Mooncake Monday
Chapter 1"Firetruck," muttered Angela under her breath. She let a soft but deep sigh as she tried to freeze time in her mind. The explosions and cries of agony faded into unintelligible whispers as if she were submerged in a tank of water, viewing the action unfold but unable to make any sense of it. So many sensations were rushing through her body but they dissolved like cotton candy before her mind could contemplate their meaning. "Boom!" Another blast went off but this one zoomed only a few feet away from Angela, kicking up the soil and spraying loose chunks into her face. This was just enough to bring her to her senses. Angela blinked twice, her heart began to climb steadily upwards, and reality rushed back into focus like a scene from a war movie. "I've got to get moving," she remarked urgently. "I can still fix this if I just get to the code in time." Angela took two steps to her left and then quickly transitioned into a frantic sprint.
Halfway across the corn field Jet yelled out for his son. "Franz! Franz!" He screamed until his lungs were about to burst but he could barely even hear his own voice amongst the noise around him. Squirming around, Jet grunted as he tried once again to untie the ropes holding him to the ground but his hands were too immobilized to do little more than stretch his fingers. All he could see was the clear blue sky peacefully maintaining status quo, as if to mock him about how little it cared about the situation unfolding below. "Clack!" A fist sized rocked rolled several times over after being kicked by one of Jet's flailing legs. Pausing, Jet took a deep breath and then extended his leg as far as it could go in the direction of the rock. "Yes!" he exclaimed as the front edge of his shoe just barely made contact with the top of the rock. Jet pulled the rock in and positioned it under his body. Using the sharp edge of the rock as a knife, he slid his body up and down along the ground, rubbing the rope against the solid surface. After 10 grueling minutes, Jet was free and he quickly jumped to his feet with only one thought in his mind, Franz.
"Let me in! Let me in!" yelled Angela.
The guard looked at her unfazed. "This is government property, I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
"But I know how to stop the Mooncakes! If you just let me in I-"
"Ma'am, I'm not going to ask again."
Vaguely recalling some quote about heroes and not wearing capes, Angela let her instincts take over and grabbed the metal chair next to the guard firmly with both hands before knocking the guard unconscious with it. She leaned down to slide the guard's right arm to his side, leaving him slightly more presentable than before, then dashing off herself into the nearby building.
The inside of the building was almost as chaotic as the outside world Angela had just left behind. Officials running through the halls, sirens blaring, and shouting from all directions distracted from the above average architectural beauty of the structure's interior. "Now which way was it," she whispered before heading towards the south side of the building to access the stairwell to the 5th floor. The pathway she was following mirrored the same routine she executed a week prior during the hack. She hadn't planned on ever returning but a careless overlook in the Mooncake's coding led her to this present fate. As she paced through the hall Angela thought to herself, "If all had just gone according to plan the government wouldn't know we even stole five of their Mooncakes and Operation CC's final phase would almost be complete by now." Annoyed but determined, Angela opened up the door to the stairwell and began climbing two steps at a time.
"Surely that wasn't him," thought Jet as he tried to reassure himself. Jet ran silently towards the cloud of dust covering the spot where he had just seen a small figure knocked back by a blast from one of the bigger Mooncakes. As he approached the area, he gradually changed his pace from a sprint to a careful walk. As if he were swatting at a fly, Jet began flailing his arms aimlessly in an unsuccessful attempt to clear out the dust. Coughing every few seconds, he continued forward until reaching where he thought he had seen the figure land, at which point he stopped. "Frrr-Frrra-Franz," said Jet timidly, almost afraid to even let the word come out. With no breeze in the air the dust settled slowly, but after a minute of what seemed like eternity, the air was clear enough to just make out a face and Jet immediately held his breath.
Just inside the yellow walled room on the fifth floor lay the computers with access to all the coding and controls for the Mooncakes. Angela peered through the window and could see about six people inside. The tall, black-haired boy and the blond girl wearing a navy suit were banging away at two of computers' keyboards while the other four were crowding around them at an uncomfortable close distance while shouting words and clenching their fists. Angela knew they were trying to regain control of the Mooncakes but also knew they were working pointlessly because she had directed all access of those five Mooncakes to herself. Although she had control of the Mooncakes, she still needed access to the government's programming in order to change the base code within the Mooncakes. Looking for ways to get past the six government officials, Angela's eyes rested upon another metal chair sitting outside the room. However, she knew she would only be able to knock out maybe one or two people before getting ganged up on herself, and frankly she was out of breath. Knowing it was for the greater good, Angela confidently opened the door, pulled out her M9, and swiftly dispatched the six members in the room. Sighing a breath of relief, she knew she had achieved a chance at redemption.
Clicking rapidly on the mouse, Angela's eyes lit up as she found the text she was looking for. The screen read, "...every enemy creature in a field line." With a click of the mouse and 5 taps on the backspace, the new text on the screen read, "...every enemy creature in a field."
"Ha. Perfect!"
Angela smiled and then laughed about how ridiculous it was that the removal of one word was going to save the world. With the previous text, the Mooncakes needed to find at least two creatures in a field in order to generate a line, and they were also only able to shoot blasts in a line. This alone was an issue but to make things worse, due to lack of government funding the Mooncakes depth perception was quite bad. This led to an unforeseen issue of when the Mooncakes would fire their blast, they would fire it as such a strong force that the blast would travel in a line for 3 miles long, ensuring that the Mooncake eliminating all targets within its designated line. Of course this meant any usage of the stolen Mooncakes would not go unnoticed, leading to the events of November 7th. Angela sunk into her chair and watched the news channels broadcast the Mooncakes rampaging through all the corn and wheat fields in the area, killing every living creature and human that remained in the fields. The Mooncakes blasted away in a much more reserved manner, only blasting a small radius around its target or shooting in short lines, curved lines, or other shapes that traveled far shorter than 3 miles. After the Mooncakes finished destroying all life in the fields, they shutdown as they were programmed too, allowing the government to safely retrieve them. By the end of the day, the death toll had reached a staggering ten thousand individuals because of the small city that stood close to the corn fields and much of the surrounding nature was burned to a crisp. Angela shed a couple tears thinking about how everything had gone so wrong that day but closed her eyes and breathed because she knew she had just saved Operation Crop Circle from failing in its final phase.
"Can you believe how hard it would be to make crop circles with only 3 mile long lines," she cackled. "The martians from Mars would certainly obliterate our planet after seeing that pitiful display. Unfortunately I'm going to have to hack into the government again to get our hands on some more Mooncakes. Oh, and since the five from today did such a good job killing off all the animals in the field, we'll probably need some more people to tie up and throw into the corn stalks."
Angela brushed her hands together and smirked, satisfied with starting the work week with another successful and heroic venture.
