Outside, Bat Granny was feeding Stronger briquettes through the hole in the wall. Strong was hoisting the anvil-contraption off the cart, and setting it down. Meanwhile Doublestash was banging on the doors of the van, and waved Serverboy and Berry over. “They’re going to do the thing,” thought Jonas, having mulled over Doublestash’s data he had pulled from the ADM database.
Berry, Serverboy, and Doublestash pulled out a strength of test machine from under the van. With heavy grunts, they stood the beast up. It was the kind of machine they use at fairs, festivals, and the like. A red and yellow, tall structure, numbered 1 through 10. At the top was the face of a dragon. It had a hand to measure the impact, and a puck to hit it. Doublestash breezily took it on his shoulder and carried it somewhere.
Stronger carried the briquettes over to the anvil-contraption, and put them in the hole carved out inside of it. “Hey!” yelled Granny. Stronger ran back to the hole in the wall and received a can of lighter fluid. Then he lobbed it over to Strong, who poured it over the briquettes. He took out a lighter from his pocket and set fire to it. Strong hoisted the block of steel and set it on the anvil. Then Strong and Stronger pulled out two large hammers from underneath the van and stood on each side of the anvil. They started pounding the block of steel, grunting with every strike. They whittled it down to something smaller and shapelier, and then Stronger drove a hole into one of its vertical sides.
“All right, boys, ready?!” yelled Doublestash.
“Ready when you are!”
He nodded. He pulled out a large wooden beam from underneath the van, and positioned himself like a pole vaulter. Strong and Stronger pressed their hammers against the hunk of steel from the opposing side, putting their body weight into it. The steel was still red, steaming from heat. Their hammers sizzled as they made contact with it. Berry watched on. Doublestash drew a deep breath, tipped back, then charged ahead with a battle cry, holding the heavy beam in front of him as if it were a spear.
The brothers made a serious face, leaning into the oncoming freight train. Doublestash finally rammed the beam into the hole, and the pain from the rebound caused him to collapse in a scream. The brothers fell similarly on the other side. The hunk sizzled harshly at the violent contact.
Berry marveled at the thing... “He’s never used it before ... he said he would only use it when, in his own words, ‘all else falters...’ The Hammer of Earthquakes...”
There was still a crowd of onlookers outside, with some ADM staff keeping order. “Yo, we’re doing it,” warned Serverboy through his earpiece. “Create distance.”
“W-wait,” a staffer responded, “aren’t we supposed to evac the whole place first?!”
“I thought we had more time, but I’ve picked up a steady increase in frequency... In other words, Jonas is ramping up the information overload ... making everything louder and more confusing... If we stay here any longer, our brains will fry... Actually, it’s like he’s boiling us alive, slowly... Besides, the UFOs seem to be multiplying every few hours around the city, and we don’t want to idle.”
“Got it,” a staffer said outside. “Alright everyone, file into the ADM vans you see around you, children and women first!”
“Why?!”
“This thing’s coming down! Come on, hurry!”
“Eh?!” the crowd went. Plum looked on nervously.
“You okay, Plum?” Serverboy asked him.
“Ah? Yeah, but...”
“We’ll be fine... Get Granny and help with the evacuation...”
Plum paused. “Sure,” he said, smiling.
There was an awkward silence. Serverboy looked like he wanted to say something badly, but couldn’t. Finally, he said, “Your sister’s beautiful...”
“Wha—”
Serverboy shut the earpiece off, and cringed.
“They’re really gonna do it!” cried Jonas. Serge Doublestash is a natural delinquent... Well, a former delinquent... Of course, all delinquent hunters were once delinquents themselves, even the serge... And since all delinquents have an ability, he does too... His ability is to start a local earthquake whose magnitude corresponds to the score he reaches on the strength machine... The scores on the machine are equivalent to the scores on the Richter scale, ranging from 1.0 all the way up to 9.9... But there is a drawback, as with all natural abilities... An Achilles heel, which plagues all naturals... In this case, it’s the circumference of the propagation of seismic waves... To put it simply, the higher the score, the farther away the earthquake will move from the epicenter... The score in this case measures that distance in miles... In other words, if he doesn’t want to kill all the fine folk standing around the dome, his squad members, himself, and cause hundreds of millions in property damage and lawsuits, he must tread lightly... But also, he must strike hard enough to collapse the dome... Otherwise... The information overload will certainly cook their brains... And my plan to destroy the internet, on which modern technology depends, and, by consequence, to destroy all of modern society ... will go unperturbed... Like everything in life, there is a fine line to strike ... between perfection and success. The mediocrity of all things ... in this, or so I believe, lies life itself.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
He watched Squad Doublestash on the screen.
“Come on, Serge!” “Lift, lift!” Now all charges were hyping Doublestash. He spat into his palms and rubbed them. He seized the handle and began grunting, screaming, convulsing. His veins bulged out, and he went red in the face. “No way...” said Jonas. But slowly the Hammer of Earthquakes began to rise, and Doublestash hoisted it over his shoulder. You could hear his collar bone cracking. He let out an awful cry, but his charges egged him on. “Ho-hum, ho-hum!”
“Hurry it up, you stupid old man!” yelled Serverboy.
“I’ll ... get ... you!” Doublestash croaked, between grunts.
“Yeah, yeah, Sisyphus, but first, move the damn thing over there,” he said, and pointed at the strength machine, which was set in the center of the dome.
We had no choice but to erect it in the center, so that the we’re covering an even area across the perimeter... He began stomping ahead. Even though Jonas stole all of our data, or, rather, it leaked by oversight, I was wise enough to not disclose all my abilities... A pang of pain seemed to have struck his head, as he whimpered and scrunched his face. A thousand sheep’s tits, I can hardly think... Anyway, I’m nearly there... When I finally make it, I will swing this thing as hard as I can ... of this everybody is certain... But what they don’t know, what Jonas doesn’t know, is that I can convert distance into magnitude... In other words, I can control how far I want the earthquake to travel from the epicenter, the puck, by converting the distance it would normally travel back into magnitude... So if I hit 10, normally the earthquake would devastate a 10-mile radius around me... But if I want, I can take 9 miles, and make a magnitude 19 earthquake, which will only devastate a one-mile area... Needless to say, this would be hard to survive. But my squad is ready to sacrifice... We’ve gotta be useful, we’ve gotta escape this beehive and fight Jonas to the death, for causing all this trouble, for trapping us in here, but most importantly, for leaking my goddamn search history!! What will my momma think? I’m personally plying him OUT OF that UFO!
He roused himself up so much he picked up the pace brilliantly. Meanwhile Serverboy opened the side of the van, in the wall of which was a generator. He ran to the driver’s seat, confiscated a plug extender, plugged it into the generator, then ran backward while unwinding the cable, and, near to the machine, he reached the end. Now he squirmed to find the plug for the machine itself, but it was stuck under it! “Serge! Stop! Stop! It’s not plugged in yet!” He was jumping and waving at him, but he had gone berserk. “Wait! Wait!” He made like a traffic controller, but to no avail. Seeing this, Berry hurried over, and gestured at Serverboy to push the machine to tilt it and free the plug. He nodded. They started pushing it, with their palms out, then with their shoulders, then Serverboy with his back, but it didn’t budge. Serverboy lost purchase and kind of melted down onto his ass. He started wheezing like a puppy, then a shadow overcast him. “Huh?” It was Strong, with his grey muscle shirt and short hair. With a deadpan face, he pushed the machine with one hand, as if he was putting in no effort whatsoever, and the machine tilted obediently. “Ha ha,” whimpered Serverboy, scratching the side of his head. Berry took the plug and ran to connect it with the other plug, like the Creation of Adam. She succeeded. The machine’s interface flashed on, and it made a turn-on sound: tu-tu-tu-tututu! Though amidst all the insane noise, you could hardly hear it, unless you were really close.
It was done just in time for berserk-Doublestash, wielding his mighty hammer, to smash the shit out of the poor puck. Suddenly he came to his senses. He shook his head, blinked obliviously, then made a concentrated face. “Alright, everyone! This is about to get a hell of a lot uglier than it already is! And I’m not talking about Serverboy! So get to the van, and hide under it! NOW!” The others nodded. Strong took Serverboy and Berry on his back and ran for it. Stronger was already there, waving, “Hurry!” Strong helped the little ones fit under the van, then he himself went under, where Stronger was already waiting for them. “Alright!” yelled Stronger. “Don’t worry! We’ll protect you!” The muscle brothers huddled over Berry and Serverboy; Stronger over Berry, Strong over Serverboy.
“I don’t know if I like this,” said Serverboy.
“Do I seem to having a good time?” said Strong.
“I feel like,” said Berry, “I feel like something is amiss...”
“Maybe Mr. Meathead over here is excited to see you.” Strong smacked him over the head with a knuckle. “Ough.”
“Mr. Doublestash never disclosed to us the details of his power concerning the hammer... With all these civilians around, there is now way he’s about to unleash a giant earthquake on them... He’s hiding a trump card up his sleeve, and I think we’ll be the ones to pay the price...”
“Oh, hell nah,” said Serverboy, and started crawling out, but Stronger restricted him.
“Well, whatever it may be, we have only to trust our Serge,” said Stronger.
“I ain’t trusting shit!” said Serverboy, but nobody minded him.
“I guess you’re right...”
“OH-AH-OH-AH,” sang Doublestash, “GERONIMOOOOO!”
“There is now way! No way he’s killing all these people!” yelled Jonas. “The evacuation is not complete! They’re squarely in the way! They’re too close!” He pushed a button, the one connected to the dome, and yelled, “Stop it, stop it! Mayday, mayday! I’m sorry, okay? I don’t know how to let you out! I never thought that far! But still, don’t kill these people!”
“It’s too late, now!”
“AAAAAAH!”
Doublestash swung the hammer.
“AAAAH!”
“AAAAA!”
“AAAAAH!
“AAAAAAAA!”