Chapter 3.B

Suddenly looking at his deadly creation, this plan seemed a little too extreme to Hank. Was he really going to go kill Eugene with his family’s bulldozer in broad daylight? Even Hank knew sometimes you had to sit down and re-evaluate your choices, and one thing more than anything else always helped Hank think: exercise. Hank hit the weight bench that him and father had welded together when he was a teenager. The padding on the weight bench was the seat from an old car laid flat. It was a real hodge-podge of parts, but it worked and it reminded him of his dad. The weights themselves were just different sized chunks of concrete on each end of a metal bar. Hank selected the biggest one which weighed in at somewhere around 250 lbs.

Hank started some really slow reps really really focusing on the eccentric contractions. Most people skipped over this part of the exercise or tried to cheat it. Hank never understood why they did that, they were only cheating themselves. He ran the information and history between him and Eugene back through his head first. Their feud had started in high school when Eugene had randomly decided that Hank was some kind of a threat to him and needed to apparently be beaten. Instead of Eugene’s sick plan coming to fruition Hank had turned the tables and beaten Eugene for causing such a ruckus and slicing up Suzie Q’s face. You would think Eugene would have learned from that object lesson. Finally coming back to what was happening now. Eugene had weaseled his way into local business and government and was trying to steal Hank’s livelihood and his father’s land.

Hank came to the conclusion that Eugene was probably involved in some sort of get rich quick scheme involving wide-scale land development. It must be extremely lucrative, especially if he was willing to anger Hank. That’s beside the point though, his current actions matter more than his why, and his historical actions as well for that matter. Hank knew Eugene was willing to hurt people if he didn’t get his way. In fact Eugene was probably a textbook sociopath, and most likely had been since high-school when he cut Suzie. He had to be stopped and this eminent domain deal was too far along and had too many moving pieces to be stopped now. Hank could go the legal route and maybe win, sure Eugene had the local government paid off but through enough litigation Hank might be able to win some kind of massive lawsuit against Eugene… Maybe, Eugene has always been slippery… greasy, he knew how to get out of trouble. He knew whose palms to grease and when. Besides Eugene most likely wasn’t the only person who was going to make money out of whatever deal Eugene was cooking up. Hank would bet dollars to donuts that Eugene had some very powerful backers with a vested interest on keeping Eugene free and clear, and away from any litigation.

The legal way just didn’t seem like it would work, and it also seemed like it would eventually hurt more people. Eugene was already putting Hank and all of his employees out of work, how far was he actually willing to go? Anyone that Eugene hurt from this point on would be on Hank’s conscience. Hank had the power to stop him. Hell, he had the ultimate tool to stop Eugene just a dozen feet away. Ultimately to Hank anything short of killing Eugene felt too much like passing the buck, or even worse, running away. Hank didn’t start fights, but he sure as hell didn’t back down from them. Eugene had drawn first blood, it had been Eugene’ choice to come after Hank’s business. He was going to have to pay for that mistake. You grab a rattlesnake and you just might get bit, it was time for Eugene to learn that again.

With his mind made up and a fresh wave of anger roiling through him Hank hopped up from the bench more determined than ever. He drank the rest of the beer in his hand and threw the can on the floor. Time to put an escape plan in order. Sure the chance of him escaping was infinitesimally low, but it felt wrong to not have a plan in place anyway, just in case. Also Hank felt like he had to at least try to follow through on his father’s promise to have kids someday, he had promised him. With an escape plan in place, even if it wasn’t likely that he could follow through on it, he would still be following the heart of that promise.

It was about 4 in the morning now, he had time to stage some kind of getaway car. There was a small parking garage just near city hall for the government employees to use. Hank had a quick plan forming that involved that small parking garage. His father’s truck was unregistered and had been sitting on cinder blocks for a few years under a tarp. Hank had poured massive amounts of a chemical called Stabil in the tank before he had stored it so hypothetically it should still start up since the purpose of Stabil is to stop gasoline from expiring. Hank had the tires stored in here with him in the metal shed still. He grabbed the tires and chucked them on a small push-cart with a ratchet set and headed out to his dad’s old truck. Ha had to hurry if he wanted to get everything staged up before sunrise. He quickly threw on the tires and ratcheted the lug nuts into place. Then he jump-started the battery and left the truck running so it would charge. He ran to his own truck and backed it up to a small trailer they used to transport service vehicles on and off the gravel yard. He attached the trailer and hauled ass over to his father’s truck and pulled it onto the trailer. He was still afraid to turn it off in case the battery hadn’t charged adequately so he left it running.

Hank grabbed a couple beers for the road and shot out of the gravel yard driving his truck, with his father’s truck still running on the trailer behind hauled behind him. Town Hall was only about a 15-minute drive from the gravel yard, Hank made it in less than 8 minutes, while blasting Metallica and shotgunning beers. He pulled the trailer up fast and dirty alongside the parking garage and threw his truck in neutral and slammed the parking break into place. Then he backed his father’s truck off of the trailer and drove it up to the parking garage. There was a small box where you inserted an access card of some type to have the security bar lift and let you in. Hank didn’t have an access card, but he had tools. He unbolted the security bar and set it gently aside and then drove his dad's truck in and parked it in what he hoped was an out of the way section reserved for janitorial staff or interns or something of the sort. He made sure to bolt the security bar back into place before leaving and hauling ass back to the gravel yard.

Now if he had an option to escape he could do it in a vehicle that wasn’t registered to him. As long as no one saw him get into his father’s truck it would take the authorities awhile to connect the unregistered vehicle to him. That was only one part of the plan, he would have to call Jimmy as well and ask for help. Hank wasn’t dumb, he knew he couldn’t call Jimmy from his landline or his cell phone, if the police looked up his call history they would track him right to Jimmy. He would have to buy a burner phone to call Jimmy with if or when he escaped the scene in his father’s truck. It was a lot of If’s, but at least there was a backup plan.

It was about 5 in the morning now, the sun would come up in about an hour and then an hour. After that Town Hall employees would start dribbling in. Hank needed to get the Bulldozer to the general area and staged up before that time. He ran through the shed looking for some tarps he could use to conceal the Bulldozer for a bit after he staged it. That’s when the whole shed began to shake… At first Hank thought it was some kind of rare earthquake, but he swore the ambient temperature inside the shed actually increased a bit. The shaking seemed a little too violent and then it all abruptly stopped. Someone began to pound on his door, the door to the shed, the shed no one knew he was in. Keep in mind it was the middle of the night still technically, Hank had been drinking for hours, and the Gravel Yard was supposed to be completely empty. So Hank was surprised to say the least. The idea that maybe he was having some kind of drunken fatigue fever dream crossed his mind, but with the spike of adrenaline running through him giving him clarity, he doubted it.

Hank still had his father’s large old fashion gun safe open from earlier, so he bolted over to it and grabbed what he thought would be a good gun for fighting in these close-quarters. Some kind of ancient double-barreled sawed-off shotgun that his father had had before Hank was born. Hank knew this thing would give any ATF agent a boner with how many federal laws it broke, but he could never bear to get rid of anything that his dad had loved. Besides fuck the ATF. Hank ensured both of the shotgun tubes were loaded with some random shells he found in the safe, he hoped they were buckshot and not birdshot, but beggars can't be choosers and getting shot hurts no matter the caliber or type of ammunition, so fuck it. He also grabbed his father’s 1911 but was really unsure where to put it since he didn’t have a holster readily available for it, so he jammed it in the back of his pants. His father had called that “Mexican Carry” and told him to never do it, but Hank was in a jam. Still in this place he couldn’t help but say “sorry dad!” out loud once before heading to the door.

Before he could get to it, the door blasted inward with an extreme beam of blue light. Hank had to jump out of the way to avoid the flying door. His combat training from his Army days kicked in and he let off a blast with one of the barrels of the shotgun directly at the beam of blue light still flooding through his doorway.

An extremely rough and gravelly voice shouted from outside the threshold somewhere “Hold your fire!”

“How about you get off my property and I won't kill you!” Hank shouted back at the unseen figure.

Then a female voice came through the doorway next “Sir, hold your fire, we are friendlies.”

Something about the female voice calmed Hank down, or maybe Hank was just a sucker for women, especially ones that sounded hot.

“Alright, come in slowly. If you try something I’m going to rip your heads off with my bare hands!”

Two figures walked in through the light, their silhouettes were all wrong. The first one through was obviously feminine, in all the right places… Except there were two shadowy prongs coming off of her forehead which Hank couldn’t quite make out through the insanely bright blue light. The second figure that came through was enormous, at least seven and half feet tall and the shape of his head, it just wasn’t right.

“Kill the light, or I kill you!” shouted Hank.

The slim female figure touched a button at her wrist and the light died off. It took Hank a second for his vision to adjust and then he realized he had drank entirely too much and that this was just a dream. The female figure ended up having light blue skin and dark blue miniature horns coming out of her forehead. She had a mane of even darker blue hair that framed her very beautiful face. She was wearing some kind of skin-tight scaled silver suit with a few raised portions here and there which Hank guessed were armor of some type. Her breasts were very large, and she had one of those “bubble butts,” if her skin wasn’t blue this would have been the type of woman Hank normally chased.

The second figure was at least partially reptilian, of some type, Hank didn’t know shit about reptiles so he couldn’t tell either. His head had two lizard style ridges starting at his temples and running over his head and then down his back. He was wearing the same style of uniform as the female except his was much bigger and his had a hole on his lower back which his enormous seven-foot long tail slipped through. He was built like a professional strongman and was absolutely covered in weapons. The most noticeable was a four-foot long double sided battle-axe that he held loosely in one hand that must have weighed 90 pounds, he was wielding it like it was from the Nerf line-up... The axe was covered with intricate designs and what looked like copper circuits similar to those on a motherboard.

They both spread out like pros and assessed every corner of Hank’s metal shed. Once they were happy that it was safe they turned to Hank who was thoroughly flabbergasted. He was standing shirtless with the shotgun held tightly in his arms. The large reptile looking one reached down to his hip towards a cylindrical object of some type. Before he could touch it Hank lifted the shotgun and pointed it squarely at his face.

“Stop. Take your hand away from that, or you are going to lose it,” said Hank who still couldn’t tell if he was hallucinating or not. The lizard man's face contorted in obvious anger.

“Whoa whoa, calm down now boys,” said the beautiful curvaceous blue woman. “He is just trying to show you a package, it’s addressed to you.”

The large lizard-man spoke up in an extremely gravelly voice again “You have been drafted to service,” he said matter-of-factly while lifting the cylinder off of his belt. The lizard-man extended his hand with the cylinder outstretched towards Hank. Hank nabbed it away from the lizard and took a few steps back. Then Hank carefully tucked the butt of the shotgun in one of his armpits so he could better examine the cylinder. Hank could quickly grab the shotgun still with it tucked this way, just in case these creepy fucks tried something. He rolled the cylinder back and forth in his hands. It was extremely heavy, that was the first thing Hank noticed, and made out of a metal that Hank didn’t recognize, like steel but much darker. It also had some kind of purple vein running through it in different directions. Hank couldn’t tell if the purple vein was emitting a soft light or if it was just extremely refractive. As Hank continued to roll it in his hands he finally stopped when he came to some small script in perfect English engraved on the side of it, it read:

“Hank Steel - Planet BG429”

“What the hell is this, and why in the sweet fuck are you a lizard?” asked Hank.

“I’m not a lizard you cretin, I’m a Noxian, from Zealos 7. You don’t recognize my kind because you are from a backwater shithole. I say again, you have been drafted for service. This is normally where people who are from species smart enough to recognize who we are, actually start asking questions. Be quick monkey man, my time is valuable.”

Hank had to contain the urge to strike the… thing. He still wasn’t 100% sure that this wasn’t some kind of drunken lucid dream. The blue woman could see Hanks confusion, so she decided to give him the rundown.

“Let’s start over,” she said. “I’m Cerulean, this is Dractus. We are Arbiters, those chosen by God himself to police the universe. We are here to inform you that you have also been chosen for Arbiter service.”