Page 29 of Rizzed Up By My Alien Neighbor
He swings wide, a telegraphed punch that would’ve embarrassed a training cadet. I duck beneath it, pivot, and plant my elbow in his gut with just enough force to expel his breath and his dignity. He folds forward and I guide him—gently—into the open dumpster to the left. He lands with a sound like a wet drum.
The second one—squat and fast—tries a hook. I intercept it with two fingers, twist lightly at the wrist until he drops to his knees, gasping. I tap the nerve cluster just below his ear. He slumps unconscious.
The tall one freezes.
I stare at him. He fidgets under my gaze.
“Your friends are not dead,” I inform him. “Only...reconsidering their choices.”
He swallows. “Wha—what are you?”
“A taxpayer,” I reply flatly. “An extremely punctual one.”
He bolts.
I collect my bag.
There’s a certain clarity that comes after violence—especially when it’s clean. No fatalities. No bloodshed. Just a tactical correction of someone else’s poor judgment.
Still, my body aches. The burns on my back tug under the skin illusion. My knees protest. Earth gravity is softer than Vakutan Prime’s, but the weight of it still drags.
I walk back toward the street, the sounds of traffic and birdsong filtering in like nothing happened. No alarms. No retaliation. Just sun-warmed pavement and the distant scent of barbecue smoke.
I don’t smile.
But inside, I admit something I’d never say aloud.
Maybe... I like it here.
I walk back from that alley like nothing happened.
But I log everything.
The inducer’s passive scan has already recorded biometric data from all three attackers—heat signatures, gait patterns, facial angles. If any of them upload a single frame to their primitive data-hive—what they call the internet—I’ll intercept, scrub, and replace it with footage of someone else entirely. A weather balloon, maybe. A raccoon in a trench coat. Earthlings are alarmingly easy to distract when conspiracy is a possibility.
Back at 209 Prairie Lily Court, the porch creaks under my step. The solar panel I jury-rigged over the garage still pulses with a faint green glow, drawing minimal suspicion thanks to a cleverly-placed wind chime and a hanging fern. I swipe my hand across the fake wood panel, and the biometric seal disengages.
The garage door opens like a maw.
Inside, it’s a warzone of wires and salvage. I’ve gutted the interior—shelving dismantled, drywall punctured for sensor grids, floor tiles peeled up to make room for power conduits. A thin ripple of stealth shielding activates along the garage walls, just enough to suppress electromagnetic emissions. Anyonerunning a scan will read it as an old washing machine and a stack of paint cans.
“Definitely not OSHA compliant,” I mutter, and it almost makes me grin.
I open the case containing my core toolkit—Vakutan make, dense and humming with stored kinetic charge. I pause at the sight of the etching on the inside lid: the family crest, carved by my brother before his deployment. My chest tightens with something that’s not quite grief. I press a thumb to it briefly, just to feel the texture. Just to remember.
The door creaks behind me.
“Whatcha doing?”
Sammy. Again.
She stands in the open threshold like she owns the place, arms folded, eyes wide and glinting. There’s a dirt smudge on her cheek, and she’s holding a peanut butter sandwich like it’s a sidearm.
“I thought you said you were an accountant,” she says, stepping over wires like a trained infiltrator. “This looks way more secret lab than tax prep.”
“I am conducting preliminary infrastructure enhancement,” I reply.
She squints. “You mean you’re building a spaceship garage.”
