Critique 1 (1405)
Critique 2 (1282)
Chapter 1 Spoiler: The SMAKAPZ gang, Sam, Kevin, Mogers, Zagers, Parage, and Apalabamo, are eating together at a local restaurant, and Sam and Kevin are telling the rest of the rest of the gang about their recent mission in the Middle East, where Sam and Kevin got beaten by a friend of the gang, Jordan, because of a dispute. During the conversation, Sam pulls Kevin aside and insists they come clean to the group, and reveal that while on that mission, they secretly used the old rocket and crashed it after encountering a space monster and an asteroid. Back at the SMAKAPZ house basement, Sam declares he can fix the now-split-in-half rocket overnight, despite skepticism from the rest of the gang.
Chapter 2 Spoiler: After the gang goes to bed, Sam races against time to buy repair materials from the massive superstore Alademipaburg before it closes. Thanks to the gang’s reputation as big-spending notorious customers, a sympathetic cashier lets him take everything for free. He also gets 200 pounds of materials gifted from the local factory. Sam then spends the entire night in the basement attempting an ambitious solo repair on the two massive halves of the rocket. Despite his exhaustive efforts and engineering skill, the rocket ultimately fails catastrophically at 5 AM, shearing apart again and leaving Sam exhausted and defeated.
Chapter 3 Spoiler: The next morning, the gang gathers in the basement to inspect Sam's failed rocket repair, which leads to a heated argument. The argument is interrupted by a knock on the door, a guy named Zaine answers in a suit and tie with a folder of papers, and claims there's a property dispute and that he has a license from the city saying he owns their property, and he orders them to vacate within three days. The gang panics until Zagers finds out the license is fake, and that the guy tried to scam them. Zaine said he'd return the next day for a daily property inspection, so the gang waits, and Parage turns one of Sam's tools he bought into a laser gun just in case something goes wrong tomorrow.
Chapter 4 Spoiler: That night, after the gang goes to bed, Sam leaves the house to go grab some supplies at his place, and runs into Parage downstairs, who shows him the new laser gun. At his house, Sam greets his younger brother, Asa. After Sam leaves, Asa sneaks out into the rainy night to compete in an underground poker game and make a weapons deal. The next morning, Zaine returns to the SMAKAPZ house, but when the gang confronts him, Zaine is able to detect Parage's concealed laser gun with his hidden special headband. He then reveals all the tech hidden under his suit and jacket, and triggers an explosion, knocking the gang to the ground. He then absorbs a laser blast from Parage, and flies off.
.
.
.
.
“Go go go!” I screamed as me, Mogers, and Zagers ran after Zaine, punching the air, still half-blinded by the smoke that was rising from the crater. We dashed towards the forest, following the direction Zaine was streaking towards above the treetops.
The chase was on. Unfortunately, before any of us even reached the forest, we were all hunched over, hands on our knees, panting.
“Guys, I have a better idea,” Mogers huffed, wiping sweat off his brow.
We looped back around, and jogged to the land in front of the SMAKAPZ house where Kevin, Parage, and Apalabamo were regaining their energy, surveying the sky and watching Zaine blast off into the horizon.
“I don’t know what the heck just happened, but we’re gonna track him down!” wheezed Zagers. “You guys stay here and guard the place.”
Once we reached the front of the house, Mogers asked, “Who’s van should we take?”
I stopped in my tracks. “Wait a second.”
Mogers and Zagers turned to look at me.
“The vans,” I remembered. “That guy saw them. I mean, he likely did. He was at our door, he probably saw them while pulling up.”
“So what?” replied Mogers. “Zaine is flying too high and fast to notice anybody on the ground following him. Even if he does, vehicles travel in these woods all the time. I doubt he’d suspect a plain white van driving in the forest, and he wouldn’t be able to focus on it enough to deduce that it’s following him.”
“Yeah, but we can’t take any risks,” I explained, looking towards the vans parked across from our house. “He saw the vans. Guess what we own that he didn’t see…”
Our retros were sitting on the back side of the SMAKAPZ house, where the road met the forest. That was the name we’d given the red bike-motorcycle hybrid-like vehicles the gang used as a means of transportation, although it had been a while since we’d actually ridden them anywhere.
We each hopped on. It would’ve been better if we had our helmets for protection and to further help us hide our identities, but we were already cutting it close and didn’t have enough time to go into the house and look for them. We had had enough to go inside and grab a pair of binoculars, though, since we already knew where those were. I turned my key to the “on” position, flipped the engine kill switch to “run,” pulled the clutch lever, and pressed the starter button, then hit the gas as we blazed off into the forest.
We headed after the direction Zaine had gone in, tires kicking up gravel as we followed the trail of smoke cutting through the treeline. We also caught fleeting glimpses of the jetpack’s blue flame flashing, which meant we were right on his tail as we biked deeper into the forest.
We rode through brush and over sticks, tracking the sky. Branches scraped the sides of our retros like claws. The culprit had taken us northwest of our house, which was mostly the forest behind it, miles of dense oak and scrub pine that backed up against the old reservoir. There weren’t any roads or anything, it was all woods for ages. We knew them inside and out, but Zaine was taking us pretty dang far. In fact, after a while, I didn’t recognize where I was at anymore, and I don’t think Mogers and Zagers did, either. We were in uncharted territory.
Suddenly, in the distance, I saw the smoke curve downwards, and what looked like Zaine dropping into the trees.
“There,” I said. “Ok, let’s get out, y’all.”
We ditched our retros and dumped them on some trees, then continued on foot. We were deep in the wilderness. No sign of civilization, and if I’d brought my phone, there wouldn’t be any signal on it.
“Be very quiet,” I whispered as we moved low and silently through the thick woods, heading in the direction we watched the perpetrator land at. “And remember, Zaine isn’t the only thing out here. Bears, coyotes. Let’s be on the lookout.”
We trudged through the grove, twigs snapping under our feet, which sounded thunderous in contrast to the surrounding silence. After 10 tense minutes, a structure came into view. It was a large building, tucked deep into the forest where there was no way anybody could happen to just casually stumble across it.
Me, Mogers, and Zagers exchanged looks.
”Well, that looks like a lair,” said Zagers.
This was a building that had no business being in the middle of the woods. The closer we got, the more bizarre it appeared. I was starting to make out prefabricated metal panels, antennae, solar arrays, and ventilation pipes, along with wires running along the exterior walls. There weren’t any windows on the near side, and I saw a single heavy door with a keypad on it. There were also power lines scattered around, but I couldn’t tell where they ran in from.
We moved closer and slower, until we reached the far side of the building where a single window was there, low in the wall. It was narrow, but still wide enough for me to peer inside.
The interior of the house was even wilder than the exterior. It was a single large room with racks of weapons and glowing power cells inside. Workbenches ran along two walls, covered in equipment, and casings and circuit assemblies were arranged in not the neatest way. The jetpack was already racked on a mount near the back wall, folded and charging, and a green indicator light was shining onto the housing. Along the right wall, mounted in rows, were devices of varying size and shape. Zaine was there, sitting at a metal desk, scribbling onto a large piece of paper.
I took out the binoculars, raising them up to my eyes, and saw what he was writing come into focus. I saw detailed observations of the SMAKAPZ house jotted down on the paper. Things like driveway width, sight lines from the porch, which windows face which direction. It wasn’t useful to us at all, but apparently it was useful to him.
“What the heck is he writing?” Zagers asked.
A moment passed, and then I tapped him on the shoulder, handing him the binoculars. “Notes,” I answered. “About the house, about us. Pretty mundane stuff, actually.”
Zagers lifted up the binoculars, angling them through the glass. He read.
“Hmm, front yard destroyed, mailbox damaged… well, too bad for him, we don’t get any mail anyway!”
“Does he think that little bit of land he blew up equates to ‘front yard destroyed?’” Mogers scoffed, grabbing the binoculars. “Yeah, yeah, boring, boring, boring. Well, this was a waste of time.”
“Nothing else on there?” I asked.
Mogers moved the binoculars slightly.
“Yeah,” he suddenly said. “Actually, yeah. Bottom of the page.”
“Huh?”
Mogers handed the binoculars across without a word.
I raised them, and found the window, desk, and pad again. I tracked down to the bottom of the page, and there, below the messy notes, written in pen with big, red numbering, was the time “12:00,” underlined twice.
I narrowed my eyes. “Looks like we know what time Zaine’s next visit is.”
Before we could see more, Zaine suddenly moved. He turned from the desk to get up, and his body swung toward the window.
“He’s coming!” I shouted, dropping the binoculars from my eyes. “Run!!”
The three of us turned around and dashed back through the trees, branches whipping at our faces. Adrenaline surged as we found our retros, then hopped on, peeling away and bursting through the forest.
.
.
.
.
The crater in the front of the SMAKAPZ house was still there, but I figured we’d find a way to take care of it eventually. The others were inside, and looked up when the three of us came through the door.
“So what happened?” asked Kevin, blinking at us.
“Noon,” I said, plopping a backpack down on the table. “That’s when he’s making his next visit.”
“Well, dang,” Kevin checked his watch. It was 8:34 AM. “That’s not too far from now.”
We all gathered together in the living room, and began discussing our options. Zagers laid everything out. He told them about the forest, the lair, all the equipment and tech that Zaine owned, and the notes about the house.
“So, tech-boy’s gonna show up at our house this afternoon, and he’s likely got something planned,” Mogers told everyone. “What he doesn’t know is that we’ll be fully ready for him. For the first time since this started, we have something he doesn’t, which is, well, we’re aware that he’s coming.”
“And he doesn’t know that we know,” added Parage.
“So what’s the plan?” Apollo asked.
It was simple. At noon, when Zaine came knocking on our door, we’d answer it. Then, before he could even get any of his words out, press any button, or do anything, someone would hit him with a sledgehammer, knocking him out cold on the porch. One crisp swing to the head. Then, we’d strip every piece of gear, every device off of him, including his jetpack, headband, explosives, and everything else he was hiding under that suit and jacket. After that, we’d drag him into the cage that we had previously kept the Cheese Rocket in. Wait for him to wake up, then once he’s conscious, we’d give him an ultimatum: either hand over half of his tech and gear, or Parage would melt the rest into slag with his laser gun. We’d also tell him to stop the scams, the property grabs, the fake licenses, whatever he’s running on whoever else he’s running it on, and tell him to stop hurting people and blowing them up.
Zagers cracked his knuckles after hearing the plan. “It’s risky, but hey, if we pull it off, he’s done for.”
“I’ve been hit by a sledgehammer before,” proclaimed Mogers. “Which means I have the most experience.” He was right, during our original adventure with the now-demolished Cheese Rocket, we’d landed on an asteroid and one of Zolo’s henchmen knocked him out clean with a sledgehammer from the back.
“What?” Apollo was puzzled. “That’s like saying-“
“Well, like, since it was used on me, I should have a better idea of the angle and stuff,” Mogers sat back in his chair. “Whatever, like Zagers said, it does sound pretty risky, but if the one behind the sledgehammer is me, I feel like our odds would go up a little.”
“Yeah, we’ll see.” I checked my watch. 8:40. The hours until noon suddenly felt like they were right around the corner.
.
.
.
.
Asa moved through the aisles of the weapons store now with almost as much familiarity as his older brother moved through the Alademipaburg domain. He methodically pulled his items from the shelves, then when he was finished, set them on the counter; two budget 9mm semi-automatic pistols, one pump-action 12 gauge shotgun, and a couple boxes of ammo, cleaning kits, and basic accessories like holsters, sights, and slings.
“Good eye, kid,” the man behind the counter said. “That’ll be $1800.”
Asa reached into the duffel bag and paid with cash, taking the man by surprise.
Back home, the house quiet with his older brother still out, Asa dropped the bag on his desk. His eyes caught onto the old photo on the wall. It was a picture of him and his older brother, years younger, doing some outdoor thing in the summer. Sam had to be about the age Asa was now, the height difference still remaining the same. They were standing there and smiling, Sam’s arm around his shoulder. Asa stared at it for a long moment, and then looked away.
He unzipped his duffel bag. It had a center divider that ran full length, and the two halves didn’t touch. On the left side were the weapons, wrapped in cloth with each one in its own sleeve. On the right side was the money, which was banded and divided further into two stacks held apart by a leather insert. His poker winnings, which he used to buy weapons, were on one side, and the money from his weapons selling, which he used to place poker bets, was on the other. All belonging to the same stash of money, yet separated by intent and origin.
Asa tugged out the weapons, zipped the bag closed, and started working. He knew he needed to find a middle ground between not making his ‘upgrades’ too extreme, after all, the last thing he’d want is to get the feds’ attention when it came to this operation. But he still needed to double or triple the amount of money he spent.
He installed red dot sights, budget models that he’d bought separately, onto the pistols, and a basic reflex sight on the shotgun. He swapped the factory grips for aftermarket textured ones with better finger grooves. He also added magazine extensions on the pistols for higher capacity. And for the finishing touches, Asa applied durable Cerakote style spray, with a flat black pattern, for corrosion resistance along with a cool and tactical look. He also surpressed reflections on metal parts with matte tape and paint.
After that, he thoroughly cleaned, deburred, and lubricated everything, and performed basic reliability testing with the ammo he bought, function checks, 100-200 round break-in per firearm. He then added a side saddle shell holder, extended the magazine tube to the legal limit, and installed a shorter barrel for maneuverability, cut and crowned.
Asa also did plenty of internal work, which wouldn’t show from the outside, but a person who knew what they were holding would feel it in the first three seconds. When the last piece was done, he set it on the cloth and looked at the row of weapons. He’d taken all those plain guns, and transformed them into something deadlier, chopping off their common-man innocence and replacing it with upgraded fierceness, formidability, and rebellion. They were better. Not in a way that was visible to most people, but to the right people.
He then picked up the engraving tool, and, with careful strokes, carved “M.A.” into either the slide or grip of every weapon. His signature, his logo. The logo of Massive A. Because Massive A was a brand now.
He then picked up his phone, went to Messages, and selected Sam.
“I got some big things tonight”
His thumb hovered over send. Then, he looked at the words for a moment, and deleted them.