Work Text:
Everyone was gone.
One by one Hero’s friends had left him. First Mari, whose suicide was heartbreaking yet somehow also the most normal of their deaths. Then there was Basil, who thought it would be funny to die to that funny green man song. Sunny went and oyasumi’d off the side of a building with Aubrey to banana man of all things. And Kel... Kel just disappeared one day after all of Aubrey’s friends died in a car crash, but given the rend of his other friends he was as good as dead.
Now Hero was alone. But he wouldn’t be for long. Because as everyone knows, you can only break a man so much before he snapped, and boy was Henry Rodriguez about to snap. He wanted nothing more than to be with his friends, and with the girl he loved. And if he was going out, he would go out with a bang that would outdo anything his friends could have done.
Thus, Hero set out to commit a war crime.
—-
The moon was bright in the sky as Hero set up the instrument of his liberation. And what an instrument it was. Mari always told him he should learn an instrument so they could play together and in a way, he finally did.
Mari had her piano, Sunny his violin,
And Hero had a thermonuclear bomb that he bought off of some guy on Craigslist.
Hero was surprised that he was able to get this far, he figured he’d hit a roadblock trying to get the thing and have to just, go out in some really dumb and un-exciting way but it turns out that getting a nuke wasn’t even the hardest part of this whole thing. The hard part was putting the damn thing together. The instructions were very bad, almost impossible to follow, and not just because they were written in Bosnian. But after three days of building, realizing he messed up, and rebuilding the thing, Hero got it right.
And now here he was, on the roof of Othermart setting up a nuclear bomb with the sole intent of leaving this world and taking this entire stupid town with him. They honestly had it coming. None of the parents here aside from his own and that blue haired girl’s gave a shit about them, there was trash everywhere, and the town didn’t even have a police force to try and stop him. He was able to break into Othermart all by himself without any difficulty and rig up this nuclear bomb without any police officers getting in the way. It was like the town was asking to be obliterated in radioactive fire.
“Just a bit more and It’ll all be over... and no more Faraway either,” Hero muttered to himself “Seriously, who the hell names a town Faraway? We aren’t even that out of the way!”
Hero grumbled to himself some more before tightening up the last screw in the bomb, which then came to life as the screen attached to it lit up with the bright yellow image associated with radiation. Hero’s face grew into a grin as he admired his handiwork. It was ready.
“Not much more left now...”
Hero turned to a nearby boom box that he brought up with him and put in a CD of his favorite band: The Ink Spots. He set the music player to play his favorite song from them. Well he was pretty sure it was his favorite song.... it was really hard to tell because every Ink Spots song starts the same.
*it’s all over... but the crying... and nobody’s crying but me..*
Hero sat down and looked at the bomb. There was no going back now. Mostly because there was a spider on the ladder back down so even if he didn’t want to do this he couldn’t go back down that ladder anyways.
“Well guys,” Hero muttered to himself. “Guess it’s time to make the Geneva Convention look like the Geneva Suggestion,”
Hero began to type in the access codes to the bomb as the CD kept going.
*I don’t want to set the world on fire...*
Hero clicked enter and watched as the computer screen displayed text.
ACTIVATE BOMB?
>YES
NO
Hero clicked yes.
ARE YOU SURE?
>YES
NO
Hero clicked yes again.
NO REALLY ARE YOU SURE ABOUT THIS? THIS IS KINDA OVERKILL, AND WILL LIKELY HAVE DEVASTATING REPERCUSSIONS ON THE ENVIRONMENT FOR YEARS TO COME. ITS NOT LIKE FALLOUT IF YOU DO THIS YOU WONT GET SUPERPOWERS YOU WILL ACTUALLY DIE FOR REAL AND IT WILL HURT FOR EVERY SINGLE MOMENT OF IT.
>YES
NO
Hero frowned and clicked yes one more time.
BOMB ARMED. YOU HAVE TEN SECONDS UNTIL DETONATION.
Hero allowed himself to fall onto his back and look up at the moon. It was a fitting end really, all alone in the town he tried so desperately to get away from looking up at a perfect moon as he listened to his favorite song.
*Never gunna give you up never gunna let you down!*
Hero scowled and slapped the side of the boom box, switching it over to the right song.
*We three, will wait for you... even for eternity...*
Satisfied at the choice of music, Hero shut his eyes. He was ready.
5
“I’ll see you guys real soon,” he whispered to himself.
4
Basil, Aubrey, Sunny, Kel... Mari. They were all waiting for him.
“I can’t wait to hold you in my arms again Mari,”
3
*What good is the moonlight, that silvery moonlight that shines above....*
Hero was certain now that he couldn’t tell any of the Inkspot’s songs apart from eachother. He’d have plenty of time to sort that out in the afterlife at least.
2
He could practically see the picnic waiting for him on the other side. Everyone was there, waving at him to come over.
1
The ends of his lips curled upwards into one final smile. Him and faraway had one moment left, and he wanted to make it count.
0
“Bazinga.”
And then the world went white.
—-
Breaking News
The village of Faraway Ohio and the surrounding area has been obliterated by a thermonuclear explosion. At 3:15 last night, the surrounding area was lit up with bright white light as the town went up in a mushroom cloud. Authorities have no idea who caused the explosion, but they do believe it is tied to the three recent incidents in town connected to the deaths of several children. The only other lead authorities have are reports of a noise complaint involving “Some dumbass blasting 1920’s music on the roof of the Othermart,” which was filed moments before the town was destroyed. The President of the United States will address the nation shortly on this incident, but until then we will keep everyone updated with the details of this story as it develops.
—-
The picnic was far more tense than Hero expected.
Mari had her arms crossed as she glared at her friends in the white void of the afterlife, the only color aside from them being the red and white checkered picnic mat that they stood on. To her dismay, all of her friends had died in horrible, and also humorous ways. For the sake of memes.
“What the actual hell guys?”
The group was looking at the floor, clearly ashamed of their actions.
“You all let yourselves die, FOR MEMES!”
She pointed at Basil first.
“Basil! You stabbed yourself to... to the onceler song!?”
Mari thrust out her hands, flabbergasted at the mere idea of her friend ending his life to a song from the Lorax.
“What were you thinking!?”
Basil weakly smiled and shrugged
“How bad could it be?”
Mari shook her head and turned to her brother Sunny.
“And Sunny, I even went and became a ghost to try and stop you from committing oyasumi,”
“But Mari-“
“No buts! You went and threw away the rest of your life, and if that’s not bad enough you went and dragged Aubrey down with you!”
Aubrey wrenched her eyes shut to try and hold back the tears.
“I just didn’t want him to be alone... I-I was scared... I didn’t want to lose him too...”
In her fit of anger, Mari managed to form a warm smile for her friend, the only one who didn’t die for @ joke, but ended up dying trying to save her brother.
“I’m not mad at you Aubrey... you never meant for this,”
Aubrey buried her face into Sunny’s shoulder as Mari turned back to him.
“You on the other hand, all this just so you could die listening to Banana Man!?”
“It was supposed to be All Star,” said Sunny.
“Thats only a little bit better!”
Mari took a deep breath before turning to Kel.
“Kel I don’t event know HOW you turned into a car, let alone why you couldn’t stop yourself before killing Aubrey’s poor friends!”
“I tried save scumming!” Said Kel “But it wouldn’t let me...”
Mari slapped Kel across the face.
“Save scumming!? SAVE SCUMMING!? KEL THIS ISNT A GAME PEOPLE ACTUALLY DIED!”
Kel looked away in shame and rubbed his cheek where Mari hit him. Hero meanwhile gave his brother a bewildered look as he learned where he had disappeared to.
“My brother turned into a what now?”
Then Mari looked at Hero.
“And Henry... you committed an actual warcrime...”
Mari threw up her arms as Hero offered the best smile he could, which given the situation wasn’t very good.
“It wasn’t that bad,”
“YOU BLEW UP FARAWAY!!!” She screamed “EVERYONE THERE IS DEAD!!!”
Hero was silent for several moments.
“... It’s because my last word was Bazinga, wasn’t it?”
Mari was breathing heavily now as her friends looked on, ashamed of their actions as they saw how it affected their dear friend. They felt even worse as Mari fell to her knees and started sobbing.
“...You were all supposed to live long and happy lives...” she cried. “You weren’t supposed to die like this... for some stupid joke...”
The five friends looked at eachother, then without any further exchange of words, wrapped Mari up in a group hug.
“Why did it have to be us!? Why did it have to be us!?” Mari sobbed.
Hero pat his lost beloved on the back and glanced over at the rest of the group, who all shared his regret.
They had all made mistakes, but the upside to it all was that they had the rest of eternity to make up for it in the afterlife however they could.
Together.
Except for Hero, Hero killed everyone in Faraway so he’s going to hell.