The randomness of the thought caught him off-guard. Johnny chuckled, and as if the floodgates had released, his laughter only grew louder and deeper, all joy gradually morphing into bitterness. He slammed his fist into the table, and the cereal bowl toppled to its side, spilling milk onto a glistening linoleum floor.

"Where is my pancake mix, mom?!" he cried, tears streaming down his cheeks. "My damn pancake mix!"

"In your mouth, you useless, no good idiot! You are eating the pancake. No. You are the pancake, you buffoon!" she shouted in all her pancake-y glory.

His sobbing countenance became an indignant scowl. He locked eyes with his mother. "I trusted you, you bimbo. I put pancake mix on the shopping list, and you stabbed me in the back!"

"It was for your own good. You had gone too deep,” she said in a pained voice, letting out a tired sigh. “I could not let you turn out like your father."

Unable to hear her lies anymore, Johnny flipped over the table and jabbed an outstretched finger into her collarbone. "I won't repeat myself, woman. I want my chicken tendies now. Now!"

"If you wish to defy me, then you first need to defeat me."

Fire of the hottest chicken tendies raged around her in an inferno of spice. Tormented souls—begging for just one lick of the delicious tendies they could never reach—floated through the arena. A terrifying aura of death spread around Mom-Boss as she took her ultimate form.

The scouter shattered at the sight of his mother attaining her ultimate form, and terror slithered down Johnny's spine, making him reflexively take a step back. He could not defeat a sow who had been cultivating for a generation longer than him! He couldn't do this alone. He needed help. His hands raised into the air, and a pleading whimper escaped through his gritting teeth. "PEOPLE OF THE WORLD, LEND ME YOUR STRENGTH."

The energy ball upon his palms grew larger.

"YOU DARE RISE AGAINST ME," the now half chicken-half human mother roared, her scream an explosion of power. Tendies rose from the ground, crawling from their graves of deliciousness. "FIGHT WHAT YOU WANTED TO SAVE ALL ALONG," Mom-Boss screamed as tendie missiles launched themselves towards her son.

Tendie after Tendie pummeled into Johnny's chest. Each one pushed the air from his lungs and gushed blood from his throat. He couldn't keep taking this much damage! Johnny rushed away from the kitchen, dodging tendies as he ran. Just a few steps more! Just a little further until he reached his mech!

"I won't LET YOU!" the mom boss screamed and with a wave of her hand the house shifted.

Walls shifted and crossed to turn what was once his home into a giant tendie statue of modern art. At the top lay his destination.

The kitchen.

Dread coursed through Johnny's vasculature as his goal retreated further from him. He would die. He really would die. Why didn't he practice more before engaging in mortal combat with that sluggish sow! Taking a deep breath, he refocused on his goal. Right now, regret didn’t help. Only survival mattered. With nimble footsteps, he darted up protrusions within the modern art Tendie museum, swiftly rushing towards the kitchen at the top.

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"It WoN'T bE ThAT eASy," his mother chuckled. She mutated into a hideous monster that went by the name of corporate fast food capitalists.

Loans and debts imprinted themselves on his forehead. Each bill, each dollar, and each cent that Johnny had spent on soggy poorly made tendies, yet still he wasn't satisfied. Each time he looked into the mirror thinking that he would eat healthier, that he would work out better, but the tendies, the poor disastrous excuse of a tendie had captured him by the scruff of his neck and dragged him down.

Tendie bombers exploded into delicious chickeny bits all around him, tempting him. Tendie troopers launched barbeque sauce guns at him.

Johnny's hand slipped, and he lost his balance.

With tendie bombers and tendie troopers launching a delicious condiment assault from all sides, and him falling to his doom, Johnny was trapped.

But then he remembered.

His secret weapon.

His tiny baby arm reached into his bib and pressed the secret mech recall button that was foreshadowed several chapters ago, so this definitely wasn’t a deus ex machina. "YOUR DAYS ARE NUMBERED, SLUGGISH SOW!!!”

"Y-you wouldn't," Mom-boss's voice quavered.

She trembled as she stood against her own flesh and blood. The child she had raised by her hands, and although he had grown up to be a waste of time, space, and energy, she could not help but love him. Such was the curse of motherhood. Time seemed to freeze as they faced each other.

The mech flung from the kitchen atop the tendie art museum of doom, and Johnny maneuvered into the cockpit during his freefall. He grabbed the console and aimed his 34mm gauss machine cannons at his mother. "Sorry, mother. But I'm the MC in this fiction, so I always win."

"I see… I always knew, somehow, that this day would come. I would fail to stop you," her voice trembled, heavy with emotion as she shrunk back into her frail human form. She looked down, as if unable to face her child anymore. "Do what you must, my son. I won’t stop you anymore. Take your tendies. You are free to live your life as you please."

Although Johnny felt regret as his finger reached for the firing console, he knew what he was about to do had to be done. If someone would bear the burden of destroying his mother, it had to be him. "So long, mother. And thank you for all the tendies."

The barrels of the gauss machine cannons ramped up, rotating swifter and growing hotter, launching an endless barrage of frag grenades at the mother that was once loved but no longer.

She collapsed, demonic tendies falling all around her.

A hollow emptiness took over Johnny. He jumped out of the mech, and the machine collapsed into pieces behind him.

Johnny made his way up the treacherous tendie mountain—to the top of the kitchen. There, in the refrigerator, rested a plate of what he had been looking for. What he had fought his mother for. He warmed the tendies in the microwave. Each second he waited for them to be ready was agony.

Ding!

The sound of the heavens themselves sounded out.

His hand thrust open the door of the microwave. He examined the tendies in all of their golden marveoulessness, embraced their perfection, and with a deep breath, he took a bite.

Rich juices flowed onto his tongue, and his eyelids dropped in a fit of ecstasy.

Then he remembered.

Although the tendie was sweet and delicious and had a lovely coated batter shell, Johnny could hardly enjoy its taste as a single tear raced down his cheek. We all had decisions to make.

This decision...

It was one he would forever regret.