DISCLAIMER: I am not Lord Vasquez.

AUTHORS NOTES: Chapter three - we're back to Johnny, and it seems he's landed himself in a spot of trouble.

Remember, I did say Johnny's part flared into action quickly. Granted, it will be a few chapters before anything detrimental really starts up, but still.

Also, DIXON! Ahh, I just love how well he connects everything. He's got his own fantastic backstory going on, there - could probably write a side-story for him, if I wanted.


INCARCERATION

A shiver ran down Johnny's spine as he stood in the lineup of the grocery store, various cans of soups and pastas held tightly in his arms. Something wasn't right, and he could feel it. Could sense that something was wrong but for the life of him couldn't think of what it might be.
A few minutes earlier, he'd been in quite a good mood, humming one of his favorite songs and not really caring who heard him. As well, his more favored soups and pastas were on sale, leading him to inevitably gather up more than the one can of Spaghetti-Os he had originally planned on getting.

However, now he couldn't help but frown at the feeling of apprehension running through him - he felt distinctly as though something very bad was going to happen, like something was about to leap out and attack. That in itself, though, was extremely unlikely in a large, open area such as this. Especially if he was the one being attacked.
Even after his things were paid for and he was halfway home, he just couldn't shake the feeling that something was completely, entirely, not right.

'What is it that's making me feel this nervous?' Johnny thought as he ambled down the street, nearing his house. For a moment he paused, whipping around rapidly to stare at the empty street stretching out behind him, half expecting some strangely dressed shithole to be stalking along behind him, walking in tandem with it's prey and moving as silently as it could.

"I know you're there." Johnny told the empty street. He narrowed his eyes at it when nothing happened, searching. "I can feel you." When it remained still, and silent, the maniac growled, continuing on his way.
This was insane, he thought. He was becoming completely insane, and over what? a chill down his spine? A bad feeling? He'd had bad feelings plenty of times before, most of them usually pre-empting a strong urge to take somebodies life. Granted, those times had usually been due to his Wall Monster demanding blood, but still.

When Johnny saw his house, he almost sighed in relief - this tension he was feeling was driving him up the metaphorical wall. Maybe he'd draw something to ease it? He had getting rather good at drawing lately. He had figured it was all the ability and creativity that his Wall Monster had stolen away, returning to him after all this time and allowing him to draw something other than that damned Noodle Boy.

In his eagerness to get home, Johnny did not notice the additional vehicle, the black car parked at the road that definitely did not belong there. He wanted to get inside, away from the world and into the one place that he knew nothing could get at him.
Gripping his cans tighter as he reached for the knob, Johnny took in a breath, letting it out with a nervous sigh. If he had to be this fidgety for a moment longer, he would scream.

"Now, to put that man in Edgar's Machine..." Johnny muttered, slowly putting the many can's away, into the ragged shelves his kitchen held. "See how funny he thinks being ripped to strips is." He had only barely gotten the last can put away when he was tackled from behind, his arms grabbed and held behind him. Johnny felt a metal ring clasp tightly around one wrist, and knew immediately what it was - handcuffs. Surprised, but furious that somebody'd had the gall to set up an ambush for him inside his own home, he didn't miss a beat - he tore himself from the persons grip, whirling around and kneeing the offending person in his groin -he did hope it was a man; it would hurt the person so much more- and then headbutting him.
The attacker yelled out in pain, and then fell to the ground. Johnny, not wanting to take any chances, gripped the persons head, slamming it into the wood floor only once before dropping him. That would at least give him a concussion.

He struggled with the handcuffs for a moment, fighting to get the metal hoop to relinquish it's grip and come off. Unfortunately, it wasn't one of the cheap sets he found at the store. These were metal, were professional. These cuffs weren't coming off any time soon, and he wasn't feeling terribly willing to go diving through the mans pockets to search for the key.
In anger at his failure to pry the metallic hoop off of his wrist, he kicked the man on the floor before him in the side, about to hit him a second time when he paused. This man was dressed as though he'd expected a fight - one with knives, or bullets perhaps. And there, clipped to the belt on his waist, was a little radio. A two-way radio. There was another person inside his house.

He had just finished that thought, had just been in the process of figuring out where the second man might've been in his basement, when he felt something sting his neck, groaning in frustration when he pulled it off - it was a dart. A small little dart that he recognized. Tranquilizers.
Panting as he fought off the effects of the tiny dart, Johnny whipped his gaze across his living-room, the objects before him blurring at the edges, gaining a fuzzy look. It took him a moment to find the man, clothed in black and using Johnny' couch as cover as he aimed a sleek black gun at him. Tossing the dart aside, Johnny snatched a knife off of the counter, growling at the second intruder as he staggered towards him.

"You fuckers... th-think you can break int-to my house? my house?" He knew his words were slurring, could feel the drug pumping through his veins fighting to render him unconscious. Vaguely, Johnny's mind registered a second dart impacting with his chest, but he ignored it in favor of continuing his attempt at reaching the man so he could kill him. "Yyyou're with that... Dixon fucker, aren't you?" He said, waving the knife around. The man before him was watching Johnny with wide eyes, the gun still pointed at the maniac in front of him.
"You know..." Johnny started, pausing in his movements and grinning lopsidedly, the drugs running through him still not quite taking complete hold of him. "The minute I see him again... I think I'm gonna put him in Edgar's Machine, instead." As he tried to move again, he stumbled, putting a hand on a nearby wall to support himself.
In front of him, the man was staring, wide-eyed. Though shocked at Johnny's innate resistance to the tranquilizers, he was not too shocked to load a third dart - which impacted the maniac in the chest, not too far from the previous dart.

It took a few moments for the drugs to finally take effect like they were supposed to, and with the help of the third dart, Johnny at last crumpled to the floor. Though not entirely unconscious, his mind was, at this point, far too sedate
for him to be of any danger. It did not, however, stop the gun-toting man from staying where he was, hidden behind the couch, until he deemed the situation under control.
From his spot on the ground, Johnny's world was a blurry mess of undefined shapes and colors and sounds, any thoughts he had being about as defined as the rest of his sensory input.

"This is Red-Thorn one to Base. Come in, Base." The man said into his radio, walking over to his friend and past the downed Johnny.

"This is Base - did you get him?" The man glanced at Johnny looking him over. Johnny was rather obviously not unconscious, mumbling nonsense under his breath and drooling just slightly. He could see the maniac tracing random patterns onto the floor with his fingers, his hand being the only part of him really moving.

"...In a manner of speaking." He said after a while. "I recommend immediate pickup - Red-Thorn two is down, and the target took three tranqs and still isn't completely under. I don't wanna hit him with another, and I have no idea how long he'll be under if her could fight off two tranq darts that easily." A moments silence, and he got a reply.

"Copy that, 're on our way, Medical and Containment teams in tow." The man grinned slightly.

"Tell Dixon the mission was a success."

0o0o0o0

When the fuzzy blanket faded from Johnny's mind enough to allow him coherent thought, he found both of his major abilities - sight and movement - rather impaired. Not only was there a fairly restricting mask covering his face, but his arms were bound in place by a straightjacket, one that Johnny knew immediately could tell had been put in place by professionals who obviously knew who it was that they were dealing with, otherwise the straps wouldn't have been so tight.
As he sat up from his spot on the very cold floor, Johnny looked around, observing the room he'd been put into. It looked to be about three meters square - fairly large for a prison cell, he thought. There were no windows in the sleek, blatantly metal walls; any light in the room came from the pot lights set into the ceiling.
At one end of the room, there was a plain-looking bed, made up with some decent-looking blue-grey sheets that appeared right for the temperature of the air around him. At the other end, there was a toilet - not fancy enough to allow him a weapon from it, but modern enough that it wasn't a bucket, or a hole.
Johnny could see a door-shaped seam on one of the walls, and if he could guess, he would have said that the door was one-way - that any form of knob on the thing was on the opposite side.

For a while, Johnny studied the bed; how long it was in comparison to his own height, how much his weight affected the mattress, even guessing the quality of the mattress by judging how comfortable it was and how well he could feel the springs inside. He had been about to test how bouncy it was when somebody spoke, was even standing on the bed in preparation.

"So, you're awake. You're a rather remarkable man, I must say." Johnny cocked an eyebrow, gazing around the room - he couldn't see anything that looked like a camera, or even a speaker. So he turned his gaze to the door-seam and glared, silent. "You took down one of our best men, and even managed to fight off two tranquilizers." Though he wasn't sure if the man could hear him, Johnny spoke.

"I have to commend you on your bravery - nobody has ever broken into my house and survived"

"According to our records, very few people have survived you at all." The man retorted, sounding amused. Though it surprised Johnny to learn that the man on the other end of the disembodied voice could hear him, he didn't move, and didn't show any emotion.

"...It was Dixon, wasn't it?" Johnny asked, unintentionally changing the topic. The moment the voice had stopped speaking, Johnny had immediately recalled how he'd let the man called 'Dixon' go free - then how the man he'd captured months later had remarked that 'Dixon was a good man'. That same man had admitted to being part of some group that was watching Johnny. This must have been that mentioned group - the one that Dixon had also been a part of. Letting Dixon go had very obviously been a mistake.

"Excuse me?" The voice replied, sounding confused.

"Dixon - he told you what you needed to know to catch me, didn't he? Until then, you'd never been inside my house, didn't know enough about my home to risk sending men inside." He didn't wait for the voice to respond before speaking again, once more changing topics.
"You can't keep me in here - nobody survives me. It's all a matter of how long it takes for me to kill you; which I will." He heard the man chuckle, then speak.

"If you manage to escape this facility, I'll let you do whatever you want." He sounded confident, and it angered Johny - the man, while he certainly sounded far too confident, he had good reason to be; Johnny could see no way for him to escape. No way for him to fight back.