So I've been thinking about writing something like this for quite a while but just never got around to it, but do to a recent change in my access to the internet I find myself with much more time to write. Enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own RWBY or any of it's characters, nor do I make any kind of money or profit off of this story, this is written purely for entertainment. All credit goes to the rightful owners.
"So what's on the menu for today C?" White asked from his position on the roof of a large compartment store looking down at the street below, snow covered the roads and the few willing to brave the Atlas winter were all bundled up in heavy coats. White was a average height average build teen wearing a pure white hoodie and a pair of baggy grey pants. He wore gray boots and a pair of white cloth fingerless gloves.
"Well the market is a little thin right now but that's to be expected this time of year, everything slows down a bit as winter moves in. That being said we've received a request to acquire a case of limited addition Vacuo cigars. Payment is forty grand." A voice in his earpiece explained.
"Forty grand after your cut is more like thirty. Almost not worth my time." White complained without actually sounding upset.
"If you try your hand at building partnerships on the black market and making connections across the four kingdoms your welcome to it. Besides we both know your not doing this for the money ya damn klepto." The voice responded earning a laugh from White.
"So what am I looking at in the way of security, anything special?" He asked looking across the street at the high class smoke shop, the type rich folks go to in order to by the most expensive cigars, cigarettes, and other cancer inducing vices on the market. They also sold top of the line liquors if the sign on the window was anything to go by.
"Not really, standard movement censors, door alarms. Honestly this should be a breeze for you." This earned a frown from White.
"In other words boring, fine." He groaned. Stepping to the edge of the building he was on he leaned forward until he began to fall, just as his feet left the edge of the roof however a round portal just his size opened in front of him and his foot planted itself on the pavement of the alley across the street. The portal closing up the moment he was all the way through. Walking out of the alley way he began making his way towards the smoke shop. "Do you have a picture of the case these things are in?"
"Sending it to your scroll now." The reply came instantly, quickly followed by a ding from his pocket. Pulling out his scroll he opened the pic, it was a dark green box with gold leaf across the front and gold lettering of the company name. It was about half the size of a shoe box all together.
Reaching the door to the shop he quickly pulled off his hood revealing a head of spiky silver hair with white streaks and a pair of onyx eyes. Pushing open the door he heard the bell ring, instantly his eyes began scanning the entire shop in a single quick glance. "Three cameras, two placed in the back corners, one at the center." He mumbled to himself quietly.
"Welcome to our shop, how can we help you today?" A tall man wearing a suit asked from behind the counter, the moment White looked towards the man he saw his target on the shelf behind him. The price set on it was sixty grand, that explained why they were hired to steal it, the buyer would be saving a good twenty thousand lien.
Putting on a wide smile White walked up to the counter. "Hey, I don't actually smoke or know much about smoking but I need to buy my grand dad something for his birthday and the man is a chimney." White laughed, the man behind the counter chuckled as well but it clearly wasn't genuine, he was simply being polite. Pulling out his wallet White withdrew several lien cards. "I've got a budget of twenty two hundred lien, what can I get for that?"
The man smiled widely, likely having expected a teen like White not to have that type of money on him. "Oh I have just the thing in the back, I'll only be a moment." The man stepped out from behind the counter and quickly went through the door into the back.
"C hit the cameras." He whispered.
"Done, you've got fifteen seconds before they're reset." He held his hand behind his back and focused on the space just below the box sitting behind the glass on the shelf.
A moment later the box fell through a tiny portal that appeared underneath it, White then felt the box fall into his hand behind his back. Quickly he tucked the box underneath the back of his hoodie. A few seconds later the clerk reappeared from the back of the shop holding a fancy box. "What I have here is an extremely fine set of sterling silver cigar accessories. A cigar case, cutter, and lighter which is fueled by red dust. All engraved by hand with beautiful carvings of various grimm. I can understand if that isn't exactly what you'd want but we also have-"
"I'll take it." White interrupted.
"Wonderful, that'll be eighteen hundred and fifty lien."
Two Hours Later
White pushed open the door to his apartment, it's was of a respectable size. One bedroom, one bath, a living room and a kitchen. What he really liked about it though was the view. It sat comfortably on the forty forth floor of the Schnee luxury apartments in downtown Atlas, it was expensive but he could afford it rather easily. Officially his main source of income was selling hand carved wooden sculptures over the web, at least that's what his taxes said. In reality it was all just a cover for his fencing of stolen goods.
He'd gotten some odd looks, it was to be expected. A sixteen year old boy with an extremely successful 'business' was odd, but even those suspicious enough to look into his back ground were generally fooled by the paper work he had created for himself.
Walking into his kitchen he pulled open the fridge and grabbed a bottle of soda and moved over to his couch. Within seconds of sitting down the TV on the wall turned on by itself and the image of a teen around his age sitting in a heavily padded chair in a dark room. He was a bit on the scrawny side with curly brown hair the reached his ears. White could see the desk he was sitting at was covered in dozens of electronic parts and items as well as tools. "The case was sent off and we've received payment."
White nodded as he popped the top off the bottle in his hand. "Has the shop even realized what happened yet?" White asked his partner.
"Nope, I fed a virus into the camera system. It basically photo shopped the case into it's original position on the shelf, it will self delete in a few hours and no one will ever be able to connect you to the crime. As far as they'll be able to tell you left the shop hours before the case was taken." Connor explained.
White sighed as he leaned his head back. "What a waste of time, any punk with a ski mask could've done that job." He grumbled.
Connor laughed. "Maybe, but nowhere near as cleanly." White only grunted in response. "If you're gonna act like a grouch then I won't tell you about the request I just got, one I doubt even you can pull off." The boy on the screen said with a knowing smirk, he'd known White since they were young and he knew all the boys weaknesses. Undoubtedly his biggest weak spot was his love of a good challenge. "Just popped up about fifteen minutes ago, payment is two million."
White was on his feet in a heart beat. "What's the job?"
Connor pressed several buttons on his keyboard. "You'll be stealing the Schnee family portrait from the fortress known as the Schnee family estate."
One Week Later
White stared at the Schnee estate from the tall tree he sat in, it was rather difficult to make out in the blizzard that had blown in early that evening. The temperature was easily ten below and the wind was blowing hard but White barely noticed, he was practically salivating as he prepared to move in. He and Connor had spent the entire last week preparing for this. Connor had dug up everything from building records to the number of kitchen staff working on weekends. White had made a detailed mental map of the land surrounding the escape as well as some of the estate itself. He'd taken a tour of the estate with a crowd of tourists, it only visited certain historical sections and none were allow anywhere near the actual inhabited areas of the estate, it still gave him a very basic understand of the what he could expect from security.
They had specifically waited for a heavy enough snowstorm for multiple reasons, one being that during such storms all out door patrols and security were pulled back inside. Another was because the amount of snow in the air made it nearly impossible for heat censors to pick him up. "You remember the plan?" Connor asked over his earpiece.
"Every letter, make a beeline for the rear western servants entrance and scale the outer wall until I reach the third floor, they only have alarms on every third window from there up. From there we'll have to go radio silent." White recited from memory. "You're sure these gadgets you gave me will work right?" He asked his partner.
"You dare doubt my genius?" He responded in a mock offended tone. "They'll work perfectly I guarantee it."
White chuckled. "You sound like your trying to sell me a suit." Jumping down from the tree White landed in a crouch an large tube on his back, his hoodie blending perfectly with the snow. "Alright, I'm going in." Without another word he broke into a sprint towards the mansion. It only took about two minutes before he reached the metal door for the servants use, the keycard slot with a sign on the side letting him know it was the right door.
Looking up he looked for any possible hand holds, quickly finding a piece of stone work sticking out he nodded to himself before looking down and creating a small portal, hopping into it he quickly found him falling out of another portal near the hand hold he was looking at. Grabbing it he reached into his hoodie and whipped out a large curved balisong knife and stabbed it into the roof and quickly began scaling the rest of the way to the third floor. It didn't take long, only about five minutes with only two minor slipping incidents.
Upon reaching a third floor window he reached into one of his pockets and pulled out a round device with wires running along the outside and a very tiny screen. "So I just press this up against the glass and press the button on the side?" He asked Connor.
"Yep, if there are any alarms or censors the little screen will light up red, if you're clear it'll be green. I figured I should keep it simple, I know how confused you can get." He quipped into the thieves ear.
"You know if I get caught I'm gonna rat you out in a second right?" White laughed before rolling his neck and pressing the device up against the glass. "Going silent." He pressed the button and waited for several seconds until the little screen took on a green glow. Grinning White slid knife into the middle of the wooden window pane and slowly unlocked it with the blade. He then carefully slid the window open and slipped in.
The moment his feet touched the tiled floor he closed the window and began running as quietly as he could. Based off of the blueprints Connor had managed to dig up he knew the exact route he needed to take in order to get to the where the picture was located, a large study used by only the Schnee family. The only challenge would be getting there without alerting anyone to his presence, which was why he would be taking a single detour.
Coming to a halt outside a door with a small sign that said 'Security Office #3'. Silently he opened the door and slid in. The room was dark, the only source of light being the wall of TV screens that showed the many hallways and corridors on the third floor, on one he saw footage of himself running down the hallway, white smiled widely at this. "What the hell?" The single security officer manning the station said noticing the footage, still completely unaware of White's presence in the room with him. He was just about to slam the alarm button when White reached into one of his pockets and withdrew a syringe and sticking it into the mans neck while also catching his hand before it could signal the alarm.
The reason White and Connor had chosen the third floor specifically over any of the higher floors was because of a single very obscure note about security they'd managed to find amidst thousands of records about security that Connor had managed to find. The security cameras for the west wing third floor were in need of an upgrade as they had a fifteen second delay, just enough time for White to reach the office.
After several seconds of struggling the officer went limp and crumpled to the floor as the drugs took effect, they would only last a little more than half an hour so that meant the clock had just begun ticking. Walking over to the security panel he grabbed a thumb drive from his pocket and inserted it into the terminal, after a few seconds of loading a large eight bit pixeled sprite of a stereotypical thief carrying a big bag of stolen goodies appeared on every screen in the room before quickly disappearing, then after a few more seconds Connor wearing a full faced black ski mask ask darkly tinted glasses appeared on a single screen. The room he was in was completely black without a single detail visible. "What the hell is up with the get up?" White asked raising an eyebrow.
"I said I was ninety nine percent sure they'd never be able to trace this hack or some how record my face after I was done, I'm not taking any chance with that one percent." He answered, his voice heavily distorted by a voice manipulator. "Alright I'm in their system, I'm gonna set the cameras in the halls and rooms you'll be entering on a ten minute loop, I'm also scrubbing the footage of you already in the system. I however will be able to see their feeds perfectly, I'll let you know of any patrols or guards to look out for. Listen for a beep in you're ear."
White nodded. "Alright, if everything goes well this shouldn't even take twelve." Turning away from the screen which quickly reverted back to their original displays. Exiting the room White quickly began making his way to the location of the portrait. A wide smile grew on his face as he ran, this was what he lived for, why he got out of bed in the morning. The feeling of his heart racing, knowing he was on a ticking clock, the anxiety over whether someone will be around the next corner that will catch him, the rush of getting away without anyone knowing he'd even been there. There was nothing else like it in the whole world.
The run to the study took roughly three minutes with very few interruptions, any time he was coming up on a guard or patrol Connor would make his earpiece beep and he'd slow down enough to find away around them without alerting them. Finally reaching the double doors to the study he slipped in after getting confirmation that it was empty.
Immediately after entering the room he couldn't help but think that the place looked more like a library than a study with the hundreds of books, the roaring fire place against the wall and right above it was his prize, the Schnee family portrait, a pair of candles burned on either side. He smiled as he examined the large portrait, only noticing after a few seconds how sad the three women in it looked. He hummed to himself for a moment before mumbling. "I guess it's true, money can't buy happiness."
Without any further delay White jumped up and grabbed one of the metal candle holders on the wall and pulling himself up and climbing until he was standing on it. Whipping out his knife again he proceeded to quickly yet carefully cut the portrait from it's frame, the process only taking a minute, he then quickly jumped down and began rolling up the painting before pulling the plastic tube from his back and unscrew the top, then sliding the painting into the tube and rescrewing the top onto it. Strapping it back to his back he turned to leave only to freeze in his tracks, standing before him just happened to be one of the women in the painting he was in the process of stealing, if he were to guess she was likely the youngest of the daughters, she only looked a few years older then in the portrait, probably around fourteen if he were to judge. "Uh... hi there." Smooth he thought as he began to inwardly panic.
"What do you think you're doing?"
So I have a bit of a confession to make, I have know clue what to do with my other story The White Mask, the canon kinda fucked me with some of the shit I had set up. Now I'm not saying it's a dead story but at the moment it's on indefinite hiatus, I'm starting this story in the mean time. Also a shout out to a certain Thief whose been following my stories for literally years now. Leave me a review and tell me what you think. LATER.