Rich Men in Richman
A Week Later, Sunday… 10:30 AM, Vespucci Beach, Los Santos
Wearing a white tank-top with black sweatpants and orange sports shoes, I decided to get some exercise by driving my Gauntlet to Vespucci Beach. I normally exercise say about three to four times a week just to keep myself in shape. I still remember the training regimen Merryweather had in place and it was less brutal than in the military. Not too bad for a Security company that has been involved in shadow wars for a couple years.
When I got to the outdoor gym (which is named Muscle Sands Gym), I noticed how big these bodybuilders were. Some of them were at a height of 6'6 feet or no less 6'2 feet. Some of them did fit the stereotypes of bodybuilders though as some if not most had tanned skin, minus the possibility of using steroids.
Pushing away the observations in my sight, I proceeded to look for some gym equipment. Fortunately, for me, someone had already finished using a bench press. Looking at the weight of the pound wheels, I added two 35 pounds to the bench press bar. With that done, I only lifted the weight bar for about 10-15 minutes. Afterwards, I performed some lifts for 20 minutes and left the gym.
After leaving Muscle Sands Gym, I was on my way back to my apartment until I noticed a commotion going on at Prosperity Street Promenade, nearby the Sub Urban store. A woman was shouting "Help!" as a white male was running franticly away from the scene. The lady is half black/white, possesses black braided Mohawk hair, brown eyes, 5'8 feet tall, and is sporting cropped tan jeans with an off-shoulder top (white) that has the Eris logo on the front. I approached the lady as she was fuming in worry.
"Hey, calm down. What happened here?" I said to the lady in a calm voice.
"That shitty A-hole with the red Harsh Souls T-shirt and blue jeans just stole my wallet. You can see him pushing a lot of people down." The lady explained to me in a quick manner.
"No dick should ever steal from a girl like you. Wait here, I'll get it back for you." I told the girl in confidence.
I started chasing down the guy was wasn't too far from where I was. As I caught a glimpse of the guy, he had already crossed the zebra line to the other part of the strip mall. Using as much speed as I could, I dodged a couple people and managed to catch up to him. To quickly subdue him, I ran front and performed a roundhouse kick to his face. The guy drops to the ground hard with part of his teeth missing due to the intensity of the attack I performed
"You fucking asshole! How dare you! No one is stopping me from stealing what's mine!" The thief said to me.
"How pathetic of a lowlife bastard! Don't you have better things to do than rob a girl?! Jesus Christ, asswipes like you need to be put down."
From there, the fight begins. I throw a punch at the thief, but dodges my attack and punches me at both my cheeks. Thrown off by the punch, I cough out a mix of saliva and blood. Coming back to reality, I kicked the thief at his left thigh and punched at him twice. He tries to punch at me again, but I dodged both his attacks and headbutted him. Distracted by the throbbing pain for a moment, he kicks at my abdomen and punches me in the face about two times. By this time, part of my face feels sore and bruised.
"Come on, give up already! You'll be dead by the time this is over." The thief proclaimed at me.
Giving him the middle finger, I said, "Go fuck yourself if you think that's going to happen."
I charged at him and kicked him in the groin. That opening gave me time to punch him again with a couple hits and headbutted him again for the second time, collapsing to the pavement with bloddy bruises and passing out. I took back the wallet that was stolen and went back to the lady who was waiting. As a side note, I'm sure someone was recording this fight and posted to the web by now.
After that, I left the scene and ran back down to where the lady was lying in wait. I approached her as I came nearby.
"Hey there. I got your wallet back for you." I said to the girl who was thankful for my action.
"Thanks, dude. That was so kind of you. I sincerely wish there were more like you guys." She said in complete honesty.
"Well, I'm not exactly a holy saint, but thank you." I said in appreciation
"Well, anyway can you call a taxi for me? My place is kind of far from here also my phone is dying. It's 0604 Las Lagunas Boulevard, Downtown Vinewood. By the way, the name is Mikaela, Mikaela Walsh."
"I can drive you there, I got time. Anyway, let's not waste time right now." I said to Mikaela.
We both enter my Gauntlet and drive off to Mikaela's apartment. On the way there, I struck up a conversation with Mikaela about some personal stuff.
"By the way, the name's Thomas Marston."
"Marston… Isn't that the last name of the Western folk hero, John Marston of the book, Red Dead?"
"Yeah, I'm the real-life descendant of his anyway. Some people think that he's actually a fictional character, but that never gets to me."
"I've read that book since I was 16 years old. Still a classic read though."
"Yeah, so where are you from?" I asked my new friend.
"Well, I hail from the so-called 'Las Venturas of the South' that is known as Vice City. Long story short; I'm 27 years old, I'm from a mixed family as you can tell by my black/white complexion, served in the Army for five years until I started agreeing with people who were protesting against Iraq since we weren't supposed to be there. I went without a job until a group of friends that I know of introduced me into the crime world. I've got to admit, the pay (except the risks) isn't bad at all. Pretty good for retirement." Mikaela stated to me
"I'll tell you my story. I've lived in the Southwest since I was a child. For your information, I'm not exactly all white as my mother is black and white, I have a older brother named Marcus who's in the Marines, at 18 years I joined the Marines myself for two years, but wasn't as exciting as I thought it would be. That changed when I decided to join Merryweather for the heck of it and to get better pay. Unfortunately, my 4th year with the company turned out bad because all of my platoon got killed in a battle in the Middle East. Since then, I've suffered from trauma, survivor's guilt and went into freelance work until I moved down to Los Santos thanks to Lamar."
"Wow, I'm sorry about that." Mikaela said to me with compassion
"It's alright, I've been trying to cope with what's happened. I not only came to Los Santos for the money by means of doing freelance work, but I'm also trying to heal with the incident and for a new start."
"Yeah, I feel that. Hey look, we're nearby my place. Just keeping driving a couple blocks" Mikaela pointed out.
We later arrive outside of Mikaela's apartment within less than seven minutes thanks to the traffic moving fast.
"Well, thanks for saving me earlier. Anyway, you gonna come in?" Mikaela asks me.
"No thanks, I have to get back home right now. Wait, can I have your number?" I asked Mikaela.
"Sure! Here, just pass me your phone… and it's done. Well, goodbye Thomas. I hope to hear from you later." Mikaela said to me.
"Same to you. Gotta get to my apartment anyway."
(25 Minutes later…)
Once I arrived into my apartment's garage, I went upstairs to my apartment's kitchen where I kept a first aid kit. I started to apply rubbing alcohol to my injuries which hurt like 500 bees stinging at you over and over again. Afterwards, I went to go take a shower to wash off my wounds and rested for about two hours. Once I woke up, I dressed up into a white T-shirt with the American flag on it along with a black hoodie, a pair of brown jeans, grey running shoes, and red sunglasses.
Once I had finished with changing into my clothing, I heard my phone make a notification. I went to grab my phone which was beside my remote control. When I pressed on my phone, I received a message from Simeon and it reads:
"If the financial crisis taught us anything, it's that the wealthy have as much trouble with the credit as the poor do. A man in Richman took two expensive cars from me, and now you must repossess them, and bring them to the showroom. You may need some help with this, I think he has security."
"Not enough info from a con-man and car thief." I thought to myself. Not knowing what specific cars to bring to his shop, I called Simeon about the issue.
"Simeon. You weren't being specific about what cars I'm meant to bring to the dealership. How am I supposed to repo these cars if I don't know what they fucking look like?! Not only that, you also didn't tell me where the hell I'm supposed to go!" I said in an annoyed manner.
Simeon replied, "Calm down, my boy! Didn't your mother teach you a lesson on patience? Okay, the cars are a grey Stinger GT and a black Super Diamond. The place where you and your associates are going is the Richman Mansion."
"The place with the topless girls and drunk men?" I said to Simeon.
"Yes. It's by Americano Way in case if you didn't know. A few more things that I have to tell you my friend, the place has a security system so in order to get in there, you'll need to hack into the system in order to steal those cars. Also, the police will come onto you once you've hijacked them. Good luck, my friend." Simeon said to me with a tone of faith in his voice.
"Great, now I have to deal with police and swiping off cars." I thought to myself in an irritated tone
Knowing that I would need some assistance with the repo, I called up Maddie, since she's good with hacking systems given her past experience. I called up Miles due to the fact that I haven't contacted him after the last mission. Needing one more person for this job, I thought of contacting Mikaela since she's had military experience.
"Hey, Mikaela. I got a job opportunity for you, but this involves repossession of cars. One of my Bosses, Simeon wants me and a few others to get back a pair of cars for him at Premium MotorSport, which is the place that he owns. He pays decently, so I thought of calling you up for the job."
"Sure, I can go. I do need the greenbacks anyway for support anyway. Just lemme know the time and place." Mikaela told me over the phone.
"Alright. Well, I've got to go. Need to set up some things for the mission."
I ended the call afterwards and proceeded to plan out the entire mission. Considering the security system in the Mansion, they might have cameras which would expose us to the police. To this end, the best solution was to buy masks for the mission to avoid being identified. The four of us would also need a decent amount of ammo since we were going to be dealing with security guards.
Knowing the others would need a specific location to meet up; I sent the message "Meet me at the Vespucci Movie Masks store." Then I set out to the Ammu Nation store nearby to collect weapons. The only things that I needed were simply smaller weapons, so I brought some pistols and SMG's for this.
From there, I drove off from the store to the shoreline to meet up with the rest of the crew. Parking nearby the mask store where all their cars were, I saw Maddie, Miles, and Mikaela in front of the store as I started to approach them.
"Hey everyone, look who's late to the party!" Miles said to me in a funny tone
"Shut up, Miles. Anyway, I'd like to introduce you and Maddie to my new friend, Mikaela. She's from Vice City, Florida. Beautiful, but can get the job done." I said to both Miles and Madison.
"Hello, beautiful! Whoever your parents are, they must have done a great job making you." Miles said to Mikaela in a flirty tone, looking at her with a smitten look. I swear to God, Miles must have the ego of a Ladies-Man if he thinks he's gonna score Mikaela.
"Uh… thanks dude. Long story short, I've served in the Army Corps for five years, and I'm pretty capable of handling myself in a fight." Mikaela said to all of us.
Maddie spoke up saying, "So what are we doing out here for? You picked this location for a reason, am I correct?"
"The mansion has security cameras as far as I believe and a security system. We can't take the risk of someone being at the Richman Hotel and taking looks at a small group of people robbing a few cars, too risky. That's why I wanted you guys to come down here to pick up some masks in order to avoid being identified by those at the Mansion." I explained to the rest of them.
"That's not a bad idea, Thomas. Good thing we have you as a team member. Alright, let's get the masks." Maddie said to me while giving me an assured smile.
Being in the "Don't Give a Fuck" state of mind, I decided to pick out at random, a Pogo monkey mask. Gotta admit, the mask looked pretty good on me when I looked at the mirror since I was wearing some urban clothing. Maddie picked out a red hockey mask, Mikaela picked out a hockey mask with an image of a rotting zombie, while Miles picked out a green monster mask.
We all looked at each other, only Miles laughed. The rest of us either shook our heads or sighed. Isn't that awkward?
After that moment, we grabbed our equipment and departed to the Richman Mansion to repo the cars. I've got to say, the traffic in LS is less slow when at night, probably due to the nightlife around Downtown Vinewood and other places in Los Santos. It only took us about less than 40 minutes to get over to the Richman area since traffic was sparse. We moved out towards the entrance of the mansion where the gate's security system is located. Knowing that the only one who's well skilled in decryption is Maddie, I called on her to hack into the gate.
"How long you think this will take?" I asked her.
"Say no less than in 5 minutes, though I may be a bit off. Just give me some time here." She asked of all of us.
Maddie proceeded to hack into the security system by means of using her iFruit phone. She told everyone that there were only two ways to fully hacking a system, using either BruteForce (system that allows you to select letters to spell out a word) or HackConnect (A system where you'd have to find a set of numbers). Fortunately, it was the former which was way easier to access into than searching for a set of numbers. It only took five minutes for Maddie to hack into the system for us to enter into the Richman Mansion. When the gate opened, we rushed in there quickly as we could.
As we were approaching the car, to our left were four security guards dressed in brown pants and buttoned-up white shirts standing nearby a passageway to the pavilion, spotted us and started to shoot at us. Maddie and Mikaela started to shoot at them as well, killing two guards with SMG fire. They incapacitated the rest by killing them both in the abdomen, lying dead on the grass.
It wasn't over yet, as two security guards appeared at another passageway nearing where the cars were. I took out my heavy pistol and fired three rounds at a security guard, but missed the third since I caught two wounds to my right thigh no thanks to the other one beside him. Miles appeared and shot the other guard in the head twice, who dropped to the ground dead with a pool of blood leaking out.
This threw off the already wounded guard who was in a bit of shock, so it gave me a window to shoot at him in point-blank range. Once that was taken care of, we had to take the cars for Simeon.
"Maddie and I will take the Super Diamond, while you guys take the Stinger GT. Keep in touch via speaker by phone, got it?"
Both Mikaela and Miles replied "yes" and we all took off from the mansion. We were driving down on Desert Drive when I came up with an idea.
"Listen, Miles, Mikaela. We've got to split up from each other. Might cover more ground and lessen out cop responses." I said to them.
"That's a great idea, Thom. We'll let you know when we've lost the 5-0." Mikaela said to both of us.
We split up from both of them as we drove to Boulevard Del Perro. However, by the time I made a turn, a police car with two officers was lying in wait and pursued both Maddie and I. Maddie started to load her pistol and fired at the cop car in chase. She managed to hit the driver a couple times, making the car lose control and crashing into a palm tree nearby a store. Needing to make a quick turn, I warn Maddie in advance.
"Hey Maddie, you might want to hang on to your seat for a moment."
"Wait, why?" She asked.
"This is why" I said as I made a quick turn from Del Perro to the bridge connecting to Little Seoul. Dodging a few cars while speeding through traffic didn't help since I caught a few bumps at the front. Thought it was about two to three bumps, so I thought there wasn't anything to worry about. I turned to Maddie and she looked a bit nauseous in the face.
"Okay, I think I'm going to hurl right now. If there's one thing you should know about me, is the fact that I hate quick turns from things like roller coasters. Makes me feel nauseous." Maddie stated to me.
"I'm thinking of bad childhood trauma of intense barfing. I've got ten dollars on me right now." I said to her with a smug smile.
"Yeah, I was eight years old when I rode on my first roller coaster in L.C. Ate too much food and… Thomas, you're about to hit a car!" Maddie suddenly warned me as I was driving. Turns out I was losing control of the car for a moment due to the conversation. Hooray for being distracted, as I mentally slapped myself for.
I swerved out of the oncoming vehicle's lane and drifted onto the correct lane. Unfortunately, as I drifted, I heard a scratching sound by the rear of the car against the other car.
"Did the car just get a scratch?" Maddie asked me.
"Yeah, it did. Now Simeon is going to bitch and moan. Hold on, there's a parking garage a block down from us. I'm going to turn left."
"Wait a minute, a cop car is driving towards us. The car's a couple feet away from us!" Maddie warned me in a hint of stress.
"Well, I'll have to drift yet again. Don't try throwing up all over the interior, we need this in good condition."
I drifted to my left and quickly speeded my way into the parking garage which has colors of red and white. Needing to be safe, I drove up to the 3rd level of the garage and parked there. The period that we waited for the cops to go away took about 30 minutes or less since I lost track of time being worried that a cop car would come and arrest us. It felt like an hour instead being in that situation which didn't help at all.
"I think the cops are gone from this area. We should contact Miles and Mikaela to see if they've lost them." Maddie said to me.
"Yeah, I definitely agree. Miles, Mikaela, you guys lost the pigs?" I asked in desperation.
"Dude, don't get your fucking panties tight in your crotch. Of course we're okay. Mikaela and I lost them in El Burro Heights. We're en route to Simeon's car shop." Miles said to me in complete assurance.
"Alright, that's good. We're on our way. They're alright and heading their way to Simeon's" I said to Maddie.
We drove off from the parking garage in Little Seoul and went our way to Simeon's car shop. There, we met up with Miles and Mikaela. Their car wasn't that beat up, they only had about 3 to 4 scratches on the Stinger and two bumps on the rear. I looked at the Super Diamond and did a face palm in shame. Apparently, there were two deep dents at both sides of the front, which looked like the worst part of the car. As for the scratches, they weren't that bad. There were only two scratches on both doors of the left side of the car, but the scratches were only medium in size.
"Well, looks like we did survive, but our cars almost did." Mikaela said to all of us.
"Well, pray Simeon pays us well for this shit. This wasn't as bad as the last mission Maddie and I went on for him. Had to kill a bunch of Ballas for a Schafter." I said referring to the Jamestown Ave incident.
"Speak of the devil, here he comes right now!" Madison said to all of us.
"Hello there, my fellow associates! I see you got the cars that I asked to return to me." Simeon said as he approached us.
"Alright, Simeon. We got the cars for you, just pay us sometime after this." I said to him.
Simeon looked at the cars and said, "Perfection is a cruel mistress, is she not? I can see why the cars are looking a bit damaged. I'm guessing the corrupt police and this damned city traffic?"
"Yeah, you won the lottery with that answer." Miles said to Simeon in a tired tone.
"Okay, I will pay all of you a total of $18,930 dollars in your Maze Bank accounts. Oh, by the way. I took the liberty of letting some of my mechanics pick up your cars from Richman. They're in front of the Motorsport store. Also, I contacted Los Santos Customs to give you guys your own personal mechanics to deliver your vehicles instead of riding in those stupid taxis with their cheap pay. No need to be feeling broke. " Simeon said.
"Thanks, Simeon. Never thought that you would do that for us on our behalf." Miles said to Simeon in complete shock, but with a thankful feeling.
"Consider this a thank you from the community." Simeon said with a smile on his face.
With that being said, we all left the parking lot and went our separate ways into the rest of the day.
Hello, guys. Sorry for the wait, but I'm back. I've had to deal with schoolwork and College issues. This chapter is one of the longest that I've had to work on since I re-did it say about five times. I really wanted to make sure it came out well before releasing this to you guys. I'm very much pleased that Rockstar Games has announced the GTA Online Heists release date to be on March 10th. I know that I lot of gamers (me included) have been waiting for over a year and a half for this to come out, but now is the time to drop it.
Due to the four-player setup of Online Heists, I'll need to figure out a way to set up the whole entire thing when it comes out. As for the GTA Online missions, I'm not going to do all of them. Given the pace of Rockstar Games and my High School career nearing to an end, I'll have to release more chapters within the coming weeks. Also, some of the Vs. Missions included in the Online portion may/may not be used as standoffs or mission objectives given by Thomas and Co.
As for me, I'm considering making a Star Wars fan-fic right now. However, I'll use it as a side project since this one is my main priority. I'm a fan of Star Wars and I've been hoping to do it for a while. Since this story gotten popular thanks to over 1,000 views, I'm still going to keep moving forward with this. Thanks for reading so far. If you've got any ideas for the story, message me if you want. Open to suggestions. One more thing, as of this chapter I'm no longer accepting OC's anymore. The whole thing has run its course, so I apologize to any reader who comes across my story and comes up with one. To the guest that's been asking to use the "Carly De Santa" OC, I'm still refusing to use her. It will distract the plot and leave a mess that I really have no time to clean up. -Tom tha Author
(02/27/15): Thanks to the readers who left some reviews, always appreciated. To the guest from earlier, I apologize about the whole incident. BY THE WAY, the girl killed in one of the earlier chapters was a random person, not the Carly OC. Wanted to clear out the fog before it got less clearer to see.