Fallout Equestria: Lionheart

When it was time to leave this place and move on to his next job, there was something he had to do.

Sparky went into the back rooms and rushed up the staircase, ignoring the company break room with “No gays Allowed” and “No meat-eaters allowed” signs on the doorway and knocking on his manager's office door.

“Come i-i-i-n!” Bleated the sheep.

He entered the room and tried not to vomit at the scent of burning incense or laugh at the low-quality sound of a preacher trying to guide this hornless sheep through the act of casting spells. More than eighteen candles were scattered in metal ashtrays around the room, and a radio was playing a CD full of lies, lies that insisted anyone could cast magical spells, no matter what their species was...

As long as she had a “sufficiently pure heart” (sufficient devotion to the rich)...

As long as she prayed (to the rich) and sacrificed (money and time) consistently enough...

As long as she spent enough money on enough CDs (full of lies)...

As long as she smoked enough “healthy” (cancer-causing) incense that openly claimed to smell like vagina despite smelling more like an infected wound...

As long as she ignored the evidence provided by her own lying eyes and ears, she could see whatever she wanted to see, believe whatever she wanted to believe, and finally obtain enough magical power to kill anyone you wanted... If only she was enough of a Noble, and believed in Nobility hard enough.

That was the end goal of all Nobles, the power to hold on to their power through violence, corruption, cruelty, public shaming, murder, and the threat of force while endlessly fighting for more power, more unearned dominance, more absolute power over the poor and more absolute power to abuse absolutely. They were the most loathsome failure of existence imaginable, the ultimate argument against any deity worth worshiping or any grand cosmic plan or game worth a damn. They would never have enough might, they would always crave more for the sake of the fun they found in hurting innocents. They would never have enough money, they would always want to steal more for the sake of the fun they found in theft. They were all frauds, they lacked souls, they deserved death. Every last one. But removing their power would be like killing them, because it would take their undeserved sense of importance away.

The rich and authoritarian sheep was coated in expensive anarchist punk fashion like a squid engulfed in an inky smokescreen. More than eight barbell piercings through each eyebrow, heavy makeup and eyeliner, more than fourty metal piercings all over her face, more than ten diamond studs for each ear, four different lip piercings and two additional two metal-ringed holes in her lower lip her tongue could stick out of...

Her megacorporate-produced shirt originated from machines in a sweatshop in the lower floors full of the poorest workers in this Zoo. Her shirt featured a depiction of a boyband in which two angry wolves were shredding guitars and an angry gorilla was slamming drums as a sheep in red and black dye roared the same corporate-approved bollocks about society the Nobles preached despite pretending to be outside the system the Nobles governed and funded.

This steel-pierced sheep tried so hard to look rebellious and scary, she forgot how absurd she looked and how ostentatious and gaudy spending all that money on her appearance was. That band on her shirt, a band hilariously named “The Real Fucking Rebels”, was full of corporate-produced plants and not a month went by when the Stable's radio stations hadn't sucked it off at least once. Sparky hated gossip and celebrities, he only recalled the band's existence because the band and its megacorporate owner had replaced its old wolf drummer last week with a gorilla because the wolf had said something genuinely rebellious and truthful... Something negative about the Nobles.

Everything about the old bitch was so fake...

Sparky got to work on the punchcard machine, taking the ID Card with his name and inserting it into the machine, clocking out on time before returning his Key Card to its pocket in the machine

He hated that she put this machine in her own office, to ensure she could see everyone clocking in and out. But nobody with the authority to stop her particularly cared.

“Good afternoon, boss!” Sunrise greeted brightly. “Another great work day.”

“Do you have to clock out right when your shift's up?” She tut-tutted at him.

“Yes, I've got a lot of responsibilities and obligations,” He told her.

“That's no excuse!” She insisted. “This shop is my life, and it should be your life too!”

She had an unusual relationship with work. When she was on the clock, and she was supposed to be managing her employees, she sat around doing sweet fuck all. She checked her emails, she chattered with shallow friends on the phone who secretly loathed her almost as much as she secretly loathed them, and she wasted her life on fake mobile games that required no skill, only a deficit of common sense, an excess of money and time to waste gambling with no chance of profit, and a lack of ability to play and appreciate real video games that weren't thinly-veiled gambling simulators where the chance of making any money from the gambling was always zero percent at best.

But when she was off the clock, she felt lonely and powerless. So she phoned her employees while they were off-duty and sent them personal messages and texts and emails at random times in the day, expecting them to pick up and reply almost instantly, expecting them to put their life on hold to still keep acting like they needed her approval and consent to continue their lives, keep pretending like she had something to contribute as their all-powerful small-minded ego-driven middle-management asshole.

He remembered the time she went on a vacation, and carried her work laptop around almost the whole time so that she could check in with workers who were currently not on duty, just to interrupt their attempts to live their lives in peace at unexpected times.

Didn't she have her own life to live?

Probably not.

She needed to get laid.

Maybe it would make her less of a cruel whiny miserable old bitch.

The airhead looked bothered. Severely bothered. Again. “Come on! Do you really have to leave now?” She asked.

This again?

Fucking again?

He acted polite. “My shift's over, and I've got a second job to go to.”

“You're so selfish,” She spat.

His eye twitched. “You sure? I'm an orphan working two jobs for minimum wage, I've been at this since I was twelve, and I've even got a dependent living with me, so-”

“Only selfish workers watch the clock and clock out right when their shift is over! You should work overtime!”

“You want me to work overtime?”

“YES!”

“Would you pay me to work overtime?”

“NO!”

“There's your answer.”

“You should be a team player! Team players are the ones who get ahead in this company, not those who just barely do enough not to get fired!”

He rolled his eyes. “There was a time when I believed what you said about team players, and really thought you'd promote me if I worked harder than anyone else in this company. But after the first year of running myself ragged trying to rearrange the floor's presentation to look better, help everyone do their job better even if they didn't want to be helped, charm every customer into buying the most expensive things possible for the sake of maximum profits while everyone else lazed around waiting for others to come through the door and hopefully buy something, I eventually realized you're not paying me what that kind of effort is worth. So I got over myself, and I got over this job. Fire me if you want, I'm qualified to fix shit at any stores around here.”

“You...” She grumbled, in an attempt to growl like a real predator.

Sunrise tried not to growl loudly enough to shut her up and strike the fear of decapitation into her heart. “Remember my first Winter Wrap Up with this company, when every worker except me called in sick, leaving Luna and I alone to handle the entire winter season gift rush on our own? You didn't pay us more for doing the work of several workers at once. You fired them all when they came back after their holidays, and you fired some middle-management person for not somehow magically stopping this from happening, but you didn't promote me to that middle-management position. Why?”

“Because you're such a good worker!”

“Then pay me what I'm worth, if you want me to try that hard again. Boss, you know what my living situation is like, and you know I need a raise, but after all these years spent working under you, you've never shown me or my time any respect.”

“Why respect you, when I can replace workers like you at will?” She snapped. “There are a million other starving kids out there, younger than you and hungrier than you! They'll work hard for a living!”

“Until they realize how you treat them. I could always work double shifts at my other job, you know.”

She readied her PipBuck and pressed some buttons, activating the phone call feature and phoning Sparky's PipBuck.

It made no sound.

“Why isn't your Pip-Phone ringing?” She asked.

“Because after I clock out, my time doesn't belong to you. I've gotten sick of you phoning me at stupid hours in the morning and night, trying to monopolize my life and ruin my work-life balance and sleep schedule, so I've programmed my phone to mute you whenever I'm off-duty and your feelings are not my problem any more. By the way, you have my paycheck for the week,”

“Yes,”

“It's mine, so... Are you going to hand it over?”

“Don't all things belong to the people?” She smirked.

“I certainly qualify as people, despite what some would have me believe.”

“Come now, possessions are illusions,” She smiled.

“You're in possession of some illusions, if you think I'm working unpaid overtime again.”

She swore at him a lot, and he ignored it. He ignored how often she called him a Nothing, because he wouldn't let it get to him.

Giving up, she pressed some buttons on her PipBuck, equipping her Credit Card and holding it out to him. He held his company PipBuck to the card, wirelessly transferring the funds to the personal account he automatically accessed whenever he wore a PipBuck.

He wished he could afford a PipBuck of his own, as he removed his PipBuck by holding the joystick in for twelve seconds and left it on the floor behind him.

Still, Sparky walked towards the exit with his money, feeling like a sexy witty genius, immensely proud of that line.

You're in possession of some illusions...

Damn, that was cool.

But before he could leave, she turned her radio on. And tuned it to the Stable's news station.

"...backed up through the entire A-12, pedestrians are encouraged to take prey-only lanes if possible to avoid the traffic. In other news, the youngest predatory meat-eater in the Stable has died, and many of his supporters are getting into regrettable fights with the police they cannot win, attacking innocent police drones who did nothing wrong. The regrettable gas explosion that killed one Prey animal and several others was an accident, as our experts assure us, and it is necessary for you to always obey and never resist. My insider sources believe you stupid meat-munchers have nobody to blame but yourselves for making that poor goat want to blow himself up and take you filthy freaks with him- I mean, it was a gas leak. Experts said so, end of discussion. In other news, Bobidos and Mountain Blue have teamed up to put two billion bits towards sponsoring the newest anti-establishment concert by The Real Fucking Rebels. Tickets are on sale now, here's a clip from their latest album, Fucking Resist, in stores now-"

Sparky left the room and slammed the door behind him, trying to ignore the sounds of corporate hacks yell about how much they wanted all meat-eaters dead.