Axetale: Do You Really Hate Me That Much?

Do You Really Hate Me That Much?

"Hey, boss... One of the alleyway chicks just showed up. She was knocking on the doors so hard I thought she might break through them somehow. No matter how much I yelled at her to go away and that we're not letting anyone in the resort, she just wouldn't quit. So, uh... I let her in..."

"You what?!" Mettaton's head snapped up from his desk. He had been sitting in his back office at the resort for the last few hours, unmoving, his head resting against the broken and battered desk with his eyes half-closed.

Burgerpants held up his hands in a gesture of defense, a scowl on his face. "Hey, I tried to get her to go away. She just wouldn't take no for an answer. She says she's gotta talk to you."

Burgerpants wasn't looking good. He and Mettaton had been stuck in the resort in quarantine for a couple of weeks now, with no one to keep them company. All of the other resort employees had managed to make it home before things got so bad that it wasn't safe to even go outside anymore.

Mettaton had gotten a call from Alphys back at the lab over two weeks ago, asking him to televise a public announcement about the worsening state of the Underground. Following her advice, Mettaton had instructed everyone in his last news broadcast to quarantine at home and not go outside unless absolutely necessary. He'd also (reluctantly) asked everyone to turn in friends and relatives showing signs of the illness to the nearest guard outposts for a separate quarantine. Dark discharge, especially from the eyes, uncharacteristic aggression, schizophrenia, fits of manic violence... insatiable hunger...

That was what they were calling it now. The Hunger.

"Hey! Boss! Earth to Mettaton!" Burgerpants snapped his fingers near Mettaton's face, and the robot was startled out of his reverie. He hadn't heard from Alphys in days. He should probably call her... but he had so little energy... and he was worried she would only tell him things had gotten worse.

Mettaton stared dully up at his one remaining employee. The cat's uniform hung loosely off of him and was dirty and matted, as was his dull orange fur. There were bags under his bloodshot eyes, and he wasn't even pretending to act civil around his boss anymore. Now, he was just staring at Mettaton resentfully, waiting for him to get up and go talk to the alley girl.

Mettaton had also recently noticed a strange twitching in Burgerpants' right eye. The cat had run out of cigarettes over a week ago, even after attempting to ration the ones he had. Burgerpants was starting to rub and scratch at his eyes, probably in an attempt to cope with the withdrawal. As much as Mettaton hated Burgerpants' smoking habit, especially while he was on the job, he couldn't help but feel the slightest amount of pity for him. That pity, however, was mostly overshadowed by the ever-waning thread of patience that grew ever thinner, only getting closer to snapping every extra day they were trapped in the resort.

"Okay. Fine. I'm going." Mettaton hauled himself to his feet, trying not to wince as a stomach cramp immediately made its presence known. Much more important than cigarettes, they'd finally run out of food a couple of days ago. Mettaton knew they had nothing to complain about in comparison to most of the other monsters in the Underground, some of whom had probably gone without enough food for weeks by now... but it was hard to keep that in mind when his empty stomach gnawed at him so incessantly.

"Where is she?"

Burgerpants followed Mettaton as they left the office and walked down the back hallway to the door leading to the main part of the resort. "Just out in the lobby," he responded gruffly.

The clacking of his heels, once a perfectly polished hot pink but now starting to rust due to lack of maintenance, echoed eerily throughout the dark and empty building. The CORE hadn't been checked on by Alphys for a while now, and the lights around the resort and the rest of the Underground grew ever dimmer as the monsters' one source of energy started to fail them.