “Just kidding, I still can't afford a PipBuck, and I don't consider them important investments. I actually have a sense of direction, so I don't need the maps to find my way around. I can carry things, and I travel light as it is, so I don't feel the need to rely on a magical machine to carry a few hundred pounds of guns, outfits, ammo, food, sex toys, magical pony dolls, and garbage everywhere I go. And I was ever going to buy a PipBuck, it's going to be a customized and overclocked one worth a damn, with custom parts and unique programs, something unique to me without any of the back doors and other problems that plagued the average consumer's PipBuck model.”

“You have a tiny penis!” The bitch wrongfully in charge of the shooting range shouted at Sparky. “So there! Your delicate masculine ego is pathetic! Faggots like you should be put to death!”

Sparky suspected that if he commented on her elderly ass, tiny tits, or unappealing wrinkled skin, or sexual history of being a shameless homewrecking whore, or history of marrying and divorcing men to steal everything they owned, even if he only admitted he knew those medals on her chest were stolen valor and she'd stolen the gun range from her most recent victim of her divorce-trapping con, he'd be arrested and accused of sexual harassment. But hey, mocking a man's dick to show him his place in society and remind him that he can't say anything like that back, trying to demean him and emasculate him to remind him who's in charge and how he's treated by society, that's perfectly acceptable when you're in charge, right? Oh, but also, you're just soooo oppressed because you say so. You can tell you're a "victim" because you're in charge, even though you shouldn't be in charge of anything, Noble scum.

“Blah blah blah, I'm bitter!” The bitch in charge of the shooting range practically said but she took a few hundred more words to say it. “Balls balls balls penis penis penis motherfucker! Blah blah blah, words words words, I have clear and obvious penis envy and when I think of what a man talks like I think of a petulant bully who can't stop insulting your cocks even though any actual man would get knocked out or killed for talking like that! Blah blah blah blah words words words! I'm a victim! I'm the real victim here! I'm the biggest victim of all, not you, you cumgargling gimp with a dick smaller than a fucking butterfly! All men are trash and all gays deserve death! You're really homosexual! Fucking words, words words words, fuck words, mature language, look at me because I'm saying mature words and I just think I'm sooooo mature, penis penis penis. Hey, are you listening to me?!"

"Everyone's listening to you, because you're loud," Sparky noted.

"Don't take that tone with me, you cum-drunk shitgobbler! Do you know what they say about sensitive fragile tiny men like you with tiny dicks?”

He sighed, and decided he'd been enduring her shit for too many months. He didn't care if he was banned from this particular gun range when there were others out there, even if this was the cheapest. “The same thing they say about sensitive fragile egotistical tinier women like you, with a negative six inch dick you keep trying to use to win dick-measuring contests against the male victims you needlessly antagonize, abuse, and sexually harass?!”

Every man and several women either cheered him on or looked horrified.

“YOU WHAT?!” She shrieked. “Nobody talks to me like that!”

“That's why you turned out this way, your daddy didn't spank you enough to keep your feminine ego in check. You talk like you expect the world to be afraid of upsetting you, you talk like you enjoy bullying those who don't feel like fighting back, you talk like you think being a bully makes you a big man, but despite what you constantly say, a man is not a bully. Flying off the handle at the slightest provocation and constantly badmouthing men won't ever make you a real man, it just makes you look petty and pathetic. You keep on going on and on about dicks and cocks because you just can't measure up to the males you're jealous of. THAT'S RIGHT, I SAID IT, everyone knows it, everyone laughs at you behind your back, and the only reason they don't say it to your face is because they know you and others like you are so petty and spiteful and vengeful and pathetic and completely beyond saving, telling you the truth and potentially setting you straight isn't worth the hassle you'd become when the artificial authority you base your ego on feels challenged.” He turned around, dropping the magazine of his gun, followed by his gun. “I quit, cancel my subscription to this place, I'm going to a different gun range from now on. I'm sick of your abuse and this is the nice option I have to put a stop to this. I hope we never interact again.”

“What's the not-so-nice way you can deal with it?” She yelled hopefully.

He walked away in silence, his tail-hair forming into the shape of a fist, a point forming in the center that flipped her off.

“What the fuck does that mean?” She eagerly asked Goose. “Was that a death threat? Can I have him arrested over this?”

Goose seemed shocked. “Over what, insulting you? Doesn't that seem a little excessive?”

“What did you think I was going to want when you called me over and told me he was breaking the rules in MY gun range?” She asked.

“I just thought you were going to yell at him again and call his dick tiny over and over like you usually do when talking to men.” He said. “Normally he just puts up with you, and it's hilarious for me, but... I didn't think he'd say anything back to you or leave!”

“You got a problem with that, you baby-dicked candy-ass anus-licking faggot? Last I checked, you fucking hated the guy!”

“Well, yeah, but... Not that much!” Goose wasn't sure what to say. “I want to overcome him, not get him locked up! When we were eight he won first place in our school's talent show when it should have been me who won that!”

“Why should the winner have been you?” She asked.

“Because it's a talent show, and I was in it! Therefore I should win because I'm so talented!” He stomped his foot. “But even I'm more mature than you!”

“That's it, I'm calling the police!” She snapped before bursting into tears, leaving wet trails behind as she ran over to a phone on her gun range's wall, blubbering lies to the operator on the other end until a cop was given the order to review camera footage of the day.

The low-ranked low-paid office cop assigned to the case was a meat-eater who knew the old Sheep well, so he decided to do the right thing, telling her he'd handle the case so she'd hang up, before marking the case closed while wishing it was illegal for grass-gobblers to waste police time.

That day, many other men and women decided to quit her gun range, too.

Might as well, since she was always bitchier than usual for days whenever someone stood up to that bully.

It had just never been the same ever since she stole it from the husband she married and divorced, anyway.

It smelled like bitchy sheep in there.