Allonzo Trier lurked in the shadows of the poorly-lit parking garage. Dressed in an all-black outfit, including a black ski mask, he was practically invisible. Already, several people had walked by him without noticing his presence. Any minute, the Rockets’ team bus would come pulling up and the players would come piling off. Then, and only then, would Allonzo spring into action.
He went over the plan one more time in his head, even though it was not really an actual plan consisting of multiple concrete steps. It was just one main step which served both as the beginning and conclusion of the plan. Mainly, he reminded himself that this was a necessary step he had to take, and if he hurt people in the process, well, that was the price that one paid for progress.
A rumbling motor brought him out of the thoughts. It was too loud to belong to a car, so he paid close attention. When the vehicle pulled into view and revealed itself to be the team bus that he had been waiting for, Allonzo readied himself for the upcoming attack.
Players filtered off the bus one by one, interspersed with coaches and other team staff. None of them were the one Allonzo was waiting for. But when that one did descend the small flight of steps off the bus, there was no mistaking him. The bushy beard, the apathetic facial expression, the headphones, the slight hint of man-boobage; it could only be James Harden himself.
Silently, like a cat, Allonzo burst from his hiding spot and ran towards James, who was occupied with something on his phone. As he ran by, he reached out his hand, grabbed a handful of James’ beard, and yanked. While James’ eyes widened in surprise, Allonzo kept running, but now he had a small handful of freshly-removed beard hairs.
James was apparently too shocked to give chase. He rubbed the spot on his chin were the hairs had been removed while speaking to one of the arena’s security personnel about the incident, but Allonzo was long gone.
Darting into an out-of-the-way, unused bathroom, Allonzo ripped off his mask and took a closer look at the beard hairs in his hand. There weren’t many of them, but they were long. “Yes…yes…” he moaned, unable to believe that real, authentic bits of James Harden’s beard were in his possession.
Now was the moment of truth. Retrieving a piece of scotch tape from his pocket, Allonzo carefully affixed the hairs to the tape, then put the tape on his chin. Now, Harden’s beard and Allonzo’s own beard were one in the same. Already, he could feel the beard powers being transferred through his face down to the rest of his body. The last thing Harden would expect was his own powers turned against him. Allonzo looked forward to it.