Chapter 6.B

It was then that he noticed a little blinking yellow icon on the bottom right hand corner of the television he was using to run the security camera feed into the dozer. The little icon was shaped like a sword. What the fuck is that! Thought Hank as he tried to rub it off with his finger. As soon as his hand touched it though some words appeared above the view of the cameras, filling the length and width of basically the entire screen. They said:

You have four upgrades available, please choose where to invest your souls:

Speed +

Armor +

Offense +

Defense +

U.I. +

Efficiency +

Advanced Upgrades (Click for more options)

“What the fuck, this isn’t even a touchscreen!” Hank shouted. Well whatever, when in Rome… He quickly pressed the plus signs next to Speed, Armor, and Defense. At that point a gray bar at the bottom of the screen popped up with the words “Confirm Choices?” on it. He pressed it, and the button disappeared. The whole Killdozer started to shudder. The most noticeable thing from Hank’s perspective that was changing was the small forward facing slot that he had cut as a backup viewing measure. It was normally six inches across and two inches tall, except it had just started expanding...

“NO NO NO!” Hank shouted at the impossible thing happening in front of him.

Hank got lower in his seat and moved his body to the side in the hopes of avoiding incoming bullets as he shifted into a higher gear and tried to speed up. He didn’t understand why the slot was enlarging, but if it got too much bigger he was surely going to get shot in the face. As it expanded he got a better view of what was going on in front of the dozer. There was cops crawling all over it who had been just out of the view of the cameras. One of them had just finished crawling on to the top of the engine compartment and was only a few feet away from Hank. The cop shakily stood on the moving vehicle and grabbed the smokestack for leverage. He had gloves on or he would have just lost some skin. The cop lifted his gun and pointed it at the slot that was still expanding, directly at Hank’s chest. Hank’s Arbiter Intuition was telling him that this was a really bad dude. The cop grinned and fired.

Hank exhaled hard wondering why he wasn’t dead. He looked at the police officer who was equally confused. In between them seemingly floating in the air in the middle of the once-was slot was the police officer’s deformed slug that he had fired. Hank stared closer and noticed a small spider web stretching out in all directions from it. He tried to touch the slug but found he couldn’t, his finger hit a transparent resistance. Somehow a thin layer of extremely strong glass had grown in the slot, the slot that was now about two feet by two feet in size. Hank wouldn’t call it a windshield since it was so small, but it was definitely a window or view-port of sorts and it was easier to use than the forward facing view from the security camera. The new glass was bullet-proof or at least bullet-resistant. The slug had damaged it somewhat, Hank could see that, so enough sustained damage probably would bring it down. The police officer fired again and another slug lodged itself into the glass and more spiderwebs appeared. Shit, he had to get that guy off of there. He cranked the bulldozer from side to side and tried to dislodge him but the fucker was holding on tight...

Hank’s Bulldozer left the rear lawn of the Town Hall now that he was picking up speed so he aimed it down a residential alley nearby. He could see in the rear camera that almost every squadcar in town was chasing him and he still had cops climbing all over his bulldozer trying to find a way inside. His screen was blinking again, this time it read “Deploy defensive electric blast?” Hank didn’t think twice, he tapped it. Cops went flying in all directions except for the evil one on his hood who was still holding on. The electrical current only made his grip stronger it appeared as the cops muscles involuntarily spasmed. Hank could tell when the electrical current stopped because the cop looked up at him again, but this time groggily. The cop slowly started raising his gun back toward Hank’s new windshield. The button to deploy the electric blast was still on the screen. Hank hit it again, and again, and again. The third time he noticed something weird... He swore he saw a red ethereal version of the evil-cop rise a few inches out of the cop’s body before it’s face put on a grimace of pure terror. Then the ethereal red version of the cop started stretching and elongating towards the engine compartment of the bulldozer. This continued until the whole thing had passed through his hood. “What the shit was that!” Hank shouted. To his surprise a quick reply was displayed on the screen “1 evil soul consumed.”

Hank hit the next major thoroughfare and hooked a right not really sure where he was going. It was only about 9am on a weekday so luckily traffic was light. Otherwise the giant Killdozer and the 20 squad cars chasing it would probably have caused quite a commotion. He started shifting through his gears to get to max speed. He wanted to see what this thing could do now with the new speed upgrade. There was no speedometer in here so he couldn’t get the exact number but it felt like he was moving at least twice as fast as before so maybe somewhere just over 40 mph, which is insanely fast for a bulldozer. He knew whatever he did he was going to have to get these cops off of his tail, especially the evil ones. He was too far away from them to be able to use his Arbiter Intuition to separate which were which so he couldn’t risk hurting them unless they got close so he could verify that he wouldn’t be hurting innocents. He could still hear rounds dinging as they hit his vehicle so someone somewhere was taking potshots.

Hesitantly he reached up to the side slot he had cut to see to his left. He had one on his right as well and one aiming backwards. He had to test this theory, he pushed his hand at the slot and hit resistance, just like he had when he tried the front. When he pulled his hand away there was a bloody fingerprint on the glass filling the left slot. It was so new and clean it appeared almost invisible. So, he was completely sealed in now by bullet proof material, good. If he wasn’t slowly bleeding to death he would probably be pretty elated about this situation. Hank had to get medical attention quick, find some way to meet up with Dractus and Cerulean, and find some way to ditch the authorities. Lastly he had to find and kill Eugene.

None of the squad cars had dared pull ahead of him yet. Hank didn’t blame them for being hesitant after seeing the Killdozer in action with its many unknown capabilities. Hank decided he was going to use their position to his advantage. he was a little afraid to try this at the speed he was going but he didn’t have much of a choice if he wanted to lose these clowns. He pulled to the far right side of the road still going a little over 40mph and dropped his ripper. He fought hard to maintain control of the dozer, the ripper was tearing the street to shreds and bleeding off his momentum quickly. He yanked the controls hard and aimed the dozer sharply left. He cut a jagged diagonal line all the way across the road and jumped the dozer up onto the sidewalk before lifting the ripper back up. He had created a foot wide crater all the way across the road with jagged razor-sharp asphalt edges. Some of the police officers were smart enough to hit their breaks but some tried to drive over the new ditch and lost axles or blew tires on the sharp edges. One swerved into it and began to roll. Others were hit by flying asphalt that the ripper had thrown up into the air at terrible speeds, it was pure pandemonium. Hank couldn’t help but smile.

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Hank’s cell phone began to ring, shit he should have turned this thing off. The caller ID was saying the number was unknown. He wondered if Cerulean was calling him. His blood soaked finger couldn’t get the touch screen to work for a second but the third attempt went through and the call connected.

“Hello?”

“Hank, It’s Jimmy.”

“Hey Jimmy, good to hear from you. I’m a bit busy right now.”

“I know, I’m guessing you are the crazy fucker in the armored bulldozer?”

“Yeah that’s me, you can’t talk me out of this. I mean to kill Eugene.”

“I’m not trying to talk you out of anything. Listen to me, some local movers and shakers saw what you were doing on the news, look above you and see the news helicopter. Anyway they are using you as a distraction to rob the bank.”

“So? It’s insured, let them rob it.”

“Hank you aren’t thinking straight right now. The bank in your town Hank, where Suzie works. The gal you would never stop talking about whenever you got drunk enough. The robbery isn’t going well, they have hostages. I’ve got a few guys in the area and I’m on my way myself, but you are the closest. If you still care about this lady, she is in danger... Listen the choice is yours I just thought you should know. I still keep an ear to the ground in your neck of the woods and check up on you. You know I just felt I owed you. You were the only person I ever felt I could really trust… You get it.”

“Thanks for calling me Jimmy but you really shouldn’t have called me. The police are surely going to check my phone records.”

“Hank, this aint my first rodeo. This is a burner and there about 10,000 ‘Jimmys’ in this state... Are you going after her?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll try to meet you there, I might be able to help you out of that situation you are in.”

“Don’t come anywhere near me Jimmy. These cops are shooting to kill and half of them are on Eugene’s payroll.”

The line went dead. Hank tried to call the number back but all he got was an automated message saying the line was out of service. SHIT, Jimmy is liable to get himself killed or arrested. Now two people Hank cared about were going to be in danger. Hank decided to make a beeline for the bank. Eventually more cops caught up to him but he would just drop the ripper here and there to throw asphalt at them and create potholes that they would have to dodge. Eventually they decided to back off and let the helicopters track Hank.

Hank arrived at the bank in short order. There was only two squad cars in front of it, both had cops huddled behind them. Hank heard automatic gun fire and could see a muzzle flash coming from just inside the bank which was obscured in shadow. Soon rounds traced their way up the side of one of the police cars. The cops were pinned down and couldn’t enter. They were also extremely out-manned thanks to Hank. Hank had disabled half the police cars in town and slowed the other ones down miles back. Hank had a mini-flashback of all those years ago of not being able to defend Suzie as Eugene slashed her face. He couldn’t fail her again.

If he got out of the bulldozer and tried to enter the bank on foot the cops were liable to gun him down, so were the bank robbers inside for that matter. He couldn’t help anyone if he was dead. He couldn’t really see another option for a safe entry other than just crashing into the side of the bank with the bulldozer, but he also didn’t want to accidentally kill a bunch of innocent people in the process so he couldn’t go in blind. He was still losing blood from his leg, and he was getting lightheaded. He was running out of time, blood, and people he cared about. His mind came back around to his new Arbiter Intuition. How did it work exactly, what was the range? He tried to get a feel for the cops taking cover in front of the bank, they were about 100 feet away from his position. He couldn’t get a reading off of them. So he figured there must be a range on the ability or he wasn’t trying hard enough.

He pulled the bulldozer up in line with the police cars in front of the bank and looked out one of his side slots to see the comical surprised expressions on their faces. He tried his Intuition again now that they were only about thirty feet away from him. He immediately got a reading off of both of them. One was a shining beacon of positive light, the other one was more of a muted gray and dull type of energy. Keep in mind Hank wasn’t seeing any actual colors, these were just some of the things his mind used to make understanding the Arbiter Intuition a little easier. He was obviously getting a read on the police officers through the heavy armor on the bulldozer. So it seemed like solid objects didn’t interrupt his ability, it could be reducing the efficiency but there was no way Hank could figure that out short of getting out of the dozer and standing in the line of fire.

He remembered outside the town hall when he was on foot at the mouth of the alley that he was getting reads on people clear across the street. There was too many factors to consider here. Was he getting better reads before because there was no material between him and the people or was it because he was more energetic and awake, or because he had more blood in his body? Stick to the facts you are going on a tangent, thought Hank. He knew the Arbiter Intuition worked through solid matter, it was the only real edge he had. The bulldozer wouldn’t be much help in a hostage situation… Realizing that made Hank have his first real whiff of regret for choosing the Bulldozer as his Arbiter weapon... He pulled the bulldozer closer to the bank, he angled it around the side of it so those inside wouldn’t see him. He parked with his vehicle facing the side wall. He started trying to use his Arbiter Intuition on the wall of the bank.

At first all he got was vague impressions of what might be inside, but he couldn’t be sure if that was his guess based off of his memories or if it was his actual Arbiter Intuition working. It reminded him of the hearing tests he used to take for school and the military. Some of the beeps the testing machine would make were so faint that he couldn’t tell if he was actually hearing them or if his mind was generating them, this whole situation was just like that. The Arbiter Intuition isn’t like hearing though, it’s some kind of metaphysical power. Hank wondered if it had any limitations at all or if the only limitations on it were the ones his mind was making up as he went. Maybe he was trying to relate it to the wrong thing. He decided to think of the Intuition like a strong muscle and using the power as lifting a heavy weight. He focused again on the wall and pushed with his new imaginary muscle. Then he tried to imagine a beam of light coming from his body and going through the wall.

He actually felt physical resistance when he did particular exercise. It felt like his attempt had been physically bounced off of the wall, it was so surprising he stopped. He realized he had been clenching his eyes closed while trying it. When he opened them he actually felt dizzy. He felt wetness on his upper lip as well. He reached up and touched it, fresh blood… He was pushing so hard he had somehow injured himself. Well fuck it, a little blood never killed anyone and she still needs me. He closed his eyes and pushed again. This time his imaginary tentacle of light burst right through the wall. He could see everyone inside of the bank. A smattering of cool blue figures on an ocean of black. Spaced among them evenly was a half dozen red and burning individuals with angry looking auras marching back and forth nervously. One of them was leaned forward, his body was vibrating as he pulled the trigger on an invisible gun. Hank could even see his body move with the recoil of the weapon that Hank couldn’t see. His Intuition must not work on inanimate objects.

Near the back of the bank was a woman who had a red figure’s arm wrapped around her neck. One of his hands hovered about six inches away. He was holding an invisible gun and pointing it right at her head. Somehow Hank knew that was Suzie. He started looking for an area that was clear of “blues.” In the back portion of the bank there was a giant black box he couldn’t pierce with his power it was about the size of a small bedroom. Hank guessed that was the vault. Just next to it was a space where only one red figure stood with no blue or Grey figures around him. Hank could use that as his entry point. He pulled his power back to his body and immediately felt like he was drowning. His eyes snapped open and he gasped for air, he couldn’t breath. He couldn’t catch his breath, he was dizzy beyond belief and his naked torso was covered in blood that had been dripping from his eyes and nose. He slumped backwards and couldn’t move, his whole body felt tingly.

He didn’t have time for this nonsense. He fought to move his limbs and they slowly responded with needles of pain coming from every direction. He made a mental note to never use his Arbiter Intuition like that again. He felt like dying would be a nice reprieve from the pain he was in now, but he still had people who needed his help. He started revving the engine of the bulldozer. As he was about to shift it into gear a familiar face peeked around the back corner of the bank. Jimmy?