Filler 21
The Lazy Anchor
The heavy analog screen flickered violently as the camera cut to the news desk, completely catching the deeply depressed reporter entirely off guard. He wasn't sitting in his chair. He was currently lying face-down on the studio floor, aggressively stretching his lower back while letting out a pathetic, high-pitched groan of absolute misery.
Realizing the red "ON THE AIR" light had just blinked on, the reporter didn't even try to stand up quickly. He let out a rattling sigh that sounded like he was actively passing a kidney stone, slowly crawling up the side of his desk like a zombie and violently throwing himself into his squeaky rolling chair. He spun around to face the camera, his eyes completely bloodshot, carrying the heavy, soul-crushing weight of a man who had entirely given up on life.
He stared at the rolling teleprompter for exactly two seconds. Then, he aggressively slapped his hand over the lens of the prompter camera, completely turning it off.
"Okay, look," the reporter mumbled into his desk mic, his voice entirely flat and hollow. "My producer just handed me a massive stack of papers about some global economic crisis. I am not reading it. I don't give a single fuck about the economy. My shift legally ended four minutes ago, the coffee machine in the breakroom is broken, and I am currently operating on two hours of sleep and absolute spite. I am really tired right now !"
He grabbed the entire stack of official federal news documents and casually tossed them over his shoulder. The papers scattered all over the studio floor like garbage.
"I really, really don't have the biological energy to explain all this shit to you right now," the reporter groaned, slumping so far down into his chair that his chin was practically resting on his belt buckle. "So, instead of journalism, we are just going to roll a random clip the interns found on the internet. You guys have eyes. You can figure it out yourselves. Play the fucking tape so I can go to sleep."
The Lunch Ruiner
The screen violently flickered with static, and the studio feed cut to a highly shaky, amateur video recording taken from a distance.
The video opened on a beautiful, picturesque scene. It was a bright, sunny afternoon in a lush, grassy plain bordered by a dense, peaceful forest. Sitting right in the middle of the grass was a completely average, everyday citizen. He had a small picnic blanket laid out and was peacefully, happily eating his packed lunch from a cheap plastic container.
Suddenly, the peaceful ambiance was completely shattered.
A massive, six-hundred-pound, terrifying wild tiger violently leapt out of the bushes. But the apex predator didn't attack the man. It completely bypassed his jugular and violently pounced directly onto the plastic lunchbox, absolutely obliterating the guy's food.
Sandwiches, rice, and gravy went flying into the dirt, completely ruined.
The man froze, his hands still holding an invisible sandwich, staring at his destroyed lunch in pure, unadulterated shock.
The tiger, having successfully ruined the man's afternoon, sat back on its haunches. It looked the man dead in the eyes, tilted its massive head, and literally stuck its tongue out. It wasn't a roar. It was a smug, highly disrespectful, trolling facial expression. The apex predator was actively, purposefully mocking him like a petty middle-school bully.
The man's eye aggressively twitched. The shock on his face instantly melted into an absolute, unhinged, volcanic fury. He wasn't scared for his life; he was furious about his lunch.
The DI'an Wildlife Protocol
With a deafening roar of pure human rage, the guy violently stood up. He reached out, aggressively grabbed both of the tiger's front paws, and effortlessly lifted the six-hundred-pound predator off the ground like it was a minor inconvenience.
With a brutal, flawless spinning throw, the man violently yeeted the tiger directly into a massive oak tree.
CRASH!
The tiger hit the thick trunk so incredibly hard that the tree physically shook, leaves rained down, and a cartoonish spurt of blood shot out of the tiger's mouth. The massive beast slid down the bark and slumped into the grass.
But as the man marched forward to finish the job, the bleeding tiger looked up at him, still smiling broadly, and stuck its tongue out again.
That was the absolute breaking point.
The man completely lost his mind. He lunged forward and started aggressively beating the absolute shit out of the tiger. It was a chaotic, slapstick flurry of pure, unregulated DI'an street violence. The guy was throwing wild haymakers, punching the tiger directly in its snout, picking the massive beast up by its tail, and body-slamming it into the dirt multiple times like a professional wrestler.
The tiger was helplessly bouncing off the grass while still smiling. The man then reached into his pocket, pulled out a tiny, rusted pocket knife, and began aggressively stabbing the tiger thirty to forty times in a blur of pure, unhinged motion, screaming at the top of his lungs about the current market price of his ruined sandwich.
Save the Tiger
Just as the furious citizen wound up his fist to deliver another devastating, full-force uppercut to the tiger's face, the deafening sound of heavy military rotor blades violently chopped through the air.
WUMP-WUMP-WUMP-WUMP-WUMP!
A massive, heavily armored DI'an Forest Guards helicopter aggressively swooped over the tree line, hovering directly above the grassy plain. The downdraft flattened the grass as thick black ropes dropped from the side doors. Within seconds, a fully geared squad of highly trained, elite special forces soldiers rapidly repelled down to the ground, assault rifles raised.
But they absolutely didn't aim their weapons at the wild beast.
"GET DOWN! PROTECT THE APEX PREDATOR FROM THE GUY IN THE POLO SHIRT!" the commander screamed at the top of his lungs, waving his arms frantically as the elite special forces aggressively tackled the citizen to the dirt.
They weren't saving the man from the tiger. They were desperately, frantically trying to save the six-hundred-pound tiger from the man.
Two heavily armored soldiers immediately slapped heavy steel handcuffs onto the citizen's wrists, legally arresting him on the spot for brutally assaulting local wildlife. But the man was operating on a level of pure, unregulated, sandwich-deprived adrenaline that completely defied human biology. Raging like an absolute, unstoppable bull, the guy roared, violently pushing three or four heavily armed soldiers backward all at once. His boots dug deep into the mud as he literally dragged the elite commandos across the grass, desperately trying to break through their tactical lines just to punch the smiling tiger one last time.
"Hold the line! For the love of God, protect the animal!" the commander panicked, his voice cracking as he watched his highly trained men getting completely overpowered by a hungry civilian.
The elite special forces soldiers were forced to literally drop their high-tech assault rifles and join hands, creating a frantic, sweating human-chain barricade around the heavily bruised, bleeding tiger just to physically shield it from the enraged man.
Suddenly, the absolute chaos on the grassy plain ground to a halt as a brutal, terrifyingly intense standoff occurred.
Through the gaps in the desperate human chain of trembling soldiers, the arrested man and the battered tiger locked eyes. It was a completely cinematic, high-tension staredown of pure, unadulterated hatred. The man was practically foaming at the mouth, his eyes burning with the volcanic, unforgiving rage of a ruined lunch. On the other side of the barricade, the tiger was coughing up cartoonish amounts of blood, covered in grass stains and knife wounds—but it was still looking dead at the man, stubbornly holding that smug, highly disrespectful smile, and slowly sticking its tongue out to mock him one final time.
The man let out a demonic, blood-curdling scream and surged forward, nearly snapping the steel handcuffs in half.
"He's breaching the perimeter! He wants to bite the tiger!" the commander shrieked, yanking his military radio up to his mouth and screaming over the deafening roar of the helicopter rotors.
"Base, this is Alpha Team! We have a Code Red! The citizen's lunch was way too valuable! We need a hospital!" the commander shouted frantically into his radio, his eyes wide with absolute panic as he looked at the battered predator. "I mean we need a fucking mobile hospital right fucking now ! I don't give a fuck about logistics! Do not send an ambulance, airlift an entire, fully functioning hospital to these exact coordinates right now! Pull it out of the ground with cranes if you have to! We are losing him! The tiger's pulse is dropping! Somebody administer CPR to the tiger now !"
In the background of the highly chaotic video, a second, massive military medevac helicopter could already be seen aggressively swooping down from the clouds, deploying a heavy reinforced stretcher and an emergency veterinary team to airlift the traumatized, heavily mocked apex predator to absolute safety.
Click.