"I'M A MARE AND A HALF!"
The Doom Marine hated a lot of things.
He hated demons for obvious reasons. He hated fools like Samuel Hayden, who thought he could exploit the resources of hell without consequence. He hated traitors like Olivia Pierce, who betrayed her entire species in exchange for power.
Now, as the Marine huddled behind a pillar in the wrecked temple, he had another hate to add to his every-growing list: running out of ammo
His Praetor armor was virtually indestructible; it had been drenched with caustic bile, bludgeoned, rammed, shot, scorched, yet it was still as shiny and pristine as the day it was forged. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the one wearing it. Combat with the forces of Hell had left him with broken bones, internal bleeding, pulverized organs. Were he still a normal human, he would have been dead ten times over.
But they’d paid for every wound. The Marine clutched a blood-splattered fist. Oh how they had paid. The tortured hellscape around the temple was covered with demon corpses, blood, entrails, and things best left undescribed. Some had been mulched by chain gun fire. Others had been turned to bloody charcoal by plasma, others disintegrated by Gauss cannon rounds or chewed to pieces by his chainsaw.
But, as always, they were still coming. Looking through the scope of his empty Heavy Assault Rifle, the Marine could see demons emerging from the craggy cliffsides: cyclopean Cacodemons like fleshy pumpkins, Barons of hell, like oversized, bipedal oxen. Corpulent Mancubi, their bellies bulging with rotting flesh. In the skies, swarms of lost souls circled about, accompanied by squads of skeletal Revenants. Hordes of Imps and Possessed soldiers clambered towards him. Hell Knights charged, roaring in psychotic rage.
And here he was, his ammunition spent and his body worn. His BFG still had three shots left, but a lucky shot from a now-dead Imp had left it useless. All he had left now was his puny sidearm-- little better than a popgun against most of the demons--and his bare fists.
The marine smiled grimly and cracked his knuckles. Let them come.
The Imps charged ahead of the horde, gibbering and howling. Calmly, the Marine lined up a head-shot on the head of the nearest of the horde, the pistol whining as it charged. He hooked a finger around the trigger.
Suddenly, there was a brilliant flash of light. A figure materialized on a ledge overlooking the horde. It may have been the Marine’s imagination, but he swore it looked like a miniature horse in a leather jacket.
A miniature horse surrounded by the tell-tale aura of a berserker orb.
“WHO’S A MARE AND A HALF?!”The creature bellowed.
The horde turned to face the figure and froze in its tracks. The Marine swore he saw one of the demons shiver.
“I’M A MARE AND A HALF!” It roared, answering its own question before tearing into the horde like an equine buzzsaw.
“Rip and tear Rip and tear your guts!” The creature yelled as it ripped the gun-arms off of a mancubus, then used them to beat a Hell Knight to death. A Baron tried to get the jump on the creature, only to have its head bucked clean off its body. An imp jumped on the creature, only to have its head exploded by a headbutt.
As he watched the creature fight, the Marine felt a strange tightness in his crotch plate. For some reason, he liked it.
The horde didn’t last much longer. With the berserker orb, the demons didn’t stand a chance. The entire battlefield became a symphony of cracking bone, bursting bodies, and demonic screams. Soon, most of the army was a mess of bone, teeth, and pulped flesh, as if some massive creature had just exploded on the battlefield. Orbs of Argent Energy littered the battlefield in stark contrast to the ruddy ground. And In the middle of it all sat the creature, painted in gore. The aura around its body faded, and it slumped to the ground, gasping for breath.
“Whoah,” It said in a surprisingly feminine voice. ”Those Berserker orbs really take a lot outta yeah.” The creature pulled a cigar out of nowhere, lit it, and took a long drag. “Ahh…” she said, blowing out a skull-shaped smoke ring. “Yeah, that’s the stuff.”
The Marine’s eyes widened. Dimensional pockets. The art of opening a dimensional pocket, he’d thought it lost forever, along with the rest of his homeworld, yet this creature apparently used it to store cigars.
The creature turned its head towards and grinned. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.” It said, brushing a bit of gore out of its cerulean blue mane. It motioned towards the sea of Argent Energy. “‘Sides, don't’ you got some healing to do?”
The Marine snapped out of his trance and dashed through the dropped energy. His suit’s systems sucked up the glowing blue orbs and funneled them into his body, repairing damaged tissue, setting broken bones.
Once he’d fully recovered, the Marine walked up to the creature.
“Are...you...all right?”He said slowly. It had been a very long time before he’d actually talked to another intelligent being. In fact, he actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d talked at all. Until now, there hadn’t been a point. What was the point of talking to something you were just about to kill?
“Yeah, I’m fine,” The creature picked herself up, wiping demon blood out of her cream-colored fur. “Just gimme a minute or two.” She pulled another drag on her cigar and blew out a stream of blue smoke. The Marine smelled bitter almonds: was there cyanide in that cigar?!
“Who...what?”
The creature held up a foreleg. “First thing’s first. You need ammo,” She pulled a large duffel bag out of nowhere. “Here, load up. We don’t have much time.”
The Marine nodded and tore the bag open.a glittering waterfall of ammo poured from the sack onto the dusty ground. Immediately, his suit began absorbing the dropped ammo, automatically loading it into his hungry arsenal.
“All right,” The creature took one last drag on the toxic cigar, then tossed it into her mouth and swallowed it. ”Name’s Coco. Coco Pommel. Earth Pony.” She held out a foreleg. The Marine stared at the appendage for a bit; what did she want him to do?
“Shake?”
It took a few seconds for the Marine to remember what a handshake was. He grasped Coco’s foreleg and gave it a firm shake. It was strange: normally, when he came into physical contact with an nonhuman, it was because he was about to relieve said nonhuman of its limbs. To shake hands with a creature he wasn’t about to kill was alien, to say the least.
“What are…?”
“What am I doing here? Simple. I’m a problem solver. My Coco sense told me that you had a problem, so I used this,” She pulled a strange blue amulet out of nowhere. “To come here and alleviate said problem.”
Coco winced, rubbing her flank. The spiked helmet emblem on her rear began to glow.
“Horseapples, thought we’d have more time.” She reached into her dimensional pocket and pulled out a large-bore shotgun with the word “Generosity” engraved on its sides. ”Get ready. They’re close.”
The Marine nodded and unlimbered his rocket launcher.
“You know,” Coco said, loading shells into Generosity’s magazine “Back where I come from, we take out our bad guys using the power of magic and friendship. Personally, I think a high-explosive bore slug to the brainpan gets the job done a whole lot quicker.”
The Marine smiled beneath his helmet. He liked the way this mare thought.
There was an all-too-familiar flash of red, and a horde of imps materialized, soon joined by a phalanx of hell knights, then a pair of mancubi and a cacodemon. In no time at all, an entire army had materialized on the outskirts of the temple, roaring, growling, and hooting for his blood.
“You ready?” Coco said.
The Marine gave a thumbs up, almost giddy with excitement.
The demons charged, almost tripping over each other in their zeal.
“Well then.” Coco gave Generosity a hearty pump, chambering a slug with a loud chik-chuk. “Guess it’s time for some spiritual warfare. Coco style.”
With that, she aimed at a hovering cacodemon and fired, bursting it like a balloon filled with gore.
“Charge!”
--
If there was one thing the Marine had learned during his countless centuries of battle, it was that you never stopped moving. When the enemy outnumbered you by at least a thousand to one, your only chance of surviving was to keep on moving. If you stayed in one place for too long, the demons would pin you down. If the demons pinned you down, you were dead.
The Marine locked onto a Revenant with his rocket launcher and sent a burst of homing rockets into its chest, ripping the skeletal flyer apart. Thankfully, his new equine companion seemed to take this philosophy to heart. Coco was a speed demon. Nothing could catch up with her. Nothing could even get close to her without her blowing it to a bloody pulp.
A group of imps charged towards him, claws slashing. The Marine switched to his plasma rifle and launched a stun bomb into the mob, trapping them in place, while a frag grenade turned them all into a bloody mist.
Meanwhile, Coco was making good use of her shotgun. With uncanny accuracy, she blew a Baron of Hell’s head clean off, then, before it had time to fall, leapt onto its ruddy shoulder and onto a charging Hellknight, riding it like a bull and forcing it to charge through a group of Possessed soldiers.
A Mancubus raised its chitinous flamethrower-arms and sprayed the Marine with jets of sulfurous flames. In response, he readied his heavy assault rifle and peppered the bloated beast with volleys of micro-missiles, sending it reeling. Seeing his opening, the Marine charged the mancubus and force-fed the demon its own heart, exploding it in a shower of toxic gore.
“Amatuer” Said Coco, tearing the arms off of an imp and beating several of its companions with the detached appendages. Never one to pass up a challenge, the Marine charged a Hell Razer and, just as it was about to fire at him, grabbed its gun-arm and forced it into the demon’s face. The monster reflexively fired, turning its own skull into bloody charcoal.
“Not bad,” Coco said, blowing a mancubus’ belly open. “But can you top this?” With that, she dashed out in front of a hovering Revenant, taunting it until it launched a volley of missiles at her. Coco pulled a haste orb out of her pocket and shattered it, then, using her newly-enhanced speed, grabbed two of the homing rockets in mid-air, jumped off a Baron, and jammed the projectiles into the Revenants glowing eye sockets, blowing it to pieces.
From there, the Marine and Coco’s little game escalated. The battle became a macabre contest to see who could come up with the most imaginative, and satisfying, kill. The Marine used his weapons in ways their designers had never intended, but certainly would have approved of; flinging possessed soldiers into the air and blasting them with his super shotgun, sticking a frag grenade into an Imp’s mouth, then shoving said Imp down the throat of a Mancubus. One time, he spun in a circle, using his chain gun's turret mode to spit out a cyclone of tungsten slugs. Every time, Coco would come up with something just as outlandish, and awesome.
As he thought the Marine realized something: he was having fun. Normally, when he fought, all he felt was a barely-contained urge to pulverize anything stupid enough to stand against him, Now, he was laughing with glee as he mowed down the malevolent minions by the millions. Why, he hadn’t had this much fun since...since...well, ever.
The contest finally ended with Coco tricking two Hellknights into tackling a Baron of hell from both sides, then tricking a Cacodemon into spraying all three with psychoactive bile. Two possessed engineers and an exploding slug later turned all four of them into a spray of charred meat and bone.
The Marine just gave up at that point. Even he couldn’t top that.
Time passed. Slowly, both the ammo, and the fun, began to run low. Their fun little romp degenerated into a grueling slog through the horde. One by one, the Marine’s weapons ran dry, until all that was left was his sidearm and his bare hands. His health ticked down with every hit. Only the constant stream of argent energy dropped from slain demons kept his body from falling apart.
Coco was definitely feeling chipped around the edges as well. When Generosity ran out of shells, she’d cursed someone named “Suri” and settled for using the slugthrower as a club, bashing in skulls and snapping bones with every swing.
Finally, the demonic horde was crushed. The few fleeing survivor cut their losses and teleported away, leaving the two standing in a field of bodies about two deep.
“You’d better run” Coco dusted off her hooves. “Guess that’s that.”
The Marine hesitated. “No.” They had something else. Something big. Hell always did.
The tattoo on Coco’s flank began to glow again. “You’re right, my Coco sense is going nuts! Something’s coming. Something…”
Before Coco could finish her sentence, there was a flash of red light, followed by a monstrous roar as a Cyberdemon materialized on the field.
“...Big.”
“Impossible,” Said the Marine. “Killed the only one.”
“Guess they had a backup.” Coco said.
The Cyberdemon roared and raised its arm cannon. Red light flared at its tip, and a jet of raw hell energy spurted out out. For some reason, the word “Freudian” came to the Marine’s mind. He didn’t know why.
Quickly, the Marine triggered a hologram, grabbed Coco, and huddled behind a convenient rock.
“Any ideas?” He grunted as the Cyberdemon blasted the decoy.
The mare gave a wicked smile. “As a matter of fact, I do.” She reached into her pocket dimension and pulled out...it.
The Marine froze, weeping tears of pure joy. It wasn’t a weapon, it was the weapon; four BFG-9000’s that had been wired together and mounted on a crude wooden stock. The words “RBFG-90,000” were stenciled on its side.
“You like it?”
The Marine nodded excitedly.
“Wanna do the honors?” She said, handing the weapon to the Marine. “Might as well add a second one to your tally.”
The Marine nearly squealed like a schoolgirl as he hefted the weapon. At that moment in time, he never had a deeper and more natural admiration for anything in the universe.
“Well, are you going to stand around like an idiot or are ya’ going to shoot the damn thing?”
Snapping out of his firepower-induced trance, the Marine hoisted the oversized weapon with both hands, lined up a shot, and squeezed the weapon’s jury-rigged trigger. There was a spark, a sound like a generator spinning up, and four blobs of crackling green light shot out, hitting the Cyberdemon right in its face. A flash of emerald light, a sound like a mountain splitting in half, and the next thing the Marine knew, he was laying flat on his back, watching charred gore rain from the sky.
Coco picked herself up, brushing bits of carbonized demon off of her jacket. “Nice shot.” She said, pointing to the smoldering crater where the Cyberdemon used to be.”
“Well, Marine,” she said, tucking the RBFG-90,000 back into her pocket dimension, “It’s been fun, but I’m ‘fraid you’re on your own from here.” She clenched the amulet around her neck, and a swirling pool of light erupted in front of her. “ You’d better get going. That hell portal isn’t going to close itself.”
The Marine clenched a fist against his chest and bowed.
“Maybe we’ll meet again one day. Until then, later.”
Coco started towards the portal.
“Oh, one more thing!” She trotted over to the corpse of a Baron of Hell and wrenched its head off. “Needed something for the trophy wall. Later.”
With that, she walked into the portal and vanished.