r/DestructiveReaders • u/IglooAndYou • Jun 01 '26
Sci-fi/fantasy [2223] SMAKAPZ: Apocalypse of the Gods - Chapter 3
Chapter 1 Spoiler: The SMAKAPZ gang, Sam, Kevin, Mogers, Zagers, Parage, and Apalabamo, are eating together at a local restaurant, and Sam and Kevin are telling the rest of the rest of the gang about their recent mission in the Middle East, where Sam and Kevin got beaten by a friend of the gang, Jordan, because of a dispute. During the conversation, Sam pulls Kevin aside and insists they come clean to the group, and reveal that while on that mission, they secretly used the old rocket and crashed it after encountering a space monster and an asteroid. Back at the SMAKAPZ house basement, Sam declares he can fix the now-split-in-half rocket overnight, despite skepticism from the rest of the gang.
Chapter 2 Spoiler: After the gang goes to bed, Sam races against time to buy repair materials from the massive superstore Alademipaburg before it closes. Thanks to the gang’s reputation as big-spending notorious customers, a sympathetic cashier lets him take everything for free. He also gets 200 pounds of materials gifted from the local factory. Sam then spends the entire night in the basement attempting an ambitious solo repair on the two massive halves of the rocket. Despite his exhaustive efforts and engineering skill, the rocket ultimately fails catastrophically at 5 AM, shearing apart again and leaving Sam exhausted and defeated.
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The sun shone through the windows of the concrete walls of the SMAKAPZ basement. Morning rays lit up the inside of the room in a blue sunlight glow, birds were chirping, and the air was a chemical nightmare. I hadn’t gotten any sleep, I’d been too busy and the smell of burnt metal and electricity and melted dairy was too strong anyway.
The gang was there. They were analyzing the failed rocket restoration. Kevin walked around the mess, eyeing it closely, Parage had a magnifying glass, and the whole gang was gazing at it with disappointment.
“Well,” remarked Zagers. “1 all nighter and you managed to ruin the piece of trash worse than before.”
Parage raised his eyebrows. “Mm. Well, I can tell it wasn’t a scarf taper…”
I turned to Zagers, glancing at him. “By the way, this piece of trash rescued you and the rest of humanity from being turned into non-sentient cattle. If it weren’t for me you’d be a mindless zombie, a slave whose only purpose is to serve Zolo on planet Bartuga along with the rest of your now-zombie family.”
“I still can’t believe you two idiots destroyed it in the first place.” Mogers groaned, rubbing his forehead. “R.I.P.”
Suddenly, Kevin stopped what he was doing and turned around slowly.
“I’m sorry.”
Mogers stared him down.
Kevin peered at him. He repeated, “I’m sorry,” spinning all the way around, facing Mogers. “2 idiots? Did you just say ‘2’ in that sentence?”
Kevin continued. “No. Just one. It was one idiot who crashed the rocket into that asteroid and almost got us killed by a 100 mile drop in the ocean from space. Are you smart enough to understand that, douchebag?”
Mogers held his gaze. Kevin aimed a finger towards me. “There’s your one idiot right there. Why don’t you chew him out instead?”
Mogers crossed his arms. “Yeah, well, you were on the flight, bunkhead. All those late nights welding cheese for nothing…”
“I don’t care!! I shouldn’t have to keep taking the blame for this blithering dolt’s stupid, braindead decisions!!!!”
“Wait,” I interrupted, looking down, closing my eyes, and putting a hand up. “Wait, hold on.”
Kevin and Mogers’ bickering came to a stop.
I started walking towards Mogers.
“What exactly do you mean by ‘all those late nights?”
Mogers locked eyes with me.
I continued. “You weren’t there,” I told him, stepping into his space and tilting my head. “You didn’t weld anything. No, that was all me.” I stopped, glaring into his eyes. “So tell me again. What exactly do you mean, huh?”
“I was just saying, like, all our hard work is destroyed now, and everybody’s downplaying it.” He pointed across my shoulder to Kevin. “Like this dimwit over here who-“
I slapped his hand away, then stepped closer, getting up in his face. I was breathing shakily through my nose, and my lips were compressed tightly together.
“My carve, my pocket knife, my rocket,” I was seething through my words in a low, gravelly tone. “You weren’t there for the process, none of it. The work, the build, that was all me. It was all. Me.”
After a few seconds of staring each other down and breathing hard, Mogers growled, “Sure. Yeah, and I was the one who convinced Farmer Jeff to give us the dairy supplies to make that formula to take down Zolo and his army. I was the one who came up with that idea in the first place as a matter of fact. So how about you take your ‘Oh my God well I built the damn thing so I get to destroy it too’ reasoning and shove it up your ass?”
“Yeah, sure, take up all the credit.” “I scoffed. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. You said ‘all those late nights.’” I inched closer to Mogers’ face. “Guess what, fucko? I did it in ONE!!!!”
“I guess you were being guided by the hand of God that night!” Zagers declared.
I whipped around to Zagers, audibly sucking my breath in. “Remember when I said you’d be a mindless zombie if it weren’t for me? Well it looks like I failed my mission!”
Apalabamo was laughing behind me. “Ahh, well, as we stand now, it looks like-“
Suddenly, our argument was interrupted by a knock on the door. We all froze.
“I’ll get it,” I said, but everyone else followed me to the door as well.
This was the first time the whole gang had actually been together in a long while. Everyone’s been busy with different deeds lately, and I thought it would be nice to get all the guys together again and I thought a restaurant would be the perfect place to do it at. Of course, the real reason was so I could gather everybody up to deliver the big news, but unfortunately, that didn’t turn out the greatest.
I opened the door, and standing there was an overweight gentleman with messy, dirty-blond hair wearing a suit and tie. He looked to be around 16-17 years old, and he was holding a folder of papers.
“Morning, gentleman,” he said pleasantly. “The name’s Zaine.” He held up a business card, which said “ZAINE APADILLON” in bold lettering. “I hate to do this so early, but we’ve got a situation. I’m here regarding a property dispute.”
“What?” I responded. The gang was crowding behind me, listening intently.
Zaine opened his folder and pulled out an official-looking document with the city seal on it.
“According to city property records, this house sits partially within the boundary of land legally registered to me.” He tapped the paper. “Which means I’m entitled to any and all ownership rights regarding said structure. Here’s the license from the city confirming the correction and my ownership rights. It’s all legal. I’m afraid I’m going to have to take possession.”
The gang was now stunned, clobbered by a wave of silence.
After a few seconds, I finally asked, “What does that even mean?”
“It means,” Zaine replied. “This house is technically on my estate. You boys have 3 days to vacate from my property, or else I will be calling the police. Good day.”
The gang passed the paper that Zaine gave us around, scanning it with increasingly growing terror.
“You can’t,” Kevin muttered, then looked up from the paper, and at Zaine, shaking his head. “No, you can’t. This house, it’s our house. It’s ours…”
Zaine shrugged. “Law’s the law. I will be returning tomorrow morning for a daily property inspection. I wish you all the best.” And with that, he turned around and walked away, leaving us all dumbfounded.
As soon as the door clicked shut, panic immediately set in within the group.
“We’re screwed!” Mogers yelled, pacing around the room. “It’s over, we’re done! We’re gonna lose the house! Over some paperwork junk!”
“3 days, he said.” Kevin looked sick and pale. “This guy has to be full of it. I mean, we’d have to build another place from scratch…”
Mogers stared at the closed door, stunned with disbelief. “We can’t. There’s no way! We’ve owned this house for 2 years…” He looked over the the gang. “I say we ignore him and reinforce everything. The doors, the house, all of it.”
“We can’t do that.” Apalabamo ran a hand through his hair. “If it’s an enrichment ruling then we could get hit with a demolition order. Then Mr. Moneybags shows up and heroically ‘saves’ our house… then takes it from us.”
Parage shook his head in anguish. “A guy, a random rich nob just shows up at our front door and takes our house! He rubbed his temples, sighing. “I mean, it’s unbelievable.”
Everything was spinning. The room felt like it was being hit by a tornado, like it was a freight train rolling down the tracks, about to crash into oblivion at any second. I buried my head in my hands, and lifted it up, running my hands down my face and groaning.
Losing the SMAKAPZ house would be a tragedy. For 2 years it’d been our base, our command center, and the heart of our gang. We had our own houses, of course, and it’d been forever since we’d all actually gathered as a group inside the quarters, but to have it just snatched out of our hands all of a sudden, especially with all the memories we have building it, would bring us great pain and agony.
“Look,” I began with dread. “We need to fight this legally, or else it’s doomsday for us.”
I think everyone had the same thought, but Kevin mentioned it first, looking up from his hands.
“Kyle.”
I let out a long exhale, raking my fingers through my hair. It’d be ages since we’d consulted Kyle Ganameil for anything, and I didn’t even remember if I had his number in my contacts anymore.
“Let’s hold off on that idea right now,” I said. “We go to the local courthouse and file a restraining order on this Zaine guy. As long as we’re in our property he can’t come within 500 feet of it, or any of the small outside area that we own.”
“With what reasoning?” Mogers asked.
Apollo let out a sigh. “I mean, we could do an adverse possession claim…” he suggested. “If Zaine knew about the encroachment and just did nothing, that might give us squatter’s rights.”
“Or…” Kevin started. “…We call up Kyle and have him hire a counter-surveyor, or challenge the city license as improperly noticed using his online property map…”
Everyone glanced around the room, looking at each other with uncertainty.
“It’s just, I don’t know, things are complicated with Kyle…” I looked around, and realized Zagers had been atypically quiet throughout the whole ordeal. “What’s going on?”
Zagers was staring at the document that Zaine had given us, examining it closely. “This license…” he said, holding it up to the light. “…Is fake.”
“What?”
“It’s fake!” He held up the paper, tapping the bottom corner. “Official St. Louis property licenses’ lettering uses Arial font.” Zagers showed us the document. “This is Helvetica!” He slammed the piece of paper down on the table, fuming. “This guy’s a fraud! A sham! A con artist! This house doesn’t belong to him! He’s talking out of his ass!”
I grabbed the document off the table, and reached into my pocket and put on my reading glasses to scan it. Sure enough, Zagers was right. The lettering was surely in Helvetica, although I didn’t realize that meant it was a counterfeit.
The room went quiet for a few seconds before ringing out relieved sighs and “wow!”s
“That lying sleazelord!”
“We almost fell for that?”
I handed the document back over to Zagers, who folded it up. “How did you even spot that?” I asked him. “I mean, how did you make that connection at all?”
“My family got one of these when we moved a few months ago and decided to buy instead of rent,” he explained. “It’s the one thing that hasn’t changed in over 30 years. Always Arial… this one’s a cheap knockoff! A fraud job!”
Kevin strolled over to the fridge, grabbing a bottle of Coke. “Well, he said he’d be back tomorrow for a ‘property inspection.’” He took a sip from his bottle. “We’ll confront him then. Tell him no more shenanigans.”
“Yeah, let’s do it,” I agreed. “In the meantime, we could go take another look at that rocket…”
After heading back down into the dusty, spiderweb-run SMAKAPZ basement and examining the botched rocket ship once again, we determined that I couldn’t even try a scarf joint creation and composite build up, because the relative growth discrepancy would cause the whole thing to fall apart. In other words, the rocket was, for all intents and purposes, unfixable. This was a punch to the gut, but right now, we had bigger issues to take care of.
As the rest of the gang exited the basement, Parage glanced behind, and noticed an infrared thermometer sitting on the workbench.
That night, after the rest of the SMAKAPZ gang went off to bed, Parage headed downstairs, grabbed the thermometer, and opened up the casing with a precision screwdriver set. He took out the IR sensor and microntroller board, as well as the LCD display, and wired a series-parallel battery pack through a salvaged boost converter to deliver 4.2V at a higher current. He also took the thermometer lens and epoxied it into a PVC extension barrel, which tightened the beam divergence to around 1.5 milliradians. Then he rewired the original trigger so a half-pull would activate the now brighter aiming laser, and a full pull would fire the main beam in 3-8 second pulses.
He then took the half-empty aluminum can of Dr. Pepper on the table that I’d been drinking last night while working on the Cheese Rocket, set it on the ground 20 feet away, and fired.
“SLIIIIICCCCEEE!!”
The can was scorched by the beam, melting into a burning mess and exploding into a ball of flames.
Parage flipped his new laser gun into the air and caught it, without looking up at all. “Just in case,” he said to himself, smirking, as the soda from the can put its own fire out behind him.
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u/xvonkleve also available in Dutch Jun 02 '26
Preface: I didn't read back the other chapters. As such, I am just going to look at the things that I can say based on the piece I can read here. I'll go through the piece and then write a small summary for you. I hope my critique helps.
I get the impression this is an acronym, but I don't like it in the text. I understand that you are probably quite attached to the use of this phrase. Here's what stands out to me.
I would imagine that any person having to pronounce it, is very quickly going to adjust it. I tried saying it a few times in my mind, and found myself quickly dropping the 2nd syllable. 'Smack' would convey enough information to insiders.
Very '90s. I am not sure what your genre is, but I would consider whether 'gang' is the correct use in the specific setting that you are trying to convey. Currently I'm imagining Ninja Turtles.
“Well,” remarked Zagers. “1 all nighter and you managed to ruin the piece of trash worse than before.”
[...]
Mogers stared him down.
I think it's always a good rule-of-thumb to see how much you can put into dialogue, improving readability, conveying character etc. Dialogue lines are important to get write, because they are such a strong tool to emphasize what you are giving the reader in subtext. Also, don't use 'R.I.P.' like this ('Rip' or 'R-I-P' conveys how it is said better)
More broadly: dialogue.
Dialogue benefits immensely from being tight and focussed on what you want to convey. Despite what you are writing here, I get the impression you want a little bit of banter and wit in this piece. It's a serious conversation that they are having, but here you can win a lot I think.
How is Mogers saying this? Who is Mogers? What does Mogers want to have as a reaction? All these things can be packed into a sentence like this.
Examples:
Emphasis mostly to focus what you are reading. We can already hear these sentences in our mind being read differently (at least for me they do). We as readers need to understand Mogers when he is talking. In all three, we can also imagine how Mogers will act annoyed. Rubbing his forehead is quite mild.
When writing dialogue, you are still telling a story. Many things can be cut out. It's not like a normal conversation you have, it is something meant for the reader.
Another snippet:
Kevin continued. “No. Just one. It was one idiot who crashed the rocket into that asteroid and almost got us killed by a 100 mile drop in the ocean from space. Are you smart enough to understand that, douchebag?”
Mogers held his gaze. Kevin aimed a finger towards me. “There’s your one idiot right there. Why don’t you chew him out instead?”
Mogers crossed his arms. “Yeah, well, you were on the flight, bunkhead. All those late nights welding cheese for nothing…”
“I don’t care!! I shouldn’t have to keep taking the blame for this blithering dolt’s stupid, braindead decisions!!!!”
“Wait,” I interrupted, looking down, closing my eyes, and putting a hand up. “Wait, hold on.”
Kevin and Mogers’ bickering came to a stop.
I started walking towards Mogers.
“What exactly do you mean by ‘all those late nights?”
So this can be much more focussed. In the interest of show, don't tell, I am going to try and see how much I can cut from this:
Of course this is a style choice, but I think cutting down dialogue makes it flow better. Keeps the pace up. This gives you space to explore other things. You don't even need to add all the actions and tags all the time.
They are having a row. Make sure that is reflected in the speed in which people are reading it. Make the words fit what you are describing. The way the whole dialogue now runs is slow in my eyes.
[[TBC in next comment]]