MADMAN APOCALYPSE

Ding!

The elevator doors slid open, and Bee was the first one out. The sirens had been turned off at some point, but there was still quite the welcoming committee on this floor, even though I was sure most of them assumed that we’d never get past Jeza.

“Beetle Brawler Bomber!” she exclaimed.

Two dark-blue ethereal fists the size of my torso appeared next to her in the air, attached to her body with vague dark-blue trails that might be considered arms if I was being generous.

Woosh!

The right fist smashed into the frontmost spider, knocking it to the floor, before the left followed up with a downwards slam, killing it. I came up next to her, covering her flanks as the two fists swung out around her with little finesse and lots of passion. It was clear Bee didn’t know how to throw a punch, and that lack of experience translated to her spectral hands. That being said, the strength of the fists more than made up for this weakness, as even open-handed slaps were breaking the bones of the enemies.

“Bomb!” she shouted, and the left fist flew into the back of the room, before exploding in a spray of tiny see-through dark-blue flechettes.

Cubicles, computers, and the Agency employees who’d been manning them, were all riddled with holes as the projectiles went straight through every physical obstacle. A few even whizzed by us, but neither Bee nor I were struck, though it seemed a real possibility.

“Be careful with those!” Panda told her.

“Bomb!” she repeated, flinging the other one back behind the crowd.

A second before it exploded, she pulled me down to the floor while laughing maniacally, as the remaining spider employees were shredded to bits.

Before the last one had even fallen, she was back on her feet and skipping towards the glowing wisp holding the keycard to floor 9.

“Onwards!” she said enthusiastically, while I was cleaning bits of shredded spider out of my hair.

“You really must like your new ability,” I remarked, following her back into the elevator.

“It’s so much fun! I need more Intelligence points though, I’m already out of Mana again.”

After slotting in the wafer and clicking the new button that lit up, she dropped down onto the floor and began reading from the Litany book to restore her resources.

“Guess I’ll handle clean-up on the next few floors then,” I said.

The doors slid shut and down we went.

Ding!

The metal doors opened to reveal floor 13. I sprang out, fists already punching the air and generating small bursts. I’d gone through the previous three floors with ease, after realizing that my ‘fight’ reset every time I entered the elevator and that I could use my Pow Punch every floor.

The new version was obviously weaker, but I’d still managed to get some truly devastating results, with floor 12 seeing the entire room turned to rubble after its activation.

I ducked scything limbs and weaved around clawed arms, while punching as fast as I could, not really caring if each punch landed or not.

“This is incredibly annoying to watch, somehow,” Panda complained.

“You’re just upset it works.”

“Sure, blame the game not the gamer.”

“I don’t think,” I said, uppercutting a spider so hard that his head exploded, “that’s how the saying goes.”

“Fak yee!!” Brock squealed.

Bee was still seated on the floor of the elevator, recharging her points, but none of the spiders seemed particularly interested in going after her when I was right up in their faces.

“How many am I up to?” I asked, as I located the Floor Manager in the back. He was putting as many of his employees between me and him as possible. It wouldn’t save him from what was coming.

“I wasn’t counting,” Panda said.

“Forty-one,” Bee announced from within the elevator.

I had no idea how she was counting, since her eyes were closed while she held the Litany.

“Good enough,” I decided and back-pedaled to the elevator doorway.

Only a few of the spiders followed after me, with the rest nursing their broken bodies or pulling away the one’s who’d died.

“Shouldn’t you save this for the boss on the last floor?” Panda asked.

“Where’s the fun in that?”

“Who cares about fun?”

“I do,” I said, then I started pumping air into the valve on the balloon gauntlet’s wrist.

Bee got up and started firing Beetle Bolts over my shoulder, keeping the spiders from getting too close while I set up the ultimate punch. From experimenting a bit on the preceding three floors, I was fairly sure that a ‘fight’ would last until anyone I’d damaged, or who were hostile to me, died. This gave me ample time for setting up what I was about to do.

“Breezy really gave me a lot of good pointers on how to exploit this ability,” I commented as I pulled my lips away from the valve.

“Brock likes where this is going.”

“Stop making it weird,” I told him.

I clenched my right fist in the exact way required to trigger the Sea Urchin Ring and, as it activated, Brock and my entire arm were covered in a black spiky carapace.

“Cover your ears,” I told Bee. “This is gonna be the biggest one yet.”

She returned to the elevator, while I walked just past its threshold and located the Floor Manager, who was busy pushing the other spiders out in front of him, urging them to attack me.

Then I cocked my arm back with a grin.

Perhaps the employees on the floor realized what I was up to, because they suddenly surged towards me in a panicked frenzy.

I swung my fist forward into the air.

“Pow.”

ACTIVATING SCRIPT: Math.pow(Punch)!

Number of Punches recorded in fight: 42

Calculating 42 to the power of Punch

…

Calculations complete!

Although the world didn’t hitch or freeze, I could tell it was a big number, just from the sheer effect it had on the world around me.

The spikes on my fist fired forward faster than the speed of sound, creating a sonic boom that tore the skin off the spiders closest to where it passed by, as it crossed the floor in an instant. Then came the superheated Air Blast on its heels, vaporizing everything in its path and melting away the floor and ceiling, before spreading out to blacken the walls.

The cubicles, furniture, carpet, machines, wallpapers, and so on, were obliterated into floating bits of ash.

As the effect finished, there was not a single piece left untouched, aside from a few bits to my very left and right, where the cone of my attack did not reach.

I breathed out, my breath visible thanks to the ash and pale smoke that filled the room.

The screaming tapestry was back, yelling at me in their static voices.

By the far wall, which was also exposed down to the tapestry layer, was a floating wisp holding the keycard.

“The first time was amazing, but this time it felt just right. Hope it was as good for you as it was for me, Gamby.”

I rotated my shoulder, hardly feeling any backlash from the devastating effect. “It definitely felt good.”

“Sure, very cool. But now what? You can’t get that keycard.”

“You’re such a hater, Panda,” I replied.

“I’ll get it,” Bee said and glided across the deadly woven-hair Dungeon Barrier.

She managed to pick up the item and return to the intact floor, all within a few seconds.

“Touché,” Panda admitted.

“How much damage was this?” Bee asked.

“If I did it all correctly, that should have been forty-two punches to the power of sixteen.”

“…This is the fixed version, right?” she asked, skeptically.

“The previous version would have been sixteen to the power of forty-two.”

“What’s stopping you from using this in every fight?”

“Nothing,” I replied.

“I’m sure they’ll tweak it,” Panda predicted. “Maybe they’ll reconsider what constitutes a fight, or maybe they’ll have only connecting punches count as real punches.”

“Breezy seemed fairly content with leaving it as-is,” I said.

“We’ll see,” he replied ominously.

“Onwards to the boss!” Bee exclaimed and skipped back to the elevator.

She handed me the keycard:

‘Floor 13 Keycard’ x

This keycard allows you to use the elevator in the Castleburg Regional Headquarters of the Broadcast Department, in order to reach Floor 14, the Boss’ Office.

Weight: N/A

“Would you like to do the honors?”

I took it from her hands and pulled out the previous wafer, before slotting in the new one.

The buttons all lit up, and I clicked the top-most one for Floor 14.

As the elevator doors slid closed, the piano and chitter music filled the metal box, creating the least dramatic lead-up for the final confrontation of the Broadcast Department’s Regional Headquarters.