Charon served Crown Vic faithfully for many years. Vic was especially interested when he noticed that, despite the fact that the slave-owner was starting to show his age through the decades, the ghoul looked exactly as he did the day he was brought into Paradise Falls. This meant that, even as his own strength and vitality waned, he could still use Charon to do whatever he needed. In many ways, he became even worse than he did as a younger man, forcing his ghoul bodyguard to perform heinous actions that he would have normally just done himself, if he had the bones for it.

Charon barely spoke anymore. His only dialogue between Master Vic was Vic giving an order, and him saying, without fail, "Yes, sir." and then turning to leave. He never talked to anyone else. He at least would used to say things like he was busy at the moment and could not talk if someone bothered him, but now lately he either grunts or just ignores them completely. Any time he would pass by the pens, the slaves would run and cower at the far end of the cage. It happened so much now that he just stopped noticing it.

Crown Vic had long ago abandoned disguising the fact that he was personally ordering Charon to do his wet work for him. Now, a row of skulls of people that the ghoul had killed was proudly on display right at the entryway to the compound, Reese and Helike among them, along with slavers that Vic had felt were falling out of his good graces, such as the elephantine skull of Warrant at the far left. Whenever Charon passed the row on his patrols, he would wordlessly kick past them.

"Hey, Zombie." Charon heard someone call behind him. He did not turn around. A lot of the newer slavers treated Charon only slightly better than the average slave, knowing only that he was under Vic's command and thus would not randomly attack them. Of course, they didn't know that, with their lifestyle, under Crown's thumb, the very same "Zombie" had a high chance of being the direct cause of their death, a fact that most of the senior slavers respected well enough.

A young, fresh-faced lad, ready to morally bankrupt his soul in his new career, walked out in front of the ghoul.

"Didn't you hear me, retard?"

Charon simply stared past him, watching the door.

"Vic says he wants to see you right away." The young man continued after a silence, somewhat disappointed that the bodyguard hadn't reacted to his taunts. As ghouls became more and more commonplace in the Wastes as time went by, common insults like "zombie" and the like tended to get thrown around, either as derogatory epithets, or just to annoy them. Charon did not care either way.

"Master Vic can come to me himself." He said finally.

"He can't, asshole. He's in a meeting with a client. Here, he gave me this note to prove that it's from him." He shoved a crumpled up piece of old, yellowed paper under the ghoul's (lack-of) nose. As usual with any time Crown sent a courier with a note for him, Charon did not care what the contents said, just that the signature was indeed Vic's. He grunted as he confirmed the origin of the letter and turned, marching off back to Vic's quarters.

As Charon walked through the door, he heard Vic's voice, strained and cracking with age.

"Ah, here he is, now! Best bodyguard in all the Wastes!" He smiled, his grin somewhat less impressive than his halcyon days when he possessed all of his teeth. The man that was at Crown's side looked Charon over quickly, his face painted with an expression of surprised disgust. He turned to Vic and tried to whisper something into his ear, however he was the type who just couldn't seem to correctly control the volume of his voice, so his words were easy to listen to.

"You didn't say he was a ghoul!" The man complained.

"And what of it? So maybe his skin looks like someone took a potato peeler to him, he's still the most efficient damn killing machine this side of a sentry bot."

The man rubbed his chin in deep contemplation. While Charon was stone-faced and taciturn, he was counting all the ways the man was an asshole.

"It's not like you have to live with him." Vic said after a silence, the man still trying to make up his mind. "After you get to where you're going, just sell off his contract again." That Vic, always coming up with those solutions that made everybody happy.

"Yeah...Yeah, okay, I guess you're right. I'll take him." The man finally relented.

"Wonderful. Charon, meet your new master; Harrison." The man gave an awkward wave.

"Master Vic, I have been under your service for decades, now. I cannot simply follow another man." Charon found himself going to a place beyond consciousness in these times, when he would just parrot something that a normal slave would say without thinking about it.

"Ah, but you can, my friend. Here, this my look familiar to you." Vic reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a scroll. He unrolled it, letting both Charon and Harrison look at it: "CHARON'S CONTRACT" it announced in bold letters. In all honesty, the ghoul had completely forgotten about its existence. "This has been the concrete bond between us, Charon. And now, I'm passing it onto Harrison. Treat him well as you have treated me." Vic smiled again as he handed the parchment to the slave-buyer, who rolled it back up and set it between his waist and his belt.

"So I am no longer honor-bound to serve you?" Charon asked, his eyes darting between Vic and Harrison.

"That's right, my boy. Bon voyage!"

Charon looked at Crown Vic hard. This withered old man. This evil little hunchback. Fifty years of service, fifty years of buying, selling, and killing every race and creed, and he was still smiling. That same smile that Charon had seen on his first day in the pens. That same smile when he was getting lashed by rods. That same smile when he cast a knowing glance from the doorway, completely assured that Charon would turn around and kill his adoptive father.

Charon looked at Crown Vic hard, and felt nothing.

"Very well then. I shall follow Master Harrison as far as he deigns to take me." He turned and followed the man out the door, and out of Paradise Falls. He learned some years later that Crown had died peacefully in his sleep.

The man and his ghoul came into the Wastes, where a brahmin toting several packages strapped to its back was waiting.

"Listen..." Harrison said as he checked to make sure all of his inventory was still on the mutated cow's back. "I don't want you to think I'm a bad person. I...I don't really condone slavery, really." He glanced at Charon, who stood as still as a statue behind him. "It's just that, well, I'm a merchant, and I'm trying to travel all the way across the state, and who knows what kind of people and other stuff is waiting out there, you know? I already got attacked once, see?" He lifted up his shirt, showing the fresh cut on his side that looked like it was from a glancing knife slash. "I wasn't looking for a slave, just a bodyguard..."

Charon continued staring at him, his expression wooden.

"Uh, okay...Well, let's go." He coughed, turning around.

"As you wish." Charon responded, which caused the merchant to jump slightly. He grabbed the hanging reins on the brahmin's neck and began walking, pulling it along with him. Charon followed several steps behind.

Charon had not left Paradise Falls for some fifty years, but the Wasteland was exactly as he remembered it. Empty, brown, puddles of discolored water everywhere. The complete starkness of it all made it easy for him to hear the sound of approaching feet, and was surprised to see that Harrison had apparently not detected it.

"Look out." Is all he offered as he turned, pulling his shotgun out into his hands. Harrison gave a half-hearted "Huh?" as he looked Charon's way, the ghoul already having the mole rat in his sights.

"Come on, you bastard!" He yelled somewhat uncharacteristically, pumping a shot off into the mole rat's face. It was too far away, though, the pellets of buck shot only acting as an irritant as it drew near. "Yeah! Yeah!" His next shot took out the rat's left foreleg, causing it to tumble before regaining its balance. Charon ran to it, unleashing more and more rounds into its body. It was at times like these, he would realize, that he only ever let his real emotions out, anymore. Killing something that truly deserved to be killed was a good outlet for all the rage, and anger, and depression that welled up in him over the years that he simply never showed. The ghoul continued firing into the mole rat well after it was dead, it's head eventually exploding in a shower of gore that covered his armor.

"Hey! Hey! Jesus, it's dead!" Charon finally perceived Harrison shouting at him. The bodyguard stopped immediately, slipping his shotgun into the holster on the back of his armor. He returned to Harrison's side soon after. "Damn, man, it was just a mole rat." The merchant observed, surprised at his bodyguard's brutality. "You didn't have to flip out."

Charon grunted.

Their journey continued well into the night, when Harrison decided that it was too dark to continue. He set up a little camp, offering Charon a blanket to sleep with, which the ghoul denied. He didn't sleep much anymore. Harrison found that he wasn't getting much slumber either, however, as his bodyguard deigned to chase down every bloat fly, mole rat, or vicious dog that wandered into a twenty yard radius around them, yelling in fury and ecstasy, muzzle flashes lighting up the black sky like fireworks.

"Seriously, Charon, you don't have to go and kill every little thing you see." Harrison remarked the morning after. "I can't sleep with you murdering everything every five minutes."

"I am only keeping your safety in mind." Charon lied. This newfound masturbatory technique was simply too good for him to pass up.

"Whatever..." Harrison relented. "Just do it more quietly, okay?"

"As you wish."

The duo reached their destination in a few more days, a small settlement of people deeply in need of food and water, two products that Harrison was happy to provide. The very first good he sold, however, was the very contract binding Charon to his service. The man who bought it had received it for a hefty price, and when he was out of earshot of the merchant, he turned to the ghoul, the first words he ever spoke to him being,

"Kill that merchant, and get my caps back." An order Charon obeyed without protest.

That was the only two types of people that Charon ever worked for: Those who needed bodyguards because they were too weak to survive on their own, or those who needed murderers because they were too afraid of getting their hands dirty. There was no in between. The ghoul wondered if those were exclusively the only two types of people in the entire Wasteland, for as a century of his life slowly turned, and he was passed around like shots of booze from person to person thanks to their greed or their comparatively short life span, they were the only types he ever seemed to encounter.

Ahzrukhal was different, though. To Charon, he was more despicable than any other, but not because he was a particularly amoral being. No, in fact, Charon barely ever had to kill anything while under his service, mostly having to just throw miscreants out of Ahzrukhal's bar, The Ninth Circle.

Charon came into Ahzrukhal's service when one of his many human masters had unwittingly treaded too close to the Museum of History, a building that, for all intents and purposes, seemed bombed out and abandoned, but which held the largest, semi-secret gathering of ghouls in the DC Wastes. Several ghoul radicals, seeing Charon working for a "smoothskin," as he learned they were called, were filled with "righteous rage", ambushing the poor fool from all sides and beating him to death. He was one of the ones that was too weak to survive on his own.

Charon would have killed them all, every assailant that had just murdered his master, and any other inside the building that was watching if he had to, but he couldn't. They were all ghouls. They were all deformed, all cursed to live for centuries, maybe millennia, looking the way they did.

They all reminded him of Helike.

Despite this, and their efforts to free him, he refused to move from his dead master's side. The ghoul radicals were all shocked and appalled when he informed them that he was honor-bound by contract to serve a worthless smoothskin, but nothing they did would move him, verbally or physically. And that's where Ahzrukhal came in. Using his smooth talking skills and considerable pull in the politics of Underworld, he convinced them to officially pass Charon's Contract onto him, so that he could give the wayward, confused ghoul a home and a purpose. Everyone agreed, and Charon had yet another new master.

He hated Ahzrukhal most of all. Even more than Crown Vic. Even more than the Brotherhood of Steel paladin Siegfried, who had bought his contract so he could lead the ghoul to a desolate location and "euthanize him" (as far as Charon was concerned, being attacked by his master rendered the contract void). And it wasn't because Ahzrukhal had attacked him, or had taunted him, or had forced him to do anything that he didn't want to do.

For one hundred years, Charon stood in the corner of The Ninth Circle, and watched the bar. Watched every ghoul, everyone that looked almost like the spitting image of Helike, stumble into a seat, and get served booze and chems until they passed out. Watched Ahzrukhal ruining the lives of these countless people, these countless Helikes, all with a smile on his face, the only ghoul in all of Underworld that did not, to him, resemble his martyred father in any possible way. He watched him, every day and night, and despised him.

Charon watched the odd sight, one day, of a smoothskin strutting into The Ninth Circle. The human walked up to the bar, initiating conversation with Ahzrukhal. Charon could not help but listen from his post. He heard the smoothskin guffaw.

"2,000 caps?! I don't have that kind of money!"

"Well, there are always alternatives..." Ahzrukhal leaned in to whisper into the smoothskin's ear.

"That's all I have to do, eh?" The human asked. "And then he's mine for free?"

"For free." Ahzrukhal assured.

"Heh, okay then. I'll go and take care of your little problem." The smoothskin stood up from the bar and walked determinedly out of The Ninth Circle. Charon remained silent, knowing full well of what was about to happen. Another complete bastard of a person was about to become his new master, someone with no qualms about playing with an ending the lives of fellow humans. Someone who would take full advantage of the fact that their new bodyguard would do whatever they commanded him.

And at the same time, Charon would also no longer be honor-bound to serve, or protect, Ahzrukhal.

For the first time in one hundred and eighty years, he felt a sliver of silver lining in the clouds.

End.