“What do you mean stop screaming?! You shot me in the shoulder, you long necked son of a bitch!” Ben Jeremy frantically pressed his cuffed hand to the wound. His panic was causing him to sweat, and his sweat was causing his glasses to slip off his nose.

“Will one of you two bastards help me?!” he demanded.

“Come on, Ben, you’re a scientist. It was a laser. You should know well enough that it cauterized the wound and you’re not bleeding,” Tommy Tony clenched his jaw to keep from giggling. The scientist was flopping around so violently that he looked like a fish out of water trying not to get hit by a board with a nail in it.

“I can hardly be to blame, white coat. I know you’re wet behind the ears on this sort of thing, but stop moving around so damn much. Otherwise things like this happen.” Small chuckles were escaping the llama’s lips. Mostly from watching Tommy Tony try so hard not to laugh.

“Moving around too much!? A bunch of llamas ambushed us, so we immediately ducked into this abandoned building! Together. At the same time! Then you turned around, made a bunch of weird friggen llama noises, and shot me with a laser beam!” Ben Jeremy waved his hands around in anger, the briefcase jostled around with them. “Furthermore, where did you even get a laser weapon? No one else has laser technology. We never even got close before the damn world ended!”

“I found it.” Mwah’s attention was drawn to the shots coming in from a blown-out window. Every time there was a break in the fire, he would poke his gun out the window, letting several laser blasts fly.

“You found it!?” Ben Jeremy continued. “Where the hell did you find a laser rifle?”

“It was on the ground somewhere. I’m pretty sure it was next to a bunch of shoes.” Mwah and Tommy Tony flanked the window in order to fire in tandem.

“You found a laser gun, just sitting alone, randomly on the ground?” It was obvious the scientist was about to launch into another tirade, but luckily fate intervened.

Two hooves that could have arm wrestled an elephant burst through the window and gripped the broken frame. A voice like thunder rang out and the massive forearms flexed, then the wall gave way and a steam roller disguising itself as a llama burst into the building.

He was as tall as ten bowling balls, if those bowling balls were each one foot tall. His chest and shoulders were so wide that you could park a car on them, and his arms looked like two trees decided to grow elbows.

However, just as striking as his immense physique was how incoherent his words were. Erratic would have been an understatement.

“Irate bowel, candy bar, silk, gloryhole!” screamed the mass of muscle, the llama known as Incisorator.

Before anyone could react, he began whipping his enormous neck around the room, cracking the thick, concrete walls when his head collided with them.

“Mwah, go high!” Tommy Tony screamed at the llama while dodging.

“Right! You get the knees, I’ll get his swim bladder!” Mwah lunged at the hulking creature, missing whatever his friend had replied about fish.

Tommy slammed into Incisorator’s legs, but the llama didn’t budge. Mwah came in with a hard shoulder to the llama’s ribs and Incisorator’s knees snapped in half. The llama’s legs gave out but never broke the skin, like putting a carrot inside a glove and snapping it.

Despite what must have been world shattering pain and loss of mobility, Incisorator still had plenty of fight left in him.

He collapsed forward and landed on the stumps where his femurs used to connect to his knee, with the rest of his legs dangling behind him like socks filled with wet rice. Even so, he was still tall enough to throw devastating punches at Tommy and Mwah.

He managed to land a solid jab to Tommy’s chin and an upper-cut to Mwah’s throat, an easy target given its length. Tommy Tony pushed through the pain and responded with a piece of broken wall to Incisorator’s face, the llama’s jaw unhinging several inches to the left. Mwah finally stopped coughing and thrust his gun into Incisorator’s ear lobe.

“In one ear and out the other!” Mwah screamed out as pastel yellow light burst from his rifle.

The top of Incisorator’s skull turned to dust and his brain melted into a cotton candy like mist as his eyes popped from his head and splattered on the wall.

“Eh, maybe a three, tops,” Tommy Tony said after the carnage ended. He looked at the enormous corpse on the floor and tried not to think about it possibly having a family.

Incisorator, as it turned out, had five kids, all now fatherless. He also had a charming wife, sitting in a chair near the door. A fragrant plate of vegan chocolate chip cookies was waiting for him in the kitchen, hopefully fully cooled in time for his return. His beautiful wife had to repeatedly yell at the children not to pick at them. He worked so hard, he deserved the treat. His ailing mother was knitting in the chair opposite his wife, mumbling about how chilly it was. She had always been good to her son, so they took her in when she had fallen ill. However, now that he was gone, she would die alone in her small room on her small bed, heartbroken as she listened to her daughter-in-law cry and wail. With her son dead, she no longer felt the will or need to live.

Unable to afford so many children without her husband’s income, the mother was finally forced to take a job in retail. It was a degrading life, but at least her four kids could eat. It was four now that her eldest had joined the army to help with the bills. The letter she received detailing the incident that took his life was still sitting on the floor, even so many weeks later. Luckily, she didn’t have to mourn the loss for too long. She met her demise during a fire caused by her employer’s negligence. No one cared enough to find out what fate befell the other four children but perhaps that was for the best. Suffering follows a family, and when it has tasted their sorrow, it will not be satisfied ‘til its cup is full, and their hope is empty.

(See Appendix for her vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe.)

“How many bullets do you have left?” Mwah asked Tommy Tony.

“My clip holds twenty rounds and I have five of them. I’ve already fired 3 shots so I should have thirty-six more bullets.” Tommy Tony was checking his gun as he spoke, making sure he didn’t accidentally turn the safeties on.

“Can the white coat over there fire a weapon?” Mwah cast a glance at the scientist huddled in the corner of the room, trembling.

“I’ve bent all of known science to my whim in order to create what is essentially a weapon of mass destruction. I think I can figure out how to use a-.” Ben Jeremy was cut off as a handgun slapped him across the left cheek. Despite Mwah throwing the thing gently and underhanded, the scientist still managed to catch it with his face.

Tommy Tony pointed at Ben's left lens. “Seriously, man, clean your damn glasses.” 

“I think we can flank them if Ben will offer cover fire. I’ll be the bait and you can snipe them while they’re-.” Tommy Tony never got to finish. A scream echoed throughout the battlefield and stopped him cold.

It was a tactic that Tommy Tony had grown accustomed to. The llamas had taken someone hostage.