Banged this out last night.

Me and my lizard brain.

*Ding Dong*

The sound floated up and dissipated into the hot, humid breeze. The moisture in the air caused Rock's hair to stick to his face like the warmest of wool caps. The longer he stood here, outside Iori Yagami's door, the worse he was going to smell for the remainder of the day.

He hit the doorbell again, with more aggression this time. It didn't matter. The sound wasn't any louder.

*Ding Dong. Ding Dong*

…

A long moment elapsed, then:

*Bang*

*Thud*

"Fauuck!"

Perfect. Iori Yagami was awake. And that meant, Iori Yagami might lend his nuclear mustang to his favorite (and only) secondary bass player.

"Boss? It's Rock!'

"..."

A couple of months ago, Rock had agreed to a drag race taking place midnight, tonight. His friends were coming. The girls were coming. Even his engineering professor was going to show up and proctor the race. Rock had a B- in his electrical engineering class, and he really needed to impress this professor. Ever since he decided he wanted to be a smartass and choose the god-awful EE major as his fate for the next three years, his time and tolerance for bullshit had to be split evenly between his classes and his employer.

Recently his employer had been especially bullshitty, and as a result - his grades were suffering. At least that's what Rock told himself. He had raised the complaint to Iori once, and he got the expected answer:

"I don't give a fuck. The salary I'm paying you is more than all of your professors' combined, so don't come at me with that shit."

Which was… probably true.

But regardless, even if Iori felt like Rock's B- wasn't his fault, he was still going to help bring that grade up… by handing over the keys to the mustang on the curb. Rock was going to get an A in Electrical Engineering B01 to maintain his perfect GPA. The mustang was gonna win him that race. It was gonna smoke everyone else. His Professor was going to love him. Nobody was gonna stop him. Not even the owner of the car.

There was the muffled sound of the owner screaming from inside the house. He sounded a little high pitched. He must have done shrooms last night. Not abnormal. He sounds like a girl… heh.

"I'm not buying your shit!"

"Boss! It's me!"

A long pause. Rock marveled that not only was Iori loud enough to hold a conversation through two closed doors and likely a pillow over his face - but his boss could hear him as well.

"Dammit, Howard. It's Saturday. We don't work on Saturday. Go away."

"Boss! It's important. Please?"

"Urg."

Rock exhaled hard and prepared his pitch. How was he going to convince Iori to give him the car? A couple of months ago, around the time he had agreed to this race, Rock had managed to maintain almost continued possession of the vehicle in question.

It was a combination of always needing to move small furniture, always needing to borrow it for road trips, and his father constantly getting stranded somewhere, and needing a ride. Most of this was untrue, and since Iori lacked the time and energy to confirm these statements, Rock was typically successful in procuring the car.

Eventually, Iori got fed up and just gave him the keys. For a period of five or six weeks, Rock Howard was the coolest kid in town. He had a badass car. He had a badass job. He had a badass girlfriend. Then he did a badass fender bender and wrapped the poor beautiful mustang around a tree.

It went back to it's owner for some expensive R&R and had finally made a full recovery. Iori was understandably pissed, and demanded that Rock pay for the damages and go to the DMV to 'get a fucking driver's license for fuck's sake!'

As of today, Rock had done neither… but he needed the car. He was going to ask nicely for it. If that didn't work… then… hm…

Seirah said something about the assumptive close… like, 'I'm here to pick up the keys…' but that had never worked… ugh, didn't she say she was coming to help?

Last week, Rock had voiced these concerns to his girlfriend, and upon hearing of his situation, Whip immediately got to work. She had made a whole bunch of phone calls to her scary military buddies in languages Rock didn't understand, and when she was done - she gave him a devious grin, then gave him a script, then demanded he memorize it.

I don't know what she was thinking...

Rock had long forgotten that script, but he did remember it being incredibly pretentious and offensive. Something along the lines of 'The mustang belongs to me. Give me the keys...' Ridiculous, but Seirah seemed so proud of her… frankly horrible negotiation skills, that Rock didn't have the heart to break it to her. Besides, as an IKARI Analyst, she was supposed to be good at this stuff. It would hurt her pride if he criticized her.

Besides… she flew to like… Panama yesterday. I'm definitely on my own for this...

Another thud from inside the house snapped Rock back to attention. A car drove by. A few - obviously drunk - people tottered across the street. A car alarm went off three blocks down, and hadn't stopped for the past ten minutes. Rock was beginning to get annoyed.

Is he coming out? I swear he's like a woman… always taking his sweet time doing everything…

Rock tapped his foot and glanced at his watch. A trickle of sweat ran down the back of his neck and soaked into the collar of his shirt… wasn't he sweating just a bit too much? Sheesh...

Dammit Yagami…

Was it that hot? No… this morning the weather said high eighties. It felt like at least a hundred… and was getting worse. He frowned and rubbed the back of his neck. When he brought his hand back, it was burning hot, and slick with sweat. Rock stared at it with dismay. Was something wrong?

*Thud*

*Thump, thump*

*Ka-chack*

The door was violently wrenched open, caught on the chain, then slammed shut again. Rock heard his boss cursing and fiddling with the mechanism for a worrying amount of time, before the lock finally came free and the door was thrown open. Iori was yelling at the moment they made eye contact

"What!"

"Hey Iori I-..."

Rock stopped short mid-sentence and stared. Iori glared back, then turned to cough into his elbow. Despite the time he had kept Rock waiting outside, he had done no cleaning up at all. It looked like he had just fallen out of bed and crawled to the doorway. He was wearing a t-shirt, boxers, and had both eyes nearly covered with hair.

He looked a lot like Shermie.

It wasn't just the hair.

"Oh my God, Boss. You have tits!"

"What?!"

Lmao, you don't get context too bad ;0

Posting this during a zoom meeting with company.

Good waste of time lmao