Fallout Equestria: Lionheart

The sea was a foreign concept to Sparky.

He had read books about the sea.

He had experienced vidcomics about the sea.

Sparky had never seen the sea, just as he had never seen the outside world.

And yet, he believed he would compare the sensation of idly drifting in and out of consciousness as his narcolepsy came and went to floating aimlessly in the ocean.

Still, one thought pierced through the icy hold detachment's numbing miasma held over him.

The barren steel walls around him were an agonizingly dull shade of grey, and he had to do something about that.

Some day, decided the handsome half-lion Unicorn just nineteen years of age, as he curled up in bed, desperate for one more iota of true sleep to take him away from this world.

But the black shock collar around his neck triggered, sending an agonizing jolt of pain through his body, and he knew it was time to go to work.

He didn't wear much, as clothing suited for a man of his stature was something rare you had to custom-order. Businesses that catered to his kind were rarer than moral billionaires.

All alone, he put on a Trucker Hat and some Lucky Shades.

Some day, he'd decorate his room.

But not today.

Not now.

His Lucky Shades were a stylish pair of military-grade metal-framed sunglasses, the perfect thing to wear at a gun range if normal eye protection wasn't stylish enough for you, but he'd modified the metal of his shades with metallic gold spray-paint to seem more expensive than they were. He fondly recalled how he'd taken the sunglasses out of their frames to ensure they didn't get splattered or stained with any paint, shortly before re-inserting those glass pieces once the paint had dried. Meanwhile his Trucker Hat was as blue as Rainbow Dash's asscheeks, which he saw in images he viewed every night and during more than a few bathroom breaks. His hat proudly declared to the world in bold white capital lettering, “Women want me, fish fear me”. Though what it said didn't really matter when so few down here could read or write. The hat had english text on it, and that was enough to impress the illiterate, make them more likely to think he was literate and not like one of the BAD half-lions they heard about on the radio.

Raising the bombproof pneumatic blast door on his bedroom long enough to leave it, only for an automated AI to slam the door shut behind him.

Sparky ignored the graffiti on the wall around his room that called him a monster, a freak, a half-beast cancerous nothing that needed to be eradicated. He ignored the graffiti that told him to kill himself, told him to die, called him the reason everyone else in this Stable suffered.

He knew the real reason why everyone in this Stable suffered... It was because of the Nobles.

Sparky turned around and saw an endless flow of countless animals, effortlessly slipping into the herd as they all marched, dead-eyed and hopeless, to their miserable workplaces. Now and then, someone young sneaked a peek up at one of the Stable Security cameras with mounted guns overhead, before swiftly looking back down. Any who didn't look dead-eyed and miserable were mugged by spiteful mutants, and given one less reason to be happier than the spiteful. They all marched through identical steel hallways in a neverending grid pattern, with arrows painted on the floor to tell the animals which routes were one-way routes and which way they went. Those in charge (The Nobles) claimed these routes were to prevent collisions, aid traffic flow, and improve societal cohesion. In reality, the needlessly circuitous routes forced upon these animals extended everyone's travel times to and from work, but with the gun-toting security cameras overhead, deviating from these arrows during work hours could get you shot at by those in charge.

Why did machine gun turrets mounted on security cameras bother shooting anyone when all meat-eaters wore bomb collars to keep them in line? Simple. The Nobles simply liked the way these machine guns left behind recognizable corpses with holes in their heads or bodies, faces twisted into shock and pain, maybe rage, maybe fear. Depended on who the Nobles killed, really.

Sparky joined the herd, and the slave collar around his neck felt like it weighed more than your mother.

After a few blocks of walking, he noticed a gaggle of animals that had stopped moving, and were crying as they crowded around a wall.

Expecting to see another innocent person stabbed to death or dying, Sparky joined the crowd to see what had captured their attention. Maybe he could save someone?

He saw a wood-framed photograph in the center of the herd with some fake plastic flowers. The herd was a whole lot of canines, felines, birds, bears, meat-eating animals of all sorts of shapes and sizes weeping or hugging each other.

Sparky peered closer at the photograph of a friendly-looking Fox Cub, before he noticed some writing on the frame.

Crimson Carmine
9 years old
The youngest of us, and the best

The sound of loud nose-blowing caught Sparky's ear, and he turned to see a grown bear weeping with a stoic expression, trying not to bawl openly like his wife, who sobbed openly into his fur and blew her nose on a reuseable cloth rag.

The sight of a grown man crying...

You didn't see that often, and the sight of it was like a knife in the heart, but Sparky just couldn't help himself, getting closer to the bear. "What's going on?"

"We're mourning the loss of Carmie, the youngest of us." He looked down, shedding another tear. "Now and forever."

"What happened?" Sparky asked.

"He was just a baby. A Cub. The youngest meat-eater alive in this damned Stable. It was a real big deal when he was born, since not many of us are as fertile as we used to be. Our fertility's going down all the time, and those who can have Cubs can't afford them. Feeding and clothing them takes money, raising them takes time, and who's got enough of that these days when we're all working at least two jobs just to feed ourselves?"

"I can relate, I've got two jobs and an adopted daughter to take care of," Sparky nodded. "Dad left me with her before the cops killed him, mom died when I was born. She could have been saved, if this Stable allowed the use of magic."

"Really?" He asked, raising an eyebrow. "Can you believe some people believe in a conspiracy theory that says they're putting something in the water to make us more infertile each year?"

"No," Sparky shook his head. "I definitely don't believe that, wink wink. I also can't believe anyone would also believe the illegal conspiracy fact that says the big burgers they feed us at the Civil Crechendo are loaded with more than 80mg of estrogen each. Is that wacky or what?"

"Yeah. Good to meet another who definitely doesn't believe in that sort of thing. I'm Bear Growls," said the Bear.

"I'm Sparky. That's short for Sparkapocalypse Meteorstorm."

He rolled his eyes. "That's not your name."

[CHARISMA 4/6]"That's the name I heard your mother screaming last night."

"We're at a FUCKING FUNERAL!" shouted the Bear. "What is WRONG with you?"

Sparky regretted everything. "Sorry, I'm bad with emotions, and talking to others, and life. I thought that would lighten the mood, and stupid cock jokes are my coping mechanism. But that really is my name. Mom wanted to call me Sparky, Dad said that's the name of a little bitch. He said any name ending with an ee-sound is a little girl's name, and he thought this was cooler. They had a round of Duel Monsters, she lost, and I ended up with a name that's about as easy on the lips as a Griffon's barbed cock."

"Whatever," Bear Growls growled.

"Mom, I wanna go home!" A Lion Cub begged his mother, a haggard old lioness. "It's not safe to be here! They're gonna find us!"

"Shut up, Cymbal!" His mother hissed. "They can't kill us all. Not all at once."

"Why not?" Sparky asked her.

Cymbal's mother glared at him. "What?"

"I don't see a gun on you. Or anyone here. I don't have one either. We're all helpless. Why wouldn't the cops feel safe killing us all?"

"They wouldn't dare," She smiled at the camera above. "They know some of us out there have guns in their homes, and they know some of us would avenge us."

"Like your husband?" Sparky assumed.

"The Nobles got him."

"Did anyone avenge him?"

"No."

"Do you think anyone will avenge this child?"

"No."

"Do you think anyone would avenge us, if the lying Nobles had their way?"

She broke down and sobbed, right in front of her child.

"You made momma cry!" Cymbal tried to growl, tried to sound intimidating. "I'll fucking kick your shitty ass, asshole!"

"Language, Cymbal!" His mother snapped.

"I-I'm sorry," Sparky stammered, "I didn't mean to-"

"Do you want to know about Cymbal's father? He was thirty, and he worked regular time and overtime at a construction site a few floors down, every day. Worked for a construction company that struggled to pay anyone because they couldn't stop hiring new grass-eaters. He did twice the work of every boy under eighteen he worked with, and three times the work of any grass-gobblers he worked with. Sometimes he was forced to take time off work to train new arrivals. You know, show the grass-gobblers what hard work looks like, not that they ever really did any of it. When he was training someone new to replace anyone worked to death or hurt or killed by a workplace injury or fired for needing time off work, he had to put in a whole day of real work teaching the newcomer everything without being paid. He could have said no, except he couldn't, because saying no means getting fired. One day they decide he's being promoted to a... What did they call it? An Assistant Worker. They wanted to assign him to some Sheep girl so he can do all of her work while she lounges around and eats half of his pay. Something to try and equalize numbers on a graph somewhere, so some manager's assistant can feel like he's doing a good job artificially equalizing what nature never wanted to be equal. He called bullshit, and his Rabbit boss fed him some bullshit myth about equal pay. He said his boss doesn't pay equally, because even though the meat-eaters are more likely to need raises and ask for them, the they're more likely to be told no, while the grass-gobblers are more likely to get any raise they ask for even if they do fuck all every day. So his boss calls the cops on him, and the cops just pulled their guns out and shot him in the face."

"Holy shit..." Sparky teared up. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"The Nobles killed him," The Lioness sobbed. "They killed little Crimson Carmine. They're killing all of us!"

She ran over to the mighty furry chest of Bear Growls and sobbed into it.

"Anyway..." Bear Growls sighed... "He was a good kid, that Carmine. His parents were killed by the Nobles, making him an orphan, property of the Nobles and their systems. But he didn't let that get him down. He studied hard, worked hard, went to Church, always did his best, always ignored what the prey kids called him. Barely any meat-eater kids are still alive, there aren't many being born and there aren't many that make it past twelve without being killed in the workplace. Or in the streets. Or in some school full of evil little murderous grass-gobblers raised by their grass-gobbler parents to hate us. He put up with a lot. He was a good kid. He was a good kid, damn it! And they shot him." The Bear growled.

"Who killed him?" Sparky wondered, his blood boiling. He had his suspicions, but he had to make sure...

"Fuck off, you know who it was," The Bear growled. "Who else would kill babies down here? Or eat them, or sell them to pedophiles like they're used cars? Who else would be pedophiles? It wouldn't be one of us. It's one of them, up there. The Nobles killed this baby. A Noble cop tried harassing him, hitting him, hoping for an excuse to arrest him, and when Carmie tried walking away, the cop shot him in the back. A big, bad bison pulled out his revolver, and shot an unarmed Fox child in the back for walking away. And he told the courts he had to do it, said he feared for his life. And he got away with it, thanks to Qualified Immunity. Some day I want to make all those rich cunts fear for their lives like we dirt-poor wage slaves fear for ours. They're fucking killing us! And they don't even have the decency to tell us the truth when they do it! Not a day goes by without some liar on the radio calling us monsters, making shit up about us we didn't do. They're killing all of us. And their brainwashing has got some of us hating ourselves, when we should be hating our enslavement."

Sparky didn't know what to say, eyes leaking silently. "I can't believe this... Fuck. I'm gonna go take a shit, and cry where nobody can see me," He said as he walked away, trying not to cry.

He swiftly slipped back into the uncaring sheeplike crowd of prey animals that moved on without a care in the world, giving no shits about the funeral if they weren't glaring at the funeral attendees or spitting at the ground near them or hurling insults at them. Typical Noble-supporter behaviour, really. Always classy... Not. They were all pedophiles. You could tell because they voted pedophiles into power. Sometimes they'd claim all alternatives to the Nobles wanted the age of consent lowered, but Noble-supporters were pedophiles who said a lot of untrue things, such as "I did not have sexual relations with that Cub" and "I believe in equality".

Sparky had gotten thirty feet away down a straight road for the travelling herd, but then...

"IT'S THEM!" A wolf shouted.

The sound of screams heralded the arrival of fourteen remote-controlled Stable Policedrones, toweringly tall and muscular tiger-sized attack drones modeled after German Shepherds, though with rounded mirrors covering their blank facial regions above their mechanical muzzles. They readied the shock batons held tightly between their metal teeth. The enchanted mechanized arms on their backs readied attached double-barreled shotguns loaded with electrostun rounds that could stun an elephant, and give anything smaller heart problems for life, or potentially even kill on contact.

The predators screamed and fled as the cops started attacking innocents, their amplified and digitized voices ordering people to "Break it up!" and "Stop feeling!" while calling them "Dirty beasts!" and "Filthy nothings!". "Stop violating traffic laws!" and "We're doing this for your safety!" were shouted as the cop drones fired their stun-guns wildly into the crowds before the drones crowded around any animals downed by their tactics, crowded around them to cruelly beat them unconscious and choke them to death, maybe keep beating.

For once, Sparky was glad he was part Unicorn. It seemed those drones only wanted to brutalize nearby pureblooded meat-eaters.

Though Sparky's heart ached for him to leap into action and whip out his wrench, attacking the drones and buying someone time to escape, he knew it would be a useless gesture that wouldn't truly save anyone down here unless they left the Stable. The cops down here were driven by ego and their sense of entitlement, each Police Predator-Drone piloted by a tiny grass-gobbler animal with a tiny cock elsewhere in the Stable. Do anything to meaningfully resist them and you'd never be safe again. Nowhere would be safe. They would avenge their slighted egos, even if it meant sending everyone close to you to the work camps until someone knew where you were and felt like spilling that secret, even if it meant making examples out of those you tried to save. Sparky wasn't ready to throw his life away for nothing just yet, not when anyone he saved would be guaranteed to be killed by the Nobles and their cops anyway. Though there were many days he felt tempted to take himself out by taking as many of the Nobles in charge out before they got him...

He acted as if he'd never slowed down, because he couldn't slow down.

The more he saw, the more pissed off he became.

And the angrier he got, the less likely he was to choose the pragmatic thing over the heroic thing.

He had someone close to him he had to protect. He couldn't leave her alone in the world.

By the time Sparky slipped around a corner and vanished, a crowd of grass-gobblers had formed to cheer the cops on as they brutalized men, women, children, and even the elderly for stepping one hair out of line.

Sparky was about to slip away undetected, and he had only stopped for a second, but he heard the sound of a child barely older than eleven scream. "Momma!"

A Lioness had been grabbed by the drones and thrown to the ground, savaged by mechanical teeth that tore her guts out, as the police drones smashed her limbs and ribs apart with shock clubs, and she cried out to her son, "Run, Cymbal!"

But the little lion Cub didn't run away, he ran to his mother's aid and tried to shove one of the cop drones away, only for his slave collar to taze him to the ground, right before a camera drone trained its gun on him.

The Lion Cub looked up at the sound of the camera's lens focus in on him just in time to see its attached gun flash.

BLAM!!!

Sparky closed his eyes and looked away, but that couldn't stop him from hearing his mother's scream, right before she was silenced by police drones who used their batons to crush her windpipe to kill her.

Sparky had to keep going, had to forget everything, had to pretend he was fine after seeing that.

His kind weren't allowed to feel.

After a few blocks of walking and keeping his head down, he noticed a suicide booth. Before his very eyes, it went from "Occupied" to "Vacant". The sign on the front said...

Chainlink's Red-Hot Suicide Clinic and Incinerator
20 Bits per head
Now with free built in Abortinator! Walk in pregnant, walk out a free mare, free of charge and neutered for life!

He kept on walking, disgust in his heart. No wonder their fertility rate was dropping when things like that were around...

After some more walking, Sparky noticed another herd of animals that had stopped moving to crowd around a wall illegally.

But these ones were prey animals, and they were booing something together.

Expecting to see another innocent person stabbed to death or dying for saying something the Nobles didn't like, Sparky joined the crowd to see what had captured their attention, wondering why the cops had shown up for the last illegal gathering, but not this one. Although for some "mysterious" reason, Sparky didn't expect to see them risking their lives to do something good like mourn the loss of a young one.
It turned out...

Graffiti?

There was actually...

To his shock, there was graffiti, on the walls.

And the Graffiti didn't tell his kind to die. No, it said something else.

That simply wasn't done down here.

Who the hell would risk death by camera-gun to write graffiti on a floor like this? Those things were programmed to gun down anyone they caught committing an act considered a crime for someone of their caste and social status.

This wasn't just Graffiti, this was art...

This was a Celestia-damned mural.

Someone heroic had risked death to paint a mural.

There were big white letters, outlined in thick bold outlines, over a big orange explosion.

If the Noble Government is so powerful...
Why isn't it protecting us or our interests?
SAVE YOUR FUTURE!
SAVE YOUR YOUNG!
JOIN THE UNDERDOGS!

Thin black lines of spray paint had been haphazardly used to scribble over this graffiti and block out as much of the message as possible, before being used to write far less stylized messages in various hoofwriting styles aimed at whoever had risked death to paint this symbol of rebellion.

Die rebel scum!
Fucking kill yourself, carnivores!
Stop resisting!
Eat shit and die out!
Stop caring so much!
Everything's your fault!
Die meat-munching monsters die!!!!!!!

Shit like this really brought Sparky's piss to a boil.

But he had to keep moving-

"Can you believe that rebel scum?" A rich half-white black rabbit wearing both a puffy pink skirt and a 100% cotton shirt with some boyband and "Smash the system!" painted onto it asked the Golden Retriever whose black leather leash she held, a leash connected to the same type of shock collar no herbivores and all carnivores wore down here. "How dare those filthy peasants desire a world where we Nobles are not in control of everything! How dare they want their families freed from our work camps! How dare they desire freedom!"

"Those rebels are stupid for wanting freedom!" The dog mirrored her, panting hopefully. "Stupid and evil! I hope they all get cancer and die!"

The rabbit smiled and gave him headpats, making the dog wag his tail. "Good boy. Resist your instincts, resist those evil meat-munching monster instincts! You don't want love! You don't want freedom! You don't want to put your own kind's lives before our desires, do you? You don't want to be a Nothing! You want to be something for us. You want to be a part of our system. You want to live, right? You want to live in our world. You want us."

"That's right! I love you! I'm yours! I'm one of you, not one of them! I hate my kind and I love you, mistress! Will you step on me, mistress?" The dog begged.

"Maybe later, if you keep being a good boy," She smirked, passing him a pink can of spray paint. "Now go and show those rebels what you think of them!"

He looked horrified and dropped the spray can like it was hot. "I can't break the law! We're not allowed to do that!"

"It's alright, sweetie. The rebels broke the law by existing and making that hideous graffiti! That graffiti is terrorism because we don't like what they did or said! You're doing a good thing by covering it up. As long as you write what the government wants you to write, you won't be shot, arrested, or even investigated. Crimes are only crimes when those filthy terrorist rebels do it. You'll get to feel like a brave, daring freedom fighter, without actually risking anything. Doesn't that sound lovely?"

He looked nervous. "B-b-but-"

She slapped him across the face, tiny but highly sharpened claws raking his flesh. "When your father criticized the Nobles and got his whole family arrested, who took you in at the age of two when you had nowhere else to go?! Who gave you that collar? Who fed you? Who clothed you? Who owns you?!"

Despite being so much bigger than her that he could have easily killed her, he cowered in fear. "You, mistress! You own me! You're a good mistress! I love you! Please don't hurt me! Please don't hurt meee!"

"Good boy. Remember, my father is the chief of police. He can have you and anyone like you killed, and the rest of us Nobles will cheer him on in private and deny he's one of us in public. It's a miracle that I decided to spare you. We're the ones who control your food! If you want to be a fed boy, you'll do what we Nobles say when we say it! Now do as I say, and... Paint!"

With frenzied eagerness, the dog-trained Golden Retriever gripped the paint can horizontally in his teeth, and rushed to the wall, forgetting his leash and falling as his leash grew taut enough for his shock collar to taze him.

He looked up at her, his mistress, and he looked heartbroken.

Smugly, she moved closer to the wall, giving him access to it, letting him get close to the wall without pulling the leash around his slave collar taut again. "Those evil monstrous meat-eaters hurt my feelings! It's only fair that I hurt another meat-eater in response. Now, paint for me! Show me your devotion!"

Gripping the paint can horizontally in his mouth with the centered nozzle pointing outwards, pressing down on the lever-action spray nozzle with his tongue, he started to spray.

FUCK YOU FUCKING REBEL SCUM I HATE YOU FUCKERS I WANT TO RIP OUT YOUR GUTS AND PISS AND SHIT IN THEM I WANT TO KIL YOUR CUBS AND YOUR GRANDMAS TOO I WANT TO MAKE YOU AFRAID LIKE ME I WANT TO KIL YOU DEAD FOR HURTING MY MISTRESSES FEELINGS!!!! FUCK YOU UNDERDOGS STOP RESISTING FREEDOM IS EVIL SUBMISSION IS EASY AND I WANT ALL MEAT EATERS DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD!!!!!!!!

He stopped and held the spray can out to her, tail wagging as he expected praise.

"Such beautiful hatred!" She cooed, taking her can back and giving his neck pleasurable scratches, his wagging tail going wild. "That's right, you HATE your own kind, you HATE them! Is there anything more gorgeous than a well-trained mutt? You hate your kind almost as much as I do!"

It looked like this Golden Retriever was in heaven.

"You're one of the good ones, darling! You're such a good little pet. I'm so glad I ordered my daddy to spare you!"

She gave him one final pat on the head before pulling away, leaving him wanting more. Satisfied, she yanked him along by the leash as she moved on with her life, and he followed dutifully like the pet he was.

Putting that scene out of his mind, and trying to forget the sound of that woman, or the fear on that Cub's face, Sparky miserably moved on and rejoined the moving herd.

Those real rebels risked death by sending out a message, only for it to be covered up by the government's most eager and willing slaves and servants.

Didn't anyone care about the living meat-eaters enough to defend them?

Would anyone save his people from the cruel dictators that wanted him gone, or would it be up to his people to save themselves?

Every day, he found himself with a new reason to hate Nobles enough to want them dead.

He hoped everyone else down here felt the same way.

He wanted to believe everyone desired freedom as much as him.

But if they did, why was this Stable's society a decaying ruin that put ignorant lies before innocent lives?