It was the perfect romantic date, they even had the warm and relaxing flames of candles on their table. The only thing that was missing was a sweet lounge music being played throughout the whole restaurant. They even had the whole place just for themselves, it was a bit eerie at first but it eventually grew on them, although it still wouldn't have hurt to have some more voices and clinking dishes around.

For a while, they simply ate their food, taking some adorably awkward look at each other, smiling in a way that actually said more than words.

“This is actually pretty good!” He said after swallowing a quite large mouthful. Perhaps even too large, but he felt both wonderfully delighted and horribly intimidated by the girl on the other side, who just smiled from ear to ear without talking, but for him it was enough. She was truly a wonder to look at, he didn’t even need to touch her olive skin and her long black hair to feel how soft they were.

Of course she felt exactly the same about him. He didn’t look too “masculine”, he had a very smooth and delicate skin himself and long blonde hair that shone like sunrays, and the light emanated by those little sunbeams and by his presence in general pretty much blinded the girl. He actually reminded her of those pretty boys from Japanese animation.

She finally spoke, struggling a bit to find a point where to start a conversation: “So… I think you previously said you used to be a 'brony', right?”

He chuckled and blushed a little bit. “Yeah, when I saw that abandoned toy I couldn't help remembering the days when I used to love My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic… to be fair though, if I had a past as a drug abuser I'd be much prouder!”

She laughed with a mix of surprise and genuine amusement. “Oh, come on, you really regret it that much? Well the series eventually disappointed me too, but not to the point of making me ashamed of having been a brony or pegasister or whatever the hell they said about female fans!”

“But all that redeeming villains bullshit… seriously, who in his right mind would ever write that, even for little children? I mean, you can’t make a child think that the power of friendship can overcome everything, especially with all those things that were going on in our world and all those people showing that many humans are simply beyond redemption! And just a little time after that horrible terrorist attack at the Vatican, this cartoon that has such a huge fanbase of both children and adults even resurrects an evil tyrant such as King Sombra so they can even turn HIM into a good guy with some Pollyanna crap! I mean… good lord!”

“Wow, I didn’t think you could get so passionate about this… either way, sorry but I don’t really know much about what happened after the death of Sombra, that was what drove me away from the fandom.”

“Huh? Why?”

“That was too dark! Yeah OK, maybe they overdid it with the redemptions but… actually killing a bad guy? Don’t you think that was going a bit too far?”

He just stared blankly at her for a few moments, sometimes blinking in an unnatural way. “Well… then how about most of the villains from Disney movies? They got killed too…”

“Yes, but My Little Pony is supposed to be even cuter and more innocent… besides, to be fair I would also have preferred Disney villains to turn good, for example maybe even Maleficent wasn’t beyond redemption after all, I think I may have been the only one who actually loved that movie with Angelina Jolie…”

“Wait wait wait… forget it, let’s just change the topic, OK? I don’t like talking about this.”

“Why not? Let me just try to prove my point another way: you told me you also used to like Doctor Who, didn’t you?”

“Yes, why? Are you a ‘whovian’?”

“Well, I was. I loved the tenth doctor…” She giggled with a hint of embarrassment “David Tennant was such a hottie! But after his regeneration, they chose these actors that just couldn’t compete with Dave’s handsomeness… so yeah, I lost interest”

His face became almost unexpressive, because he just didn’t know what emotion he had to choose… was she just being silly? She had to!

“Okay… I personally hated the Tenth Doctor’s stories because most of them were corny and preachy. And I stopped giving a shit about Doctor Who altogether after I saw that bullshit episode ‘The Zygon Inversion’. But back on topic, you wanted to talk about Doctor Who in order to defend your point, didn’t you?”

This time she stared at him awkwardly. “Oh… ironically, ‘The Zygon Inversion’ was not only the episode I was going to talk about, but also the only episode from the Twelfth doctor era I actually liked!”

“Oh? Well what’s even ironic is that idiotic episode made me realize that I was fucking done with Doctor Who, just when Twelve was becoming my favorite doctor of all time! I wanted to strangle him when he simply forgave a murderous sociopath like Bonnie, and all the shit he had been through because of the Time War was no excuse!”

“But that led to peace, and it saved countless lives! Why are you so much against forgiveness? It makes people let go and avoid unnecessary violence…”

“Oh yeah?!”

It was like a button had been pushed to change the scene drastically. Now he was almost standing rather than sitting, looking down at her like an angry cat who’s about to pounce on a mouse that is not only going to be his dinner but has also bothered him greatly thus far, and indeed she kind of looked like a prey that was about to get viciously mauled for a few seconds, covering her face like something was about to dash towards her and hit her.

“Would you have said the same about people such as the ISIS or the Trump supporters? You know, those people who completely ruined anything good that was left to us? Would you have just forgiven them despite their ignorance and fanaticism that lead to the biggest bloodshed of history?”

After he was done talking, the flame inside of him still didn’t give any sign of being about to die out. On the other hand, she was regaining her composure and was ready to answer and hopefully avoid the whole thing being ruined.

“Well, to be fair it was the ISIS who should have learned to forgive and let go of whatever we did to them… either way, that’s not a very good example, they were Muslims, so they weren’t even worthy of being called humans. Yeah I know, the Zygons were literally inhuman but at least that was science-fiction, so I think yours is not a very good example. As for the Trump sup-”

“Hold on a minute! Not worthy of being called humans because they were Muslims? Do you realize what horrid and heinous things you’re saying? Yeah I hated the ISIS, but because they were murderous terrorists, not because they were Muslims! Anyone with a brain would figure out that not all Muslims are terrorists!”

“But wait… you said you’re a Christian, right?”

The rage on his face melted like ice in the sun. “Yes… faith is pretty much the only thing that keeps me alive. After all these horrible recent events I came very close to lose that as well, but I did my best to hold on, it would have been like turning off the life support of a comatose…” He gave her a stern look again “Why? What does that have to do with what we were saying?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Those Muslims kept refusing to become followers of Jesus and accept his salvation, how can you call such people human beings?”

He stood still like a statue for a while, then he left out a long sigh while he massaged his temples. “Seriously… I’m just speechless. I thought you were much better than this. You even said you hated Donald Trump, but now you give me these ignorant speeches that really sound like his average voter!”

“Well, ‘hated’ is a bit much, I just didn’t like him very much, he had such horrible tastes in fashion, and that hairdo… no wonder he was such a popular punchline for jokes about bad hair. But as a politician, I actually had great respect for him, it’s too bad he was unable to really accomplish what he want-”

She couldn’t finish her sentence. The dish flying away from the table and violently hitting the ground made an abrupt, loud and startling noise followed by a chilling silence, and what was left of his food was scattered on the floor, never to be eaten by anyone, not even mice or ants.

After standing up, pacing crazily and panting several times like he had run in the marathon, he grabbed his own hair like he wanted to rip them all off and said with a mix of anger and despair: “I… I can’t believe it! I thought I had finally found a silver lining after all this shit… and… THIS is what I get?! Just the latest reminder that human evolution goes backwards! I… this can’t be real… what in the name of God did I ever do to deserve this?”

She finally woke up from her shock and started to sob softly. “You know what? I don’t deserve this either! I made this food for you with the few ingredients I could find and this is how you repay me? You ungrateful jerk… I would expect at least an apology, but since you’re being so mean I bet you won’t even give me that!”

“Apology?! Hah! You should apologize to me and to all the innocent people who died because of disgusting parasites such as you! Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go out and do something more important than hearing your bullshit, like finding the right way to kill myself! Goodbye bitch, and remember to put your delicious tears in a bottle so I can drink them all!”

As soon as he finished his nasty comment, he kicked a chair violently and stomped out of the restaurant, while she just kept weeping and drowning what was left of her food in tears.

It was horribly hot outside, just like it always was lately. Dust flew from every corner, most of the buildings (other than the miraculously intact restaurant) could crumble down any second and there was always a big risk of running across a feral mutant. A perfect reflection of how horrible he felt on the inside.

He just walked away gloomily, hands in his pockets, not paying as much attention to his surroundings as he probably had to, but he just didn’t care anymore. He even inhaled the radioactive air deeply, hoping that his lungs weren’t entirely mutated.

Then, something caught his attention: there was a wall at his left, a piece of some destroyed building that was actually in pretty good conditions; attached on it there was a very old poster that somehow survived many calamities, it was for a meeting of the Westboro Baptist Church with the topic being “the immorality of gayness”.

He screamed like he wanted his guts to come out of his guts and angrily punched the wall, creating a large hole with the force of his mutated muscles.

He panted heavily and calmed down little by little, then he hissed spitefully to no one at all: “Seriously… why bother?"

He spat at the remains of the wall and resumed his melancholic walk, mulling over the idea of letting a mutant spider bite him.