>>373142>I passed the cafeteria where ponies loaded bowls with green recycled algae slime, scooped recycled fungus cubes onto trays, collected synthetic recycled carrot sticks and apple flakes into bowls, or heaped up stacks of green recycled grass chips, brown recycled hay chips, and white recycled cake chips upon their plates. All the food in 99 was recycled into more food. All the waste in 99 was recycled. We were recycled. And yes, even having lived here my entire life, I still found it easier to pretend that the machines just magically made the food poof into being. Still, despite being made out of recycled poo water, the chips were pretty tasty!I'm told the Indians had a saying: when the chips are down, the buffalo is empty. In all seriousness, though, it's nice to see the author putting some thought into this stuff. I don't think kkat ever addressed how food in the Stables worked, and as I recall most of what the wasteland ponies ate was just prewar canned goods, which for some reason they still had in abundance more than 200 years after the megaspells.
Anyway, Blackjack still has the hoofcuffs on, so she goes to the table where Midnight is sitting. As luck would have it, Midnight is a PipBuck technician, which means she probably knows something about getting cuffs off. A couple of other ponies are there, by the name of Rivets and Textbook; not sure if they will be important characters or not.
It's clear enough that Blackjack
whose name I just realized can be shortened to BJ has been after Midnight's no-no parts for awhile now, and it's equally clear that it's a one-sided crush. The author is probably using the original story as a jumping off point, so it's not surprising that there would be a couple of parallels. The obvious parallel here is that kkat's protagonist, Littlepip, had a one-sided crush on Velvet Remedy. However, LP spent most of the early story pining away silently after Velvet, whereas BJ seems to prefer a more direct approach.
>“Which means you’re intelligent. Skilled! That you possess far more competence than a lowly security pony like myself!” I said as she hesitated. I almost had her convinced! “I’ll pay you in oral sex!” I blurted. Textbook turned the shade of a spoiled apple, and Rivets covered half her face as she chuckled.I was beginning to worry that there wouldn't be any cringey sex humor in this story, but it looks like I can put that fear to rest.
Anyway, BJ makes an ass of herself in front of her would-be lady friend, said lady friend wanders off in disgust, one of the ancillary characters makes a perfunctory "that went well" kind of joke, and the laugh track rolls.
>“I had no idea. I didn’t think you were into mares,” Rivets said with a smile, munching on her grass chips.Really? I don't get the impression that subtlety is Blackjack's strong suit. Plus, she was very publicly chasing Midnight down the hallway just a few minutes ago, and from Midnight's response it's clear she does this sort of thing quite often.
Anyway, BJ and Rivets talk shop for a bit, and we learn a bit more about how things work around here. This stable is...strange. Jobs are hereditary: if one pony is a maintenance technician, that means her daughter will be a maintenance technician, no arguments allowed. Also, due to the strict population controls, if an adult pony dies, their child must immediately step in and take over their job.
I can understand the reasoning behind this arrangement in theory, but in practice this means that ponies are often thrust into jobs that they are not even remotely qualified to do. Specifically, it seems like the current Overmare is actually a young filly (I'm assuming something like picrel), because her mother was the Overmare, and presumably she died at some point. We also learn that a young filly is going to be taking over her mother's job in maintenance the following day due to
that mare's untimely death. All in all, it seems like this stable's social structure is more than a little screwy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13oK9HMEtv8Anyway, they banter a little more, and then Rivets takes her leave. The scene ends in a page break.
We rejoin Blackjack in the security team's briefing room, because apparently BJ's job is security. She still has the fucking cuffs on.
>Daisy and Marmalade snickered as I limped in, and I gave the rest of the security mares a sheepish grin and a shrug before taking my seat. Gin Rummy just sighed and looked at me with a slow, disappointed shake of her head. Still, wasn’t much she could do.The hoofcuffs gag is funny, but it's getting a little illogical at this point. Are we seriously supposed to believe that in an entire room full of security ponies, not a single one, including this new character Gin Rummy, who is apparently head of security, knows how to take these stupid things off? Between the wacky job assignments and the Paul-Blart-tier security personnel they clearly employ, I'm impressed this stable has managed to survive for as long as it has.
Anyway, there's a fairly important-looking infodump that I should probably just drop in verbatim:
>Everypony in Stable 99 had a job assigned to them from birth. Maintenance ponies maintained, security ponies secured, and baker ponies baked. The forty or so males in Stable 99 were no different: they were breeding equipment. From birth, they had their segregated quarters in medical and were signed out by mares for reproductive purposes and, more frequently, recreational. There were twenty unicorns and twenty earth ponies on the breeding rotation. Once a male reached… how old was it? Twelve? Fifteen? -- they were put into breeding. Of course, to keep the number in rotation the same, that meant that a male had to be taken out of breeding and retired.I'm assuming "retired" is a euphemism for "killed." I'm getting sort of a "Logan's Run" vibe from this place.
Anyway, the leadup to this is that a male seems to have escaped when it was his time to be retired.