Iron Will tapped his big cigar on the wood of his desk to pack the tobacco down firm;y, there was a no smoking indoors aw in Ponyville but as far as he was concerned; his office, his own damn rules. His employees sat in chairs looking like they on trial, and while they weren't in any majorr trouble he still some discipline to dish out. "Do You two know why i wanted to speak with you?'' He said flipping the lighter and bringing the flame to the tip, his powerful lungs sucked and puffed on the ashes to get a good burn going, the eighty gauge Lunatic brand stoggie usually was a good three hour slow burner but Iron was one to enjoy the smoke itself and the act of smoking cigars not the mellow slow flavor the way most afficiandos did.
The first one the green lanky built stallion leaned back in his chair a bit trying to play it cool as he gave a smug smart alleck smile and said. "Hey big boss no need to thank old Zep for a job well done, it's what I live for well that and my day job as a mane stylist you know." Iron was so tempted to wrap his meat spider like growths at the end of his forehooves and choke hold the little idiot the way his old Drill SGT. did in the core. He settled for slamming one on the desk in rage,
"No you lunkheaded boob! I'M pissed! Do you know what I caught in the pantry this morning." he said as he moved a hand to a cloth covering something on his desk he grasped it but didn't lift the cover just yet.
"Uhhh a lucky penny?" Zepher asked,
"The new fridge to keep salads fresh?" His sister guessed
"Wrong, I found this little bastard, digging in the peanut cookies." Iron Will lifted the cloth cover and revealed a cage, sitting inside was a rat. The dark brown fur sticking out at all directions frizzy, matted with Celestia knows what. The front teeth yellow and long with a chip on the left tooth under the bent frizzy whiskers, and the tail worn down and ragged clearly an old and dirty desheveled rat. "Do you have any idea what the Dept. Of Health would do if they found rats...no A rat even in the kitchen?! I'll be ruined!...and the both of your will be outta work." He added that last bit in an attempt to not sound self centered. "I'm not pointing any fingers here, but you." He turned his gaze toward's zepher who cringed and shrunk down in his seat somewhat in fear. "You're getting lazy again and leaving food out or messes half cleaned up. Doing so ALWAYS attracts pests, I want this place spotless Zepher or else...and you Fluttershy." He paused, her and Iron had something of a history together, a torrid one but history none the less.
"You're too soft on these little...buggers, I didn't get snap traps and posion just for you ro use frilly butterfly nets and cages to keep them alive, I know you love animals unconditionally and all that...jazz." His pause was cause he was trying to not swear around her, a soft spot in his hard as stone heart. "You want a problem to go away you gotta attack it head on and without hesitation and in the case of rats that ruin a venture like mine...with out mercy." With that Iron Will opened a desk drawer and began to lay a few objects on the desktop; a heavy glove, a block of wood, some disenfectant, a rag, and then the worst of all. This made Fluttershy curl her hooves around her face but she dared not cover her eyes if only because Iron Would yell at her not too. Her brother's mouth hung open in a mix of awe and disgust as he realized what Iron was planing.
He placed a hatchet on the desk, then put the heavy glove on one hand. His expression unchanged from its stoic unmoving emotionless look. Not sadistic by any means but still one of a male not one for any of the traits the yellow mare beside him or her friends embodied. I don't know if any of your little friends will see this...my filthy friend, but I will make an example out of you come here." He said his teeth gritted as he lifted the cage door and wrapped his meaty apendages around the rat just as it bolted for the cage. The glove made his efforts at bitting the hand that held him to escape as fruitless as a condemend pony on the way to the gallows.
"Mr. Iron please don't do this, i can give him a home, give him shots if he's got any disease, and keep him from the resturant but please for Celestia's sake don't do this to the poor fella." Fluttershy begged almost contemplating putting her hoof in the blade's path to stop it. Her brother wasn't snivley but even he thought this was going too far past the line of sensable pest control.
"Boss come on man, it's not even like there are other rats around to see this, and even if there is they won't understand seeing...what you're gonna do, they're animals boss." His words did nothing to move Iron's descision and his sister only looked at him with a look of 'really?' regaurding his animals comment.
"Oh you two don't like wathcing my stance on keeping pests outta my resturant? Then keep it clean and keep them out of it or the next one will be a full on firing squad you'll be required to see." He said with his nose flaring and huffing hot breath's in a thrill of a kill, even if it wasn't them. Iron placed the squirming little rat as it screeched and struggled to get free as Iron's other hand raised the Hatchet over his head poised to deliver the lethal strike. His lips now smiling in delight his eyes fixed soley on his..victim. The rats head just over the edge of the block the rag layed out under it. With a growl bordering on a guttural savage roar, Iron Will brought the hatchet down, mirroring the very minotaur he was in the ledgends with battle axes so huge they split their victims clean in two.
Fluttershy threw her hooves up and turned away not caring if he fired her for it. Zepher turned a darker shade of green and tried to contain his urge to vomit as the rat head rolled after giving one last squeak and death rattle as it landed on the rag. a stream of blood across it and running up a good lenght of Iron Will's arm. He took a long drag on his cigar so big it turned a good lenght of it to ashes that fell right off, the kind one takes after a session of making sweet love. And he blew the smoke right onto the lifless rat corpse, the dirty matted fur soaking up more filthy in the smoke that he blew on it.
"Now get out both of you and and remember what I said about keeping this place clean." He said in a much calmer more relaxed tone now.
He was unaware of it then but above him near the celling, in the cracks of the walls and tiny holes. Pairs of eyes had seen the whole thing. Yellow sick looking eyes with bloodshot streaks of red where the vessels where strained. and they were angry eyes.
A Few Hours Later.
"Mhhhmm hello fella's mhh you miss me?" Iron Will asked the stallions in the pictures of the magazine he was reading, a choice rag titled 'Construction Site Studs.' Iron considered himself an equal opportunity heart breaker, every wife's secret husband and every stallions closet wife, to paraphrase and old Roman Empire saying about Clopius II The usual copies of Stablehouse, Rustler and Playcolt as old as himself and a hand me down from his father in his teenage years mixed with new issues of Playfilly and other all Stallion rags and mags that said father would puke his guts up if he knew his son was reading them now.
Iron took a minute to enjoy the centerfold when he his sharp ears picked up a screech and a rustle of papers. Looking up from the mag he say a rat another one scrambling on the papers of his in and out box, "What THE?! Another one?!" He opened a differnt drawer this time drawing a long colt m1911 with a surpressor attatched to not raise any alarm he took aim down the sights and almost in blitz fury fired. The bullet tore through the papers, the plastic shelving and even the wall at the end of the room but the rat ran from the desk unscathed. "Oh wise guy eh?" Iron Will said as he stood up and aimed again. He didn't see the other pointed muzzle with the long teeth at the end and those yellow eyes as it poked thru the bullet hole.
"What the Hades? This place is infested!" He tossed the pistol away and not caring if anyone heard took the 12 gauge pump action shotgun off the wall with its eight buckshot ready shells and took aim as the pair of vermin perched on a bust of Starswirl above the office door. "Listen you little fleabags, I will not have my good name and my latest money maker ruined because of anyone, least of all rats." They only stared back with those eyes of yellow, they eyes on deranged maniac or evoking the insanity of a prisoner in some dungeon. Long gone mad from the isolation reaching through the bars no longer for freedom but rather to lash out at whoever came to close. Iron pulled the trigger and in a small cloud of gunsmoke and the loud crack of the shot gun. The bust of Starswirl was blasted to dust almost as if Iron Will was some assassin who took a sniper shot at him if only in effigy of stone.
The rat's where gone but their wasn't any blood on the walls, no bodies or remains of fur, he missed. He took a second to wipe some sweat from his brow and moved in front of his desk, looking around the room trying to get his bearings and take the blighters out. "Come on you filthy disgusting vermin. Iron Will always gets his due." He pumped his gun and ejected the spend shell, it clattered to the floor with a hollow ching and rolled across the carpet. Now two more Rats crawled from the hole he had blasted in the wall. The four of them scurried across the shelves Iron Will followed them with the gun barrel but didn't fire just yet. When they stopped he stopped with the barrel aimed dead in his sights as they perched on the safe sitting atop the office mantlepiece they stared back at him just as stoic and unmoving as him, but there was something else in their gaze. As if...they knew.
There was something of an understanding between him and the guests Iron Will set his weapon down, and he loosened his tie opening a few buttons on his white shirt. His nose snorting and eyes fixed on them just as he was when he killed the first one. He killed that one with his hands and a steel weapon now he had to deal with these rats the same way. "Ok, if that's how you want it." With that he picked the poker from the fireplace tools and raised it above his head swinging it at them. The rats statue like poses broken as they scampered away one skeeching as it took the cast iron to its body, a few organs ruptured, maybe internal bleeeding. The safe shook a bit and then settled back.
Iron Will chased and swung for them occasionally either knocking one clean across the room or driving more holes in his walls, which in turn made more crawl out from the wood work. Before long a wirthing black mass with squeaks and screechs and even hisses made its way to him, strecthing from in front of his desk to the office door, they had him corned. Iron Will swapped the poker for a putter from his office golf set for its closer to ground reach and tried to sweep the rats back but they just seemed to move close no longer running but more like a mini army marching on to battle. Iron climbed onto his chair hoping to make a last stand but it wasnt meant for him to be standing on it, it gave a creak and snapped making the minotaur land flat on his back on the floor. Looking up he could she he was just under the mantle, and the big heavy safe full of his profits within it steel womb.
A single rat made its way over his body Iron held back his disgust at the though of such a vile thing on him and then climbed onto his face. In an almost...sentient way the rat tilted its head as if to look at him and he could swear the mouth curled back showing all those nasty teeth in...a smile. Just as the shape of his safe tilting over the edge came into view a mass of black just behind it as it was headed right for his head.
"Hey Boss? You alright? I was on my way to put the cash away and well...I heard gunshots coming from the office were we being robbed?" Zephyr Breeze's voice called from the other side of the door as it slid open, "Boss?"
