Uninvited Guest
Bang!
While he was sleeping soundly, submerged in the deep, restorative rest that only intense physical labor could bring, a sudden, urgent knocking violently rattled the heavy door, startling Arthur Sterling.
More accurately, it shouldn't even be called knocking; it was a ruthless, rhythmic pounding on the door, threatening to tear the frame right out of the drywall.
Arthur, who was right in the middle of a peaceful dream, was immediately startled awake by the deafening sound.
Adrenaline instantly flooded his veins, sweeping away the heavy fog of sleep in a fraction of a second.
He subconsciously reached out his hand into the empty air beside his bed, accessing the invisible void of his dimensional private space. A cold, heavy steel handgun immediately materialized in his firm grasp.
Gripping the loaded gun tightly, feeling the familiar, reassuring texture of the checkered grip, Arthur quickly and silently jumped out of bed, his bare feet hitting the cold floorboards.
The place he rented was situated in a run-down, forgotten, and thoroughly out-of-the-way corner of Los Angeles.
It was absolutely never a truly safe neighborhood—drunken brawls in the alleyways and violent gang shoot-outs over territory were tragically common occurrences here.
He had been living in this dangerous, parallel cinematic world for a little over a month now.
Arthur had slowly, meticulously grown used to the harsh realities of his new, adrenaline-fueled life.
Yet the tangled web of violent crime and underground syndicates in Los Angeles—indeed, in almost all of urban America—still felt exactly like a waking nightmare he had to constantly arm himself against.
After all, the ruthless streets of this city had taught its vulnerable residents these brutal lessons in blood over the decades.
Bang!
The aggressive pounding on the wooden door grew visibly fiercer, the heavy impacts sending violent vibrations traveling through the floorboards.
Arthur had only just woken up, but the unknown, immediate threat snapped him instantly alert, his heart hammering a steady, controlled rhythm in his chest.
He genuinely didn't know exactly who was standing outside his apartment in the middle of the night, but the violent tone of that relentless hammering told him with absolute certainty that they hadn't come in peace.
A habitual sleeper in the raw, he quickly yanked on a pair of dark boxers. Then, keeping his loaded pistol raised and ready in his right hand, he crept silently across the room and crouched low behind the heavy fabric of the living room sofa.
The apartment was incredibly tiny—measuring barely four hundred square feet in total.
Aside from the separate, cramped kitchen and the small, tiled bathroom, the narrow living room and the bedroom basically melted into one another without any real structural barrier between them.
Bang!
Another brutal, shattering hit echoed through the tight space; after a dozen more relentless impacts, his flimsy, cheap wooden door began to audibly buckle under the massive strain.
One of the heavy steel hinge screws popped clean out of the splintering wood, clattering loudly against the linoleum floor; the structural integrity wouldn't last much longer.
With his dark eyes locked intensely on the shaking entrance, Arthur smoothly and silently flicked off the mechanical safety of his Colt M1911. The faint click was entirely swallowed by the noise outside.
In America, there was a very clear, legally recognized boundary: if someone violently breaks into your private residence you can absolutely shoot them dead without facing any legal consequence.
That was exactly why you never wander uninvited into lavish Hollywood estates, heavily guarded mansions, or large, isolated farms and ranches across the country.
The property owners are completely within their legal and moral rights to aggressively gun you down on the spot ---and face absolutely no criminal penalty whatsoever for protecting their domain.
Bang!
With one final, devastating crash of splintering wood and tearing metal, the heavy door completely gave way.
Arthur watched from the shadows as a heavy leather boot kicked the ruined door wide open, and three aggressive men—a mix of white and Latino thugs, all looking to be in their rough thirties—violently stormed inside the small apartment.
The absolute moment his sharp, enhanced eyes recognized the man taking the lead, Arthur slowly lowered the barrel of his pistol, his finger easing off the hair-trigger.
The rugged man leading the charge was Slant;
Arthur clearly remembered that he had stood right beside the hulking Vince the very first time Vince came looking for violent trouble at the neighborhood garage.
So, logically, these three violent intruders were Vince's loyal buddies ---
and probably active, trusted men belonging to Dominic Toretto's tight-knit crew.
Because of his intimate, complicated relationship with Mia, Arthur genuinely didn't want to make an outright, bloody enemy of Dom.
Even after fully realizing this sprawling cinematic world ran far deeper than the main Fast & Furious storyline, he still strongly preferred not to break completely with Dom and trigger a full-scale, lethal war.
If the obsessed Vince hadn't come after him again and again, aggressively pushing the limits of his patience, Arthur would have gladly settled for teaching him a simple, non-lethal lesson instead of brutally putting Vince in a hospital bed with shattered bones.
But the massive man clung to him like a toxic, infected plaster.
Before Dom could even officially process the situation and retaliate for Vince's brutal beating his reckless hangers-on had stupidly jumped the gun and taken matters into their own violent hands.
Even Arthur's cool, calculated temper had its absolute breaking limit.
Screw this... this nonstop, aggressive harassment ends right now, Arthur thought, his jaw clenching tightly.
Flaring with pure, unfiltered rage, he rose smoothly from the dark shadows behind the sofa, standing tall in the center of the cramped room.
Slant and the other two thugs physically flinched at the sudden, imposing apparition rising from the dark, but their angry leader quickly recognized Arthur's handsome, chiseled face.
"That's the arrogant punk who completely crippled Vince break his arms and his damn legs!" Slant roared furiously, his voice echoing off the peeling wallpaper.
Dom was a highly famed, undisputed street racer in the Los Angeles underground, widely known even across the entirety of California for running countless illegal, high-stakes races and leading highly coordinated, high-speed highway heists.
Over the chaotic years, he had aggressively hit more than a dozen heavy transport trucks hauling millions of dollars in high-end electronics.
His immediate, fiercely loyal crew alone fielded a dozen heavily tuned, combat-ready cars.
Vince's specific group of aggressive friends was only a tiny, reckless part of the massive pack Dom commanded.
Arthur had actively tried to avoid an all-out street war, but these repeated, violent provocations would easily anger a living saint.
Relying entirely on his supernaturally enhanced strength, he snatched the heavy, standalone armchair sofa weighing easily forty or fifty solid pounds and hurled it violently at one of the charging intruders.
With raw physical strength that went far, far beyond that of an average man, the bulky sofa felt practically weightless in his powerful hands.
To Slant's advancing crew, however, the flying furniture was moving exactly like a devastating, heavy cannonball.
Bang!
A heavily tattooed Latino bruiser completely never expected the lean, relatively unassuming frame of the mechanic to suddenly explode with such terrifying, overwhelming force.
He had been Arthur's immediate, primary target, rushing forward with a heavy, solid metal baseball bat gripped tightly in his hands.
Before the thug could even begin to chemically react and raise the bat to defend himself, the heavy sofa...
...shot aggressively across the five-meter gap and slammed violently right into his chest and arms.
"Agh!"
He crashed down heavily onto the linoleum floor, the sickening, wet crunch of bone echoing in the room as his arm bent at an incredibly unnatural, horrifying angle—clearly completely broken from the massive impact.
"Bort!"
Slant roared in absolute shock and anger, seeing his loyal friend fall so brutally, and he immediately lunged directly at Arthur, his heavy fist aimed straight at Arthur's face with murderous intent.
Meanwhile, taking advantage of the chaotic distraction, the third man aggressively yanked a sharp, tactical folding knife from his back denim pocket and rushed in blindly, the cold steel blade flashing dangerously in the dim light of the room.
Slant had personally visited Vince in the private hospital ward;
the two aggressive men were very close friends, and the heavily bandaged Vince had specifically, painfully warned him that Arthur was highly skilled and boxed like a professional demon.
Still, Slant had arrogantly brought two heavily armed buddies, absolutely sure they could easily overwhelm and avenge Vince by ganging up on him together.
He knew perfectly well he wasn't nearly as physically reckless or brainless as Vince , but all three of them were highly seasoned, brutal street-brawlers who had survived countless gang fights.
And mathematically, it was three against one.
Yet, within mere seconds of aggressively breaking in through the door they had already brutally lost a heavily armed man.
Arthur had originally meant to just spar a little and deliver some painful, educational bruises, so after effortlessly downing the bat-wielder with the flying furniture he had intentionally pulled his heavy punches and tangled with the charging Slant, utilizing his [Boxing] footwork to casually evade the wild swings.
But the absolute moment his sharp eyes spotted the third man's lethal, flashing knife, his cold expression completely froze into a mask of pure, predatory intent; explosive, system-granted power instantly flooded into his dense fists.
Two lightning-fast, devastating punches struck Slant squarely in the jaw, completely dazing the rugged man and sending his brain crashing against his skull.
Arthur then smoothly pivoted on his heel and booted the reeling Slant directly toward the approaching knifeman like a human shield.
The terrified thug desperately yanked his sharp blade back at the very last second to completely avoid accidentally stabbing his falling friend in the back.
Capitalizing perfectly on that tiny, fatal hesitation, Arthur vaulted gracefully forward over the stumbling Slant and launched a devastating, heavy kick directly into the knifeman's chest.
"Agh!"
The man flew backward through the air for two full meters, crashing violently and loudly into the heavy steel door of the humming fridge, leaving a massive dent before crumbling to the floor.
Without a single second of pause or mercy , Arthur closed the remaining distance instantly and punched the completely disoriented Slant ruthlessly in the face, the impact snapping his head back violently.
Another miserable, echoing howl filled the cramped apartment, and then the room finally went dead silent, with all three aggressive intruders lying sprawled, broken, and groaning weakly on the cheap linoleum floor.