“We should trash a train car.”
Nathan jolted upright at his friend’s suggestion. He and Hanna had been spending the day out and were having coffee at a local cafe when she just blurted out the bizarre suggestion. “Where did that come from? “
“I was just thinking about Terry Pratchett,” Hanna explained, “You know, the writer? He wrote the Discworld series and a bunch of other stuff. He’s pretty famous actually.”
“But what does that have to do with your sudden urge to destroy property?” Nathan asked.
“Well, he once pointed out that one difference between us and fans of the soccer team Manchester United is that we’ve never trashed a train car.” Hanna explained, “And wondered why we were the social outcast.”
Both Nathan and Hanna were fans of the Star Trek series, more commonly known as Trekkies. They did all the semi-stereotypical things, obsessing over their cosplay, spending all night in line for tickets for the latest movie and getting into rather heated debates about what series in the franchise was the best. (Nathan preferred the original while Hanna was partial to Next Generation) And they were, as Sir. Terry pointed out social outcasts.
It wasn’t like they were met with scorn everywhere they went, but there were always the whispers of geek, or wasting your life, your show is stupid, and of course being constantly portrayed in the media as one big vocal minority (I.E. the real crazies) was awfully annoying some days.
“And actually, trashing a train will help us become mainstream?” Nathan asked, one eyebrow raised.
“At the very least we’ll deserve our societal exile.” Hanna replied, a cheeky grin on her face.
“Do you realize how insane you sound?” Nathan responded, “It’s not like we’re the only fandom out there that gets flack. Whovians, the Star Wars crowd, the animation age ghetto…”
The cheeky grin on Hanna’s face because almost manic as she slammed both her hands on the table and said, “Then let’s get them all involved! Let’s round up part of every fandom that has ever been made fun of and do this thing!”
“Hanna, you’re starting to scare me a little”, “Nathan replied, edging back a little, “This isn’t just some harmless prank you’re talking about. This is, like, a felony and people could be hurt.”
“We could wear some kind of disguise to hide our faces.” Hanna countered,” And could pick a car with not a lot of people on it, or maybe no people so no one gets hurt. We could buy them all out.
“Ah, Hanna, how many people are you planning to get involved in this?” Nathan asked, momentarily distracted from how crazy this plan was by the logistics of said crazy plan.
Hanna smiled again, “Oh, I have a few ideas.”
#
So, they began to form a plan and put it into motion. The first step was gathering their fellow acceptable hobby targets. They gathered several Star Wars fans which is rather impressive because normally there’s fandom rivalry between them and Trekkies, Whovians, Earpprers, Prodies, X-Philes, both shipper and no romo alike Potterheads, Brown Coats, they a got few Avengers fans to stop fighting for long enough to do it. They even had a couple of Broanies.
They planned for a night when they knew very few other people would be there, on a car few people were rarely on anyway. When the night of their operation came they dressed in regalia representing their fandom, which conveniently enough hid their identity, and bought tickets for the train. Hanna in her Spock ears led the motley crew onto the train where they all sat down.
The group discovered they pretty much took the entire train car, except for two men in sports jersey, both of whom backed to the nearest exit.
Everyone just sat in silence until Hanna announced “Okay, on the count of three. One, two three!”
Suddenly the train car erupted into chaos. The band of nerds started screaming like maniacs, ripping up seats. One of the patrons sitting in the car in front of them peaked back to see what all the hullabaloo was about, and quickly reeled back when he saw a boy swinging from the beams of the car roof with a red and yellow scarf.
The Earpers teamed up to tear the beverage cart away from the attendant and started riding it up and down the isles like a sled. One of them started pulled out a large bee bee gun and started shooting.
In another corner of the car, a young woman in a Black Widow costume landed deftly in front of the two sports fan. “You know,” She began with an actual Russian accent and a flirty smile, “You’re kind of cute. “
“Ah, thanks.” One of the sports fan said awkwardly, “I’m Brad.”
“I’m Svetlana,” The Black Widow responded, “You want to get out here when the train stops?”
Meanwhile, the broanies were beating windows, seats, and any imadamite object they could into a fine paste with a baseball bat, yelling varying angry statements, most of them with every word punctuated for emphasis. (They had a lot of pent-up aggression.)
While all of this was going on Hanna, armed with a can of spray paint and a large cloth bag, was making her own contribution to the riot. By the time she was done, the train stopped. “Everybody out!” She screamed, causing everyone to scatter before train station security got there.
By the time train security got there everyone had disappeared, and all that was left was a large mess. Well, not just a mess. They also found what was discovered to be a giant bag of money, enough to cover most of the damage, and a spray-painted message on the front side of the car that read: Unlike Manchester United fans, we will give you restitution for damages. But still feel free to make us social outcast if you want.
Sincerely, The Acceptable Hobby Targets.