It starts with fire. I douse the whole place in the liquor they love so much. Every bottle drained onto the bar and the floor and everything wooden. On them, too. Everything is covered in it. Then I light it. The whole place goes up in glorious flames. It finally lives up to its name. I pick out the ones that really bugged me. The ones that laughed at me or leaned on me when they were drunk. I catch them as they struggle through the flames and grab their throats. I choke them and then disintegrate them. It is simple, but I don’t have time for revenge. There are too many ghouls to kill.
-
The normal raucous music of Afterlife was absent. The only sounds in the bar were of some of the band members tuning their instruments and practicing a few lines. Even in a city populated entirely by ghouls, partygoers had to take a break every now and again. There were no dancers or patrons at the bar, just two or three ghouls clearing the worst of the trash and stocking the drinks for Cerberus to serve that night.
At the bar an emaciated pegasus ghoul worked on a robot. It had a spherical body and two trios of gangly limbs curled up at it’s side. There were three rigs at the top that terminated in three spherical cameras. The three spidery arms curling up from its body was each tipped in a tool. The middle ended in a clamp, the left in a flamer, and the right in a plasma-based disintegration weapon with an engraving further up the arm. The whole machine was painted in black and white pinstripes.
The robot whirred to life as the ghoul gave a final turn on his screwdriver. “Rise and Shine, Cerberus. You’ll have customers soon.”
A set of thrusters at the robot’s base roared to life, hoisting it off of the ground. It turned to face the ghoul with its front eye tilting downwards to meet his own filmy orbs. The sounds of unnamable robot parts booting up joined the quiet chorus of the club’s slow waking. When the mechanical sounds faded, the robot lurched backwards and pointed its plasma gun to the pegasus.
“IF YOU’RE NOT USING IT TO PULL OFF THIS DAMN COMBAT INHIBITOR, GET THAT SCREWDRIVER AWAY FROM ME YOU FILTHY ROTTER!”
The ghoul sighed, his bony wings rattling as he dropped the screwdriver into a pocket in his worn stable barding. “Still sore about that, Cerberus?”
“Sore? I’m not sore. I’M DAMN PISSED OFF! DEEP IN ENEMY LINES AND FORCED TO WORK FOR THE UGLIEST PIECES OF ZEBRA SHIT TO EVER HIDE FROM CELESTIA’S SUN!”
None of the ghouls looked up from their work. The mare stocking the bar rolled her eyes patiently and the performers on stage waited for Cerberus to finish his rant before they continued practicing.
The pegasus rubbed his creased brow with obvious exhaustion. “Cerberus, I don’t know the details of what happened, but I do know that Meatlocker is not your enemy. We didn’t-”
“YOU LIE LIKE A ZEBRA! TARTARUS IS FILLED WITH ROTTING REMINDERS OF THE PAST, AND I WILL TEAR DOWN EVERY ONE OF YOU DISGUSTING PUS BUCKETS! YOU WILL BURN, WINDCLOP! DO YOU HEAR ME?”
Windclop sighed again. “No getting through to you tonight, either? I’ll see you tomorrow, Cerberus. Try not to blow a circuit.”
As Windclop trotted out of Afterlife to other duties, Cerberus called after him, raising his plasma gun. “IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU, YOU’LL KEEP RUNNING OUT INTO THE WASTELAND! THIS INHIBITOR CAN’T HOLD ME FOREVER! I’LL COME FOR YOU! YOUR FAMILY! YOUR FRIENDS! I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU!”
-
The bar is in flames. I have moved on. It is his turn.
He hides behind underequipped security. They turn the corner, covering him. I take a shot. One of the guards screams. When I turn the corner, a door is being slammed closed by a single guard. Two more are waiting for me around the corner in a sloppy ambush. My flamer is already in front of me; I haven’t put away the fire since I started.
They drown in flames. I don’t watch as they flail and scream. The guard at the door fires at me and her bullet pierces my chassis. My internal alerts flare but I focus on bringing my plasma gun to bear. A searing green bolt chars her face and the ghoul collapses.
I open the door. He and his guards are cowering behind upturned tables. He and two of them are on the far end and one is close to the entrance. I am peppered with bullets from the two guards while the nearby ghoul blankets me in a shower of shotgun pellets. I hover over his cover and set him on fire, taking the shelter for my own and shoving him out.
The panicking ghoul flops about the room like the maggot he is. Tables catch fire, adding to the smoke that quickly begins to fill the room. I could wait. Guard the entrance. But I want to see his face when I kill him. Smoke covers the ceiling, and it covers me as I hover through the thick smog. Bullets fly around and through me, but none of them stop me. I descend upon the guards. The one to the left I feed to my flame. The one on the right disintegrates into a green sludge when I fire on him.
He hasn’t run. He doesn’t fight. There are no weapons in his hooves or his mouth or his wings.
I kill him. All that is left is the corpse of a tan earth pony buck.
I don’t have time to think. Many ghouls are still screaming. Many ghouls still need to be killed.
-
“GET YOUR OOZING STRIPS OF CRAM OFF OF ME!”
Cerberus tilted and swayed, shoving at the ghoul. He collided against the bar with a drunken grunt. Cerberus swung his flamer to face the zombie, shaking the weapon impotently.
“IF IT WASN’T FOR THIS DAMN COMBAT INHIBITOR-”
“Yeah, yeah, Cerby…” The ghoul regained his shaky footing. “We heard it all before. You’ve used the cram joke on me four times already. The whole routine is getting a bit stale. Can’t you just chill already? I mean, really…”
Cerberus tilted his central and leftmost optic orb to watch as the ghoul staggered away. Some of the patrons at the bar chuckled at his limp rage before returning to their drinks. His arms shook in tune with every snorting, rotting muzzle. Cerberus raised the limb tipped with a dusty plasma gun and looked at the signature seared upon it. He turned to the shelf of liquor behind him and struck at one of the bottles with his weapon. There was a jolt from his rear that seized his motors and pulled them back, slowing his furious strike to a lame tap that gently tipped the bottle.
He was ready to scream.
“Excuse me-”
“No, no, like this. HEY BARKEEP!”
Cerberus whirled in place, the metal sphere of his body rotating 180 degrees clockwise while his trio of spindly arms spun in the other direction. He poured power into his thrusters and hovered as high as they would allow. Pointing all of his weapons to the rude little mare, he struggled to be heard over the din of Afterlife.
“I AM NOT A BARTENDER! I AM A GUTSY-CLASS ROBOTIC SOLDIER IN THE SERVICE OF HER MAJESTY’S- oh.”
Cerberus lowered himself back to the ground. Two smoothcoat mares sat leaning back in their seats as if blasted by a strong gust of… voice. Even the ghoul regulars were taken aback. One of the two was white unicorn with a light wash of pink and the other was a dark red pegasus.
“Sorry,” said Cerberus, “I thought you were ghouls.”