Back in the mall they took the escalator straight to the 3rd floor where all the arcade machines were. There, some parents were scrolling on their phones and some were talking with each other while waiting for their kids to be done playing so they could leave.
In the corner found its place a surprisingly new looking punching machine, red plastic enveloping it, the frame of it stood at around 2 meters tall, and it required tokens from the arcade exchange machine to play.
"Looks like it's one token for two plays." Jerry looked at the little plate near the slot where the tokens had to be inserted, on it a photo of a token and an equals sign near it. After the equals followed a black number 2 and the punching bag near it.
A token was exactly 1 dollar, Jerry went to the exchange machine as Quast looked around the arcade that he hadn't been to in a year or two.
Once back with exactly 1 token, Jerry inserted it into the machine and clicked the red plastic button on which was written in white letters 'START'.
In a stance that was the most comfortable and natural to him, Jerry prepared the strongest punch he could muster, with the skin of his palm around his clenched fingers turning white, he readied the attack that might break the machine.
The next split seconds were ones filled with confusion, as the first floor windows of the mall exploded and smoke rose up, everyone's attention was gathered to the ground floor, but Jerry's punch was already in motion. The impact of his fist meeting the leather punching bag, beat the previous world record for the strongest punch by a shot, and the poor bag was sent back some ways. The collision broke the plastic of the machine and pieces of red plastic found their place on the ground afterwards, but no one noticed this since every conscious mind was focused on the screaming and shouting from the first floor.
The numbers on the digital screen of the machine couldn't go beyond '999', so it did the next thing it knew and showed '000' the digits were also red like the entire theme of the machine, today was the first time an integer overflow had happened from a normal punch.
Yet Jerry and Quast didn't have time to see that and quickly turned around too, their attention was also now gathered at where the explosion had happened, they looked down from the 3rd floor while holding onto the metal bars of the glass railings.
"Woah, you see that?" Jerry asked as he pointed downwards.
"An explosion ability?" Quast wondered out-loud.
"No way, there's an explosion ability already?!" Jerry exclaimed, fascinated. The friends were now away from everyone else, because almost every soul in the mall was panicking and rushing to escape.
"The person with the ability must be crazy to attack such a densely populated spot." Jerry said to his friend. "..Wait! Why are we always near the attacks?"
"I don't know, must be a coincidence." Quast gave his best shrug with the bag of sweets in hand, and as it turned out, it was indeed just another wild game of chance.
"These people are all getting high and mighty, thinking they can do anything they want with their powers." Jerry said a little bit angry because he thought that an explosion ability was much cooler than his fire magic, but cooled off soon after.
"So, what do we do now?" Quast pondered.
"Let's just watch as the police gun him down." Jerry said while turning the camera app on his phone to take a video. "Am gonna go down and film the whole shenanigan."
"Alrighy then, I will stay here and eat the things in this bag." Quast lifted the bag filled with the products that they bought from the convenience store.
"Save some for me." Jerry made his way to the stairs, he took the stairs down because the escalator wasn't the safest way.
Now on the second floor he located the other stairway and followed it to the bottom.
The explosion ability user was a man in his middle 20's, things around him were detonating as smoke rose up.
"Must take a lot of mana to cause such huge explosions." Jerry thought and decided to go and get a better filming position, he made sure to hold the phone vertically, since that was the best way to film videos.
Police sirens could be heard in the background as they got louder and louder, they had arrived very fast.
The man didn't utter a single word the entire time as he made the best effort to blow everything up that stood in his way. The direction that the explosion guy was headed in was the opposite of where Jerry stood.
Heavily armored police men, with the strongest bullet-proof vests and shields entered the scene, they were taking the matter very seriously as they should have.
"Woah, interesting." Jerry said, now standing a little bit more hidden near a shop that was empty.
The armored people shot tasers at the now-labeled 'terrorist'. The ground infront of the first officer that fired exploded and he was sent back falling by the abnormally strong explosion, even though it wasn't quite large in scale.
That was the trigger for the armored men to start shooting, some bullets went through the man.
"Oof. That must've hurt." Jerry winced. "Nothin' a good ol' bullet can't solve."
However the explosion wielder was almost unharmed, except for a bullet hole through his arm and leg. And although mana made it so that people had better regenarating capabilities, a hole made from a bullet would still need quite some time to heal.
The man wasn't talking, but he could still think as he normally would, he had dug himself into a hole, but being driven by hatred and a mental condition, there wasn't a single care given.
The terrorist thought that maybe fleeing was the best choice, but he was tired from all that mana he had used up, maybe with a little bit more effort he could run away, it was definitely a possibility, yet he didn't.
The last explosion was a spectaluar one, because of the shockwave it broke almost everything that was made out of glass in a radius of 10 meters on the first floor, so much money was gone in damages.
With his arms raised up into the air the explosion ability user officially surrendered. The police officers made sure he passed out so no more trouble could be caused and they took him away.
"It's over." the video recording was stopped and everyone calmed down slightly.