Run Chad RUN! #1.2

Commissioned by @ChaosUntold on Patreon.

Disclaimer - I don’t own nor claim to own any of the IP of the giant multi Billion Dollar companies that might appear here. I just own any OCs that you see.

Manhattan

–Chad Tannings–

His eyes snapped open as his mind returned to an awake state, instantly. No lag, no disorientation, no fuzzy feeling. Just one moment, he was asleep and the next, he was awake.

With a sigh, he woke up and looked outside the broken window of his trailer, showing that it was still night. 

Being enhanced, “It sure sucked in some ways.” 

Muttering that to himself, he set about setting up a pot of coffee, even though it barely did anything to him. Perks of being the conduit of an omniversal force, a very high metabolism, and burning out any poison as fast as it entered his system. That, unfortunately, included alcohol as well.  He had tried alarmingly high levels of alcoholic drinks yet in the end, nothing came out of that endeavour, except lighter pockets.

Thankfully, he had a nice stack of cash lying around from his last raid on HYDRA, or at least that’s what he thought that base was. Judging by the way those people began killing themselves en masse once it became clear that he could not be stopped, it was evident enough that they were fanatics belonging to the Nazi organisation.

Drinking the entire pot of coffee, as part of the morning routine that he had set up in the year and some odd days that he had been here, he sighed and readied his duffel bag.

After opening the door and locking it, even though there were far easier ways of entry than through the door for any would-be thief, he took in a deep breath of the cold crisp air of 3 in the morning.

Yup, two fucking hours. That’s it. That was all the rest he needed to be ready for the next day. His body was pretty odd as well, in the way it generated energy for him.

All he needed were calories or at least that’s as far as he could tell within the year he had been in this reality. It didn’t matter what kind. Sugar, protein, carbs, whatever. All his body needed was calories and it could metabolise that and fuel his body. No exaggerated protein requirements, no insane caloric requirements. Nothing.

Though, he could eat enough for 5 people if he wanted to but that always left a bad feeling in his body for a few days before it went away, as if his body had to be working extra hard to digest all that food.

Looking all around him and using his expanded senses to see if anyone was there and awake, he found no one who fit the bill. So, with a thought, a cloak of red fizzled into existence around him, enveloping him in that familiar crackle of energy and making him feel invincible for a second.

Sighing in contentment, he was amazed at the fact that the power high of the initial cloak moment never really went away. It was the best facet of his power, after surviving on anything and enhanced senses, part as it allowed him to run around without any suit and remain completely cloaked.

It also provided him an extra layer of senses, acting like a second skin just in case something impacted his cloak. He could flash out of the area instantly as soon as he detected something breaking through his bulletproof cloak of lightning. It was not bulletproof in the sense that it was hard but bulletproof because the cloak being of lightning interacted with the metal in the bullet, telling him in advance about an incoming projectile, allowing him to get out of the way.

It was all really intuitive but sounded really complex because no other people, as far as he knew, had the frame of reference to understand what it's really like to be a speedster.

Well, maybe one of the Eternals would know but he hadn’t met her yet and didn’t mean to do that for a long time, mostly because of their version of discount Superman being far too strong for him to deal with, at least for now.

With a thought, he disappeared from the Trailer park and was on his regular route for the morning. Since it was still night, it gave him a bit of leeway in switching between his giant lightning cloaked form and his short king real life form. Soon, he reached the place where he usually started his day.

A 24/7 gym, with a nice convenience store attached right next to it.

The Giant’s Den. 

“Sup, Diane.” He greeted the Giant of a man at the reception, despite the name being feminine. But, hey, if a 6’3 250lbs man wanted to call himself Diane, who was he to object?

“Sup, Chad. Early mornings, as usual?” Diane greeted him, not even looking up from the book that he was reading, having leaned back on the chair, which was not a regular chair but an improvised massaging reclining chair, all to properly and comfortably fit Diane for the graveyard shift that he does every day.

Yup, despite his brutish looks, the man was a huge nerd and continued to voraciously devouver books of all kinds as long as he could get his hands on them. Him, recognising an opportunity, regularly gave Diane books that he purchased second hand, or new ones that he had finished reading, in a bid to create positive relations with the one man who controlled the exit and entry of a place that allowed him to feel a little more human than most other things that happened throughout the day.

“Yup, early mornings, a whole lot of 'em,” he muttered as he swiped his membership card and then entered the showers. It was one of the nicer gyms around and he had an annual membership to this place. The cleaning was done here at midnight, for some reason which meant that when he came in at 3 in the morning, everything was sparkling clean and ready to be used by a bum like him.

He took his time getting ready, as he did everyday. Can’t risk using his powers and getting discovered in this place. No, this was more important to him than even his trailer. All that rusted out thing had was a bed and a mattress. No food, no kitchen, no documents, nothing.

His stash of cash was buried in the middle of a forest, and the only way to get in was to phase his hand in and get the cash out. His clothes, half of them were in a locker here in the gym and half of them were in the trailer, as were his identification documents.

Still, even at his regular pace, it didn’t take him a minute over 20 minutes to shave, to bathe, and to get dressed up, not that he put any particular efforts into the last bit because he simply did not care how he looked.

The job came with its own uniform.

With his job done here, he put the clothes he needed to put in the laundry in a ziplock bag, wrote his name on it and put them in the laundry bag, another service that the gym provided. Bulk Laundry.

All he had to do was pay at the end of the month and Diane being who he was, accepted cash without any question. So, when he meant that this gym was indispensable for his current lifestyle, he was being very truthful.

Coming out of the shower, he was greeted by the same scene of Diane reading his books, “Bye, Diane!”

Diane just nodded, not prying, not looking for small talk and not interested in his life outside his annual membership fee and him following the rules.

The manliest of men.

Getting out of the gym with his duffle bag a little lighter, he slipped into the convenience store right next to the Gym.

“Your usual?” Were the first words the cashier spoke to him, whose name he did not know and at this point, he was too afraid to ask, after having been in this exact same position for over 7 months now.

“Yes, the usual.” He replied and began taking out the money for the items that had already been brought by the cashier near the counter and once he was near, they were neatly handed to him.

A bottle of water. Large.

Cup noodles. Large. 3 packs.

Protein Bar. Large. 3 packs.

Thanking the man, he moved to sit on the sole bench in the store, after putting hot water into one of the noodle packs. Slurping down all three of them one after the other, he gulped down the bottle of water and stuffed the protein bars in his cargo pants.

Cleaning any spillovers from the cup, he carefully disposed of the trash and after waving at the man, left the convenience store.

Only to come face to face with Coulson, “Gah!”

“Ready to talk now?”

Carefully making sure that no one caught the very brief flash of red that must have erupted around his arm instinct that he instantly suppressed after being ambushed by the agent, he hissed at the agent, “Are you mad? Do you wish to out me?”

The man, the legend, the Phil Coulson himself, remained calm, gesturing at the car behind him, “I have food.” He then glanced at the store behind him and then added, “Real food.”

“Okay then.” he shrugged and agreed.

After all, what was a little knockout gas if he got some real food today? It had been days since he had a nice steak.

______xx_____

“Ohh, this is sooo good.” He whispered to himself as he bit into his food.

As it turns out, the car that Coulson was gesturing to was just the travel car, something that made him mad at first but then, they climbed down and into a small cordoned off area, which had a literal feast on a large table, he had almost cried tears of joy as he bit into heavenly food.

He did go to nice-ish places and eat good food but those were never really the top tier ones, the ones that were not really snobby five star ones but were the best at their craft, not chasing ratings but good food experiences and customer satisfaction.

[part of the reason was that he was afraid it would be suspicious, because he did not look like someone who belonged in that place and secondly, he simply did not have the time. The two hours of sleep and the hour or so of peace and calm in the early morning were all that he could afford before he had to whisk himself away to work.

Yes, superhero work was work and no one could tell him otherwise.

Finding out any illegal activities, tracing any stock, finding any parallel links to crime, stopping active crime, helping citizens and more, was just one facet of his job. The other was acting on the meta knowledge he had and even that was not something he could do willy nilly. He had seen, on multiple occasions, Tony Stark flying in and out of the Stark Tower that was being built in Manhattan and could have done something to interact with the man but in his humble opinion, Tony Stark was not the mature and responsible man that he would become after the Chitauri Invasion so held off on tattling to the man about his meta knowledge.

Instead, he began looking for smaller clues.

The HAND, they were active in New York but not at the scale he knew they would be soon. Madam Gao was here, but without knowing the mechanisms of their revival scheme, he could not carelessly barge into her stronghold.

What he could do was track what her people did. That was how he found out about the child abductions. Dozens of children, tranquilised and sent to a remote part of the jungle, where he found the experimental facility.

The flashes of the victims he found in that place, it just soured his mood a bit as he put down the steak that he was viciously digging into a moment earlier, suddenly no longer in the mood to indulge himself.

“I hope the food is to your liking?” He looked up from the steak to see a tissue offered by Coulson.

“I-oh, yeah, it’s great. It’s just–I am full now. Thank you, by the way, for this. Really,” He said as he wiped his mouth.

“Please, think of it as advanced payment for all the help you provide to this city,” Coulson said, genuinely thankful, and in this case, he actually believed Coulson’s gratefulness. The man was actually good. Like, Fury was not good but Coulson was really good, at least before all the dying and being brought back and all the other mind and soul shenanigans that were written in this man’s fate, something that he swore would never let happen.

There was a moment of silence between them, after which he spoke, “So? What do you want to know?”

Coulson smiled at him as he pulled a folder out of his suit, “I’m glad you asked.”

“For starters, we would like to know more about this,” The file folder opened and the scene of the now ruined experimental facility was shown to him.

“Ah,” he nodded as he pushed the plate of food away and pulled the file towards him, “This was some really nasty stuff. I was really surprised that you guys didn't find this before me. Makes me think you guys have some holes in your no doubt overarching net.”