Ch50 - Suit Up
Author: Gem
last update2022-01-30 07:03:02

After an alarming amount of time, by 427's current standards at least, of high-intensity buzzing competition, there is still no clear winner. Nearing his breaking point, 427 finally interrupts.

[It's great that you are all bonding so well, but we REALLY don't have time for this.]

Lucas had been mid-buzz when 427 spoke up and the sudden mechanical voice startles him into fumbling. Willy does not hesitate to consider this a failing on his part, barking at him twice, then turning to look at Jonathan for his turn.

'Hey! You could have at least waited until it wasn't my turn, jerk.'

[…]

'Okay, okay, you're right. Busy day and all that. Meh.'

As Jonathan successfully finishes another round of buzzing, Willy gives his accepting bark and then quickly runs in a small circle in front of him, apparently declaring the victor.

By what rule set they were just playing with, who could say? Yet, somehow, all parties involved seemed to agree with the outcome.

As Jonathan celebrates his victory by pumping a fist in the air, Lucas really can't resist laughing at him.

"All right, enough of that. We... Er, I need to get ready to go out so we can get some of our chores over with." While saying this, Lucas has gotten up from where he had sunken into the patched-up sofa. Before he has taken more than three steps towards his bedroom, Willy has immediately taken his place on the sofa, curling up into a doggie donut.

Seeing that Willy has lost any lingering interest in the soggy chewed-up bagel on the floor, Jonathan can no longer resist getting up to pick it up and throw it out, washing his hands afterward.

[Hah! There is definitely no way he would have tolerated you throwing garbage around the room. Now I'm curious if he would have used his speed to try and catch it mid-air and mitigate the spread of crumbs.]

'...I'm not used to you encouraging me like that.'

[I was absolutely not! Don't you dare do it on purpose, and don't you dare try to pin any of the blame on me!]

'Heheh, that almost makes me want to do it even more. Maybe next time.'

[You know what? You deserve whatever he does to you.]

Lucas involuntarily snerks, grinning to himself as he heads off into his bedroom, shutting the door behind him.

After rummaging around through his dressers for a little while, now judging his clothes by a higher standard than before, he has an epiphany and charges back out of the room. There's a loud bang as the door flings open and whacks against the wall without any resistance from the ex-doorstop, a few flakes of paint and drywall falling as the door bounces back off of said wall. The poor wall now has greatly sprawled spiderweb patterns of cracks on it and is probably not long for this world.

"JON!" Lucas yells as soon as he rips the door open, the sound of his shout is almost simultaneous with the collision of the hot hot door on wall action.

The sudden loud noises drowning out the weather forecast on the TV make Jonathan and Willy both jump up from their previously relaxed positions on the sofa, gasping or barking accordingly.

Jonathan turns a bit paler than normal, somehow. It seems he's still a bit too skittish to handle a sudden spook like that.

"Ah!? Wha-what!?" Jonathan's frightened confusion doesn't cause Lucas to lose any momentum at all.

"Jooooon! Let's wear the suits!" As Lucas voices the inspiration that triggered his sudden chaos, Jonathan's confusion quickly clears and he gains his own enthusiasm.

"Oh! Yeah! We gotta be cool when we make the organization!" With Jonathan fully on board, Lucas starts to head towards the bathroom, ready to inspect the so-called wrinkle resistance of the suits he left in a dryer overnight instead of having taken them to a dry cleaner.

Before he's even made it to the bathroom door, Jonathan has already returned from the coat closet near the front door, carrying the two neatly hung-up suits draped across his arms so as to not drag them on the floor at all.

'You know what? I'm not even surprised.'

[If anything, you should have expected it at this point.]

'Seriously. Oh, still need shirts from the dryer though.'

The currently normal-person-speed Jonathan leisurely brings the suits over, hanging them off of the hook mounted on the inside of the bathroom door.

Lucas has begun rummaging through his neglected clothing, apart from hanging his suit it seems Jonathan only folded his own clothing.

After only a small amount of searching, he pulls out a white button-up collared dress shirt for himself. As he stands back up with it haphazardly draped over his left shoulder, he grabs Jon's matching shirt from his neatly stacked pile and tosses it at him over his right shoulder.

"Here, let's match too." As Lucas casually says this, Jon needs to activate his enhanced speed to catch the shirt before it falls anywhere unacceptable.

"Um, yeah, sure!" Even with their only limited time knowing each other so far, Jonathan doesn't seem at all fazed by Lucas's behavior.

Without even checking if Jonathan actually caught the shirt, Lucas goes over to claim his hanging suit and then heads to his bedroom, leaving the bathroom for Jonathan to change in.

The bathroom door quickly swings shut behind Lucas as soon as his body fully made it past the doorway, slowing down at the last moment so as to close gently.

Once they've both finished suiting up, Lucas heads back to dig around in the bathroom until he eventually finds a mostly full container of hair gel. Once they've both slicked their hair back, he sets about knotting up their matching red silk ties.

He starts with Jonathan's, making sure he can still actually work out how to do it for someone else with mirrored motions.

Thankfully, all it does is slow him down a bit, but he still manages a flawless Eldredge knot for Jonathan. Afterward, he proceeds to do the same for himself, taking half of the time to tie it compared to how long it had taken for Jonathan's.

Now that they are both dressed to the nines, Lucas pokes about on the top of his dresser to find the social networking all-stars card to tuck into an inner pocket of his suit jacket.

Now equipped with the priceless cardboard rectangle, Lucas heads back out to the living room, idly wishing he had bought some handkerchiefs as well.

Jonathan had procured their sunglasses and moved the two boxes of dress shoes that they brought home over towards the sofa so they could sit down to lace them up.

Once they're primed and ready to go, Willy runs a few circles around each of them as they head over to start unlocking the door.

-----

Lucas kills this chapter: 0

Lucas total kills: 6

Lucas deaths this chapter: 0

Lucas total deaths: 10

Lucas current GDV: 8.78 (+.01 net change)

Lucas's fame level: 2* (Mostly just local)

Lucas's hero suspicion level: 1* (Only highly paranoid people)

Jonathan kills this chapter: 0

Jonathan total kills: 5

Jonathan deaths this chapter: 0

Jonathan total deaths: 2

Jonathan current GDV: 1.78

Jonathan's fame level: 1.5* (Just local)

Jonathan's hero suspicion level: 1* (Only highly paranoid people)

-----

Little character theater:

Jonathan, currently the fanciest he's been his entire life: Hehe, we're so badass right now.

Lucas can't help adjusting the collar of his suit jacket a few times: You know, these really are pretty slick.

Willy is feeling a bit underdressed for the occasion. What with being naked and all.

427, genuinely hoping they don't run into any minor GDV tasks on the way to their objectives today in order to save time: Seriously, you can stop preening already and go.

Author, sighing: 427, please don't set flags like that.

Mr. Quacks, now wearing a small red bow tie he got from who-knows-where: Quack!

Continue to read this book for free
Scan the code to download the app

Latest Chapter

  • Vol 2 Ch 11 - System Updates

    Lucas and Jonathan—dressed decently but nowhere near as fancy as yesterday—are most of the way to Cat’s Paw Cafe, pointedly not utilizing the stinky subway station to get there.‘Ya know, it’s been surprisingly peaceful, yeah? Though, not havin’ people gawk as much as yesterday is kinda nice. All that attention was gettin’ old fast.’[Ahem, well, fortunately, Boss System approved my long-term task priority filtering proposal.]‘Oh? Whassat?’[Compared to before, now it requires an opt-in before being bombarded with every single task in range. Before receiving alerts—and therefore penalties for ignoring them—we’ll run the calculations of the tasks’ estimated impact vs. potential unwanted attention. This effectively weeds out a majority of minor tasks—plus some moderate ones—by accounting for how suspicious it would be for you to know the event was taking place, let alone be believably compelled to interfere. I knew there was no need to ask if you were interested in activating it immedi

  • Vol 2 Ch 10 - Chosen Chores

    Once the allotted thirty minutes have passed—precisely down to the second—427 tentatively undeafens Lucas. At first, all he can hear is a booklet’s pages being flipped through, followed by Lucas grumbling.Hesitantly removing the remaining sensory suppressions one at a time, 427 nearly sighs with relief upon discovering that Lucas is standing in the kitchenette by the new automatic drip coffee maker—thankfully dressed—in the midst of poorly attempting to demystify its instruction manual.‘How the hell is this so complicated?’[Ah, making good on your promise to Jonathan?]‘Oh, thank fuck; yer back. Took ya long enough.’[…Hello, again, to you, too.]‘Yeah, yeah, yeah. Welcome back. So, anywho, can ya scan through this or somethin’ and tell me how to use it?’[…I already looked up the instructions from everything’s model numbers earlier. First, measure out—]427 guides Lucas through measuring and grinding a serving’s worth of coffee beans and setting it up in the machine with such in-d

  • Vol 2 Ch 9 - Solitary Request

    For a few peaceful minutes, Lucas delights in demolishing the delicious delicatessen delivery. As Jonathan reaches for his coffee cup to gauge if it’s cool enough for a sane person to drink, he ends up cutting himself off with a yawn, earning a side-eye from Lucas.“Hey, ya barely got any sleep, yeah? Instead of havin’ caffeine, shouldn’t ya go take a nap?” Upon Lucas’s question, Jonathan pauses, looking at the contents of his mug with an obvious longing. “I’ll make ya a fresh one in like half an hour; I’m sure 427 can figure out howta use whatever newfangled machine ya got,” Lucas continues, his eyes also fixed on the beverage.[…I suppose I appreciate your vote of confidence.]Jonathan’s gaze lingers on the coveted coffee for a moment before he sets it back on the table. As soon as he lets go of it, Lucas lays his claim upon it.“Um, o-okay, yeah. I just, um, sh-should take a shower first,” Jonathan stammers as he stands.Lucas hums an agreement around a mouthful of coffee.[Did y

  • Vol 2 Ch 8 - Good Un-Morning

    Thankfully, there are no further interruptions during the rest of this round of deliveries. Or even during the next one, either.Once Jonathan finally has the fourth and final load of freight, he makes a detour to a delicatessen. More specifically, the one where he previously purchased yesterday’s breakfast.After equally uneventfully acquiring milk, third breakfast for himself, and first breakfast for Lucas—since he’d totally only eat sugary baked goods if real food wasn’t conveniently available—he makes his way home.With his back to the recently re-locked front door, Jonathan reclaims the last armload of supplies as he looks at Lucas’s still-shut bedroom door.‘…Our food will still be too hot to eat for a little while; I’ll make some coffee first.’Jonathan may or may not be making up excuses to keep putting off waking up Lucas in the hopes that he’ll do so on his own, knowing full well that he probably won’t.While taking longer than necessary to decide which appliance to christen

  • Vol 2 Ch 7 - Ongoing Onerous Obligations

    “Ah! Um…” Jonathan’s face scrunches up a bit as he looks over his pending purchases.‘Can we at least turn off tasks while my hands are full? I really don’t want to drop everything and have it get broken or stolen by the time I get back to it… It will be annoying enough having to run back and forth a bunch.’[Requesting temporary task suppression… Permission granted; disregarding minor tasks for one hour at no penalty, effective immediately.]Jonathan barely represses his urge to sigh with relief.Before Ji Soo works up the nerve to express concern over Jonathan’s vacant stare at the wall behind the service bot, Jonathan’s attention returns to reality and redirects to said bot.“Um, c-could you hold some of it for a few minutes once I’m done paying? I-I won’t take long… Like, five minutes?” Before fidgety Jonathan even finishes asking his question, the bot is already nodding.“Certainly. Do you wish to use a private scanning kiosk to complete your order?”‘I’m surprised it’s even an

  • Vol 2 Ch 6 - Whole Latte Shopping

    Jonathan, however, doesn’t hear the utterance of recognition. Unaware, he continues his quest for a coffee maker.A short time later, Jonathan stands--while quietly grumbling--before a row of two-in-one coffee/espresso machines.Behind him is a sea of drip coffee machines, with cold press equipment further off to the side. Alongside the arrangement of two-in-ones sits a selection of espresso machines, both automatic and semi-automatic.‘How are there so many!? What even are the differences? Wait, no, don’t answer that. The technical details will probably just be even more confusing.’[Understood.]Although Jonathan notices movement in his peripheral vision, he doesn’t outwardly react to the recent arrival at the end of the aisle. Instead, he pulls out one of the two-in-one machines set at eye level, rotating it so he can read the back of the box.“Ah! Don’t get one of those! That entire line is overpriced trash,” the newcomer blurts out, muffled by the layers of carbon-filter fabric f

More Chapter
Explore and read good novels for free
Free access to a vast number of good novels on MegaNovel app. Download the books you like and read anywhere & anytime.
Read books for free on the app
Scan code to read on App