Chaoter 4: The Method Actor
Nic Cage woke with a start. There was a rustling of the leaves outside his bedroom window. They rustled and cracked, like if blankets were brittle and tiny and smaller. And there were a lot of them on the ground outside the window.
Being stepped on.
Cage was ready. He jumped up and punched through the glass window, and as shards of the semisolid liquid erupted from the punch-hole like a sharp metal chrysanthemum, he felt the bone of his knuckle break the ninja's jaw.
He didnt even bother to check the body because he knew that one hit from Nic Cage meant you were out cold. He had been in the wicker man. He had survived the bees.
Nic turned cooly to face the door as Sean Bean burst into the room.
"Nic, are you okay?" Mr. Bean was panicked, afraid. "I was asleep in my bedroom next door when I heard the glass!"
"Quiet, my young ward!" whispered Nic. But as soon as he had shsuehd mr bean, a second ninja, that had been disguised as an ornate chandelier, dropped from the ceiling, and pressed a knife to Boromir's nech. The fake glass and lightbulbs glued to his kimono rustled like tiny brittle blankets.
"Do what I say, or the boy dies!" hissed the ninja. Nic Cage took a calm breath, before he punched him in the face anyway, and he crumpled to the floor.
"No one threatens my boy companion, and no one tells me what to do! I'm old enough to have my own phone, dad!" Cage was shouting, even though the ninja was clearly dead or asleep.. perchance to dream.
"You have much to teach me." said Mr Bean. "How did you stop them?"
"Remember when I was in cinderella man?"
"No."
"Exactyl... I was so good at playing that boxer who looked like Russlwe Crowe, that people thought I was just Russel crowe playing a boxer, which is why I've never won an oscar. I trained for months.. years in the himalayas under the league of shadows to learn to box for that role. You see, to act is to become the character. To be someone on screen, you must be him not on screen. Like when I was in ghost rider and I lit my hair on fire"
Cages had turned and was staring through the window-crater, calmly, dramatically. The wind ruffled his fine angel hair. Bean's soul patch was also rufling. The shadows of the hollywood hills were blue in the moonlight, and scattered windows in far off buildings glowed as business executives downed their sorrows in piles of coke and prostitutes. Just piles of women, like sexy lady jenga. It truly was a city that never slept.
"But why ninjas' why now?"
"Because they want us to shut down the orphanage and build a glue factory."
"But why?"
"Because, as the recession worsens, people will stop consuming, they will become more thrifty, and will repair things instead of buying new ones."
"...they'll need glue!" Beans shouted.
"You catch on quickly." Cage said, nodding sagely.
"But how will we raise enough money to save the orphans?" Bean inquisited
"Simple, my good chum. Tonight we will steal the declaration of independance."
"But Washington is on the other side of the country from here, we could never get there in time"
Cage laughed. "Don't you remember?"
"I hijacked a jet in Con Air"