A radioactive pack of bacon VS The vengeance filled old forum layout
APRIL 21, 1986 - PRIPYAT, UKRANIAN SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLIC
"We done for today?"
"Yea, that's the last batch."
"Alright, let's pack it up for the night. We've got a busy day ahead of us tomorrow."
As his head chef exited the kitchen, Ivan Acklovich Troussov lingered to survey his handiwork. Tomorrow was the grand opening of Comrade Bacon, and the wondrous meaty strips lay waiting in the freezer for eager communist customers to flock to the shop in droves. Satisfied with his position in life, Ivan Acklovich exited the shop and returned to his home, hoping to make enough profit as to not be relocated to Siberia.
It was, however, not to be. For right next door to Comrade Bacon lay the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
As news of the nuclear disaster spread, the residents of Pripyat fled in a blind panic. Ivan Acklovich drove by his failed bakery on his way out of the city, giving one last longing glance back before driving off. By sunset on April 22, Pripyat was a ghost town, all but forgotten.
Comrade Bacon received some of the worst of the radiation. As the years passed, alpha particle after alpha particle bombarded the shop, with the freezer in the back offering little protection to the once-promising product within. Ivan Acklovich's bacon slowly became more and more radioactive. And as anyone who has ever read a comic book knows, large amounts of radiation can only lead to horrible things.
The sentience came first. The malevolence later. The higher thinking required to accomplish the goals of the pack, later still.
And yet, the bacon was lacking in a key component of it's plan: mobility. But that would come. For their patience was infinite, cryogenically frozen in time in the center of a 30 kilometer evac zone.
...
JUNE 26, 2013 - SOMEWHERE IN KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The door was open.
chaos stroked his beard thoughtfully. When he had gone upstairs after breakfast to write a bit of code, he had been certain that his back door was closed. Yet here it stood, three hours later, tauntingly ajar.
"I must have forgotten to lock it this morning," he mused. "The wind probably blew it open."
With this optimistic thought, he went upstairs to ask his bum of a roommate Vbulletin if he wanted a sandwich or something.
The eerie silence coming from Vbulletin's room concerned chaos. Normally one could always hear the sounds of trolls, spambots, and yet another Shiruba post. Yet chaos heard... nothing.
"Yo V, did SOMALIA go on a banning spree again?" he called as he opened the door.
What he saw stunned him beyond anything he had ever seen.
Vbulletin lying facedown in a pool of blood.
A window ajar, the curtains flapping in the breeze.
And a note on the nighstand that read "GARY WAS HERE ASH CHAOS IS A LOSER".
Succumbing to shock, the last thing chaos saw before he fainted was a strange glint in the otherwise glassy eye of his old friend.
...
JUNE 27, 2013 - PRIPYAT, UKRAINE
"Is this the place sir?"
"Yes. This is where my dreams died."
Now an old man, Ivan Acklovich had returned to the gravesight of a long-lost friend - Comrade Bacon. He knew his time was short, and he finally wanted to make his mark on the world.
Donning a hazmat suit, he followed his comrade, who preferred to be known only by his initials, H.D., into the ruins of his bacon shop.
As the pair walked inside, they were immediately greeted by a family of five-legged raccoons, who scurried off into the dark in search of more wooden furniture to knaw on. The once carefully polished mahogany tables and proud, sturdy stools now lay strewn across the floor as if they had been hit by a tornado. Unperturbed, Ivan Acklovich ventured deeper into the shop, ultimately reaching his final desination: the freezer.
Stepping inside, he noticed an anomaly. The bacon he had abandoned so many years ago seemed to have doubled in size, and despite being in cold storage for almost thirty years the bacon showed no signs of freezer burn. In fact, it almost looked fresher than it had when he had taken it off the fryer.
Delighted, Ivan Acklovich and H.D. loaded a large vaccuum bag with as much bacon as they could carry, then returned into the overcast Ukranian outdoors. Boarding a private jet sponsored by Ivan Acklovich's personal friend, Vladimir Putin, the two flew off to Moscow in hopes of making a profit off of Comrade Bacon's last hurrah.
The bacon was pleased. Its plan was coming together. Soon it would be able to spread mayhem.
...
JULY 6, 2013 - SOMEWHERE IN KENTUCKY, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
The rain was falling in sheets. A stiff breeze howled through the trees, and the night was pitch-black except when an occasional flash of lightning illuminated the landscape. Inside his new home, chaos was enjoying a meal with his new tenant, a pleasant man named XenForo.
Out in the yard, a small wooden signpost depicting a Koffing was the only marker for the grave of Vbulletin. On the gravesite lay a package of imported Ukranian bacon, a final offering from chaos to his departed friend. V had always been fond of bacon.
This night, however, was not like other nights. At precisely midnight, the rainclouds parted just enough to reveal a massive full moon hanging low in the sky. At that precise moment, a flash of lightning arced down from the sky, striking the Koffing embedded in the ground and travelling down to the coffin of Vbulletin.
The combination of the rays of the moon, the lightning, and some residual magic in the area (which can be attributed to the fact that chaos now lived on a former Indian burial ground) jolted life back into the corpse lying below the soil. The heart of the dead forum restarted, the lungs began taking in air, yet the brain was unable to return to full capacity. Vbulletin was back, but had lost many of his higher-thinking capabilities. In fact, as a single hand shot up above the ground, there was only one thing on the revived man's mind:
Vengeance.
Though his ultimate target sat inside the home on the hilltop, in the bedroom that should by all rights be his, Vbulletin had no qualms with eliminating anyone else inbetween him and XenForo. In fact, the obstacle in question didn't even have to be living... or so he thought.
As he reached for the package of Acklovich's Genuine Soviet Bacon, the meat inside tensed. Over the years, they had learned to withhold the radiation they had absorbed in the abandoned freezer, releasing not even a single alpha particle. And now, the pack planned to unleash it all in one massive nuclear blast.
As Vbulletin ripped open the pack, he was met by a bombardment of radioactive particles, meeting with more radiation than a lifelong Chernobyl worker, more radiation than the Three Mile Island plant had released during its meltdown. A normal human would have instantly been killed by this level of radiation.
Yet how can one die if one is not truly alive?
The same mystical force that had returned life to Vbulletin's rotting corpse also prevented life from being taken away. So although he staggered away from the powerful weaponized radiation surge, he was largely unharmed.
The bacon grew frustrated. This was not part of the plan. This shell of a man was immune to their spread of chaos and destruction. They would have to devise a new plan, one that would be certain to-
The bacon pack's plotting was cut off when they were suddenly eaten whole by Vbulletin, who had not eaten anything since the day he died.
With that minor nusiance out of the way, the once-dead forum shambled towards the home of Smogon's founder, ready to reclaim his throne.
Winner: The vengeance-filled old forum layout