Fallout Equestria: Lionheart

Sparky had half of his pay for the day, and hoped he'd have a job tomorrow. Fuck zero-hour contracts, they shouldn't be legal.

His own livelihood and whether he has food to put on the table shouldn't have to depend on whether one of his two jobs with staff full of prey animals require a meat-eater around to do their thinking, fighting, and heavy lifting for them.

But alas, he had a second job to go to...

In the Lust Ring.

With Luna at his side, Sparky left his workplace and joined the endless crowds of countless animals packed together like sardines, eyes darting about to keep an eye on any prey who got too close. You never knew when one would knife you just for fun, or to rifle through your pockets on the off chance you carried something valuable.

Of course, he had to keep his eye on the smallest predators, too.

You never knew when one would try to improve his standing in this prey-dominated society by trying to sabotage or harm or even kill one of his own, especially a threatening rival competing with him over an ever-shrinking number of opportunities.

Sparky kept on walking, and walking, wishing the crowd would hurry up.

Over a hundred feet ahead of him, someone exploded in a shower of gore and bony shrapnel, body bits flying as screams and blood filled the air. Sparky tackled Luna to the ground and protectively shielded her until the screams died down.

Sparky didn't feel any shrapnel hit him, or any blood.

It took less than a minute for those around him to stop screaming and carry on with their day as if nothing had happened.

Sparky took that as his signal to get up and help Luna up. “Are you ok?” He asked desperately.

“I'm fine, are you ok?” She asked, concerned.

“I'm fine, let's keep going,” He sighed as he relaxed, and he kept on going with his life just like the rest of the crowd moving around the dead and wounded. Anyone hurt by the blast but not killed crawled or slid to the sides of the Stable corridoors, where they were less likely to be trampled, but not entirely guaranteed to not be trampled. There they remained on the ground as they waited for professionals to arrive in several hours with health potions to dispense.

Sparky wished the Stable still had those glass cages full of health potions with “In case of emergency break glass” written on them, along with a hammer. And Sparky wished the Stable still had those medical supply boxes with bandages and low-grade healing potions and whatnot. But alas, those were stolen from or used and emptied so many times, the Stable eventually stopped refilling them. And when they remained empty for too many years in a row, the Nobles in charge decided these boxes were a symbol of insert negative term here and therefore had to go because blah blah blah, words words words, political nonsense that doesn't have to make sense to its preacher or believers when dissent is more illegal than murdering offspring in this backwards zoo.

As Sparky and his adopted girl walked, she whispered to him, “Third time this month,”

“Huh?” He asked.

“The new normal gets worse all the time.”

“True,” He whispered to her. “I'm old enough to remember the first time I saw... that. I was five, my dad was at a bar where he was celebrating with his friends. Dad turned down the booze my godfather really wanted him to try, said it was the first beer he'd ever actually liked. It looked like piss with extra foam. The bartender was practically giving all sorts of stuff away, said it all had to go before the newest laws on alcohol kicked in and made bars as illegal as owning alcohol and keeping it in your own home is. I tell my dad I have to go to a politician's summit. Dad asks, what is that supposed to mean? I say I need to take a shit, and I made a joke about it. Dad laughs, a ton of his friends laugh, some roll their eyes. Suddenly some goat comes in and blows himself up, kills my godfather and four of my dad's other friends and four strangers I never knew, gives my dad some shrapnel, but he shielded me with his body the second he noticed a goat walk into a mostly-pred bar, so I was unharmed. He had to go to a back-alley doctor just to get someone with medical knowledge to take the bone shards out of his own body without anaesthetic before he downed some healing potion.”

“Why didn't he use anaesthetic?”

“The quack doctor didn't have any. That stuff's expensive.”

“Why not just call six six six and ask the cops for a medic?”

“There's a chance they would have sent a panicky cop over to tell him to drop a weapon he didn't have, and then shoot him. Or sent the idiotic quacks in the Medical Corps, who aren't much better. They would have just injected him with Stimpak-brand health potion injectors and expected this to fix him instantly before charging him enough to make having offspring impossible for the rest of his life.”

“Wow,” Luna wasn't sure what to say.

“I remember when dad brought me to this floor. Nobody exploded for so long, it got me paranoid and nervous, as if it was something unnatural, unusual, weird, and my happiness was about to be ripped away from me any moment. It was ripped away anyway, just not in the way I expected.”

“I guess that makes us different,” Luna told him.

“What do you mean?”

“I'm not old enough to remember a time when this wasn't the norm for this floor.”

He felt devastated, he almost stopped in his tracks, and he would have done so if not for the danger of being trampled. With heavy, tired eyes staring a thousand yards into the distance, he kept on going.

Not only for his sake, but for everyone's.