Fallout Equestria: Lionheart

Sparky made it to a colossal and overcrowded crimson room twice as large as New Pork's Grand Central Station, only instead of normal trains, it had vertical trains serving the role of elevators all painted in golden spray paint. Lines fifty animals deep were the norm for every elevator, with the low-quality announcer calling out PipBuck ID codes and lines for them to join.

This system was meant to keep passengers waiting in one big mass, away from the queues of approximately fifty, to hide the visibility of every line.

Right now, Sparky and Luna were in a floor in one of the sections of the Stable unofficially referred to the Wrath ring.

Sparky was needed in the Lust ring, and Luna was needed in the Gluttony ring. Similarly hellish names were given to the other sectors of the Stable's floors by its dissatisfied occupants. Sadly, speaking these names aloud would get a meat-eater arrested. If a meat-eater knew what hell was, you'd know who deserved a stay there, and who didn't. But of course, prey could say whatever they wanted.

Sparky and his reason for trying so hard hugged each other.

"ID 69X49881, Luna, to line 5!" Announced the announcer through speakers that spoke overhead. "ID 6949882, Rainbow Dash, to line 5!"

Why was Luna such a common name among wolves, Sparky wondered?

“I'll miss you,” He told her.

“I know,” She stated. “I'll miss you too.”

They had to break away from the hug, much too soon, and get going. She trotted over to a big ATM-like machine to slam her customized all-black (aside from the screen, of course, fitted with a light-reducing adaptive screen filter that could darken as much as possible depending on the light levels while always being legible for her) PipBuck onto a machine that automatically scanned the simulated copy of PipOS running in a virutal machine in her custom machine. The big ticket device checked its database full of data on where each pony was meant to go right now and why according to those in charge, and loaded her name and ID onto the announcer's list of names and IDs to announce.

There was no need to double-check her own ID number, FE40536. And there was no need for Sparky to double-check his own ID number, 246019430.

Meanwhile, Sparky made his way to a line just twelve ponies deep, purchasing a Fast Pass+ Genie-Class SSS Ticket to the Lust Ring for fifteen bits.

It was possible for richer ponies, or those with a greater need to use the system than whoever had to settle for an ordinary ticket and with the funds to pretend they were rich, to buy out the seats others had already booked ordinary tickets for to ensure there would be a seat for you on the fastest elevators whenever you needed them.

Those moved out of their pre-purchased seats by this system could either wait in a cramped cargo hold that could fill up rapidly on days the rich loved to travel for, and on many days, you could end up dumped at a random unexpected destination just because your seat had been bought out. How would you get to your destination, or to your home, if you lacked the money to buy a new elevator-train ticket? That was a You problem, of course. If you didn't want to deal with that problem and wind up stranded on a random floor with your train leaving without you, missing whatever appointment or job required you, you simply had to pay extra.

Sparky hated that the only way to avoid being fucked over for being poor was to pay extra for the pricier services, but he needed to get to the Lust Ring on time, or he'd lose his job and potentially suffer criminal charges.

So he needed a train ticket within thirty minutes, and once those in the queue before him had bought their super-tickets and fucked off, and once those in the queue before him with sob stories and insufficient money had been dragged away by security for wasting time, Sparky could finally put down most of the money he made from his first job each day on the ticket that brought him to his second job.

If the pay wasn't so good, he wouldn't even consider a terrible deal like this...

But he needed the money.

With a real-ass goddamn paper ticket in his right paw (Wow, how fancy and traditional!) he waited for the Lust elevator to arrive, barging into the vertically-tilted train carriage and using each seat as a platform as he and countless other animals climbed their way up the train. Halfway to the top of the train, the magic of an artificial gravity spell kicked in, and the train seemingly rotated right-way up for those inside it as the doors closed. Sparky landed flat on his ass, recovering and making his way to a middle-class window seat.

He was glad he sat alone...

He didn't feel like talking to anyone right now.

Animals behind him continued to fill seats around him, but nobody wanted to sit near him.

He noticed a little dog girl and her gorgeously MILFy mother sit down a few seats away from him. "Today a Rabbit was nice to me!"

"Really?" The mother was openly surprised.

"She told me to tell you a funny joke! How many Rabbits does it take to screw in a-?"

"Don't say that!" The mother screamed and closed her kid's mouth, but it was too late. Microphones in the seats had heard everything, and cops arrived swiftly to arrest them. They screamed, they cried, and they were dragged away from each other to different prison camps.

Sparky thought about throwing his life away to help them. It would be easy... ish.

He'd just need to kill every last cop that ever came near these two, and they could pretend to live an ordinary life.

But that would mean putting his adoptive semi-daughter at risk for the sake of complete strangers who might not appreciate a Lion-Unicorn killing for them...

He couldn't do that.

Someone relied on him to keep his head down and be a good little slave. He couldn't go around rebelling.

He heard seven giggling twenty-something rabbit girls approaching, sitting in the seats those dogs had taken, chattering to themselves.

Noisily.

Fuck.

He noticed that one of them wore an overpriced t-shirt with Soupreme on the front. It was priced at over three hundred bits in the average auction, and she wore an equally overpriced Cucci jacket that said "Resist Oppression(TM)" on it over and over, much like her Adidas-branded choker with "Resist The System(TM)" on it. “Holy shit, did you see that Lion with a horn?” She gushed to her friends.

“He's so dreamy!” Said another.

“So hot!”

“I wish I was a hybrid like him!”

“I wish I had a horn!”

“Being like him would be perfect!”

“He's got it so easy!”

“He doesn't appreciate how good he's got it.”

“Why do you think he's going to the Lust Ring?”

“I bet he's going to strip somewhere, it's the only place that would hire a dumb himbo like him!”

“I bet he's a prostitute!”

"Or maybe he's a filthy oppressive business-owner, oppressing us rich people by charging us for stuff!"

“I want to have his babies.”

“I want to have his babies just so I can kill them and make him breed me more!”

“I want him to buy me more jewellery!”

“I want him to rut me so hard my whole family feels it! Especially my bitch mom and missing dad!”

“I want that beast to break me in half and make me his bitch in the sheets and worship me in the streets!”

Sparky tried not to think about how he was hated as a child for being a hybrid.

Or ask himself whether it was worse than this.

“Do you think his daddy is the Lion, or the mommy?”

“Mmm, I hope it's his daddy! I hope he's got a big, strong, sexy lion daddy!”

“Oh, that would be so romantic! You'd date him, but then his daddy would rape you, and he'd be fine with it because he's only part lion, and you'd get to date a daddy and his sexy son!”

“I want to dress him up in black leather!”

“I want to dress him up in pink lace and girly baby clothes!”

“I want to dress him up like a soldier and make him pretend he's conquered me!”

“You should talk to him!”

“No way! What if he bites my head off?”

“That'd just make it hotter!”

“For you, maybe.”

“You can't trust Lions.”

“But he's part Unicorn! Aren't they, like, supposed to be super tolerant, unlike those bigoted Lion bastards?”

“Fuck you, don't ask me questions I don't know! Are you trying to make me feel stupid!”

“Don't accuse me of things, you bitch! I'll fucking bite your throat out!”

“Oh, I want him to rut me!”

“Do you think even a beast like him could love?”

“Oh, imagine the sloppy sweaty stinky meat-beast romance! He'd take me behind a wall and rut me until it hurts and then buy me presents to make me feel better! He'd pattern me when I act up and be my new daddy! I'll be daddy's little princess all over again! And if I don't like this daddy, I'll get him arrested just like my last one!”

“I wish I had a chance to fuck your daddy before you called the cops on him.”

“I want him to stick his dick into me so deep it goes right through my mouth so it can go through you and out of your mouth until he's gone through all of us like a big bunny bitch kabob, and then I want him to fuck us all at the same time!”

Sparky couldn't take it any more, raising an empty paw to his right ear as though it held a small internal earpiece. “I'm on a train, be quick before I lose signal... OH, DARLING! How's my special somepony doing? Remind me again, how much do you love that new wedding ring on your paw?”

“FUCK!” The rabbits cried in unison, as Sparky started pretending to agree with everything his imaginary girlfriend said. An imaginary girlfriend would certainly be better than these options.

“I can't believe it!”

“Why does this always happen to ME?”

“Why are all the good men either gay or already taken?”

“I bet his wife's some bitchy Lion!”

“He's such a bigot for fucking someone like that instead of someone like me.”

“I bet he's fucking a pony instead! Like a Unicorn, or one of those winged fuckers!”

“Or maybe he's fucking a disgusting little wolf girl!”

“EWWWWWW!” sang the Rabbits together.

“I hate my life!”

“Life's not fair!”

“I want to kill myself!”

“I want to kill you too, and then myself!”

And then, with their 'romantic' dreams dashed in reality, they sought refuge in fiction and whipped out books stored in their PipBuck.

They started to read the kinds of books most popular with their type.

Pornography.

In public.

Aloud.

Hornily.

And the hornier they became, the louder they became.

Cries of “Turgid man-carrot” and “Torrid love-affair” and “Lurid love-meat” and of course, “Holy cow!” filled the air as Sparky continued hating this Zoo.

If nothing else, Sparky felt less awful about the awful shonen anime fanfiction he wrote when he was a teenager.

Because at least his writing wasn't as bad as the auditory pollution poisoning the air right now and burning his earholes.

How could this get any worse?

One of the Rabbits turned on her pink PipBuck radio, and started listening to a radio show.

“-repeat, I fucking repeat... FUCK! LIONS!” Shouted another rabbit over the airwaves. “Let me tell you listeners how much I fucking hate lions! It's not fucking fair, why does my sixty-bit shampoo and eighty-bit conditioner cost so much more than their all-in-one body wash? And don't give me any of that 'they use different ingredients' crap, you bigot, because I don't know what that means! And do you know what happened yesterday? I was a victim of sexual harassment! I ordered pizza since I don't know how to cook, and the wolf who brought me the pizza didn't look happy enough when I paid him! I said, do you want a tip? He said yes! I said, here's a tip! Stop flirting with me, you bigot! And then I slammed the door in his face and the whole train clapped inside my head!”

Another Rabbit turned her radio on, setting it to a different station. “One Mouse was found dead in her own home, and her Cat lover was arrested. We cannot rule out foul play just yet, but it was probably terrorism and another typical case of species-based violence. Her husband, the chief of police, had this to say... Shit like this is why you should never let poor people into your home.”

Another Rabbit turned her radio on, setting it to a different station. “This just in, a gas leak killed two grass-eating women, one cub, and some others, along with an innocent Goat who never did anything wrong ever.”

Another Rabbit turned her radio on, setting it to a different station. “Experts are confused today as a car exploded with a Goat inside, for no apparent reason outside a hospital full of meat-eater women. Authorities struggle to determine his motivations, but are certain the Goat did nothing wrong, and if the Goat did anything wrong, it is because he was fed up with the inherent bigotry of meat-eaters. Remember, there are no good predators.”

Another Rabbit turned her radio on, setting it to a different station, and so did another one, and another one.

Noise, noise, noise...

So much noise.

So much nonsense.

So many lies, too many lies.

And it had to go unchallenged.

Because those in charge thrived in this noise.

They lived for this madness.

And then, another rabbit woman arrived with a food cart, offering the brown rats with floppier ears some food quietly.

They couldn't hear her, so they decided to do the universe a favor and shut the fuck up for a while, and turn off their radios too.

The rabbit offered the brown rabbits seated their choice of overpriced food, and they each ordered gold-coated carrots before greedily gobbling them up.

The cart-pusher moved on to Sparky, who was trying to sleep. “Would you like anything?” She asked.

His stomach growled.

”That was my stomach, but I can't afford anything, sorry,” He told her.

“And you're heading to the Lust Ring?” She asked, confused.

“It's where I work, sadly.”

“And you can't even afford food during the journey?”

“Yeah.”

She clearly felt bad for him.

Well, that's what it looked like, but you could never tell with prey animals.

One of the first things they evolved was their capacity for deception.

“Don't tell anyone,” She says, tossing him twelve protein bars with chocolate and oats.

Sparky was stunned.

“Thank you!” He smiled, tearing up at the rare show of kindness while hiding them in his PipBuck as quickly as possible.

She looked uncomfortable. “Hide your emotions already before someone suspects something's up!”

“Oh, right, sorry,” He looked down at his hands and tried to look pissed off by thinking about his annoying colleagues at the tech store. Stupid fucking sheep, stupid fucking other guy, stupid fucking middle-management whore sheep in a stupid fucking punk costume...

It worked, and he looked like he was ready to lash out with his claws at any moment.

You'd never guess that someone had just done something good for him.

But internally, he was happy.

He...

For the first time, he...

He had just seen evidence that not all grass-gobblers were evil.

She started to leave.

“Wait,” He said, and she stopped. “How can I repay you?”

She blushed so intensely it turned her white facial fur red. “I shouldn't even suggest this, I'm sure you get this all the time, but-”

“Name a time and place,” He smiled.

She chose a nearby bathroom, in ten minutes. She told him she had to finish pushing this cart around and selling food, but when she was done, she'd remain in the stall and lock it until she heard his voice approaching.

She'd suggested humming casually as he approached the toilet, as a way to let her hear him coming.

He smiled.

It seemed this ride wouldn't be painful after all.

Well... For him.

After all, he was a big guy where it counted.