There was a high-pitched sound, and he opened his eyes suddenly.
"Now what?!"
Lawrence forced himself to get out of bed, rolling around and undoing the sushi roll he got inside on the night. "Curse you, blankets." He put on his daily mules, this time axolotl-themed (ain't they the cutest little things on earth?) and lazily picked himself off that heavenly mattress.
"I swear to God if this is another villain attack, I'll kill them with my very own hands." Still groggy and sleep-deprived, courtesy of yesterday's adventures, he growled as he opened up the nearest window to find out what in the damnable earth had woken him up.
Hammered planks. Pneumatic drills. Saws of every size and type. Cranes carrying loads of wood, metal and stones. Sweaty men shouting at each other and making even more noise. Oh, yes. For those who, like him, needed a full night of sleep to gain strength, construction works were but a veritable hell.
"Sheyt." He was so tired he couldn't even muster a proper curse. "Aaaaagh, damn those Hellhound dorks! It's the third consecutive day these guys wake me up! Can't they, dunno, put a silencer to their drills?"
He stoped for a second and imagined how that would be.
"Forget that I ever said that."
Now giving up on trying to sleep a little longer, he searched inside his wardrobe, looking for something to put on.
Slam. Slam. Slam. Crrrrrrraackackackack. The screeches of doom kept hammering on his head like a drumstick hitting the cymbals for a heavy metal intro.
He ignored them the best he could, taking the white shirt with black kitty pawprints from its hanger rack.
Yes, he liked the design. So what? Go criticize a good citizen's life somewhere else.
"Haha, as if."
That's when he heard the knock on the bedroom's door.
"Come in" he said, buckling up the last button. Mika probably wanted to complaint about the noise.
The door burst open, and a someone came in.
"Listen, Mika. I know the noise's hellish, but you'll have to put up with it. I can't—"
Something hammered hard on his head, and for the first time of the day, he could sleep without minding the noise.
This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.
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Johnny Chase was a very patient man.
He always knew he was meant to be a part of something. Something bigger than just turning into one of the cogs that makes the clock of society run until they degraded and turned useless. His father, always jumping from office to office, rotting between bill stacks and coffee cups, was a sad example of that. He loved him, good ol' dad, but he sure as hell never wanted to be like him.
That's why he promised himself he would work hard, not for the state, but for himself. He was the number one, and number two, and number three as well. Everything standing on his way would be utterly crushed. Not because of hate, vengeance, any of that. No, he knew life too well as to dwell that much on those feelings. It was simple survival. 'Nothing personal, just business' as he used to say.
That's why, when he hard about this new wannabe villain taking out some of his men, he didn't get mad.
Instead, he got one of his folk's best info man, the best, really, to track the bad guys for him.
It was simple, in fact. Unless you had specialized equipment or a meta-disrupting ability, you couldn't hide from Johnny Chase. You just need some genetic material from the crime scene and voila, Exodus knows exactly where you are and when you got there. The business, of course, had a legal cover. Exodus was a very big construction company, the biggest in fact. While QuickBrick specialized on small, quick jobs, their deal was full-scale construction and massive damage reparations. Of course, that was only the cover. On the other, more illegal side of the line, they dealt with smuggled merchandise. Ships and ships of everything from washed money to exotic animals arrived to his docks every day, and boy he got money from it. Of course, he never got into drugs dealing or anything major like that. He wasn't insane.
But he was getting way off track.
His phone ringed inside his pockets. A burnable, don't you doubt it.
"Chase here."
-Mr. Chase! How good to hear you.-
Johnny cursed under his teeth.
"Same for you, Mr. Norrington. To what do I owe the honor?" Irony did not go unnoticed to the person on the other side of the phone.
-Come on, now, Mr. Chase. Were I'd rather not having this conversation, please understand. It's the circumstances that force me.-
"I already told you, I won't put any of your product on my boats."
-You'd really do well to reconsider my offer—!-
"A no is a no, Mr. Norrington. Now, if you'd excuse me, I have a business to take care of."
There was a styled ding, and the call cut off.
"Now, let's show our guests what a real villain looks like..."
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When Lawrence woke up, he wasn't on his comfy bed any longer. Comparing the texture of his bed to the steely hardness of that metal chair would be a heresy nobody should be allowed to live with. The same could be said about the table he was handcuffed to.
He felt a dead weight on his left shoulder. He turned around to see Mika drooling on his pawprint-stamped shirt.
"Hey. Wake up, useless minion" He hit her in the head. The only result he got was a loud snore and more drool.
Lawrence sighed.
"It's one damn thing after the other..."
He looked around. They were in a dark, cold room. The walls appeared to be made with concrete bricks, coated in dark grey pain. There was only one way in, through an iron door at the front of the door.
Just as Lawrence inspected it, the door burst open, and a men whose aura could only be described as 'intimidating' came in, closing the door behind and sitting in front of them both.
"Now then. You're gonna tell me who you are and why you're messing around with me. Or else..."
There was a knock in the table and, before Lawrence could notice, a giant machete was laying there, ready to turn his inners into outers.
"We're gonna have problems."
Sheyyyyyyyyyt...