Brushing my hair out of my eyes, I ease myself down on an old plastic folding chair at the corner of a plastic folding desk. There are a lot of bottles here, scattered across the table in clumps. Far more than what the average man can drink...but at the moment, only the one with the label called "Jack Daniel's" intrigues me.

I reach over and pull the Jack Daniel's over while my eyes search for a suitable glass into which I can pour the liquor and help myself. The lighting is dim, as you'd expect of a place like this. No surprise - there's only a pair of incandescent lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling on little more than glorified pieces of string. Incandescent in this current year? What a joke.

The music that's blasting into the room is annoying. What the hell is this noise? Do people really dance to this noise pollution when they're listening to nothing but digital scrapes and beeping that amount to nothing more than nails against a cyber chalkboard? God, I don't want to live on this planet sometimes.

Finally managing to find a glass that isn't already somewhat filled to varying amounts with a wide assortment of other liquors or one that hasn't been slobbered all over, I pour myself a glass of Jack. Unfortunately for me, there is no ice to accompany it. I suppose I'll just have to rely on myself for a chilled drink tonight. Either way, I take a sip - and the nicely smoky and vanilla zest immediately seep into my taste buds. Sinatra Select...at least they had good taste. It really is too bad there is no ice at hand, from what I can tell.

This - music - is starting to feel like it's ripping out my nerves from my brain. Drawing one of my AMT Hardballer Longslides from its left hip holster, I lazily half-aim and squeeze the trigger at the stereo riding the top of a wall shelf dead ahead, and the large P-47 Custom .45 Suppressor spits out a sharp pfft! that echoes through the room harshly, though nowhere near as badly as if I were to fire an unsuppressed shot. That one shot cleanly knocks the stereo out, plunging the room into natural silence - a much better ambience than that trash that people call electronic dance music.

As I sit and savor my scavenged glass of Jack in wonderful, sweet silence, I produce my phone from the inner pocket of my black and gold jacket. My phone greets me when I hold it up somewhat to unlock it, lighting up its screen that shows me a picture of a mezzo violin. 0209 hours, 22/05/18. God, the lighting in this room is so bad that my own phone provides more than half the normal visibility at the moment. Unlocking the screen simply by holding my left index finger against the back sensor, I thumb in a phone number and bring it up to my left ear, letting the familiar but still always as annoying buzz of a dial rattle my eardrum.

The dial goes on for some time. Usually she doesn't take this long to pick up, but she's always got some excuse to be busy. I remember getting angry at her before whenever she failed to pick up my calls within reasonable time, but by now this has happened frequently enough to the point where I don't consider it all that worth it to get worked up over something so trivial as this. Though, I would never admit that to anyone.

My left foot nonchalantly taps lightly against the side of the violin case on the floor next to my pathetic excuse of a chair. I thought I would have needed it tonight, but then I realized that it was just easier for me to walk inside this place without it, so it ended up being more of an obligation than an asset. But I would never call it an obligation...

"Hello, 47 ~ how's it going?"

This girl...

"Warlord, be advised, site is secure. Requesting cleanup," I sigh quietly, sipping on some more Jack.

"Already!? But you called me saying that you reached the site fifteen minutes ago!"

I snort under my breath.

"You get what you pay for," I tell her, swirling the Jack in my glass around a bit. "I'd like to remind you that I am the best. So, I cost more. This is natural, no?"

"Yep! What, you think Overlord forgot that already?"

Scowling, I roll my eyes a little.

"Oh, and, I guess I shouldn't even really ask you this, but did you secure the package?"

"Affirmative, package is also secure."

"Al~righty, just gonna send over a cleanup crew to your site aaaaannd - done! Report back to base, and I'll have some ice cream for you when you get back, mkay?"

My ears perk up a little at the sound of ice cream. I can't stop myself from wondering if it's chocolate.

"I'm a mercenary, not a grade-schooler with a sweet tooth. Please stop treating me with such disrespect," I grumble.

"Aww, c'mon, 47, it's alright to admit that you like chocolate ice cream ~ no one's ever gonna find out about it, right? Well, except for everyone at base, hahah - "

I cut the call and pocket my phone. I'm very tempted to hurl the phone as hard as I can across the room, but I know Overlord will charge me for that, as that would be considered deliberate destruction of company equipment. So unfortunately, that isn't an option to me.

Taking my own sweet time with this glass of Jack, I get the most enjoyment out of the liquor since I can't take the bottle back with me; it's strict company policy to not take anything from the sites that we're assigned to clear that isn't marked for extraction. And I, as the model T-Doll, can't afford to let my reputation slip. Not a single mistake, not a single slip-up. My work is perfect, clean, and quiet. As they say, a good mercenary is feared by many - but an exceptional mercenary is unknown.

I finally finish my glass of Jack Daniel's. I haven't had the Sinatra brand in God knows how long - I'd love to buy a bottle of it again sometime, now that seeing one here has refreshed my memory of it. It hurts to leave the rest of the bottle behind, as it's still got plenty of liquor left, but I console myself by recognizing that I can always go out and grab my own bottle if I want to. And I'll probably do just that in the near future.

Setting down the glass on the table, I get up from my chair and pick up the violin case that I've set down next to me while I was seated to exit the room, which is the basement of an old run-down six-story building that used to be an apartment building in Los Angeles, only no one's lived here for about twenty years. As I walk through the room, I step past - and in some cases over - a total of nine bodies, bodies of men dressed in various street clothes, clothes that would give them the look of gangbangers the moment they stepped foot outside of this building. I feel the slippery touch of blood on the floor against the bottoms of my boots, and when I pass the first such body, I eye the pair of tracker knives jutting out of the man's upper thighs, impaled at angles that would sever their femoral arteries, before I walk up the stairs and step outside into the starless night of the Los Angeles skyline.

My custom Yamaha V-MAX is waiting for me, gallantly as always, and as the moon is out tonight, the moonlight splashes brilliantly onto the sleek steel of the motorcycle. Wearing the violin case behind my back like a messenger bag, I pull out the pair of Cutler & Gross aviators that've been riding the middle of my collar just above my red necktie, set them on as I swing my leg over my vehicle, and rev the engine to life with my black and gold-gloved hands.

"All the good girls you take out for dinner, but all the bad girls you take out for liquor - "

With my driving playlist active and rocking my ears, I drive out of the dilapidated parking lot.

Nothing beats a night drive...