These Things Aren’t Supposed to Happen

In Podunk, a small town in Eagleland, there lives a sad boy with a strange name… 

Ninten Elliott, age 15, does little more than study for math tests and eagerly wait for his childhood to hurry up and end. All that changes when one fateful night, his bedroom lamp grows teeth and tries to bite his hand off! Ninten, accidentally discovering a great psionic power welling within him, now has to tangle with a freak alien occurrence and somehow rescue his sort-of only friend in the process: Lloyd Fahrquhar, scrawny, cowardly, and woefully ill-equipped to handle even a regular high school bully, let alone a murderous robot attack!

Will Ninten brave the opening salvo of “Queen Marie Antoinette” and her gang of feral household appliances? Will the Twinkle High School janitor hurry up and unlock the door to the rooftop already? And will Lloyd find a hiding spot at least thirty percent safer than the trash can?

Find out on the first episode of a brand new season of… The Podcast Against Giygas! No crying until the ending.

Transcript

You’re listening to… The Podcast Against Giygas!

Episode one: These Things Aren’t Supposed to Happen

*

The year is 197X. Podunk, a small town in Eagleland.

The houses lining the street lied still and snug together in the night like dozens of eggs resting in their cartons. Not a single light peeked out of their windows and not a single peep could be heard over the summer cicadas.

Not a single light or single peep, that is, except at a single solitary house on 89 Railroad St., in which a single solitary boy was awake. The boy’s name was Ninten Elliott, aged fifteen. No one else in Podunk had a name like Ninten Elliott, indeed, no boy in the world had a name like that. If anything, he said to himself sometimes, the two names should have been switched around, and then he’d have a fighting chance. But that wasn’t the only way Ninten was unlike most boys.

You see, it was the first week of June, and the promise of a new and wonderful summer vacation soon to come was on the minds of every sleeping boy and girl in Podunk. But not Ninten, who as you recall was awake. He pored over textbooks, filled up marble composition notebooks and wore out pencils and electric sharpeners alike. In other words, he was studying math. A lot of math. Ninten did not have summer vacation on the brain like his peers, but rather a much more immediate concern: end of the year exams. 

It was a mistake, however, to assume that he so wholeheartedly threw himself into his studies because he enjoyed them. No, he treated them as he did most other things, as something to get through for the life he wanted for himself later on. Even math was to him such a chore, though he gave it more attention than say, English or World History, as the chore which would most likely lead to that elusive and ideal adult life. The first week in June, then, meant little more to Ninten aside from making sure that all exam grades were as close to the high nineties as possible, and then steeling himself for the next three months working as much as he could at the local five and dime for the old college fund. 

Ninten closed the current open textbook and rooted through the pile of others like it for the next, when his breath suddenly became heavy and labored. Clutching his chest, he went to his dresser, took out an inhaler, and breathed in the stuff, which instantly relieved him. Before ambling back to his desk for more lessons, he then left it on the dresser tabletop, next to a small stuffed penguin.  

The penguin was one among a small number of rather out-of-place things in the room, which included ticket stubs for the handful of times he saw the Fourside Giants play, a baseball signed by the all-star player Shigeo Nagashima, who just so happened to be sitting incognito beside him at just one of those Giants games, a poster of his favorite old black-and-white sci-fi horror movie, Dr. Mentallo and the Slave Engine, starring that perennial scream-queen from years ago, Janet Rosemary, and a few LPs of his favorite rock bands, the most significant among them being his all-timers the Runaway Five (with only four members, as it were, for their first three full-length releases, although “Lucky” Decker Hagen could still hold his own playing rhythm guitar). They were the only things that even remotely suggested a time long ago when Ninten was different from the glum boy he was today.

For indeed, he wasn’t always this way. Two years ago he was like most boys in Podunk. He had loved summer, of course, and baseball with his dad on the odd weekends he was home, and swimming in the lake near Podunk or a pool at a friends house, and giving his dog baths alongside his mother, and singing rock and roll songs together on the radio out of tune with her, and late-night sleepovers with friends watching scary movies about alien attacks and zombies and mad scientists. 

But that was all before two years ago. Baseball wouldn’t lead to a future, you see, as the chances of anyone like him making the major leagues were unlikely, especially considering his major health issue. And swimming and spooky sci-fi movies and junk food and worst of all, friends, were just a distraction to keep him from that prize to come. He didn’t have any friends now, and his dad’s line of work which kept him on the road for a couple weeks at a time meant he was usually alone in the house. That was fine with him. He’d lock up the house, go to school, come home, feed himself whatever frozen dinners were on hand, and study. 

Geometry proofs were done, and algorithms were grasped as well as they could be with what little time the night had left for him, though they could be studied all the harder tomorrow. It shaped up to be a Friday night like any other, and it was time to wrap this one up the same way as all those before it. He closed his books and rose to his feet, as his big stretch upwards coaxed a yawn out of him, and reached for his desk lamp to flip the switch off. 

But it wasn’t to be a Friday like any other, not even close. For when his fingers reached for the lamp, that same lamp grew a set of jagged teeth and tried to bite them off with a loud chomp.

Ninten screamed and staggered back, tripping on something and falling on his back to the floor, and watched as the lamp also grew arms to propel itself closer to him, and big googly eyes to train on him a look of rapacious fury.

—Thief! Thief! Giygas will have what you stole from him! Giygas will have his revenge!

The lamp walked on its two arms like stilts and launched itself at Ninten, who dodged its chomping attacks the best he could. It was bad enough he suddenly had to grapple with the notion that an electrical appliance could grow eyes, a mouth, sharp teeth, and arms, but the voice itself, which was shrill, staticky, and almost seemed to reverberate directly into his mind, and the strange words themselves, sent Ninten positively on edge.

But Ninten was no pushover. As scary as a talking murderous lamp was, it was a lamp all the same. Not to mention, it was made of ceramic too! Seeing by chance the wooden baseball bat lying against his bedroom wall, he grabbed the thing, wound up, and grand-slammed the monstrous lamp into shards on the floor. 

Ninten had little time to enjoy that small victory, as the floor rattled underneath like a small earthquake with some commotion outside his bedroom. Bat in hand, he peeped through his door and found many more furnishings, now animated with life and bearing limbs and faces, running amok all throughout the house. 

—Thief! Don’t let the thief get away! Giygas will have back what was stolen from him! Giygas will have his revenge.

Dresser drawers, brooms and mops and vacuum cleaners, the stereo set and two speakers, and many more wicked light fixtures, all rushed with clawed hands outstretched and fangs bared at Ninten, who swatted them out of his way. He had really no idea where to go or what to do, as part of him wanted to get out of the house at all costs for his own safety’s sake, yet a part of him also thought he had some sort of duty to protect the family house from… whatever this all was.

He got to the living room and abandoned all hope. Filling the room like an infestation, immediately noticing him tiptoeing in and swarming him en masse, was the collection of antique dolls. His mother loved collecting antiques of all kinds, but porcelain dolls were her favorite. Her prized possession was a nineteenth-century rendition of a French noblewoman with a built-in music box for “singing” and complete with a detachable head, and though it was unclear if the doll merely suffered some damage long ago or if it was deliberately designed that way, it didn’t stop his mother from naming her “Marie Antoinette” anyway.

Well, after the real last queen of France lost her head two hundred years ago, this doll version had come alive and was acting the queen of all the live stuff. She sat upon a makeshift “throne” on top of the TV set and barked orders at other furnishings. Upon seeing Ninten, she pointed a pale porcelain finger and fixed the same wicked glare at him.

—There’s the thief! Seize him, take back what he stole from Giygas! Cut off his head and rip it out of him if you must!

Ninten had no idea who “Giygas” was, and as far as he knew he didn’t steal anything from anyone. He was mostly concerned, however, with the mob of old dolls tackling him to the floor and pinning him down Gulliver-like. They pulled his hair, scratched his face, and even almost gouged his eyes, seemingly grasping for something locked within his head.

Something was kindled inside Ninten’s heart when the first attack against the lamp occurred that bowled over into a fire here. Maybe it was the dolls themselves, grasping and scratching, maybe it was the whole attack on his house, maybe he was frightened, but also annoyed at how it was all as stupid as it was scary. Or maybe, whatever it was, whoever was doing it, they somehow got to perverting his mother’s favorite thing, the sheer insult of it all.

Ninten rose to his feet, clawed the attacking dolls off him, and swung his arms out, fingertips splayed open. A few hairs on his head stood on end, the pupils in his eyes disappeared and left them flat white, and a “ring!” chimed loud in his mind. Without realizing what he was doing, that fire in his heart exploded from his fingers, concentrated into a white-hot laser beam of death, and careened toward Marie Antoinette. 

The doll tumbled from her throne atop the TV upon impact with the laser blast and fell to the floor. As if it was her controlling everything, the room suddenly went still. The dolls fell down impotent alongside their leader, and the furniture stopped rattling and chasing Ninten around the house. 

Ninten took a moment to gain his bearings after that horrible happening, before turning his attention to his still-tingling fingertips. As thankful as he was that the lasers stopped the menacing dolls in their tracks, it unsettled him all the same. A gigantic blast of destructive force came out of his body, and he had no idea how. Lamps coming alive, lasers shooting from his hands, these things aren’t supposed to happen! 

But that was to ponder for later. More or less recovered mentally as well as physically from the bizarre assault, he picked up his bat with one hand, and with the other picked up Marie Antoinette. He placed the now-lifeless precious doll where it belonged. That is, on the mantle above the fireplace, with the other antiques and knickknacks she loved so much, and next to the family photo with all three of them together, that is, Ninten mom and dad, the boy dressed in his Sunday best and hair hatless for once, nice and slicked back, smiling, so much different from the stuffy family photos like this, in that they were all genuinely happy to be in each other’s company. 

And beside that, the urn that held his mother’s ashes.

*

The day before that odd happening, like the night that led up to it, was also a day like any other.  

   Ninten woke up an hour earlier than the other kids his age did to get to school, due to another of the many unusual-for-a-kid-his-age responsibilities he imposed upon himself. There he was, rising for the day well before the sun would do the same, putting on a red, white, blue and black-striped shirt, a pair of long-distressed blue jeans, his favorite black high-top sneakers on his feet, and on top of his shaggy black-haired head his favorite red baseball cap. The last article to be put on was always his lucky red neck sash, a holdover from the brief time he was in scouts and his mother was his troop’s volunteer scoutmaster. 

Then, he’d lock up the house and head to school, avoiding the bus with other students and instead opting to ride on his scooter there and back. Then, early enough to enter the unlocked school but well before any classes were to start, he would head to the janitor’s headquarters, and begin the long daily ritual.

The kind old man would offer Ninten a cup of tea, and half the time he’d accept and the other half he’d say he already had his tea for the morning. He had to tell the man he was part of the hall monitor squad, and he needed access to the roof to make his inspections for the morning. The janitor always believed him.

The old man would always creak his neck as if to say follow me, then amble up the three long flights of stairs to the rooftop access. He’d say something like, well, sure it’s a problem if any old kid could just head on up to the roof and skip all his classes, but you know what an even bigger problem is? My wife! And Ninten would politely nod and keep silent. The man would go on, every day she sleeps in until noon. She doesn’t even pack me a bag lunch in the morning, can you believe that? Ninten would politely shake his head and murmur no, he couldn’t believe that. And then, he goes on to say, she just goes shopping all day. Good thing I hid the credit cards this morning. Yes, it’s a good thing, Ninten would politely agree. But… I dunno, I guess she’s not so bad after all. You know, back in our heyday she was voted Miss Podunk, did you know that? Isn’t that nice? No, Ninten did not know that, but yes, that was very nice.  

Finally, he reached the door to the rooftop access, duly unlocked the knob, and walked away whistling and jangling his big keyring, leaving Ninten to enter. He did, and made a beeline to a tin garbage can. Knocking a little cadence on the lid, something a little like shave and a haircut, two bits, he waited as the lid popped open like a jack in the box, revealing a small boy.

—Heya, Ninten!

—Hello, Lloyd. It’s a pleasure as always. 

The other boy, Lloyd, stumbled out of the thing, knocking it over onto the rooftop floor, and shook off whatever detritus clung to him, not picking up the tone in Ninten’s voice that suggested this routine was anything but. 

Lloyd Fahrquhar, aged fourteen, was a head shorter than Ninten, who was already not very physically imposing, and probably a good thirty pounds skinnier, if not more. But that wasn’t his most notable feature by far. No, what most people noticed when they met Lloyd for the first time was his flat-white skin, thick round glasses covering his beady eyes, and the platinum-white hair neatly gelled into a bowl cut. In other words, he was the only kid in Podunk, and probably for a not a small number of towns far and wide around Podunk, who was an albino. 

—I think you should find a better way to hide from bullies.

—Yeah, I've been thinking the same thing, too. The tin on this can is too thin for any reasonable protection against a blunt impact, not to mention its susceptibility to tipping over, as you just saw. I have to find a spot at least thirty percent safer. 

—I meant more for the smell, but okay.

Because nature doled out a pretty bad hand for Lloyd, it made him unduly afraid of not just his classmates, but pretty much everything else in the world. Everything presented to him was given the same quick calculations in his head, the great or small probability of something bringing him to harm. Anything over fifty percent and he would refuse, and anything lower than that, well, it could always be made even lower, couldn’t it? This meant, among many others on a long long list, no swimming, no roller-skating, no going out under the sun for longer than half an hour, and especially no sports, excepting, of course, the occasions he didn’t have a choice in that matter.

Hence the garbage can.

Nobody liked Lloyd. Not even his parents liked him, not even Lloyd himself liked Lloyd. Which was a shame, because he was a whip-smart young man with a kind heart and a good brain underneath that white hair of his that was perfectly suited for a long and fruitful life of science. Nonetheless, he was small, gangly, and odd-looking, and not very good at sports, and not very good around other people, and so he earned the ire of every bully in Twinkle High School. Ninten still had no idea how Lloyd got up to the roof in the morning and in between classes that didn’t interest him, but he did all the same, and Ninten took it upon himself to signal the coast clear and escort him safely to the classes that did interest him. 

—So, I’ll see you again at lunch, right?

—Sure, but you’re on your own for gym class.

Lloyd grumbled as they made their way to the door back to the school halls.

—Ugh, still? You must’ve gotten out of every single gym class this year!

—Yeah. People don’t get better from asthma.

True to Ninten’s word, the two boys did meet for their lunch period. They sat across from each other as the rest of their classmates gave them a wide berth of space. Ninten, truth be told, didn’t exactly cherish Lloyd as a dear friend either, but they had an unspoken mutual understanding. Everyone wanted to bully Lloyd, you see, but ever since two years ago no one wanted to talk to Ninten. Lloyd didn’t want to be bullied, so he stuck around Ninten. And Ninten wanted to continue to not be spoken to, so he stuck around Lloyd. 

Ninten nibbled on a packed lunch and caught up on some homework, barely paying Lloyd any mind all the while. Meanwhile, Lloyd has his nose stuck in the latest issue of his favorite magazine, Duncan Inc’s Popular Mechanics.

There was one singular solitary thing in this great big wide world that Lloyd loved so much it even surpassed his mania for extreme risk aversion: machines. Lloyd loved to tinker with anything that could or should work, if it was a model car, a radio-controlled biplane that loops the loop, a personal robot from Duncan Incorporated, or best of all, if it was something with rocket propulsion. He loved messing around with, and got into trouble with his parents and at school many times over, fireworks, bottle rockets, and rocket-powered robotics. He was to this day banned from the science labs in school, and to this day no one could figure out how he regularly got into them anyway.

—Say, Ninten, want to come over this weekend? I got my new Duncan’s multitool in the mail. I can show you the Duncan-bot I’ve been working on.

—No thanks. I have homework.

—Psh. You always have homework!

—Yes. Most kids my age do.

—What are you studying so much for, anyway?

—I want to get into international finance. You know, speculate on foreign currency rates and stuff.

—Aw, you don’t mean that, do you? Come on, really.

—That’s where the money is. And I’ll get to travel, to Tokyo, to Shanghai, Dubai… see the world. 

—…I have a dream job, too. I want to get into NASA.

—Eh. There’s no money in the space program. You should get a nice job with a weapons manufacturer, Raytheon, or Lockheed Martin maybe, see whichever one wants to pay you more.

Lloyd looked aghast at his friend, who was not even looking back at him, before he rolled his eyes and returned to his magazine.

—You’re hopeless…

The second half of the school day followed with more classes, where teachers would relish a chance to put Ninten and his rotten attitude in place, only for him to listlessly give the correct answer every time, hopelessly further ahead of the rest of his classmates. Then, the bell would ring, and if Lloyd wasn’t in the science labs Ninten would check the garbage can on the roof and he’d walk Lloyd home, not minding the slow ride on his scooter to let him keep pace.

The sun was just starting to think about setting for the day when the two boys reached Lloyd’s house, and Lloyd invited Ninten into the foyer, kicking off his sneakers. Ninten hung back as Lloyd’s father approached and immediately went to spot-check Lloyd all over like a nervous hen.

—There you are, boy! Sheesh, it’s almost time for supper, where you been?

—Agh… I was… I was at the lab for a little bit longer today.

—Well, at least you made it in one piece. Any cuts? Any bumps or bruises?

—No, dad! Jeez!

Lloyd swatted his father away and headed deeper into the house, and the man looked on at his son and sighed. If he wasn’t a gym coach at Twinkle High School, then he looked like he was a gym coach at some other school, and he comported himself with the tortured air of someone who, while sure, he loved him as a father should or whatever, did not receive the son he clearly expected to get.

Lloyd’s father, as if just remembering he was there, then turned to Ninten waiting at the door.

—Well, thanks again for looking after him. It’s real kind of you, making sure he gets home safe. Sorry if he kept you…

—Oh, not at all, Mr. Fahrquhar. It’s no problem-

—Don't get me wrong, I love the kid. Good with all that nerdy stuff, he'll probably invent a new computer or something, but... He has to visit the doctor enough without some idiots pounding on him every day, you know? Anyway, we’re about to have supper soon, if you’d like to join us-

—Oh, no thank you, sir. I have some things to take care of at home tonight.

—Suit yourself. But you’re welcome here any time.

—Thanks, Mr. Fahrquhar. Well, see you later.

*

See you later. That’s the sort of typical banality adults like to utter to each other, or perhaps kids to other adults, when they really want to leave their company but they don’t want to sound rude. As much as he never meant the sentiment even as he said it, little did Ninten know that he would indeed see him later that night. 

A few minutes after Ninten quelled the riot in his living room masterminded by his mother’s favorite antique doll, while he was doing his best to tidy up around the house, Lloyd’s father suddenly burst through the front door, which Ninten only now noticed was ajar due to the earlier commotion.

—…Mr. Fahrquhar? What are you doing here?

The man took a moment to catch his breath, bent over and wheezing, clearly at an age where he couldn’t do such exertions as well as he used to.

—I'm sorry, I didn't know who else to turn to. It's Lloyd. His... his nerdy whatchamacallit-

—His Duncan bots?

—They just… came alive! They bunched together into one super robot thing and went after him! He ran off… he said he was going to a safe place. I… I ah, don’t know where he could have gone. Do you have any idea…

It took all of Ninten’s self control not to groan out loud. He knew exactly where Lloyd had ran off to safety.

—Why not, I don’t know… did you try calling the police?

The man looked at Ninten like he was nuts.

—The police? Take a look outside. The police are a little tied up right now!

Ninten did as he was told. Outside his open door, chaos reigned in Podunk. Street signs bobbed and weaved as they chomped at screaming townsfolk trying to run away, cars grew bloodshot eyes and jaws, and gave chase to other people unlucky to be away from home at the late hour. Not to say that those in their houses were any luckier. Lights flickered and windows smashed as unsuspecting residents were assailed by bloodthirsty appliances and toys. And worst of all, he did indeed notice a handful of men in uniform turning tail in terror at their own squad cars trying to eat them.

Ninten groaned loud enough to himself to not be heard by Lloyd’s dad. Well, it served him right, he thought. All he had do before was never speak to this kid, never escort this weirdo safely to his classes, never eat lunch with this dweeb, never even acknowledge he was alive the same as he did the other kids in school, and he would have never been put in this situation. His hardened heart and innate selfishness put up a valiant fight, but something else deep inside him won out in the end. Maybe it something his mother might have said to him years ago, one of those many lessons technically forgotten in his head but nonetheless retained in his heart, or maybe it was just the bare minimum human decency you need to arrive at “maybe, if I can shoot lasers out of my hands, then by rights I shouldn’t let someone I know reasonably well get eaten by a police car.” 

Whatever it was, it made Ninten leave Lloyd’s dad at his house, grab his bat, hop on his scooter and head into the thick of weird Podunk and toward Twinkle High School.

The “slower than a bus full of noisy kids, but faster than walking” pace that his scooter afforded Ninten suited him for an average school day, when he wasn’t necessarily in a hurry to get there, but it was torture to him in this emergency situation. Nonetheless, he arrived at the front steps of the school, and his heart sank as he saw another worry of his on the way here, that is, how was he going to get into the locked building at night, solved before he had a chance to tackle it. The front doors were demolished and hanging by the hinges, wide open. Ninten clutched his bat and headed inside.

The school was a mess, but not due to any inanimate objects suddenly becoming animate. Rather, it looked like something big, strong, and angry tore through the whole place, throwing around desks and chairs, tipping over lockers, searching desperately for something. Ninten didn’t have to guess what. His feet taking him there by rote, he headed down the halls and toward the rooftop access stairs. Like the front doors, the door leading up to the rooftop access stairs was busted open. He was at once filled with a dread that he was too late, and a relief that he didn’t have to ask the old janitor to unlock the door once again. 

Ninten reached the top, the panoramic view of Podunk lit up and in a weird frenzy all around him. And before him was a sight he had never seen in his life. Well, maybe in the old black and white sci-fi movies he and his mother loved to watch so long ago, but never in real-life.

A robot loomed large over him, humanoid with long skinny arms and legs, a long bar-like body, and two bulbous eyes that scanned around the roof. It looked as if a cricket or grasshopper made of metal grew to human size and walked upright on two legs. And most notably of all, it was made of composite parts of old Duncan Bots, the sleek “D” logo prominent on the thing’s abdomen. 

The rooftop was a wreck as well as the school, and what Ninten saw the robot doing before he arrived made his heart sink. The robot clutched an empty garbage can in its hands and smashed it on the floor again and again.

Find the thief, kill the spare. All hail Giygas.

The Barbot attacked, lunging at Ninten, who wound up and swung his bat straight at its head. Lurching back, the blow otherwise unfazed the robot, who swung its long metal arms and grasped with its long fingers. Ninten deftly hopped and dodged away from its attacks, which surprised him even as he did it, seeing as how he never even really got into many fights with bullies. 

Giygas will have what you have stolen, returned to him.

The rage that exploded inside him against the doll at his house was welling up in his heart again. Here’s another thing that doesn’t belong. Stupid, nonsense. He hated the sight of it, he wanted to wipe it away, erase it completely. 

The hot, crackling yellow energy erupted from his hands, and while it stopped the Barbot in its tracks, it failed to destroy the thing completely. Ninten gained more ground, approaching the beast and firing blast after blast of laser energy, weakening it but never really blowing it to bits.

The whole fight, the stupid thing before him, the fact that his power wasn’t beating him, the fact that his erstwhile friend was still missing, made his anger grow and grow. As his fury boiled over, he gripped his bat tight, and that electric energy seeped inside his weapon, making the wooden thing glow and slightly oscillate. 

Ninten let out a yelp and wailed on the monster, his energized bat demolishing each part that made contact. Blow after blow, it disintegrated into ineffectual pieces of the toys it once was, until Ninten wound up and swung a grand slam at the thing’s head. It knocked the head off and flew away from the roof, hopefully on its way to not hurt someone and rather just hit the ground or at least a car window, if it must. 

The battle was over. Ninten took a moment to catch his breath before the realization sank in. The monster was swinging that garbage can around as easily as he would have that angry doll at his house. He frantically scanned the rooftop floor before he found something that dashed his hopes for good.

Lloyd’s glasses. 

He was gone. He failed. Kill the spare, the robot had said, and kill the thief. He had put two and two together and figured he was the “thief,” whatever that meant, so… had that thing really, killed Lloyd? 

Thoughts raced through his head as Ninten ambled out of the rooftop and down to the first floor and out the broken doors of Twinkle High School. It was more than he could take. All he had to do was not ever speak to him. It was easy, he didn’t speak to dozens of other kids, he could have avoided him all the same. But now, he took on responsibility for him, and failed. What was he going to do? What would he tell Mr. Fahrquhar? What would he tell his dad? Lloyd was… he really was…

He leaned against a dumpster near the school and wallowed in his emotions . With a sad sigh, he tapped the usual cadence on the dumpster’s hull, the same he used to summon Lloyd out of the garbage can.

And then, the dumpster lid suddenly swung open.

—Heya, Ninten!

—GAAAAH!

Ninten jumped out of his skin and staggered back, falling on his butt to the concrete ground. He clutched his thumping heart and gave Lloyd a look that said he could kill him right now, and it took every ounce of self control not to say that out loud.

—Lloyd… are you okay?

—I’m fine. Thanks to your advice, that is! Look, this dumpster is made from some kind of iron-aluminum alloy that’s thirty percent sturdier than that flattened tin garbage can! Much safer, and far less prone to tipping over! Erm… a little smellier, though…

Lloyd sniffed himself over and grimaced.

—I think I stepped in something wet, there’s a twenty percent chance I might get typhoid now, or cholera… Hm. I wonder if you can even get a cholera vaccine? Ack! And my glasses are gone!

Ninten, bewildered by Lloyd’s conversation, barely realized it when he produced his friend’s glasses and returned them to him.

—Ah! Thanks a million!

—Sure. Uh, sorry about your Duncan bots, I had to…

—Oh, that’s alright. I’ll just order new ones, and this time I’ll be careful to pick the ones that won’t try to kill me!

Ninten grabbed his scooter, and just like any other after-school evening Lloyd followed behind and Ninten slow-scooted ahead. As they went on, they saw that the chaos that had overrun the town had dissipated. Policemen took charge of various hard-hit areas and people gradually calmed themselves and returned to their peaceful, no longer mutated homes. And then, they were stopped by a voice. 

It has begun.

Though there was no one within earshot around them, the voice chimed in their minds, as loud and clear as though someone were right next to them. It was the voice of a woman, pleasant, charming, and even a little affected, like the princess of a cartoon fairy tale. 

They come from the ends of the universe, to wage war against... well, somebody. For... well, I'm sure they have their reasons... You, Ninten and Lloyd, are part of the Chosen Four... or three, maybe. I'm not sure about Lloyd... Three boys and one girl, the way it always has bean… or, is it two boys and one girl? I don’t know… Anyway. Get you hence to Youngtown. Find the girl there and do what she says. Then make your way to my realm. I will be waiting for you in Magicant. Till we meet again, for the first time, I think... fare you well, Ninten... And you too, Lloyd, although you're welcome to come along if you want. 

If the two boys had not already been through a house full of ravenous appliances and a deadly toy robot with a mind of its own, the pleasant telepathic voice would have astonished them to their core. As such, they shared a brief moment of uncomfortable bewildered silence, and then continued to do the only thing they could do about it, head home and make sense of it all tomorrow.

*

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!