This moment gave Erby just enough time to lift their collective forepaws and kick the man into the nearby wall.
With a thud, he impacted, kicking up dust.
He groaned in pain. "Little bitches! I am going to fucking spay you."
"You are vastly overestimating your ability to turn this around!" Cerby shouted."
"Oh. Am I?"
The cerberus-taur turned around to see another one of their kind approaching. It seemed like the collar had worked.
Six lifeless eyes turned back on them.
A shiver ran down their collective, mildly fork-shaped spine.
"Shall I deal with them, master?" IT replied from three mouths at once, for there was nothing left behind those eyes that could be considered a person.
"Do I really have to tell you that? Of course!"
In the deep dark of the cellar, the two taurs faced off with each other.
Bug watched as the slave-taur jumped forward, landing on his new friend's back, pushing them onto their side and revealing their weaker underbelly.
Fortunately for the free-taur, they managed to kick the slave off of them before standing back up again.
Bug watched the scene unfold with trepidation. While his new friends were doing well, they were smaller and less muscular than the other taur. They wouldn't win a battle of attrition. He was too small to amount to anything in a proper fight.
Wait.
Trying to not get blown out of the air, Bug approached the hostile taur, only to be struck by a claw and sent into the ceiling.
Shaking his head as the taurs kicked up dust, he had an idea. A possibly suicidal idea, but an idea no less.
Spreading his wings, he let go of the ceiling and raced for the collar.
"What are you doing?!"Shouted the black-haired guy.
Remaining unnoticed by the taurs he he snatched onto the collar.
Screws, screws. Are there any screws?
As the taurs continued fighting they started to break every single machine in the room in the crossfire. A computer was kicked off of a table.
"My programs! NOOOO!" Shouted the punk.
"There!"
Using his claws as a screwdriver, Bug undid a small hatch on the collar and revealed its power source...
...a simple, store-bought battery.
He didn't have the force to pull it out, but then an idea came to him. A pressure build up behind his trunk, and soon the battery housing was filled up with a viscous fluid.
The lights on the collar turned off, and the slave-taurs eyes shut as it fell into a coma, Bug barely managing to jump off in time.
Erby grinned. "Looks like we won after all."
The punk was fuming.
"You little shits! Why did you have to ruin everything? I was going to create a better world with hot monsters to cater to my every desire!"
"Well, that plan ends here!" Proclaimed Erus. "For the record, I am fine with the hot monster thing, but slavery is where I draw the line."
Cerby began talking. "Yes, we won't- ahhh...ahhhh-"
Bug buzzed off by a couple of meters as all the dust finally became too much for the taur to bear.
"-CHOOOOOO" They all sounded at once, hitting the dude full with the virus.
Everyone in the room remained still for a moment.
"... What happens now?"Asked Bug.
"I.. don't know." Admitted the hacker in a rare moment of lucidity..
The man slowly lifted a hand to see it now covered in black scales. "Fuck."
With a sudden crack, his body started reshaping, his lower body remolding as two additional legs pressed out along with a long reptilian tail.
The hacker's feet grew wicked claws as his skin became totally covered in dark scales. His face grew out into a draconian maw with four purple eyes and eight, curled horns.
As he roared in pain, he grew in length, the tail thickening till it became a proper taur body.
The cerberus and fly stepped away from the man, giving each other concerned looks.
And so the man's exhausting transformation into a dragon-taur ended, his body more reminding one of more eastern, noddle-shaped depictions of dragons.
"You...haven't seen the last of Hades!"
They ran after him as he ascended the stairs, the taur tripping multiple times.
Even though he lacked wings, the dragon-taur somehow ascended into the sky upon jumping out of the smashed up window.
"I will be back! It may take days. It may take months or even years, but I will fulfil my dreams somehow!"
He took off into the sky bullet-fast, leaving the range of Bug and the taur's detection abilities.
The taur slumped down in defeat.
"I guess we destroyed his equipment, at least. It may take him some time to return...if at all." Bug tried to reassure them that they did a good job.
Brushing themselves off, the other cerberus-taur came up the stairs.
She introduced herself as Van, and as it seemed, while the mind-control was undone, the melding of the three minds wasn't undoable.
Cerby pointed her towards where the other two taurs from earlier likely still were.
"Now we just have to make sure the virus doesn't spread. Does it just disappear after the immune system is done with it or..."
"Actually..." Began Erus. "...I don't feel sick anymore."
After some deliberation from all three of the girls, it appeared like their sickness was gone entirely, even if what it caused remained. Their noses weren't that sensitive anymore.
"Did that last sneeze just eliminate the virus from your system somehow?" Asked Bug.
"Seems so." Erus responded.
They returned to the diner from earlier and sat down for a moment to relax and recover.