Zoomer woke up early the following morning to get a head start on his superhero duties. It wasn't terribly early – 8AM is the average wakeup time for Saturn Valley. However, Zoomer needed to get out quickly, since he did not want anyone to learn his identity. He nudged his mask over his foot and jerked it upwards, throwing the mask into the air and landing perfectly around his head. He did the same thing with his cape, and the band slipped just under his nose. Now that he was disguised, he was ready to head out and fight crime!
Super Saturn peered out his windows and the glass hole on his front door. Nobody had gone outside yet, meaning he was in the clear. He opened the door and poked his head out a little, just to make sure he could head out without being spotted. Still, he saw nobody else. He left out, closed the door, and swiftly hopped for the hills to his left. He hid behind a ledge to stay out of sight and carried on, staying on the lookout for villains and bad guys. Zoomer hummed his theme song, which he wrote.
"Super Saturn, Super Saturn, fighting crime all day! With a zoom-zoom here and a boing-boing there, bad guys go away! Boing!" It was corny, terrible, and would make Walt Disney blush. Zoomer knew this, which is why he thought it was so fitting for him.
When the valley stretch ended and he was without a ledge to walk on, he was now in the Dusty Dunes Desert. The area was unrelentingly hot, and you could get sunstroke just by acknowledging the desert exists. Even the Devil would flinch if you stepped on the sand, road, or rocks with bare feet. Needless to say, this was a problem for the Mr. Saturns, since they never wore shoes or anything else to cover their feet. Many people have ventured through the desert in search of gold, treasure, or a long, unpleasant adventure. Even if people don't succumb to heatstroke or dehydration, the many, many horrors living in the desert are around. The most infamous of them all is the Smilin' Sphere, a bronze orb that's grinning. People have been known to fight it off and receive a face full of explosions and shards from its body in return. That's right, you fend this thing off and it just blows up in your face. How rude!
Zoomer was hit in the face hard by the blazing heat, along with an unpleasant breeze that blew sand into his face. He hacked and coughed violently when the sand hit him, and his eyes profusely watered as the grains battered his eyes.
"I immediately regret this decision! Boing!" Super Saturn grumbled. He walked along the giant rocks, but for whatever reason, he was not in pain. The soles of his feet had been through his abuse so many times, he did not even notice how hot the rocks were. However, his eyes were still being whapped with sand, blinding him on his trek. It was easy to shake the sand away, but his walk was not made any easier.
He almost died from relief when he saw the tunnel that lead to Fourside. Zoomer squealed in joy and hurried for it, still having to bat away the shake the sand away from his eyes. Finally, he reached his salvation, and was no longer being hit by the wind and sand. It was much preferable to being in the desert.
"Finally!" Zoomer exclaimed. There was still a breeze, but it was refreshing instead of burdening. He headed to Fourside, but instead of a bustling metropolis filled with hardworking people, he saw something rather startling and upsetting.
Zombies. Zombies everywhere.
Super Saturn's eyes widened at the horrible sight, remembering the zombie outbreak in Threed from years earlier. While the Mr. Saturns did not interfere then, as it did not concern them, Zoomer felt a need to try and help.
The undead were running every which way, converting anyone they captured into a brain-munching person. A zombie chased down a man in a business suit, jump, and tackle this poor sap to the ground. It grabbed his arm and sank his teeth into it, tearing away a chunk of flesh and giggling when blood started gushing from the wound like a geyser, then went on its merry way to do the same thing to more victims. The felled man's skin slowly changed from his regular skin tone into a sickly greenish-blue, his eyes roll to the back of his head, and disgruntled groans coming from his mouth.
"Oh, no!" Super Saturn said as he watched the horror. He needed to act, but what would he do, and where would he start? The undead were running wild in the streets, and were not going to heed the order to stop from a two foot tall ball with whiskers.
A zombie wandered by the tunnel, spotted the hero, and started making tracks for him. This zombie, as well as the others, were quite nimble and regularly ran up to their victims.
The undead one opened its arms wide, as if it was going to try and grab Zoomer and ran for him, but Super Saturn jumped over the zombie before he could be snagged to avoid the unwanted hug. When the zombie turned around to try and attack again, Super Saturn jogged to his enemy and jumped once again, but nowhere near as high, and headbutted the undead one in the chest.
"Gyuargh!" the zombie groaned. It was a primal noise, one that no ordinary human could make. The zombie heaved and stumbled back, clenching its hands into fists when it stood properly again.
Zoomer backed away, but the fiend sauntered after him. The zombie raised its right fist and prepared to punch the masked one, but the strike was much too slow to come even close to hitting him. Super Saturn jumped once again and delivered a swift kick to the side of the zombie's head, knocking it off balance and sending it fumbling into a tunnel wall, where he bonked his head and passed out, slumping to the floor.
"That was odd," Zoomer said and checked on the fallen zombie. He gently nudged it with his foot, but there was no response. He was definitely down for the count. Zoomer decided not to waste time and headed to Fourside, hoping the rest of the zombies would be just as easy to defeat. He wouldn't mind a fight – it came with the job – but he wanted to save his strength if it was possible.
Super Saturn left the tunnel and walked down Fourside's first road, which split to the northeast and to the northwest. Intuition told him to go east, but his gut told him to go west. There were zombies scattered everywhere in the city, which was one of Zoomer's biggest concerns: No matter which way he went, he would be unable to help the other part of the city.
"What a predicament. Dakota!" he said.
"Bwruaaaarrrrrgh," came a low, guttural murmuring. Super Saturn looked left and saw another zombie running up to him. It obviously had the intent to kill, so Zoomer gave it some priority. He couldn't save the citizens of Fourside when he was dead, could he? I mean, he could try, but his progress wouldn't be very impressive. When the zombie was just inches away from the masked hero, Super Saturn threw out his stubby little foot and tripped the zombie. It tumbled as it tried to regain its balance, but ultimately collapsed on the ground. Splat! Zoomer carried on to save more of the metropolis's citizens, but stayed on the lookout for more of those no-good brain munchers.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! No! No! Get away from me, zombie! Shoo! Shoo!" somebody screamed. Zoomer looked behind him and saw a new age retro hippie backing away from a zombie, but it was starting to pick up speed, and there was no way the long-haired man would get away from it if he turned around.
"No time to lose!" Zoomer exclaimed. He rushed to the scene and tackled the zombie to the ground on its side. "Run! Rune while you can! Zoom!" Super Saturn said to the retro hippie, who did exactly that and ran for the hills. The zombie picked himself up, but Super Saturn delivered a hefty kick to its head, knocking it down again and knocking it out. It made one last groan before its lights went out.
At that point, another zombie returned the favor and kicked Zoomer aside, sending the hero rolling across the ground and into the streets.
"Oof!" Super Saturn grunted when he finally stopped rolling. He got up, but the frantic stumbling disoriented him. His balance was shot and he could barely see; everything was blurry, spinning, and doubled. Zoomer swiftly shook himself, hoping to regain his visibility. Like everything else that's written by somebody who writes themselves into a corner every other sentence, it worked! Zoomer was not longer dizzy or seeing double, but instead he stood confidently and steadfast, leering at the zombie that kicked him. Then, he began pacing back and forth, but still watched the undead one, contemplating his next move.
The zombie, tired of waiting for Zoomer, decided to take matters into its own hands and approached him again, uttering unpleasant chomping sounds to make its intentions clear. Before it could fulfill its hungry desires, Super Saturn did the only thing he could think of, and that was to jump. Up into the air he went, coming down upon the zombie's head. He then pushed himself off of the zombie's head with his right foot, propelling himself into the air again, but sending the undead man face-first into the cement road. Crunch! The awful sound its teeth snapping and falling out of its mouth was loud and made Zoomer shudder; he knew the zombie was once a regular person, but now? It was just a hollow mockery of its past self. He did not know if this zombie had dental insurance, but if it did, the insurance would skyrocket now.
For every zombie Super Saturn brought down, it seemed like dozens more came to take their place. It was like a hydra, but deader and more horrible. Super Saturn did fight a hydra once, but that's for a completely different story. He realized that even less progress would be made this way, and instead needed to take out large groups of zombies simultaneously. Where he could get such a weapon to do just that was beyond him. Unless…
"The department store! Boing!" Zoomer said, as if he had reached some kind of enlightenment. He weaseled his way through the zombie-filled metropolis, taking down any zombie that got in his way. Kicking, headbutting, shoving, anything he had at his disposal, he used. He didn't have much, but Super Saturn had been fighting crime for so long, he knew what would work and what would fail.
Finally, he arrived at the department store, a four storey building that was once taken over by random monsters and the Department Store Mook, a green squid-like creature. Although zombies were loitering around the entrance, none of them noticed Zoomer or, if they did, were unaware of his intentions and decided he wasn't worth converting.
Super Saturn barged through the doors and quickly closed them, but took a minute to catch his breath. All the running and fighting was starting to wear him down. The clerks at the bottom floor's check-out desk looked at him with an odd stare.
"Who in the world are you?" asked the blonde haired clerk.
"I am Super Saturn! Boing!" Zoomer replied.
"That's great," said the other clerk, who wore glasses. "As long as you're wearing that mask and cape, how about saving our butts?"
"Why don't you try and save yourselves?" Zoomer asked, indignantly.
"'Cause I'm on break right now. My lunch comes first, saving the store comes later!" said the glasses-wearing clerk. Super Saturn groaned in disdain and made his way through the store, heading up to the forth floor. Instead of taking the elevators, he ran. There was an emergency going on, after all.
At the back of the forth floor was a door, and that's exactly what Zoomer was hoping to find. He hurried through the door and slammed it shut, and there he was: the arms dealer. He was a muscular man wearing black shades, green camouflage, and black steel toed boots. His 6'8" stature made him look all the more intimidating, but he was actually quite a friendly and respectable fellow. He just happened to have lots and lots of weapons with him.
"Hey, it's Super Saturn!" the arms dealer said. His voice was a rich baritone. "How's it hangin'?"
"Hi, hi, hi! I'm fine, but got no time for small talk! I need weapons! Zoom!"
"I got what you need. Whatcha want?" the arms dealer asked.
"Something to defeat zombies. Boing!"
The arms dealer thought for a minute. He knew that zombies were attacking Fourside, but something that would defeat them? There was nothing he had that could singlehandedly beat them all. When Super Saturn explained that he wanted to take out groups of them, the arms dealer had the perfect weapons for the job: Super Bombs. He opened a large cardboard box that was sitting on the right corner at the back of the room.
"If you want to take out those zombies, you'll need something that has a huge blast radius. These Super Bombs have exactly that."
"Excellent!" Zoomer exclaimed. "I don't want to kill them. Just drive them away."
"These'll still do the trick. I've never seen one of these actually kill people. Monsters, yes. But not people."
"Okay!" Super Saturn said. He glanced at the potent explosives; they looked like regular bombs, but were about the size of an old computer monitor, round, and navy blue instead of black, like regular bombs. Zoomer and the arms dealer hauled the box to the roof of the department store, which was no easy task, by any means. The box was heavy and difficult to shove, but after an hour of straining and shoving, they had reached the roof. They had to head up a flight of stairs, which added half an hour to their walk, but they still had time to try and save the city. Zombies were still running around, and people were still screaming and running away.
"How do we do this?" Super Saturn asked.
"Well," the arms dealer began. He took a bomb out of the box and set it down, kneeling beside it to show Zoomer how to use it. "Push this small, red button here," he did exactly as he said, "and then…bombs away!"
The arms dealer rolled the Super Bomb to the edge of the roof and pushed it over, sending it falling down and into a cluster of zombies.
When the bomb hit the ground, it loudly exploded. The noise was unbelievable; even the arms dealer was surprised by how noisy it was and blocked his ears. Zoomer hadn't expected it to be so loud, jumping from the shock. A plume was created from the explosion and knocked the zombies in the vicinity aside. They went flying through the air and either crashing into things, or just fell down when their 'flight' stopped. Like the arms dealer said, none of the zombies died; they were all knocked out cold. They would be out for some time, which gave our hero and the weapon salesman another opportunity to drop more bombs.
The explosion caught the attention of zombies from all around the metropolis, heading over to see what all the commotion was about. None of them batted an eye when they saw their fallen brethren; instead, they looked up at the department store roof and saw the mad bombers.
One of the zombies decided to try and barge into the store, tackling the front doors but was just knocked back to the ground. The doors were locked, and were quite strong. The zombie returned to the hive as they wondered how they should proceed. They couldn't seize the building, that's for sure.
And that's when something completely unexpected happened: They began climbing the wall. A few zombies dug their fingers into the steel hide of the building and started making their way up to the roof. Super Saturn and the arms dealer had not anticipated this, and started wondering what they should do to knock it down.
"I got an idea!" the arms dealer said. He pulled out a machine gun and aimed at the undead climbers. He shot at the one on the left side of the building, just missing its fingertips. This was his intention: To shock the zombies so they'd go plummeting back to the ground. It worked! The zombie lost its grip and fell back to the group. Thud!
When the zombie on the right side of the building saw what happened, it picked up the pace. It made guttural chattering sounds, making Zoomer think this was the zombie that he used as a springboard earlier. But, the arms dealer caught on quickly and shot at that zombie's finger tips, but, he actually put a bullet through one of its fingers. Ouch! The zombie squealed in pain and went tumbling down like the zombie before it.
Now that they had every zombie in the city together, Super Saturn and the arms dealer got another Super Bomb, pushed the button, and rolled it over to the roof. The zombies all stared, confused, at this giant sphere that fell towards them. While they weren't completely stupid and moved out of the way when it landed, they were all blasted every which way when it detonated.
KAAAAABLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAM!
Zombie bodies were strewn about the city grounds, all knocked out and bruised from the blast. Their bodies had burn marks, albeit light ones. Still, it would hurt for quite some time. Zoomer worried about what would happen to the zombies if they returned to normal: although zombies could take quite a lot of abuse, humans were much frailer. Would their injuries worsen if they became regular humans again? It was an unpleasant thought, to say the least.
However, he was comforted by the fact that the zombies had been defeated for the time being. That was the most important thing right now.
"Well, that escalated quickly!" said the arms dealer.
"You said it. Dakota!" agreed Super Saturn.
They left the department store and stood at its front steps outside. Super Saturn looked at the innumerable zombie not-quite corpses lying around the city. He knew the zombies would be back up in a few days, but that was plenty of time for him to solve this debacle.
"So, Supes, whatcha gonna do now?" asked the arms dealer.
"Well," began Zoomer. "I'm heading to Onett. Gonna talk to Captain Strong about the zombies. I'll see you later. Boing!"
"Good luck, Super Saturn," the arms dealer replied as the hero went running to Onett.