Chapter One: Busted
The sun blazed overhead as Alexis skipped merrily down the street. Now that school was out for the summer, she could focus on what really mattered in life: her unstoppable, untraceable, totally wicked crime spree! For the past twelve years she had been doing this, and not once had she been caught. By following simple, carefully planned out steps, she was able to pull off just about anything she could possibly want without leaving any evidence behind whatsoever.
Indeed, Alexis was rather proud of her record. The city had started referring to her as 'The Ghost' because she was never seen, rarely heard, and there was no way to stop her. This summer, the Ghost was back and only one thing had changed; she now had a partner in crime. Her very own P.I.C.
Catching sight of her P.I.C., commonly referred to as Lauren, Alexis jay-walked across the street and matched paces with Lauren.
"First day on the job; excited?" Alexis asked, looking forwards with a serious, stony expression firmly in place. Without waiting for a response, she pulled out two sleek pairs of black-lens sunglasses. She handed one pair to Lauren while slipping the other over her eyes.
The glasses matched Alexis perfectly. Wearing black heels, black pants that curved to her figure nicely, a tight apple-red tank top and a black, unzipped, sweater that was the same colour as her chest-length raven hair she normally would have looked a bit suspicious. But the fact that she was carrying a portable radio and blasting the theme for Halloween H2O just gave others the impression that she was simply a messed-in-the-head kind of girl.
It was the perfect cover.
"Should I be excited?" Lauren asked, also looking straight ahead. She was wearing a bright blood-red hoodie that hung down to her knees and dark blue jeans. Her sunglasses were almost too big, but she put them on anyways. "If I get too excited, I might mess up." Lauren had also achieved a nickname for herself: the Darkness. She'd also never been caught throughout her line of business.
The two wandered down the street, Halloween H2O theme blasting in their wake. A mother with a stroller crossed to the other side of the street, glaring at them. Alice grinned at her and waved cheerfully. "She has no idea who we were," she mused under her breath. "No idea at all that we're… The Ghost and the Darkness!"
Somewhere in the distance, a distinct "Dun… Dun… DUUUUUN!" went off.
"Anyways, time to get down to business," Alexis stated, her mood suddenly shifting back to reflect her intensity. She placed her hands on the sides of her sweater and pulled each side back, revealing the contents of the lining. On the left side, their were several hand guns, a few knives, and even a couple hand grenades attached to the liner. On the right, packets of cocaine, mushrooms, ecstasy, crystal meth, and some green gummy bears were along the outer edges. In the center was a thick, folded up list of victims.
"We could start out small… you know, something like telling those damned brats who made fun of our height that we have some candy, then send them home with a pocketful of evil gummy-bears, secretly rigged to attack at midnight. That's always fun," Alexis smirked while Lauren chuckled in agreement. "Or we can go for tapping into top secret pentagon files and change all their information again. It's not as much fun seeing as how all the important knowledge has already been erased, so there's not a lot of variety. But now that they think they know the whereabouts of Lord Voldemorte that might be fun to watch." Lauren nodded as she followed along. "You know, something like, Location: Up your ass and around the corner."
"Or, 666 Completelyfake Ave." Lauren interjected "They never seem to catch those kinds of things."
Alexis nodded. "Or we can come out kicking and screaming."
Lauren arched one eyebrow. "Continue…"
Alexis grinned evilly. "I'm talking full out, mass homicide, assault, arson, grand theft auto, reckless endangerment, disturbing the pigeons, and of course, what crime would be worthwhile if burglary wasn't involved!"
"A boring one?" Lauren shrugged. Alexis chuckled.
"Well if we're going to go through with that last one, then you should know that Tony, the guy who works at the place directly three o'clock from where we're standing right now—no! Don't look!—is our backup. Whenever a job starts to fall apart, we back down before there's a chance to get caught. If we split up, we meet at Tony's. Don't worry, he's cool. We've been tight ever since the great bank heist of '97. I was four, he was nine. This was back when his parents owned the business. You remember that don't you, Lauren? Yeah, we took down 79 men from the S.W.A.T. team, the P.D., the D.O.T. and the S.T.U.P.I.D.S. And one friggen badass spider, but that's another story. WATCH OUT!" Alexis paused mid-monologue and whipped out a hand gun, shooting at a spot on the sidewalk about two and a half feet away from where Lauren and Alexis stood completely composed. An evil, havoc-wreaking spider had been eavesdropping on their dastardly villainous plots.
At the very same second, Alexis dove down a convenient back alley, pushing Lauren ahead of her. Ironically, no one on the street seemed even remotely phased by the sudden shot. It was as if this sort of thing happened every day. Which it did, however that is not the point. Also, neither of the girls was seen.
"Anyways," Alexis inhaled deeply and continued with her brief autobiography. "A little over 9696 billion had gone missing. Took me about eleven years to get rid of it all, but I managed to spend the last of the cash this weekend. On these very sunglasses, actually."
Lauren poked out her head in the public's eye. No one seemed to notice so they continued across the street to Tony's. She turned back to Alexis who cleared her throat. "So what are you thinking, Darky? Oh, and remind me later. If we do get split up for any reason during one of our hits, we skim the high ways for a while, turn onto route 90 and I can show you how to get to Tony's from there. No cell phones. They're too easily tapped. If we need to communicate, walkie talkies are really the only way to go. And even those are seriously out of date."
The two girls stopped right in the middle of the road they were currently trying to cross. A black Mercedes convertible stopped suddenly, less than a foot away from where Alexis was standing. Aside from the incredibly fast speed the car had been moving at, they both stood completely still as if the car had been parked the entire time. "That's just Tony," Alexis mumbled under her breath.
"Hmm. I think it sounds like a lot of effort," Lauren thought aloud, watching the black-tinted windows through narrowed eyes. "I personally like the idea of the last one, but—" she was cut off as a police car came flying down the street with its sirens screaming. "Give me a gun!" Lauren told Alexis who tossed one to her and held one for herself. Lauren took aim and shot out the tires while Alexis took care of the windshield.
"Go for Tony's!" Alexis yelled, running across the street. Lauren followed. As they neared the door the police officers jumped out of their car, guns drawn, and hid behind their car doors for safety. "Drop your weapons!" they hollered.
The door to Tony's store opened and the two ran in, shutting the door behind them. Bullets hit the door as the police officers opened fire. Lauren said down calmly in a chair. "Well," she said dryly.
"Something tells me we're going to get caught this time," Alexis sighed, peeking out through a small crack in the door. She watched as Tony, Raul, Amilio, and and George—his Italian Mafia gang buddies—hopped out of the black convertible and began shooting at the cops. Although they were doing quite well, many more cruisers were approaching.
Suddenly, her gaze lifted from the current blood-fest that was going on in the streets, to a dazed, glazed-over stare. She slightly cocked her head to the side and a corner of her lips tugged upwards. "Huh. That gives me a bit of a rush. I've never actually come close to getting caught before."
"Neither have I, and I am not about to start now!" Lauren exclaimed. She leaped from her chair. "There must be some sort of back door out of here!"
She went into a back room and flipped on a light. "Whoa!" The walls were covered in every type of weapon she could imagine. Guns, grenades, flame throwers, bombs, bombs, mines, knives, socks with pool balls in them, and even a few dozen rocket launchers. Lauren stared at them in shock. She turned to Alexis. "What kind of friend did you say Tony was?" she asked quietly.
"The absolute best kind," Alexis sighed happily. "Yepp. I think I kinda fucking love that man."
There was a huge bang on the door. "Police! Open up or stand aside!" Lauren and Alexis exchanged a glance. "We have to get out of here!" The police banged on the door again. "Come out with your hands up! We will use necessary force to detain you if you do not comply. Open the door and surrender peacefully!"
"One second! We're uh… not decent!" Alexis called through the door, taking on the vocal expression of a 50-year old Stepford wife.
Almost completely silently, she leaped across the room, grabbing Lauren's arm as she lead her to the back corner and pressed a button on the wall that was cleverly disguised as a knife sticking out of the wall. A long wooden ladder tumbled down from a hole in the ceiling.
Alexis and Lauren quickly grabbed hold of the ladder. "We can get to the coast, the roofs of these buildings aren't more than a couple feet apart so we'll be able to jump them." She kicked the button back in with her foot. But when they reached the top of the roof, an utterly horrid sight filled her eyes. "Ah… SHIT!" There were at least 50-60 police officers already posed, weapons aimed and ready, pointed at the two PICs. Out by the corner, Tony was being held at gunpoint for if he tried to escape, handcuffed, and looked rather bored.
"TONY, YOU SQUEALER!!" Alexis yelled angrily at the 6'4", body builder.
"Fuck off, they had a gun!" he replied with a guilty tinge in his voice.
"YOU HAVE 746 GUNS DOWNSTAIRS, MORON! NOT TO MENTION ALL THE OTHER CRAP!!" she retorted, leaping forward to push the bastard off the building, but she was held back by a young-looking cop with shaggy, tousled dirty-blonde hair.
"SNITCHES GET STITCHES, TONY!! YOU REMEMBER THAT!" she yelled, realizing they weren't going to let her kick him around for a while.
Another cop grabbed Lauren, who look a bit displeased. "This is just great," she said in a falsely cheery voice. "Thank you SO much, Tony. When I get out, I AM SO GOING TO KILL YOU, YOU BASTARD!" Tony winced. The cops to the three and put them in different cruisers and drove off to the station. Lauren looked out the window, fidgeting with her handcuffs. "Bloody wastes of space."