Author's note: This is the first time I've written a fanfic and decided to stick with it, so reviews and critiques would be absolutely wonderful! Also, I'm not very good at titling things. If you could give me suggestions for a new title, that would be great.
It was an hour into the afternoon, and with that boy's rose clutched in her hand, Jinx walked to her headquarters. Well, not really her headquarters anymore. As of last night, it was officially her former headquarters. Her eyes were focusing on the curves of the flower's delicate crimson petals. Her mind, however, was not.
This is the last robbery I'll ever make, she thought. Her feet slowed at the realization. She'd lived a life of crime, and suddenly she was throwing all of that away. Something about that ginger kid in the yellow spandex had actually managed to get to her.
She was only making this one last robbery because she needed the money. She didn't have a home anymore, now that she was leaving the H.I.V.E. Five. Maybe she could stay at a hotel for the time being, if she could pay for it.
So this time I'll have to make it count.
But she knew for a fact that this was the time her former teammates went out for lunch every day. If they decided to get up, that is. It was usually Jinx who dragged them all out of bed every morning.
She arrived at the headquarters, and typed in the key code to get into the garage. The door rolled upward, the same way it always had when she lived here. Just as she was hoping, one of Billy Numerous's cars was missing. That meant that the H.I.V.E. Five were already up and out getting lunch. So See-More probably managed to persuade them to get up. He was the only one on the team with a shred of responsibility in him.
Jinx deactivated the security systems and hurried into the building. Those idiots probably wouldn't be back for another few hours or so, but she wasn't willing to risk facing them. She wanted to get away without having to say goodbye. It was hard enough last night, denying See-More's offer to steal computers from the research lab with her, just because she knew that she couldn't look him in the eye as a teammate ever again.
So she hurried down a staircase that led to Sector 4—her room. That was the part of the H.I.V.E. Five's headquarters that she would miss the most. It was the place that she retreated to when the guys were annoying her, which happened way too often.
Jinx took a deep breath and let it all in—the purple paint coating the walls, the ornate furniture, complete with bat wings. She'd never be able to sleep or draw or do anything in this room ever again. It was a mess from yesterday when that boy was there and she hexed everything, but it still felt like home. Finally, she put the rose down by the doorway and went over to the closet and rummaged for the largest backpack she could find, and also found two duffel bags. Then she stripped her bedroom of anything that would fit into the backpack and the first duffel bag: folded up posters, her sets of pencils and markers and pastels, sketchbooks, an external hard drive onto which Gizmo had told her to back her computer files up on, photos, books, little trinkets and decorations and stuffed animals, clothes, her pillow and comforter. The room may have looked like a wreck at first glance, but mostly it was the furniture itself that had been broken. Sure, books were torn up and vases were shattered, but more objects stayed intact than she had expected.
It probably wasn't a good idea for Jinx to attach herself too much to that room. She quickly turned around on her heels and headed out the door, the backpack and duffel bags slung over her shoulders, the rose now sticking out of the rubber hole on the backpack meant for earphones. She headed over to the building's vaults and stuffed the remaining duffel bag with as much money as would fit. When it was nearly bursting with bills, she trudged back to the garage. The bags were heavy, but after years of combat practice, her slender arms were stronger than they appeared.
Is it really stealing if it never belonged to them in the first place? she wondered. The thought surprised her. Before, she and her team had operated only by the rule "If you can take it, then take it."
The longer Jinx thought about not being in the H.I.V.E. Five anymore, the less she wanted to be in the headquarters. It wasn't that she was afraid of being caught. If she knew her former teammates, they'd be out in the city, gorging themselves on whatever food they could find, or maybe at an arcade making bets on video games, for hours. And besides, she never actually told them upfront she was leaving, not even See-More. No, it was just that it felt wrong to stand in the headquarters any longer. Jinx almost reactivated security, but then realized, No. They're the enemy now. I can't do them any favors. So she left the garage with the door wide open and without another thought.