"Man, I'm tired," declared Hank, throwing his shovel on the ground and collapsing on the grass beside it. "How long is it going to take to finish this hole."
"A lot longer if you keep laying down on the job every five minutes!" his brother complained, throwing a shovel full of dirt at but not actually on his brother. Hank was a husky blond while Dean was a slender redhead. It a was hard to believe that they were fraternal twins.
"It's a trap, not a swimming hole," said Gary who was still busy cutting the sod into small squares that could be sliced free with a shovel and laid to one side. Gary intended to fill in the pond once it serviced it purpose and wanted to keep the sod alive until then.
"I thought it was kind of shallow for swimming." Hank said, pitching small pieces of clod back at his bother. "Can I cut the punji sticks?" Hank sighed and laid back with his arms crossed behind his head. "There's nothing like a deep pit filled with sharpened stick to stop a man in his tracks.
"It's not that kind of a trap,:" Gary replied. "Besides I think it's against the law in this state to set lethal mantraps."
"The Law! - They never let you have any fun!" Hank said. He got up and grabbed his shovel and started digging again.
"We've got something wandering around the Venture Compound," Gary said. "It's tall, green and kind of looks like a tree. It's also quick so I've never had a good look at it. As head of Venture security I don't like unknown things wandering freely about."
"Did you ask Pop?" Dean asked.
"Yeah. He either doesn't know and doesn't want to admit that, or knows - and doesn't want to admit to it." Gary said. "So I'm going to have to catch it myself. I asked myself" what would a walking tree want most?"
"Brains?" Hank hazarded.
"Water!" Gary continued as if he hadn't heard Hank. "I figure if we put out a watering hole here this walking tree thing, or whatever if is, will come out in the open and we can get some pictures and maybe figure out how to capture it."
"Why not leave it where it is?" Dean wondered as he continued to work. "It hasn't done anything to hurt anybody."
"Yet!" Gary answered. "It hasn't done anything suspicious - yet!"
"How deep do you want this hole?" Hank asked.
"About a foot deep. We saw it sucking water out of dip in a factory floor in building 14. That's why I think it's hungry for water but probably won't take much to get its roots wet. That's what we're not making this pond why wider than this."
"Hey, here comes Triana," Dean said, who stood up straight and began brushing the dirt off his clothes.
Gary looked in the direction Dean had pointed. The purple haired daughter of Dr. Orpheus was walking their way, flip-flops flapping with each step. She was wearing a red two piece polka dot bathing suit, a towel around her neck and a floppy hat on her head. As she got closer Gary could see that what he had taken for polka dots prints on her suit were skulls . And that she had a set of suspenders clipped to her trunks also with skulls printed on them.
"Hey," she said when she got there. "So this is the ol' swimmin' hole Dean was talking about. Somehow I had the impression that the hole was already dug."
"Hi, Triana. You're looking good in that bathing costume." Dean said. "It really brings out your - ah -ah -ah -"
"Eyes! Dummy," Hank finished for him with a bit of a laugh. "Costume!" he half-whispered to himself"
Gary was always amazed there could be two people less adept at talking to people as Hank and Dean Venture. Rather than let Dean stew in his own juices he asked, "where you do get a bikini like that? Is there, like, a Necromancer's outlet store or something?"
"Oh, I made it." she said. "I got the cloth from JoAnn Fabrics last year during their Halloween sale. - 'cause I like the skull motif, not because I knew I was going to become a witch, you know."
"Yeah, that Adam Ant, thing," Gary remembered her explanation for her favorite T-shirt.
"You can make your own clothes?" Hank asked in amazement. Most of his clothes came either off the rack or from his father's endlessly deep chest of cast-off clothes.
"Oh, sure, it's no big thing. - for girls, I guess. You just get a pattern, follow the instructions. It's easy. Well, the hard part was stitching in the liner." She causally turned down the side of her bottom to show that the inside was coated with another fabric, something pink and kind of foamy looking. Dean turned beet-red from embarrassment. Hank wasn't far behind. Gary was a little surprised by her casual display as well, mostly because she's always seemed a little reticent around the Venture brothers.
"Where did you find those suspenders?" he asked.
"Hardware store. Can you believe it? They have this huge section of construction worker clothes. And then I saw this kind of under other stuff and just had to have it." She snapped the eleastic on the strap. "They had a flag design, flames and these skulls. I couldn't resist. Actually it was these suspenders that inspired me to make this bathing "costume," Dean." She emphasized 'costume'. giving Dean a stern look.
Gary paused to look around his dirt hole. It would large enough. He walked out to the middle and started digging out the middle. "So why'd you come out here in that get-up," he asked as he dug, "not that it isn't cute and all, but it's not your usual thing."
Triana blushed. "Someone" - she looked at Dean - "said they were making a swimming hole today and that it would soon be operational. Someone" - she looked at Dean again - "clearly misinformed me. I thought if I was going out to a swimming hole I ought to preemptly wear a bathing suit in case someone - ("I'm sorry," Dean wailed) - "tried to suggested we go skinny dipping."
"A reasonable precaution," Gary said, throwing dirt onto a quickly growing pile. "But we're only making this about a foot deep. It's more of a mud wallow than a swimming hole. If you want to go swimming why don't you use the pool at the Venture Residence. I'm sure Dr. Venture wouldn't mind." Gary suggested.
"Actually he does. He unloaded on me a while back about not want any 'trollop' hanging around his boys. I had to look up the meaning of "trollop." He's just lucky I couldn't work magic back then or he'd be a newt today! I am not a trollop!"
"Sorry you were lured here under false pretences. And if you turn Dean into a Newt could you at least put him in a terrarium and label it so I'll know where to find him." Gary tried to say it lightly, since it was just a joke, but Dean grew pale and nearly dropped his shovel from suddenly nerveless fingers.
"It's OK. I enjoy men working - I could watch it all day." Triana laughed and spread her blanket on the ground, then sat on it.
"So why the mud hole? Is Dr. Venture bringing in some pigs to experiment on?" She asked.
"No, I'm trying to capture that walking tree of yours."
"That thing? I thought you decided it was a hallucination?"
"I've seen it a couple times since. Just quick glimpses. The kind where you're not even sure you saw what you saw. But that first time it looked like it was sneaking into the old manufacturing wing in order to get a drink. I'm setting up a pond here with a webcam so if it comes around I'll finally have a record of it."
"Have you even asked Dr, Venture if he's responsible for this thing?" Triana wondered. She stretched out on the blanket and plopped her floppy hat over her head. Gary felt a lump in his throat. With her long legs stretched out there she reminded him of Kim. Kim had long legs that she liked to- -
"After that Venturestein fiasco,"Triana said from under her hat, "who knows what kind of deviltry he's got up to."
"Venturestein?" Gary echoed.
"Oh, yeah. Pop brought a dead guy back to life," Hank explained.
"He kind of used parts from different bodies. It was gross." Dean added.
"And stupid."
"R-i-g-h-t..." Gary found this all a little unbelievable even though he would be the first to tell you that weird stuff was the Normal on the Venture Compound. "Where's he get the bodies?
Hank suddenly looked away and Dean blushed, then said, "I think it was from one of your - I mean the Monarch's - raids on us."
"So Venturestein is one of my comrades?"
"Yeah," Dean reluctantly admitted.
"But it's not like he's around here anymore, Hank added. "Pop sold him to the military along with a few other zombies he's made, maybe twenty in all."
"And they were all henchmen?"
"I don't know, maybe."
Gary stopped digging and leaned on his shovel thinking about this. He'd lost a lot of friends over the years, attacking the Ventures. It was strange to think that maybe they were still alive. Only now slaves to the Military-Industrial Complex. It was kind of spooky because death was supposed to be the big sleep, the final curtain, the end to a bad game. But if Dr. Venture could bring the dead back to life...When would it all end."
"I guess they didn't work out," Dean said, "because that was a while ago and Pop's never made any since."
"They were, like, zombies. They probably started attacking people to eat their brains." Hank suggested.
"No they weren't zombies," Dean countered and the two boys started squabbling. Meanwhile Triana was looking at the boys with a mixture of confusion and disgust.
"Do you really think Dr. Venture created some kind of Frankenstein's monster?" he asked her.
"Wouldn't put it past him. Maybe that's what we're chasing here. Frankenstein's monster was pretty big, you know."
Gary shook his head. "You've got a point about it being big but I don't see how it would be green or look like a tree. Besides I'd rather deal with one monster at a time." He turned to the boys who were still arguing, "Hank! Dean! Put a cork in it. Hank, you go up to the number seven entrance. You'll find some garden hose. Start stringing it down here. Dean, go up to the Residence and make up a pitcher of lemonade and maybe some sandwiches if there's any bread left.
After the boys left Gary continued digging in the hole, leveling it out and making it an even foot deep all around. Triana lay back and covered her eyes with her hat again. "Ever hear from Kim?" she asked.
"I was hoping she give you a call."
"Nothing. Do you think she's alright?"
Gary dug for a bit in silence. He didn't really want to talk about Kim, didn't want to think about her. "Like I said at the time, if the Blackhearts didn't want her alive she would wouldn't have left the grounds alive."
"But she was really beat up and bleeding..."
'One of the things you learn early on as a Henchman is how to give First Aid. MASH hospitals could learn a lot from henchman first aid."
"So...?" Triana persisted.
"So she's either alive and a prisoner with the Blackhearts, or she's live and escaped. Until she gets in touch with us we'll never know. You can't do a seance or anything and find her?"
"If I could, I would have before this." Triana sighed and rolled over on her back. "You can't find here with all your connections with the Guild of Calamitus Intent?" she asked.
"The Guild is more an insurance company for super-villains," Gary confessed. "They do maintain a semblance of order among the villains but they're not a lost-and-found department."
Gary was finishing up leveling the little pond. "Here comes Hank with the hose," he observed.
"Is it just me or does Dean seem a little sharper than he used to?" she asked.
Gary had noticed that, as well, and had a theory about it. The boys were actually clones of the original Venture twins, the 14th set actually. Their father had run a secret clone lab where he's grown dozens of replacement sets of the boys. Whenever the boys got killed, he'd untank a new set and pump their brains full of past memories recorded from their sleepbeds. At least that was the plan until the OSI went to war against the Ventures and the unformed clones used as an army to defend the compound. That was the end of the clone farm, leaving this Hank and Dean as the only remaining Venture brothers. What Gary had come to suspect was that pumping all that information into the boy's brains left way too much of it unassimilated. Any real world experiences were limited to their actually time out of the tanks. The longer that boys were out of the tank the more they were growing up. Gary had no idea whether they would ever become "normal" - their father wasn't much of a role-model in that regard, but there was the possibility that given time they might become... less weird.
"Do you really want to be a part of all this?" Gary asked. "I mean, walking trees, Frankenstein monsters, Arch-enemies dropping in out of the sky when you least expect it."
"It beats clerking at Wal-Mart." Triana stated emphatically.
"There are days when I'd kill for a chance to just be a clerk."
Hank was holding a large reel in his arms and letting the hose play out behind him as he walked. He wasn't paying attention to the reel so when the last of the hose ran out the reel jerked to a stop because the end had been clipped to the reel. And a second later Hank did a near perfect pratfall as the non-moving hose jerked him out from under his feet.
"You know, maybe you should go back to school. Because if you intent to stay around here I think you're going to need all the magic possible to survive."
[]
The first night the boys wanted to sit up with Gary and keep watch for the walking tree. Gary hadn't actually planned to stay up himself. That's what videotape was for. A DVR would have been nicer but the Ventures were largely stuck in the 70s so tape it was. And two inch reel-to-reel tape at that.
The boys had trucked in around 9 with sleeping bags, popcorn and several board games. By ten o'clock they were fast asleep, much to Gary's relief. He turned out the lights and dreamed of giant vegetables carrying his ex-girlfriend and would be assassin, Kim Duquesne up the side of the Empire State Building while Hank and Dean in vintage biplanes buzzed around overhead, before they collided and fell to the earth. Gary wasn't sure but he thought he was in an armored zeppelin about to aim twin turbo-blasters from the Millennium Falcon when the morning sun woke him. He let the dream replay a couple times before getting up and replaying the night's videotape. Kim, Kim, Kim... Why did she have to go all crazy on him. The only thing worse than going 28 years without having sex was knowing that you're not going to have sex for the remaining 50+ years of your life.
The zing of the rewinding tape woke the boys, who were, of course, disappointed that they hadn't stayed up up night. Playback showed nothing happening for hours, then the motion detector switched the camera from one frame every two seconds to continuous recording. At first Gary couldn't see what happened triggered the motion detector then he saw a small brownish, masked figure come into view. The raccoon was carrying a half-eaten piece of pizza from the garbage, which it carefully washed in the muddy pond water before eating.
The boys were "aw, he's so cute. Can we keep him?"
"Ask your dad," he told them knowing how far that idea would get.
Nothing else happened through the rest of the video
Or for the next several days, except that nightly the raccoon would come with some choice pickings from the garbage, wash it the water, as raccoon's do before eating. When on the fourth day it came with a fresh peanut butter and jelly sandwich Gary had to bawl out the boys for feeding the wildlife.
But the fifth day the raccoon didn't come. Instead something shadowy in the night-vison lens hung around the edge of the pond. It stayed around, motionless for the longest time, visible only as something that obscured the light from the moon. Finally it went away. Gary arranged that the next night, if the motion detector picked up anything, it would ring an alarm in the guard shack. He wanted to see this thing in real-time.
The alarm woke him out of a random, albeit disturbing dream of his time with The Monarch. It took him a moment to get the images of that out of his mind and look to see what the motion detector had found. Slowly and with a certain amount of stealth, a large object was gliding into the frame of the video camera. Glided seemed the right word to describe its motion because it wasn't jerky the way large animals are when they walk, putting one foot in from of the other, then moving the other foot.
The creature seemed to be circling the pond, before finally slipping into the water with a slight shudder of its leaves. Using the pond as a reference, it was about eight feet tall, with a narrow trunk may two feet wide, running with a slight curve up to a crown maybe six feet wide of tightly curled leaves. The camera broadcast in a green tinted black and white image so Gary had no idea what colors might be present, but he had to admit that it looked like a giant spear of broccoli. A walking spear of broccoli?
Gary set about making some photos of the creature. He'd show these to Dr, Venture in the morning and find out of the Doctor was in any way involved with this. Weird stuff happened on the Venture Compound all the time. It was like the Bermuda Triangle of Big-Time Science. Visitors from space, visitors from time, strange dimensions. With Dr. Venture around anything could happen. For that matter it could easily be some escape experiment he didn't want to talk about. Knowing how most people feel about broccoli, and not just the eight foot walking kind, Gary could understand the reticence. Still, he would have to do something about it before there was a panic.
When the creature finally left the pond, Gary laid back down to rest. He left the recording running in case the creature came back but finally he had the physical confirmation that the walking tree existed.
At one point while writing "A Day in the Life of a Reformed Henchman" I decided that I needed to throw in a lot of plot complications just so I could pick up so piece of weirdness to advance the plot. And just as quickly I decided I wanted to wrap up this first story arc quickly. So about the only thing that got into the series was "Tree." I had something of an elaborate back-story for Tree and a concept for this annoying visitor from elsewhere. So when I decided to write something about Gary's response to discovering that his girlfriend is a arch villain it seemed like the place to use Tree.
