The Old Abandoned Duncan Factory

The Chosen Four heroes of Magicant have their mandate from Queen Mary; go and find five more bars of that strange melody! Too bad the Paradise Line’s train tracks to the next town are mysteriously blockaded by a random avalanche! And if that’s not bad enough, Lloyd also has a sudden bout of low self-esteem and decides, maybe he’s not all that useful to the mission, and maybe it’s for the best if he goes back to Podunk? 

Teddy, however, disagrees. Lloyd isn’t a weak fighter at all, he just needs to pack some heavier firepower, like maybe some sweet laser guns which are ripe for the taking at the recently shut-down Duncan factory! Before Ninten or Ana can say nay, Teddy grabs poor Lloyd by the wrist and together they go a-trespassin to the old abandoned factory… which maybe isn’t so abandoned after all!

Will Ninten muster up a force field as good as Ana’s? Will Lloyd’s snazzy new shooters be enough against scores of mass-produced robots as well as sinister Starmen and cackling tentacled Mooks? Will his penchant for Missile Command be enough for him to, well, command a missile? Find out on this week’s episode of… The Podcast Against Giygas! No crying until the ending.  

Transcript

Copy Transcript Copied

You’re listening to… The Podcast Against Giygas!

Episode seven: The Old Abandoned Duncan Factory

*

And so the Chosen Four heroes of Magicant found themselves back on planet earth, ready to properly begin their quest anew. Which would have been more than possible, if, after Ninten purchased four Paradise Line tickets with his father’s credit card, took his pre-attack medicine, and attempted to board the train to the next town over to wherever Queen Mary’s remaining melodies took them, there had not been an announcement that all outbound trains from Merrysville were cancelled until further notice. And further notice, of course, meant whenever and however on God’s green earth the understaffed Paradise Line personnel and what remaining few city employees of the ailing town of Merrysville were together going to remove the fifty-foot tall, two-hundred-foot-wide avalanche resting in between a valley that led out of Merrysville to the next stop on the line, and not to mention, right on top of that line’s tracks. 

There were many conflicting reports as to what caused the rocks to fall, the most unlikely being the testimony of a local farmer named Wally, who swore it was a small school of floating little hubcap-shaped spaceships that fired laser beams at the valley’s peaks and deliberately induced the rockfall. No matter who or what caused the disaster, its upshot remained the same: no trains were leaving the Merrysville Paradise Line in any direction except Podunk-bound. 

—Nuts. Well, let’s get a hotel room. Maybe they’ll clear it tomorrow, and ah… maybe they’ll honor the tickets I already bought…

As the four of them made their way out of the train station and back into the city, Lloyd suddenly hung back, looking to the ground and sighing. Ana was the first one to notice and stopped the others. 

—Lloyd? What’s the matter?

—Well, I’ve been thinking… for a while, since we left… um, well it’s like this. I think I should go back to Podunk. I get the feeling that… that I’m not particularly necessary for this mission.

Ana gasped, and the other two were surprised enough by this admission.

—No, Lloyd! Why on earth would you think something like that?

—Because it’s true! I’ve been constantly getting into one close call after another that you have to bail me out of. If I stay with you any longer I’ll just become a liability, again. So, I’ll use my ticket for the train going the other way, and leave you to it. It’s just better this way. 

Ana was horrified but at a loss for words to give Lloyd any comfort. Ninten was another story. Years after this whole journey, Ninten remembers, and still regrets to this day, that he was a hair’s width close to opening his mouth and telling his classmate and erstwhile friend that maybe he was right, maybe it was for the best, and to be careful on his way home. If anyone had given him a chance to get a word in edgewise, this is exactly what he would have said. 

But luckily, there was someone else in the group who, most unexpectedly, did not give him that chance. And it’s a good thing too, because if they all had just let Lloyd walk away, then neither Ninten, Ana, nor Teddy would have survived the entire ordeal, in fact, they would have perished at the exact same time. But that, of course, is a story for much later on. 

—No!

Ninten, Ana, and Lloyd all looked to Teddy.

—It ain’t right. We don’t kick a war buddy when they’re down, we pick them back up and keep on fighting. No man left behind, that’s the law of the land!

—But… but I can’t fight! I’m short, I’m scrawny, I’m weak! You could pick me up and swing me around like Ninten and his bat! And that’s just about the only way I’m fighting anyone! I just… I just don’t have any melanin. 

—Psh! You don’t need melanin. I don’t even know what melanin is and I’ve been in a million fights! Now let’s go over the facts of the case. Scrawny? No. Slender, yes. Weak? No! Minuscule? Yes. And short? No! You’re… 

Teddy regarded Lloyd from head to toe, and grimaced. 

—…well, you are short. But then, that means you’re agile. Hard to hit. You wouldn’t have been one of the three hundred gladiators up against the invading Arab hordes at the hot gates. You would’ve been an archer. Pulling shafts from a bow as long as you are, letting fly missiles of instant death. A hundred thousand armored knights charging on the fastest horses don’t stand a chance against you! And… a whole bunch of other guys like you, too, at the same time… 

—So what are you saying, we get Lloyd a longbow? 

—No, we get him something even better. How bout a laser gun? Something that never needs reloading, and never needs new batteries. And you know what’s even better than that? 

Teddy grinned and looked to the others down his red shades. 

—Two laser guns!

—But where would we ever get something like that?

—Easy. We go to where they’re just lying around, for free, for anyone with the guts to grab ‘em. We go get them at the same place my boys and I get them. You saw em, didn’t you, giving those coppers a hassle back there? 

Teddy turned away from the others in a dramatic pose and pointed off to the Merrysville skyline. 

—We go the factory. 

Lloyd’s beady eyes though his ultra-nearsighted glasses went as wide as they could.

—You don’t mean… the old abandoned Duncan factory?

—Well, no, actually I meant the other Duncan factory next door that’s still open and really busy and doing just fine makin a lot of stuff and HECK YEAH I MEAN THE OLD ABANDONED DUNCAN FACTORY!!

Teddy was becoming more animated in a way that was scary to the others. Ninten tried to step between him and Lloyd.

—Okay, guys. Let’s just… before we go off and trespass somewhere… 

But Teddy shrugged off Ninten and got into Lloyd’s face. 

—Well, what are you waitin for? You want a laser gun in each hand, don’t you?

—…I, I… laser guns do sound exciting, but…

—Then let’s blow up this popsicle stand, we’re burning daylight! 

Teddy grabbed Lloyd by the wrist and ran off literally dragging him behind deeper into Merrysville. Ninten and Ana had barely registered what had even happened and the next thing they knew Lloyd’s terrified screams and Teddy’s loud cheers grew faint in the horizon.

—What do we do now? That idiot’s gonna get him killed!

—Well… at least we know where they’re going. Hold on. I think I can track them.

By the time Ninten looked to Ana, she was already into it. Deep, silent breaths, eyes flat white, and a gentle ring that chimed in his head. A second later she opened her eyes.

—Follow me! 

She ran off toward Merrysville and Ninten did as she told him. Though he could have ran much faster than she was, he didn’t want to overtake her, not least of all because she was the one who knew where they were going. 

—So you really… read Lloyd’s mind just now?

—Yeah. He’s scared out of his gourd!

—Gee, what else is new. But how did you… I mean, we’re so far away from him. 

—I’m a pretty strong telepath, always have been. You know, you’re not so bad yourself. 

—Nah. I just ah… spoke to my dog a little bit, it’s no big deal.

—And you used it to find to Pippi back in Spookane. And what about the riddle, back in Magicant?

—What riddle?

—“Two alligators?” How did you ever come up with something like that, only for it to be right?

—I dunno… I wasn’t really trying to guess.

—You read their minds, sillygoose! And I bet if you keep practicing at it, you’ll get better and better.

—I don’t want to get better.

Ninten, bothered by the conversation, began to slow his gait, and Ana did as well to keep his pace.

—I don’t want to know what people are thinking. It’s gross to me. I mean, I wouldn’t want anyone doing that to me, so…

Ana frowned and folded her arms. 

—I’m not a monster, you know.

—Oh, I didn’t… I didn’t mean you, or anything-

—It’s not like I want to know the deepest darkest secrets of anyone either. I’m only following Lloyd’s shouts, I’m not trying to find out who he has a crush on. I only use it for emergencies. I only use it to help other people. 

—…understood. 

They picked up their pace again and kept moving.

*

The old Duncan factory loomed over the city grey, bleak, an old castle crumbling apart. The wide parking lots lashed with white rectangular lines had nary a car inside them. The smokestacks gave off no smoke. Not even birds approached the air around the place, let alone anyone with employable business to be there. On the outside, the factory was a beating heart of malaise, a weeping giant, radiating its glum energy and infecting the town entire with a pervading sense that this was the best it was going to get, nothing was ever going to get better, and, of course, things could always get worse. 

In fact, the only robust human life the place was to experience since its doors were permanently shuttered years ago was barreling down to its high fences, dragging a frantic Lloyd behind him by the hand. 

—This is it, kid! Hold on!

—You’re the one holding meeeeee!

—I’M JUMPIN IN!

Teddy skidded to a halt, bent his knees, and then, still holding Lloyd by the hand, jumped. 

To say he jumped, however, would be an understatement. He launched himself in the air like a space rocket, he leapt straight up to easily the third or fourth floor of a building, as an Olympic pole jumper would but with no recourse to a pole. The likes of Teddy’s midair leap would not even be fathomable to mere mankind until the advent of a popular video game character not to be dreamed up for at least another ten years, in a country much farther away from Eagleland. And poor Lloyd had no choice but to make that great leap forward with him. 

The two boys bounded the front gates and, once Teddy could tell he was about to land, he held Lloyd tight beside him. Teddy was big enough, and Lloyd was small enough, that if he wanted to he could have tucked him around his arms as if cradling a football, and he did almost exactly that. He landed on the pavement safely into a tuck and roll, and Lloyd rolled out from Teddy’s grip far less gracefully. Lloyd got to his feet and frantically looked himself over, dusting himself off. 

—That was… oh jeez… I think I cut myself on some barbed wire. I’ll probably get tetanus, about a thirty percent chance of-

—Can you walk? 

—…um, I suppose I can-

—Good! Then walk it off! 

Teddy let out another yell and ran straight to the front doors, which appeared to be chained and padlocked shut. He gave the doors a running spinning roundhouse jump kick and a loud kiai! The chain shattered into pieces, the doors swung open, and Teddy motioned for Lloyd to follow him while the latter waited a moment to pick his jaw up from the ground. 

While it took them a little more time to reach the same spot, due to the occasional stop to catch back some breath, or even an asthma bout that needed to be addressed, Ninten and Ana nonetheless made it to the old abandoned Duncan factory. There they found the same formidable front gates reinforced with padlocked-chains, the same concrete walls surrounding the place, the same barbed wire, rust-free and still razor-sharp after years of keeping guard on its ramparts.

Undaunted by any of this, Ana turned to Ninten with a warm smile and offered a hand.

—Come on, trust me. 

Ninten shrugged and took her hand, fresh out of any other options. At that, Ana’s eyes went flat white, and a gentle ring chimed in Ninten’s mind. A second later they were both floating in midair, up up and up, surpassing the halfway point of the thick concrete walls, and soon enough floating right over the barbed wire of the very top. They both began to float down, slow and gentle, as Ninten noticed a wince of discomfort come out of Ana. Eventually their feet touched ground on the other side of the gates. 

Ana walked off to the wall and leaned herself against it, catching her breath, and Ninten went to her with genuine concern. 

—Are, you…

—I’ll be fine in a bit. Telekinesis is still kinda hard for me. Even though it’s my mind doing it, it still feels like I’m lifting something with my muscles. And it doesn’t help that you’re heavier than a sack of rocks!

Ana gave Ninten a giggle and playfully tapped his gut with the back of her hand, as the latter shook off the gentle dig in stride. 

—Ha ha… But how can you block a stampeding elephant no problem, if lifting me in the air leaves you winded?

—Apples and oranges, I guess. Force fields are the thing I’m the best at, why, I could probably block a hundred thousand stampeding elephants if I needed to.

—I can barely do one at all. Somehow, back at Youngtown, I figured out how to block that alien thing’s attacks with my bat. I don’t think it’ll be enough for another fight though…

—You can do it too, you just need to practice.

—How do you practice generating a force field?

—Well, you can try doing what I do… when I make one it’s like… there’s something coming, something that’s going to hurt someone I cane about a whole lot, and I’m thinking and praying with all my heart, you won’t get past me, you won’t, no no no you won’t!

—Erm… well, I think I’ll take a rain check on that for now. 

Ana took in one last deep breath and stepped away from the wall.

—Okay, let’s go. I know where they’re headed. 

—Honestly, so do I. 

Ninten thumbed at the front doors, utterly demolished and swinging wide open. 

Meanwhile, Teddy dragged Lloyd through the empty Duncan factory, going this way and that, down empty hallways and vast storage areas, all the way to the one very special room that he and his comrades knew so well: a long overlooked storage room that was supposed to be vacated, but for some reason wasn’t. And in it lied boxes upon racks upon shelves of… a massive arsenal, though if you asked Lloyd he’d be at a loss to describe what kind. The pistols, rifles, red-tipped warheads, and other outlandish doodads were only technically recognizable as such: they didn’t even look like they were designed by humans, let alone by Duncan Incorporated.

Nonetheless, Lloyd gaped at the sight. All his earlier fear and trepidation vanished. Teddy stepped in and waved his arms around the place, like a shady realtor trying to push a sketchy property onto an unsuspecting buyer, though in this case Lloyd didn’t need much convincing. 

—Beautiful, ain’t it? And all of it on a zero-percent discount.

Without waiting for him to respond, Teddy went to a shelf, picked up the biggest otherworldly rifle he could spot, and all but threw the thing in Lloyd’s hands. With a shout, Lloyd dropped the massive weapon and let its weight drag him down to his knees on the floor. Teddy frowned. 

—Hm. Guess we’ll have to get a few bicep curls in you before you can tug that thing along. 

Lloyd rose to his feet, keeping the big rifle on the floor, and dusted himself off. 

—…or, maybe we can try something a little more lightweight first?

—Psh. Fine…

Teddy grumbled and rolled his eyes as Lloyd scanned the room and gravitated toward what looked like a sleek pistol. He picked it up and inspected the thing.

—Hm… There’s a motion-sensor activated trigger, by the looks of this liquid crystal display. There doesn’t seem to be a magazine, or batteries or any power source… hm… I don’t even see any seams, like it was fully cast in a mold… and this material? It’s lightweight, but too heavy for carbon fiber or plastic. Maybe some kind of strange metallic alloy…

Lloyd’s fussing was making Teddy antsy. He picked up something from a box, a flat, plastic disc, about the size of a frisbee, with some lights that blinked on by his touch. Then, he hurled it at Lloyd, just like it were actually a frisbee.

Lloyd screamed, pointed the gun at the disc careening toward him, and squeezed his finger on what he hoped was indeed the motion-sensor trigger. The gun let loose a laser blast and connected to the disc in midair, making the thing explode, though thankfully not enough to ignite any other ordinance in the room. Lloyd looked in horror to the gun in his hand, then the debris on the floor, and finally Teddy.

—Nice shootin, soldier!

—…but but… you… you coulda KILLED ME!

—Maybe. Want to do it again?

Lloyd took a moment to let the shock wash away, and cracked a smile himself.

—…yeah!

Meanwhile, Ninten and Ana slowly infiltrated the same routes of the old factory taken previously by Lloyd and Teddy. Two strange thoughts were going through Ninten’s mind. One was how, for a supposedly abandoned facility, it seemed abuzz with activity. The sound of metal clanking against metal, the throb of its various pipes snaking through the facility like arteries of a beating heart, filled his telepathic mind as well as Ana’s as they went deeper within. 

And the other thing was, Ana was starting, just a teensy-weensy little bit, to grow on Ninten. He couldn’t really place it, but somehow, walking together and dishing on their own superpowers, having normal conversations for once (well, relatively normal, for two kids with unlikely psionic power), it made him completely forget for just a while that she was convinced they’d end up together years later, that she was always trying to make him just as chipper as she perpetually was, and that she absolutely got on his nerves. Well, almost completely forget. 

They could hear the faint sound of explosions, and as they progressed closer to them it became apparent that they no longer needed Ana’s telepathy to track Lloyd and Teddy. That is, until Ninten and Ana reached the end of the latest hallway, terminating into one of the expansive manufacturing areas, and it became clear why the ruckus Ana knew Lloyd and Teddy were causing was going unnoticed. There, they encountered a factory not abandoned in the slightest. Conveyor belts whirred, gears ground against each other, and sparks crackled and popped as the sounds of full industry assaulted their ears. But that was not even close to the most astonishing thing. For manning all those belts and welders and and sparking things were not flesh and blood people, they were all to a man alien. Googly-eyed green mooks with tentacles, humanoid Forbidden Planet-looking Robbie-the-Robots with big fish-dome heads, miniature flying saucers patrolling the open air, other robots in the shape of octopuses performing repairs with high-precision laser beams. They were building all kinds of nefarious things, not just laser rifles and missiles, but even more sinister robots, silvery-sheened samurai bots, shiny-golden female Metropolis bots, and even what looked like big nuclear warheads with legs to walk on and eyes and a mouth. Worst of all, the whole operation was overseen by scores of those liquid-silvery spacemen, among one of which nearly incinerated Ninten to dust back at Youngtown, the Starmen.

It took Ninten and Ana a little longer, and just a little more of her telepathy, to find Lloyd and Teddy messing around in the weapons lab, but find them they eventually did. The other thing they found waiting for them, unfortunately, was another explosive disc careening toward them, and the concentrated laser fire from Lloyd’s gun, which to Ninten’s dismay had in a rare occurrence missed its mark that time. A protective force field on Ana’s part saved the two teens from any injury, though Ninten still ducked to the floor in reflex. 

—Ah… whoops!

—What are you two doing in here, are you crazy?!

—Teddy was right! Look around, this whole place is full of this neat stuff!

—Ana and I just found out why! The factory isn’t closed at all, it’s crawling with aliens!

Teddy, who was messing around with another piece of explosive ordinance off to a corner of the room, finally noticed the others.

—Oh. I forgot to tell you all before, the whole place is full of aliens. So ah, we gotta watch out for that. In the factory. Once we get in…

—…thank you, Teddy. We have to get out of here, now.

—Okay. Lead the way!

Lloyd, who by now had also equipped himself with two holsters, tried a neat little spinning trick and holstered in one laser gun to his side flawlessly. The other gun, unfortunately, did not holster quite so neatly. Well, in fact, it did not holster at all, but rather accidentally fell from his side and hit the floor, where it then accidentally shot out a round of deadly laser, which just barely missed Ninten’s shoulder, but did not miss another explosive resting on the shelf directly behind him. Again, had Ana not been there to deflect the deadly blast with a trusty force field, Ninten might not have ever made it to the end of his journey, or at the very least not with all his limbs intact. 

—Hehe… sorry…

What with the fact that they were effectively lost without a real-live human being posted at an exit and therefore a real-live human brain for Ana to read from, the fact that Lloyd had some dangerous new toys he wouldn’t shut up about, and the fact that Teddy was, well, Teddy, Ninten silently gave them all five minutes before a ferocious alien freak spotted the four of them blundering through the factory and set off red flashing lights and blaring alarms signaling all the other ferocious aliens to shoot them on sight. 

To their credit, it took six minutes. One hallway led to a door that was full of humanoid Robbie-bots, on their lunch break, of all things. One noticed Teddy and rose to its mechanical legs with frantic bleeps and boops, and Teddy, who was one to never back down from a challenge, knocked them all down with blazing-fast fists and feet, but not fast enough, unfortunately, to keep one from setting off that deadly alarm. 

The four of them ran blindly through halls, sticking together, Ninten taking potshots against the ready-made Metropolis bots and samurai bots and flying mini-saucers with his psionic power, and Ana deflected their attacks with ample force fields, and as it appeared that Teddy’s pep talks had finally done him a little good, even Lloyd got in a few shots in on target for once! 

While running from a mob of ornery, but slow-moving Robbie-bots, they stumbled into a large room, what might have been a big control center for the whole place. Teddy, thinking quickly, lifted some heavy furniture and barricaded the door behind them, an act which so engrossed the others that they did not even think to look behind to see if anyone else was in that room with them.

There were, in the room with them, two Starmen. 

*

Without much choice, Ninten and Ana took on one, while Teddy and Lloyd tangled with the other. Ana set up a big force field for Ninten to hide behind as he let his psionic powers course through his bat. It was hard going, however, because as safe as he was behind Ana’s protective shield, neither could Ninten breach the thing on his side to attack his enemy.

Meanwhile, Lloyd and Teddy took cover behind the desks and shelves of the control center as their Starman tried blasting them as well. Lloyd laid down heavy fire, which was blocked by the thing’s own force fields, but it was less successful at defending against the hulking pieces of furniture hurled at it by Teddy. Eventually, Teddy was able to approach the thing and uppercut it hard, sending it flying into some machines and electrocuting it out of commission. 

Ana took a cue from Teddy and tried launching junk at her enemy with telekinesis. But this was wearing down her concentration with the protective shield. The Starman let out a haymaker laser blast, which made Ana stagger back and fall to the floor. The alien pressed his advantage, advancing closer and preparing another beam. But before it could connect, Ninten shoved her out of the way, and raised up his left hand. 

Amazingly, the laser beam deflected away. It was a small thing, a sparkling translucent disk of bright yellow energy maybe the size of a tin garbage can lid, but it was a force field coming out of him all the same. Ninten looked on as it crackled in his hands, proud of himself in spite of the moment, before he brought his electrified bat on top of the Starman’s head, incinerating it to dust. 

Dissipating his power once the coast was clear, he brought Ana to his feet, who dusted herself off and gave him a little grin.

—Rain check, huh?

—…ugh. Don’t look too much into it… alright, now, we have to get out of here. 

Lloyd, meanwhile, who had been scanning the room once again like a kid in a candy shop, or perhaps like a Lloyd in a Twinkle High School science laboratory he was not allowed to be in, made his way to a big complicated console full of switches and blinking lights. All around that console were scores of screens, each which showed a video feed of every facet of the factory in real time. 

—Hey, guys, check this out…

He tried pushing a few buttons, and on one screen a video began to play. It was yet another one of those ubiquitous commercials featuring those perpetual friendly rivals in tech: the Orange Kid and the Apple Kid.

I’m an Orange Kid!

And I’m an Apple Kid.

I'm working on an invention that can change hard-boiled eggs back to soft-boiled. I've got all my Franklin Brand parts right here.  

And I got my new Duncan's multi-tool kit in the mail. I just built some sweet laser guns!

The Apple Kid points one of those very same sweet laser guns, which, it should bear noting, were precisely the same make and model as those Lloyd now had holstered to his side, and blows the poor Orange Kid’s invention to smithereens and leaves him with a sooty face. The Orange Kid, as he always does, frowns and shrugs directly to the camera. 

Guess it’ll never be as good as Duncan.

Strangely, in a rare move of solidarity, the Apple and Orange kids face the camera together and say the one thing that magically makes any piece of merchandise irresistible to children, instant consumer catnip: 

Remember, kids. Before you get your own Duncan bots, laser guns, or bottle rockets, make sure to get permission from your parents first. 

They then look to each other knowingly, sharing an unspoken yeah, right between them both, and let out full-guffaw laughter for the camera. Lloyd looked at the whole thing utterly baffled.

—I don’t get it. If the aliens took over Duncan Inc., why would they… sell their weaponry?

—Maybe we’re not supposed to know it’s theirs. We use it to kill each other off, then they come in and take over when we’re too weak to stop them… who knows? We have to get out of here-

—Oh my gosh! Look!

Ana pointed to another big video screen. There, in a deep recess of the factory, was what looked like an even bigger model of the Robbie-bots, but not just bigger. Gigantic. As tall as a skyscraper and as wide around. Some of them were finished, and a Starman entered commands into consoles as if… drilling them, on various combat maneuvers. Marches, strikes, even laser blasts, but more powerful than anything they had seen thus far. One blast out of its eyes could blow up a quarter of a football field at a time. 

To Ana’s horror, the vid feed showed the ceiling slowly opening, and one launching itself out of the factory and into the air, rocket-propelled like a space shuttle, up up and away to let loose who knew what mayhem upon the poor unsuspecting human race. 

—We can’t let them launch anymore! 

—There’s nothing we can do. We have to get out of here before we-

—Wait! Maybe I can figure something out!

Lloyd pored deeper into the buttons and switches of the console, then switched a few on and off with aplomb, looking up at the vid feeds in a feedback loop. 

—Lloyd, have you ever used a machine like this before?

—Never in my life!

Whatever Lloyd tried, it didn’t work, and the second bot launched into the sky. Frantically scanning the console, he pushed some more buttons and then grabbed what looked like a joystick from an arcade cabinet. A mechanical, feminine voice boomed through the control center. 

MISSILE LAUNCH DETECTED.

As the third bot blasted off into the sky, Lloyd grasped the joystick and pushed the red button on top. From another feed, Lloyd could see a first-person view of the sky, and amid crosshairs and other signals, there was the Duncan bot flying in midair. 

—I got it in my sights, I just gotta… climb!

Lloyd shoved the joystick as far as it could go away from him, and cracked a little grin as if he already had the thing dead to rights. That grin quickly faded, however, as the vid feed revealed, getting closer and closer to a satisfying midair explosion, not the bot, but rather solid ground. 

From way off in the distance, the four kids could hear just the faintest sound of a rumble, and the faintest quake beneath their feet. Ninten grumbled and glared at Lloyd.

—Lloyd! You just fired a missile at Merrysville!

—Psh, hardly. It traveled well out of range of the city proper, at least twenty miles away. It’s all just woods and stuff over there.

—You said you had to climb!

—Yeah. That’s why I pushed the joystick forward! To go up! I don’t know what happened, though…

Ninten groaned and slapped his forehead.

—You pull the stick to climb! 

—…oh. I didn’t know that.

—Everyone knows that! 

—Well, excuse me if I push up on the controller and expect the thing on the screen to go up!

—Agh! Whatever, just… we have to get out of here now!

—Oh no! They’re launching more of them!

Ana pointed to the screen, where once again a fourth robot was preparing to launch. Lloyd, in desperation, let out a yell and swiped his whole hand across the board, randomly switching on or off various buttons. From the vid feed, the others could see the robot almost reach the open hatch that led to the Merrysville sky, before stopping suddenly in midair and careening down down down to the loading bay. The bot crashed into the others like it and demolished them all in an explosion. 

That was the good news, that there were only three of the deadly Duncan bots ready for deployment and all the others in its arsenal mysteriously destroyed. The bad news was, all the aliens in the factory at that very second it happened, knew exactly how it happened, and had a pretty good guess who could have done it. From every video screen in the room, the four of them could see hundreds of robots, saucers, tentacled mooks, and Starmen advancing en masse through the halls toward what could only be their precise location. 

And as if it couldn’t have gotten any worse, there was yet another unexpected consequence of Lloyd’s hail Mary swish across the control board.

SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE INITIATED. FACILITY WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN THIRTY MINUTES.

—Guys… we really have to get out of here now.  

—Wait, I can fix it. I think I know what switched it off, I just have to… hold on…

Whatever Lloyd did pull off in that last attempt at the control board worked. On the screens, the four of them could see the aliens, all to a man, suddenly stop in their tracks, about face and frantically run in the opposite direction. Stumbling over each other, trampling each other underfoot or tentacle, the alien hordes made a mad dash out of whatever exit they could find. 

That was the good news. The bad news was, of course, that the reason why the aliens were no longer interested in hunting down the Chosen four barricaded within the factory control room, was because they all heard just as good the same booming mechanical message that the four of them also heard:

SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE EXPEDITED. FACILITY WILL SELF DESTRUCT IN THIRTY SECONDS.

Lloyd looked to the controls in dread, and if he wasn’t already an albino he would have been white as a sheet. 

—…guys? We have to get out of here…

—OH, YOU DON’T SAY!

The four of them frantically looked to each other, around the room, at the barricaded door, before Ana finally spoke up.

—Everyone, get close to me. Hold each other’s hands!

They all looked confused, and Ana stamped her foot and held out her hands.

—Come on! Hurry!

In a flash, Ninten got it. A hundred thousand elephants, he said to himself. Let’s hope that’s stronger than an explosion. He grabbed one of Ana’s hands and forcefully took Lloyd’s, who then took Teddy’s, who then took Ana’s other hand. As the mechanical voice counted down, they crouched in the control room and clenched every muscle and tooth in their bodies. Then, the timer reached zero. 

They could feel each other squeezing each others hands, and outside their little circle, utter chaos reigned. Even in the bubble Ana enclosed themselves in, the roar of the explosion was still as loud as rock concert, and the waves of force still rocked the protective field around them, threatening to topple them over. Then, the explosion dissipated, and the four of them simply waited for debris and fire to topple down on them and bounce off the force field. Still wary of fires, electrical sparks, unstable beams and debris, and toxic smoke inhalation, Ana kept up the shell surrounding them as they walked away from the wreckage. Only when they approached the knocked-down front gates of the old factory did she let finally let the shield pass away. 

They stood there for a long while, still shocked that they stood right in ground zero of a massive explosive meltdown of a whole alien factory and lived to tell the tale. Then Teddy pulled out a comb from his pocket, teased up the pompadour on his head, and having seen to that, pocketed the thing and turned to the others.

—I’m hungry. 

*

You’ve been listening to The Podcast Against Giygas. The Podcast Against Giygas is an audiobook written and performed by me, Garrett McMahon, based on Mother, the 1989 video game for the Nintendo Entertainment System directed by Shigesato Itoi. With production by William Pawlowski, thumbnail design and art direction by David Peters, and musical selections from the recent Earthbound Beginnings remake hack, with arrangements by livvy94, Snyderman, Bluestone, Pinci, and Mary Strawberry.

This podcast is a guaranteed masterpiece! It is also a fan-made project affiliated in no way whatsoever with the Nintendo Corporation or Mr. Itoi. This podcast is free to listen to, ad-free, and always will be. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode, and if you did, a rating and review on your podcast service of choice is always appreciated. Well, I’ll see you back next Monday, but until then, no crying till the ending!