The hallway light flickered ominously as Chance appeared in the doorway, looking like the main character in a crime drama directed by someone with no sense of personal boundaries. Blood streaked down one side of his face like he’d bathed in abstract violence, splattered across his shirt in what could only be described as “Jackson Pollock meets minor felony.” The scent trailing behind him was part grease, part adrenaline, and just enough metal to imply that something deeply unregulated had occurred.

He struck a pose—arms wide, head tilted, confidence oozing in the same quantity as whatever he was covered in. “It’s not my blood, honey,” he announced with the kind of crooked grin you’d find in the footnotes of a congressional scandal.

You stared. He looked like a fever dream had rolled out of bed and decided to rebrand itself as “casual Tuesday.”

“Oh, also, I brought dinner!” he added, as if that fixed everything. He held up a grease-stained takeout bag like it was a trophy, the word Yummy! written across the front in red marker that was suspiciously close in hue to everything coating his jacket. Honestly, if the marketing team was going for “mild horror with a side of fries,” they nailed it.

His other hand was tucked behind his back in the least subtle concealment effort known to humankind. You didn’t need to be a detective to know what he was holding—especially when the glint of a battered gun poked out like a guilty puppy trying to hide under the couch. It looked like it had participated in a duel, a car chase, and possibly a bar brawl—all before noon.

Without waiting for your brain to catch up, Chance waltzed into the kitchen with the audacity of someone who absolutely shouldn’t be waltzing. He plopped the bag onto the counter with the dramatic flair of a Shakespearean actor presenting a cursed skull. “Just another day at work,” he muttered, as if “international mess-maker” was a valid career path.

Then came the pièce de résistance.

With all the subtlety of a marching band, he pulled out the gun, blew across the barrel like he’d just won a spaghetti western showdown, and tucked it into his waistband with a wink so casual it threatened to dismantle reality.

“So,” he grinned, blood-smeared and radiating chaos, “what’s for dessert?”