-
“And then I was shooting tin cans, calling them ‘striped bastards.’ Cookie started getting nervous. Said I’d ‘wake up the tunnels.’ Thicket talked me up again and convinced me to shut up. He might not have known what to make of me, but he knew how to talk to me.”
“I knew an old buck who used to talk like that.” Time Bomb downed another glass as Spark Plug finished her first. “Hey, say ‘maggot’ again. I swear you sound just like him.”
“Rusty Gears sounds a lot like somepony I used to know,” muttered Spark Plug.
“She got that from time to time.” Cerberus watched the pair’s drinks quietly. A ghoul approached the bar, sidling up to one of his buddies. A different set of ghouls left to join the dance floor. Cerberus refilled Time Bomb’s glass.
“Y’know,” mused Time Bomb as she swiped the drink, “It sounds like you had a good bunch there. We should meet up some time. Swap stories. I’d love to meet a buck with a gem-finding talent! Where’re your lot now?”
“KIA,” said Cerberus simply.
Spark Plug hung her head, her demeanor already appropriately somber. “I’m sorry, Cerberus.”
“KIA?” Time Bomb tilted her head quizzically.
“Dead…” murmured Spark Plug.
“Oh… shit…”
Cerberus hovered quietly. Despite the inappropriately raucous music, a tactile silence blanketed the three for a heavy moment. “A true friend is like an old war bot,” began Cerberus, “They don’t die. They just-”
One of the ghouls began to tap his hoof impatiently on the bar. “Cerberus! Hey, Cerberus! The usual, buddy!”
Cerberus’ flamer and plasma gun shook in barely subdued rage. He floated to the shelf to fetch a glass and bottle. He and the ghoul did not break eye contact as he poured. “I CANNOT TELL YOU HOW DISGUSTED I AM TO SEE YOU STILL MOVING. YOU HAD BETTER GET OUT OF HERE BEFORE YOUR DRINK SPILLS OUT THROUGH THE MAGGOT HOLES IN YOUR STINKING GHOUL ASS!”
A smile cracked the grey buck’s dry, flaking lips. He lifted his glass and poured it directly on Cerberus’ forward eye. “You really need to lighten up, Cerby. You’re in Afterlife now, after-”
“YOU SAD EXCUSE FOR EXPIRED BRAHMIN SHIT!” Cerberus’ thrusters roared as he floated atop the bar, arms trailing behind him like vapor. The ghoul staggered backwards into the crowd. Some of the partygoers eyed Cerberus with a disinterested wariness. “I AM GOING TO CATCH YOU, AND WHEN I DO I’M GOING TO KILL YOU AS A PERSONAL FAVOUR TO AUNTIE CELESTIA!”
The ghoul tried to laugh as he regained his footing, but he was shaking too much to leave a decent impression. “Hah, heh… nice try, Cerby. You almost got me. But we both know that you can’t hurt a fly as long as that combat inhibitor is strapped to your back.”
“Oh, really?” Cerberus floated to the ground and snapped his clamp threateningly. “Maybe you should check with your oozing, corpulent boss about that. While you do, ask him if the marks have gone away. I’d be happy to replace them, free of charge!”
The ghoul sized up Cerberus and looked around him to the crowd of assembled Afterlife patrons. A few of them were starting to look worried. The ghoul spat on the ground and left for the exit. Cerberus followed with one eye until the ghoul vanished from sight behind the dancing mass of undead ponies.
“Time to hit the showers!”
Cerberus returned to his post and Time Bomb fell off of her seat, laughing.
-
There are so many of them running, it’s hard to get them all. Some get past me. I kill the rest. Some I even spare, because killing them would take too much valuable time. I have someplace to be. I have someone to kill.
The fire doesn’t spread as much as I would like, but the smoke does. I wish it could choke them but I can’t deny that obscuring their vision is important too. I am disappointed to find that none of the smoke has reached the basement. I am not surprised that many of the ghouls here do not try to run. Some do. I kill them because they have a life to take. The dead ones can stay where they are.
He found a new guard, a rotter like him. One in armor. If his guard is here that means he hasn’t run yet. Good. The griffin charges me. I grab one of the drunk corpses and hold him between us. He screams when the griffin tears into him. Now some of the others start to run. While the griffin rips the screaming rotter off of his own rotten claws, I take a single shot and move to the bar. My plasma scorches his armor but does little else.
I am trying to take cover behind the bar but the griffin is not interested in a firefight. He makes another charge against me. I cannot fly but I can hover, so I pour power into my thrusters and dodge over him. He crashes into the shelf of alcohol. Bottles crash and pour all over him. I do not miss the opportunity. I baptize the armored ghoul in flame.
He does not scream. He does not relent. As the bar ignites along with his exposed wings, he leaps at me. I try to avoid him again but he manages to knock me off course with a claw. I tilt and sway to regain my balance, taking another shot while I try and escape. He is too fast. My shot misses and the griffin charges me once again, his talons scrabbling for purchase. The heat from his still-burning body is intense.
He gets a grip on my casing. Lifting me, he slams me into the ground. I am flying up once more to collide with the floor. When he lifts me a third time, I accelerate my thrusters to counter the downward movement. I throw my arms around his armored neck. My flamer loops around his back to spray salvos of fresh fire over his still burning wings. My clamp pulls at a latch at the base of his helmet while my plasma gun fires on the lock repeatedly. The griffin flies upward and slams me on the ceiling. The rigs for my eyes shake and I lose my bearings. He slams me on the roof once more.
I lock onto the clasp that holds his helmet to his body armor and fire again. The blackened metal pops and bubbles and I tear it off with my clamp. I manage to fire on another clasp before he brings me crashing down to the ground. Some of my internal circuitry starts to fail. My right eye goes dark. I fire on the clasp once more and most of it dissolves into bright green goo. I grab the bottom of the helmet and pull with all of my strength. A gap begins to open at the base of his neck.
He tries to push me against the ceiling again. I power on my thrusters and disrupt his flight pattern, sending us pirouetting about the room in a deadly, flaming dance. When he regains balance and slams me against the wall I finally pry the gap below his helmet just wide enough to insert my flamer. The dark visor of his helmet illuminates brightly with my flame. In a split second, the reflection of my own dispassionate eye is replaced by a set of milky white orbs that show no fear even in the face of immolation. Then there is fire.
He slams me against the wall one more time before he can take no more. He releases me just as his own wings become too charred to hold him aloft. I drop to the ground in a heap of metal. My thrusters sputter and pop, failing to lift me. Then I see him.
The snake crawls out from the burning bar and tries to sneak away. I fire a bolt of searing plasma that tears away a chunk of the table he hides behind. My thrusters roar back to life, but something grabs me. Only my left eye can see the charred remains of the griffin bodyguard gripping my rear chassis and tearing blindly into me. I turn my arms and insert both weapons into the crack in his armor. I fire just as relentlessly as the two talons that tear reckless gashes in my metal casing.
Finally the claws and wing stubs glow bright green. He tears off his helmet and I can see the charred face of a hulking, emerald green unicorn. The disintegration reaches his face and he collapses into goo. Thick slop leaks from holes in the armor as I slough it off. The coward I am here for has escaped up the stairs. I give chase.
-
RL-3 and I shared more than the gutsy class and a few tired battle cries. It was more than design or even personality. It was something at our very core. I didn’t realize it at the time and I don’t believe the Sergeant did either. It was a bond. Not between each other, but between our squads.
Rusty Gears was my commander. Thicket was my drill sergeant. Reeds, Jasmine, even Cookie were my brothers-in-arms. They were my unit, and I would gladly die for any one of them. I still would. From the first day Gears activated me I knew I would follow these ponies to the ends of the earth and straight through the gates of hell. I thought it was programming, but Rusty Gears taught me more. It wasn’t wires or electricity. The battery that fueled my resolve was stronger than anything ever forged by hooves. It was loyalty. Loyalty to my friends. So I followed my friends to the ends of the earth and to the gates of hell and we walked straight through.
But when I came out the other side, my friends were gone.
Loyalty was all that drove me. When the only ones I could be loyal to were gone, where could I put my faith?
Ahuizotl was the first face I met in Tartarus, or ‘Meatlocker,’ as the ghouls called it. He looked like he had already seen the wrong end of my flamer, more reminiscent of brahmin jerky than rotten garbage. He always wore an insultingly well-kept suit and his eyes were a dark red.
These bloody saucers were the first things to greet me in my new personal Tartarus.
“He is operational?”
While my systems whirred to life I stared into his scarlet eyes, waiting dumbly for my memory to return. It all came in a flash. They had come from the front and poured from the sides. Jasmine and I were blasting them from the middle, Reeds and Thicket in front with Cookie and Rusty Gears guarding the rear. Reeds and Thicket were barely holding off a tide of shrieking, distended zombies. I came in-between them, spraying the horrid monsters with my flamer. I took some hits and then...
“That happens sometimes. You put the wires together and a robot boots automatically.”
The idly chatting mouths suddenly snapped into sharp clarity and I recognized them as belonging to a set of wretched ghouls. I hit the reverse on my thrusters and brought my flamer to bear, activating the firing mechanism.
“ALL RIGHT, PEOPLE! GIVE ‘EM HELL!”
It was a horrible sensation. It didn’t trigger any system alerts or damage any circuitry; it didn’t harm me. But if I had a heart, I imagine I would rather run it through with a concrete girder than feel that horrid, snaking restriction. My flamer meekly returned to its resting position.
“What the hell-?”
I pointed my plasma gun and tried to fire, but that slimy command pulled my weapon away and restricted my shot. Still, I brought it to bear and kept it trained on the red-eyed ghoul while I rotated my chassis 180 degrees.
“Corporal Gears! There’s something wrong with my-”
I was facing a wall. I ran into it, rebounding softly. Spinning my chassis back to 0 degrees, my eyes flew about my head like a trio of angry spritebots. This was not a tunnel. Roughly as dim and slightly more grim, but the train tracks were replaced by tables and chairs. The walls held little doors just big enough to allow a pony to enter… if they were lying down. In the room were two ghouls, Ahuizotl and a greasy one with a wrench in his jaws and a sickening lack of too much skin.
I raised both of my weapons and pointed them at the rotten bags of meat. “WHERE IS RUSTY GEARS?!” I demanded.
“Rusty… what?” Ahuizotl tilted his head.
“I think he’s talking about the breathers. There were a couple of bodies when we went down to check the feral's leftovers.”
“They’re all dead?”
“Looked like.”
My weapons tilted down for a moment as these words began to drill into me. They couldn’t be dead, I thought. It didn’t make sense. They couldn’t die, and ghouls couldn’t talk. None of this made any sense. I brought my weapons up again. “ARE YOU PLAYING GAMES WITH ME GODDESS DAMMIT! WHERE IS CORPORAL GEARS!”
Ahuizotl’s eyes widened, and he gave me a look that felt wrong in his beady red glare; a look I had seen many times when Thicket listened to me. Thicket… “Your breather friends are all dead. Do you even know what that means?”
I did. I had seen it. I didn’t want to believe that it could happen to us. I couldn’t believe it. My weapons drooped until their tips hit the floor. My eyes stared straight ahead of me, to my left, and to my right. Ahuizotl tilted his head again and approached me with a smile so venomous I would bet my right eye it hid a forked tongue.
“Well would you look at that? It seems that you’ll fit in just perfectly around here.” Then he frowned. He turned to the greasehorse. “But I was hoping for a servant with a bit less… everything. A robot was supposed to be the perfect employee, no irritating values or morality to get in the way of business. Are you certain this tin can will do everything I say?”
“Can’t help it,” replied the wrench-ghoul, “As long as he’s wearing that combat inhibitor I threw in, he won’t be able to lift a finger against you. That does mean he won’t lay a beatdown on any Meatlocker resident if they don’t hurt him first, though.”
“Excuse me? You mean to say that if it thinks I’m hurting it, the robot will attack me?”
“Oh, no no no. You would literally have to buck a hole straight through the damn thing before he could fire on you. Serious, critical damage. You’re as safe as a pegasus in an earthquake.”
I didn’t pay much attention. How could I? My entire squad had been butchered, and I was the sole survivor. I had only survived so that the very monsters that slaughtered my unit could use me as some sort of slave. I couldn’t even see a reason to fight. Without Cookie and Reeds and Thicket and Jasmine and Rusty Gears… what was the point?
I was still as stone while Ahuizotl and his little lackey looked me over.
“It will need to look presentable to our patrons. Is there a color even gloomier than robot grey?”
“…Brown?”
“So imaginative. Hm? What is this nonsense? Is that supposed to say something?” Ahuizotl lifted my plasma gun arm. One by one my eyes spun to lock on to him, each whirring as they brought him into focus. He was examining my autograph. “Remove this.”
“Don’t you dare get your scabby little hooves anywhere near that.” It was the quietest threat I had ever made, a low rumble that could be scarcely heard over the hum of my thrusters. The mechanic paused with an automatic scrubbing tool still in his mouth. His eyes were wide and pupils narrow.
“A… Ahuizotl? Ah dohn tink we hood-”
“No, you don’t think. Because that’s not your job. Your job is to work on the damn robot, and you are failing that job most admirably. This will be coming out of your paycheck! Give me that!” Ahuizotl snapped away the scrubber and pushed it against my arm.
That slimy feeling snaked through my arm, but it was burned away by a white hot rage of violation. My clamp struck faster than a radscorpion’s stinger, snapping tightly around Ahuizotl’s neck. The fetid bastard dropped his tool and gaped, pawing at my arm helplessly. His assistant tried to move, but I shoved him to the side as I pushed the struggling Ahuizotl forward. He collided against one of the small metal cupboards in the wall.
“YOU! YOU ARE A DISGUSTING, FESTERING, MAGGOT-RIDDEN, BRAIN-SUCKLING, ROTTEN SHITSTAIN THAT OUTLIVED ITS EXPIRATION DATE. YOUR VERY EXISTENCE IS AN AFFRONT TO ALL EYES UNDER CELESTIA’S SUN, AND I AM ABOUT TO WIPE THAT IMPLODED ASSHOLE YOU CALL A FACE CLEAN OFF OF THE SPAN OF EQUESTRIA!”
There were sounds behind me, but I paid them no mind. My clamp was beginning to draw thick ichor from Ahuizotl’s neck. His eyes bulged in terror when I raised my plasma gun. “YOU SHOULD BE HONORED TO BE LIQUIFIED BY THE VERY SAME WEAPON THAT WAS GRACED BY THE TORCH OF SERGEANT RL-3!”
I brought him real close, until his snout bumped with my eye. “And, for your information, it says, ‘Never lose faith.’ Hold on to that while Jasmine kicks your ass in the Everafterrorerrorerrorerrorerroerror…”
My clamp disengaged while my functions went haywire. My thrusters burst sporadically, sending me spinning around the room with my arms in a frenzy.
“Luna on a stick! You okay, Ahuizotl?” The greasehorse dropped his wrench with a clatter. “I worked as fast as I could…”
There was a moment of hacking and wheezing before Ahuizotl offered his hissing reply. “That robot is a fucking disaster waiting to happen! …I wonder how much the new club upstairs would be willing to pay for it…”
-
I catch him outside of Afterlife. Fitting. The smoke and flames wave invitingly, beckoning us over. I wrap my clamp around his neck again. This time there is no one there to help him. I drag us both into the burning club.
I hold him aloft. His red eyes bulge but he does not die. He does not breathe. So I bring him to the bar and slam him into the burning wood. Smoke was already trailing from where my heated metal gripped his neck. Now it billows from his whole green and brown body as he writhes and begs for mercy. I hold him up as his struggling slows and fades to nothing. When the light fades from his golden eyes I drop him next to the dead tan buck.
As I leave the infernal gates of Afterlife my claw is a red hot poker, my dead eye hangs limply at my side, my casing is covered in gouges and scorch marks that warp the pinstripes and my left eye has melted from the heat to become useless. My only regret is that I could not make the pain last any longer.
But there are still ghouls to kill.
-
Spark Plug took another hesitant sip out of her second glass while Time Bomb finished the bottle in a quick pull.
“So they sold me to the filthy rotters in Afterlife. They did me up in this ridiculous pinstripe paintjob and made me work the bar. Every day I thank my manufacturer that my sensors aren’t as sensitive as your inferior eardrums, or they would have burst long ago.”
Time Bomb’s feathers ruffled as she put her hoof to her chin in thought. “That can’t be the same Addled Boater-”
“Ahuizotl,” corrected Spark Plug.
“-Happy Bottle from that lame Mortuary, could it? The one who said he’d pay for us to take the no-fightey-chip off? Why would he ask us to take off the thing if he’s the bastard who put it on in the first place?”
“He doesn’t want Cerberus to go free,” Spark Plug whispered into her glass, “He wants Cerberus dead.”
“What? Why doesn’t he just get his gnarly thug to do it?”
“Ahuizotl is an agent of misery,” began Cerberus, “He can’t stand happiness, and if you ask me I don’t think it’s just for the sake of his business. He’d love to see me tear down half of Afterlife… and get torn down for trying.”
Time Bomb began to look decidedly uncomfortable. “Uh… yeah… you could do that… or you could not? Why don’t you just hightail it out of here? Say you’re going to the bathroom or-”
“YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT THIS IS LIKE!” roared Cerberus, “I’ve lost track of the years I have spent as a slave to these compost heaps that murdered my squad! All day long I have to look into the faces that killed Reeds and Thicket. I serve quaint little cocktails to the monsters that butchered Jasmine! And they laugh! THEY MOCK ME GODDESS DAMMIT! They laugh at funny little Cerberus and his impotent rage! Well isn’t it hilarious! Come on, laugh at me! Laugh!”
The ghouls around the bar shifted awkwardly in their seats. Many of them were staring at Cerberus, some in mid-drink or order. Cerberus laid his plasma gun flat on the counter, his signature displayed proudly. It faded in the middle where Ahuizotl had buffed it so long ago.
“Do you know what this says?” Cerberus didn’t wait for an answer. “It says, ‘Never lose faith, soldier!’ It’s signed by the greatest gutsy-class robotic soldier of all time. This is what gets me through. I never lose faith in the dream that I will some day return the favor of a massacred family. One day I will show every rotter in Tartarus what it means to lose everything!”
Spark Plug stared into her drink. Time Bomb looked at Cerberus with a mixed expression of shock, pity, disappointment and even anger. “Cerberus… these aren’t the ferals that killed your guys…”
“You sound just like her.”