From: lewj99@yahoo.com

DOWNTOWN SHOWDOWN (BANNISTER PART 3)
by JL <lewj99@yahoo.com>


Ever since the night at the bar two weeks ago, things had not been going well 
for Carl Edwards, he of the tattooed forearms.  First, his plan to rough up his 
main competitor in the demolition business hit a major sang courtesy of Ricky's 
incredible story.  Five of his buddies had backed off the plan, while the other 
two had left the biz entirely.  Second, Bannister had indeed won the arena 
contract, and had completed it WAY ahead of schedule.  Carl's phone hadn't rung 
in weeks, thanks to that SOB over at Bannister.  Wild stories or no, Carl was 
determined to go ahead with his plan.  He'd been in the business half his life, 
ever since graduating high school, and he wasn't about to give it up to some 
fucking upstart kid.  Besides, Carl figured that Ricky had to be exaggerating; 
maybe he'd been planted by Bannister himself to scare off the competition.  
Still, he didn't plan to take on Bannister mano-a-mano.

Through a bit of networking, Carl had come across an old buddy in Louisiana who 
figured he could offer some help.  The buddy had worked on a oil rig eight or 
nine years ago with a kid from the local high school, whom he described as 
'bigger and stronger than fuck.'  the guy had only been there over summer break, 
but Carl's buddy had kept tabs on his exploits over the next few years, which 
apparently included dismantling an abandoned derrick - by hand.  Word was that 
he ran something of a 'muscle for hire' business on the side, working for loan 
sharks, shady businessmen, and other assorted crooks.  Carl was skeptical about 
his buddy's story, but took the guy's number anyway.  Even if he only turned out 
to be half as big and mean as advertised, he still sounded tough enough to 
handle Bannister.  

Carl pulled out his cell phone and dialled the ten digits, to an area code in 
southern Louisiana.  The phone rang four times, enough for Carl to almost give 
up, until someone answered.

"Yeah?" the guy on the other end said.  The voice was deep, southern, with a 
touch of Cajun thrown in.  And fairly young; Carl reminded himself that if his 
buddy's story was right, he couldn't be much older than 25.

"Is this Vince Thibodeaux?" Carl asked, putting on his tough-guy voice.

"If it ain't, then I got the wrong name on my birth certificate."

"OK then," Carl responded, not knowing whether to laugh.  "I've been told that 
you got a bit of a business going, leaning on people, roughin' em up a little."

"Yeah, you heard right," Vince said. "But I don't go outta my way for just 
anyone.  You got one minute to convince me."

Carl made his case, leaving out some of the details from Ricky's story, but 
still giving the impression that Bannister was a force to be reckoned with.  He 
said he wanted Bannister roughed up, enough so he'd back off on the demolition 
contracts, or maybe even leave town altogether.  Vince listened intently, 
remaining silent after Carl had finished, as if mulling it over.

"OK," Vince said finally, "I'm in.  But this ain't gonna come cheap.  Somethin' 
serious like this, you're lookin' at 100 G's, my friend."

Carl winced.  It was more than he had expected, but it was too late to turn back 
now.  "All right, a hundred thousand it is.  Fifty up front, fifty after the job 
is done.  I gotta tell you, though, I've heard some crazy shit about this 
Bannister guy.  If even part of it is true, he's still a helluva lot stronger 
than anyone I ever met.  Are you sure you can handle him?"

Vince just snorted.  "I ain't met the man yet who can stand up to me.  Once I 
get goin', that fucker'll wish he was never born.  Hang on a sec, and listen to 
THIS."

Vince set the receiver down; Carl heard a few footsteps, followed by the sound 
of a door opening. 
What he heard next nearly caused him to drop his phone - a couple of muffled 
grunts, followed immediately by a tortured groan, like steel being forced out of 
shape.  That was soon joined by breaking glass and two loud pops, then the 
grating sound of metal ripping in two.  One more grunt, two loud crunches, then 
more footsteps.

"You get all that?" Vince asked, his tone more than a little cocky.

"Y-yeah," Carl stammered.  "What the hell just happened?"

"Guy out front was parked in a red zone, so I bent his fuckin' car in half."  
Silence.  "You convinced now?"

Carl felt a knot forming in his stomach.  He couldn't help but wonder what kind 
of Pandora's box he had just opened.

      --------------(ONE WEEK LATER)---------------

"So much for the perfect weekend," Drew grumbled, hopping in the Lexus.  He'd 
been planning to head up to his newly purchased cabin in the mountains and kick 
back, down some brews, catch some football...plus test his muscle on some of 
those 200-year-old trees out back.  But just before he was going to leave, he 
got a call from his security company that his office had been broken into.  
"Frankly, we've never seen anything like it," the security guy had said.  And 
once he pulled into the back lot, Drew could tell it was more than a simple 
break-in.

The heavy-duty steel security doors out back had been pried off their hinges and 
cast aside, haphazardly. 
Walking through the corridor, he could spot no damage until he came to the 
office of Bannister Demolition Co., and noticed an empty space where the huge 
oak door had once stood.  It now lay in fragments on the floor; Drew had busted 
down enough doors in his day to know the pattern.

"Aw, Christ," he said, stopping dead in his tracks.

The office had been completely destroyed.  File cabinets overturned, desks 
broken in half, computers smashed...but what caught Drew's eye were the pipes 
which had been wrenched from the ceiling and tied in a series of knots.  
Obviously a not-so-subtle way to get his attention.  He picked one up, looked it 
over, and undid the know using his own immeasurably stronger pipes; it barely 
caused a ripple in his forearms. 
Continuing across the office, he saw a sight that really sent him into a rage.  
The half-ton safe where he kept all the company's most important documents had 
been crudely ripped open and now stood empty.  Office furniture could be 
replaced, but the contents of that safe could not.  "Son of a BITCH!" Drew 
yelled, ramming his fist into the adjacent wall hard enough to separate it from 
the ceiling.  Channeling his rage in a different direction, he picked up the 
twisted safe, held it before him in his bear-paw hands, and squeezed.  Thick 
fingers dug into the tempered steel, warping it instantly.  A couple of seams 
pulled apart over Drew's flaring lats as he pressed hard, compressing the safe 
as if it were a lump of clay.  

"Break into my office, will you," he muttered through clenched teeth.  "Whoever 
you are, you're gonna regret the day you fucked with me."  Powerful arms 
compressed the safe into a roughly spherical shape, which Drew spiked into the 
floor.  It crashed right through and lodged itself six inches into the concrete 
of the basement floor.  Drew was just about to see if anything else could be 
salvaged when he noticed a note pasted onto one of the fist-smashed computer 
screens.
It read simply:  SUNDAY  7 AM  18TH AND GRANT.  Now it all made sense.  
Adrenaline surged through Drew's body as he crumpled the note.

He barely slept that night.

The next morning arrived cool and grey; low clouds obscured the tops of the 
city's tallest skyscrapers. 
Drew showed up at 18th and Grant ten minutes early to scout the area.  It was 
right on the edge of downtown, where the looming buildings met up with low-slung 
warehouses.  At this hour, the area was almost deserted, except for the 
occasional wino camped out on a heating grate.  Streets which would be packed 
with commuters Monday to Friday were empty.  Drew was relieved by that; if this 
went down like he thought it would, there would likely be some serious damage, 
and he didn't want any innocent people getting hurt.  He figured his adversary 
felt the same way.

Distant church bells rang seven times.  Drew looked around, nonchalantly rubbed 
his dark beard, and yawned.  He tried to look as bored as possible, in case his 
adversary was watching, but inside he was more than ready to let loose.  Then, 
at one minute past seven, a hulking figure in the form of Vince Thibodeaux 
stepped from the shadow of a nearby building.  Drew felt his pulse quicken; his 
veins pumped enough adrenaline to kill an elephant.

The two men stepped into the intersection, sizing each other up wordlessly.  
Both were shirtless, and both possessed monstrous upper bodies that radiated raw 
power.  At six-eight, Vince had a couple of inches and maybe 60 pounds on Drew, 
but the (marginally) shorter man was totally ripped, 400 pounds of striated 
brawn. 
Vince, on the other hand, was built more like a powerlifter, with thick slabs of 
rock-hard muscle.  A menacing tattoo crawled over his right shoulder, while a 
couple days' worth of stubble covered his chin. 
Without saying a word, Vince crouched down and grasped one prong of a fire 
hydrant, never breaking eye contact.  Thick tendons coiled in his forearm and 
bicep as he pulled, neatly wrenching the hydrant out of the sidewalk with a 
light grunt.  Water shot from the hole as Vince launched the hydrant skyward; it 
came down on top of an adjacent ten story building.

Drew was far from impressed.  Rolling his eyes, he reached over and seized a 
traffic light pole, blasting it out of the sidewalk with one yank of his well-
muscled arm.  The lights blinked out of existence as Drew tossed the apparatus 
over his shoulder, as casually as a regular man might toss an empty beer can.  
"Don't tell me you made me get up early on a Sunday mornin' just to rip up some 
lawn ornaments," Drew sneered.  "Enough of this pussy shit.  Are we gonna get 
down to business, or not?"

Vince's grim expression didn't change.  He bounced his pecs a couple of times, 
then flexed his eye-popping biceps, massive cannonballs that welled up with the 
promise of explosive power.  "All right, motherfucker.
 Get ready, cause these guns are about to unload a world of hurt on ya."

Drew was unruffled.  "Bring it on then, hoss."

The two men charged at each other.  Drew cocked his fist and prepared to drive 
it home, but at the last second, Vince spun around and delivered a picture-
perfect karate kick to Drew's midsection.  It would have been enough to stop a 
rampaing rhino...and it turned out to be enough for Drew too.  The big man flew 
across the intersection, flattening a row of newspaper boxes as he landed.  He 
was barely able to stagger to his feet before Vince was on him, wrapping his 
redwood arms around Drew's back in a brutal bearhug.  Vince's hands didn't quite 
meet, but he squeezed hard anyway, digging his thick, impossibly hard biceps 
into Drew's rippling brawn.  Drew gasped for breath, stunned at the strength he 
felt emanating from those arms.  Vince's mounding, hairy pecs ground into Drew's 
as the monstrous man squeezed even harder, determined to break Drew's 
resistance.  Drew responded by flexing his enormous arms as tight as he could; 
rolling striations formed as he forced Vince's arms outward, if only a fraction 
of an inch.  But his grip was way too tight for Drew to break.  It was like a 
vise, crushing him tighter, forcing the air from his lungs.  His vision began to 
blur as he heard an engine roar down the block; a city bus, pulling out from the 
maintenance facility.  Vince heard it too, and gave one last bone-rattling 
squeeze before releasing Drew. 
"Perfect timing," Vince said as he ran down the block, leaving Drew heaving and 
gasping like a fish tossed on the dock.

Vince jumped in front of the bus before the driver could react.  In any event, 
there wasn't much the driver could have done as the huge man took control of the 
bus with his arms, guiding it to a quick stop. 
The driver, catching a glimpse of the cold, calculated look in the monster's 
eyes, threw open the door and took off down the street, not even attempting to 
rationalize what was going on.  "Wuss," Vince snorted, sliding his left hand 
under the bus's front bumper. 
Without even breaking a sweat, he curled the front end of the bus off the 
street, forcing the already boulder-sized shape on his upper arm to swell even 
larger.  Vince powered out half a dozen bus-curls with his left arm, then the 
same number with his right, getting a fierce pump going to prepare for the task 
at hand. 

Drew, meanwhile, was still struggling to regain his breath, fairly certain that 
a couple of ribs were bruised (if not cracked).  "Fucking hell, that guy's as 
strong as I am," Drew muttered, genuinely surprised.  He looked up just in time 
to see Vince charging down the street, dragging a city bus behind him, crumpling 
the steel where he had latched on. 
Moving astonishingly quick for such a hulking man, Vince ducked behind the side 
of the bus and SHOVED it at Drew, pinning him against the wall before he could 
react.

"Had enough yet, big man?" Vince taunted, spreading his arms and placing his 
palms against the side of the bus.  Galvanized steel twisted and moaned as Vince 
pushed inward; Drew barely had room to move as the other side of the bus bent 
around him.  He managed to raise his arms halfway, enough to push back anyway.  
A tributary system of veins erupted in his iron forearms as Drew added his 
muscle to the equation.  Feeling the resistance from the other side, Vince 
somehow managed to shove even harder.  The bus's frame began bending out of 
shape as the two juggernauts fought for dominance, compressing the center of the 
bus so that it took on an hourglass shape.  Inside, seats ripped up from their 
bolted position, while windows cracked and shattered.  But with little room to 
maneuver, there was only so much Drew could do.  He felt the wall behind him 
crack against the mountain range that comprised his back.  One more shove from 
Vince was all it took to send Drew tumbling back through the wall, bringing down 
a torrent of masonry.  

Stumbling backward, Drew found himself inside the main lobby of a bank.  
Outside, Vince grabbed hold of the twisted bus and tossed it aside; it 
overturned and skittered down the street in a shower of sparks.  He climbed 
through the hole in the bank's wall, but this time Drew was ready for him.  
Bellowing his rage, Drew charged at Vince, unleashing a series of rapid-fire 
punches that caught Vince completely off guard.  Vince spun around to deliver 
another one of his lethal kicks, but Drew deftly kicked out his other leg, 
sending Vince crashing to the marble floor.  Pouncing on his opponent, Drew 
locked his right arm around Vince's neck and flexed, hard.  The diamond-hard 
peak of Drew's bicep dug into the big Louisianan's throat; he tried tightening 
the thick tendons in his neck as a defense, but it didn't help much.  Forcing 
Vince to his feet, Drew dragged him backward across the lobby to the huge vault 
door.

"You want a battle, motherfucker, you got one," Drew said.  Keeping his death-
grip on Vince's neck with his right arm, he reached behind him with his left and 
seized the vault's circular handle.  It was an old-style door, forged iron, ten 
inches thick, weighing around six tons.  Twice it had withstood dynamite 
explosions...but the 23-year-old man latched onto the handle was another matter 
entirely.  
Breathing in hard, Drew tightened his grip and tugged on the huge door.  Muscles 
writhed up and down his arm, bulging into rigid peaks.  
The door emitted a low groan, trying to stand up to the awesome force on the 
other side.  Meanwhile, Drew was practically crushing Vince's throat.  Vince 
clawed at the ridged, vein-encrusted bicep that dug into his windpipe, but 
couldn't budge it.  Now it was his turn to gasp for breath.

The wheel warped in Drew's hand as he pulled with all his young might.  
Thick veins snaked across his double-lobed bicep and cabled forearm, pushed to 
the surface by all the surging muscle beneath.  Huge cracks opened up in the 
wall as the locking bars began to pull loose, and the horrific sound of forged 
iron yielding to tempered muscle filled the bank.  "Yeah!  Fuckin' eat this 
muscle!" Drew roared, both at the door and Vince, as he slowly contracted his 
left arm.  The heavy iron bulged outward, while the locking mechanism bent 
further.  Plaster on either side cracked and crumbled as Drew ripped the six-ton 
door out of the wall, twisting his arm to pull it free.  Bent and broken bars 
poked out from the door's frame; the wall surrounding the frame was near 
collapse.  Drew just stood there for a moment, his right bicep peaking in 
Vince's powerful neck, his left supporting a massive vault door aloft, drinking 
it all in.  But he wasn't finished with the door yet.

When Drew had started ripping the door out, Vince's face had been red.  
Now it was approaching purple, but Drew didn't want him to pass out, not just 
yet.  Releasing his grip, he shoved Vince away and grabbed the vault door in 
both hands, swinging it at his adversary.  BAM!  The impact shook the building 
and knocked Vince 30 feet across the lobby.  
Drew looked at the door, dented where it had impacted Vince's dense body, and 
tossed it away.  He wanted to finish this with his own hands.

Vince staggered to his feet, punch-drunk, but not defeated.  He wiped a trickle 
of blood from his mouth as Drew advanced, cocking his fist.  
Drew swung high, and - more out of dumb luck than anything - Vince managed to 
duck underneath, plowing his shoulder into Drew's chest.  
Focusing his concentration, he grabbed Drew by the pits and hoisted him 
overhead, spinning the 400-pound man around and SLAMMING him into the floor.  
The resulting shockwave jolted the entire area, causing the wall around the 
vault to collapse and setting off burglar alarms for blocks around.  But more 
importantly for Vince, Drew had banged his head on the vault door, and lay 
motionless.  He was still breathing though; and Vince knew he would be up again 
within minutes.  
A guy capable of tearing out a vault door with one arm wasn't going to be 
stopped by a simple bodyslam.  It would take a lot more to fully defeat 
him...and looking through the hole, Vince thought he saw just the ticket.

A twenty story office tower loomed across the street, a fairly attractive mix of 
glass, concrete and limestone.  Vince figured it would be more than enough to 
flatten the three story bank.  Blood pumped furiously through his veins as he 
crossed the street, while his cock stiffened in anticipation of the Herculean 
task he was about to perform.  "We'll see who the real demolition man is now," 
he said, sneering, stretching out his arms.  Two massive support pillars stood 
in the front of the building, exposed in a recessed section surrounding the main 
entrance.  Vince grabbed the left pillar, rooted his lets, and pulled.  His 
shoulders and back bulged immensely, working like a set of massively powerful 
gears as Vince expressed his power against the pillar.  Concrete split up the 
pillar's length, right up to where the recessed section ended eight stories 
above, as Vince's arms exploded in a heroic display of battle-tested iron.  
Ripping off the concrete in chunks, he got his hands on the steel beam below, 
compressing it with a series of loud grunts.  The massive pillar sank to one 
side.  Undoubtedly, Vince knew, microscopic stress fractures would be spreading 
throughout the adjoining sections of the skyscraper's frame.  He smiled.

Moving to his right, he crippled the other support pillar in an identical 
manner, crunching the concrete and warping the steel with ruthless efficiency.  
He couldn't be sure, but he thought he saw the building shift slightly forward.  
Leaving the bowed-out pillars, Vince strode around back, scratching his stubbly 
chin as he looked for the best place to dig in.  'Might as well go dead center', 
he thought, ramming his fists into the concrete near that point.  He closed his 
eyes, took a couple of deep breaths - and flexed.  Vince's guns rose into 
fearsome, jagged peaks, completely filling the space between his shoulders and 
forearms.  "NNNGGGHHH..." he growled, lats surging, quads bulging, arms and back 
heavy with knotted muscle, all working together to form a power rarely witnessed 
on a human scale.  When Vince Thibodeaux got going, really got going, there was 
little that could stand in his way...as the skyscraper on the receiving end of 
those monster arms was quickly discovering.  Cracks zig-zagged along the 
foundation and up the side of the building; windows cracked and popped out of 
their frames.  Up front, the muscle-weakened support pillars groaned and cracked 
again, bending outward at dangerous angles.  Sweat poured off Vince's pumped 
body, down his hairy pecs, over his hard, flat stomach.  The twenty story tower 
swayed in his arms, arms that seemingly defied any number of scientific laws.

Snarling like a madman, Vince turned around so that his back faced the 
building's cracked wall, then reached back and grabbed hold once more.  
Pumping his mighty, asphalt-crunching legs, he leaned back into the building, 
hoisting the enormous structure another few inches off the ground.  Ominous 
rumblings emerged from the ground, matching Vince's own guttoral growl.  Below, 
pipes bent and burst; above, the overstressed limestone facing cracked in a 
dozen place.  Vince's tri's welled up into enormous horseshoes, denser than 
ship's cable.  The skyscraper listed ominously, leaning forward on weakened 
supports...and casting its shadow on the bank across the street.

Inside the bank, the massive body sprawled on the broken floor began to stir.  
For the first time in his adult life, Drew had blacked out - and even though he 
was awake, he had a whopper of a headache.  He crawled to his knees, rubbing his 
temples, brushing off broken bits of marble and cement.  His ears were filled 
with the awful sound of crumbling concrete and warping steel, and his eyes 
widened as he looked across the street, to the skyscraper that now rested at an 
unnatural angle.  "Holy shit," he said, racing through the hole and flying 
across the street.  The front end of the skyscraper rested perilously on two 
broken pillars; even the other pillars were beginning to warp as Vince tried to 
muscle the building up and over.  
Drew found a relatively intact section of concrete, and crouched down to brace 
his arms against the building.  Twisted, striated muscle erupted up and down his 
arms, like mountains forming after an earthquake.  Roaring, tightening his 
enormous quads and calves, Drew shoved back as hard as he could.  The building 
stopped leaning forward; in fact, it moved a few feet back toward vertical.  On 
the other side, a shocked Vince fought back with everything he had, digging in 
his heels, straining each muscle fiber to the point of bursting...
but Drew took everything he had to give, absorbed it with those arena-destroying 
arms.  "NO! NO!" Vince screamed, practically foaming at the mouth.  He powered 
out one last burst of superhuman strength, but it wasn't enough.  Drew was even 
able to wrench the skyscraper another five feet back toward vertical.  Vince 
staggered forward and collapsed on the asphalt, completely drained.

As soon as Drew felt the resistance stop, he lumbered around back.  
Spotting the collapsed muscleman, Drew took no chances, seizing him by the 
throat and hoisting his nearly quarter-ton body off the ground.  
"Who hired ya?  Who fuckin' hired ya?" he snarled.

"Edwards - Carl - Edwards," Vince spat out.  Drew tossed him aside like a rag 
doll, into the side of a dumpster that collapsed under Vince's enormous weight. 

"Get out of my town," Drew said flatly.  "Get back to whatever shithole it is 
you crawled out of.  If I hear about ya terrorizing innocent people ever agin, 
I'll make sure you pay.  I'll uproot the goddam Empire State Building if that's 
what it takes."  Drew ran his hand up the side of the cracked office tower.  It 
was no longer in danger of imminent collapse, but it had suffered terrible 
structural damage at the hands of the two muscle freaks.  Suddenly Drew's 
expression changed into a smile.  "You know, maybe I oughta thank you," he said.  
"Looks like I'll be gettin' more work comin' my way soon."

                     --------------

Carl paced around his office, sweating profusely.  It was nearly 10 AM, and he 
hadn't heard from Vince yet.  About an hour ago, he had driven downtown, where 
Vince had said the showdown would take place - and had been absolutely stunned 
by what he saw.  The police had cordoned off a four block area, which looked 
like it had been hit by an earthquake.  A compressed bus lay on its side; a bank 
was in ruins; and, most frighteningly, a twenty story building listed on 
shattered supports.  Carl had hightailed it back to his office in a state of 
shock.  Everything he had heard about Bannister must have been true.  
He was so deep in shock that he didn't even notice the Lexus parked near the 
building's front entrance.

Carl was just about to check if the phone was working when the entire building 
shook with a massive jolt, knocking him off his feet.  His first thought was 
'earthquake', but the jolt had been too abrupt for that.  The building shook 
again, hard enough to knock pens from desks.  
Carl ran over to the window...and what he saw made his heart sink.  
Six stories below, a massive bull of a man was ramming his fists into the corner 
of the building.  BOOM!  Doors shook in their frames as Carl reached a state of 
panic.  He barely noticed when the shaking stopped, as he was consumed with the 
dilemma of whether to flee or hide.  Drew made the decision for him.

The office door flew off its hinges, as if hit by a battering ram, but for Drew 
it was little more than a tap.  The color drained from Carl's cheeks as he found 
himself face-to-face with Drew Bannister for the first time.  Drew was still 
shirtless, and his body retained most of the massive pump it had gotten from the 
action downtown.  Ropes of muscle lashed across his pecs and bi's, covered in 
snaking veins.  To his amazement, Carl began to pop a boner, especially as Drew 
twitched the armor-plated muscle that covered his massive frame.  Drew noticed 
the growing bulge in Carl's crotch and decided to have some fun.

"What's the matter?" Drew said.  "You queer for my muscle?"

"N-no," Carl stammered (he had never thought of himself as anything but 
straight), but his erection kept growing as Drew hit a front lat spread, forming 
a wall of solid muscle with amazing definition that could only be matched by a 
few elite bodybuilders.  Next, Drew raised his arms in a mind-blowing double-bi, 
one peak rising from another.  
"Come on, feel it, you know you want to," Drew sneered, and Carl was helpless to 
resist.  He cupped his hand over the top of Drew's hard left bicep, and felt the 
systolic vein pressing into his palm.  Drew grunted and pumped his peak a couple 
of times, giving Carl a taste of the power contained in it.  "Yeah, ripped off a 
fuckin' vault door with that bad boy," he boasted.  Carl's free hand moved down 
to his crotch, and began rubbing his erect cock furiously, harder, 
harder...seconds later, a large wet patch spread across the front of his pants.  
Carl moaned and fell back into a chair, still shooting his load.  Drew waited 
until Carl's breating returned to normal to start speaking.

"You know, this is a nice office," he said.  "And seein' as how mine's wrecked, 
I think I'm gonna take it.  Plus your clients, whatever few you have left.  
Sound fair?"  Carl opened his mouth to protest, but Drew cut him off simply by 
tightening his rippling arms.  "Otherwise, I turn this building into a pile of 
rubble.  Don't push me.  It's been a long day."

Carl took the offer; not like he had a choice.  He scurried from the office, 
presumably to book a one-way ticket on the next flight out of town.  Drew seemed 
to have that effect on people.  He sat down in Carl's oversized leather chair, 
leaned back, folded his hands, and smiled.  It was good to be king.

END