Rachel- Ha. It was short (just like blainers.) but I'm glad you're interested.
What else? I need a cool name, because this title sucks.
Edit: The Work flowed more smoothly if I added another section rather than going by the original chapter. Enjoy!
Oh, uhm. Yeah. Don't down this.
Kurt stifled a curse as he hit the concrete bottom of the grate rather hard, rolling off his shoulders and onto the balls of his feet. The drop was maybe ten feet, and almost impossible to judge with weak moonlight and little to no streetlight. The uneven surface of ruined tiles cut in slightly as what little ground he was able to see as it swung into better focus. Selena's sigh of sympathy came through the connection as static-filled influx of noise over his earpiece. She knew the cause of that, having been there herself. The thin suit used for these cloak-and-dagger deals was meant to absorb light and slide into – and out of – tight places; anything more and it was about as helpful as a paper towel. A really pretty paper towel with pockets, granted. He swore he could feel a colorful patchwork of bruises forming along his shoulder and down his back. Yeah, this wasn't going to be fun. Selena clucked her tongue from her own little spot inside one of the many executive offices. Her role in the two person plan wasn't too stressful, but it had its own complications. Like the complete lack of escape routes from a third story glass box.
"I knew the side entrance was less painful. Like that one in Valencia," Selena muttered. He heard the rapid clicks of her systematically searching through the bank president's desk.
"It was also full of cameras." It had been Kurt's first contracted job with his aunt, and one he wasn't going to forget. "Location check?"
"The Baby is in the Northeast corner, but it looks like you'll have to –click, thunk- go in through the south side."
The Baby being the largest privately owned yellow diamond on the planet, currently en route to the owner's summer home on the coast. On a supposedly well kept trek across America. The diamond was on the last stop before a four month lock down and another two month trip through a different set of locations and down to Australia. They wouldn't have anything close to a chance at it until it resurfaced again, on the other side of the country with a maybe 12 hour stop. It had been moved from state to state for the past month, never stopping for more than 24 hours; Kurt finally caught wind of its next stop while pretending to be Selena's jailbait date to a gala. Long story- but suffice it so say Kurt won't be able to fake interest in cougars –well- for a while. It did give them the identity of the owner, though. One Miss Sue Sylvester.
The female Mogul had legitimately bought millions of dollars' worth of treasures over the years, most by perfectly legal means if you counted blackmail and enough money to buy a small country. Her borderline psychotic meltdowns were infamous enough to keep most of those deals workable, save for the Baby. Normally, if she screamed long enough, the prize would be hers. This was one of those few exceptions, and Sue Sylvester didn't take too kindly to the thought of rejection. So she hired someone to steal it, and then proceeded to brag about her 'little' jewel to her social circle. The original proprietor knew the game too well, and called on a few friends. Selena had been hired to retrieve the diamond and return it to him, for the tune of enough money to buy all the new toys she and Kurt could have wanted. It was an easy decision.
For an international bank, the non-civilian access points were numerous but vague. One of the three ways to break in without burning the place down was an abandoned subway tunnel running parallel to the security cell located beneath the main floor, but the whole thing had been sealed up for several years. Strictly speaking, it wasn't public knowledge, and almost a myth within the bank itself. No one really thought anything of it when a stray construction crane swayed too close, to the repairs made after it. The whole floor could be collapsed at any moment with strategically placed bursts of heat, underground vaults and all. Smart, but not as smart as two cat burglars with floor plans and a man (woman) on the inside.
The pain faded slightly as he started the long run to the only other exposed corner on the south side of the building, keeping one hand trailing along the wall as guidance in the dark.
"Ahem. K?"
Kurt wrinkled his nose, "… Other side?"
"Hm. Yes."
***BatKlaine***
He should have known something was deviating from the plan when he heard the first break in the white noise of his ear piece. Instead, he blamed it on being below layers of concrete and other building materials along with a quiet magnetic pulse disrupting the security channels. He went back to dissecting the false bottom of a 'normal' safe deposit box found right where his young aunt said it would be. Or rather, right where she suggested it not be to the owner. This was why he would never trust a bank employee's ideas. Especially the beautiful new hires with a pretty smile. They were never in it for you.
The halls in the bank vaults all looked the same. Everything was an unfriendly shade of grey, and devoid of a predicable way to properly identify any alcove by more than memory alone. Theoretically, it was brilliant. Gotham Bank was well known in Sel's circles to be progressive. Don't give any box priority, leave most of them empty, and you give the appearance of everything having little to no value or nothing of higher value over the whatever else is stored. Give those same 'empty' boxes false bottoms, and the chance of someone spending enough time to find anything useful drops. To sew the whole thing up, the boxes were rearranged on random intervals and the only person who knew the exact contents was the person who placed them. The system was ridiculous; any information you could acquire about the boxes was a mass of numbers, and only useful for maybe twelve hours after you got it. If you were lucky.
Soon enough, he had the diamond neatly packed away in his small velvet bag. A small matter of getting the box number (Selena's doing), finding the new arrangement pattern (Also Selena), and stumbling upon another small fortune; placing everything in its proper designation. Kurt slipped his glasses on and began to reassemble the box with a small torch, briefly turning his back on the entryway to the room he was in. The attention placed on the disabled mess was dismissed the moment the hairs on the back of his neck raised. Someone was running down the hallway, and it was certainly not the nerdy little security guard from earlier; Kurt had punched him in the throat hard enough to kill him. He began to slide the completed piece back into place-
Sure enough, the voice echoing through the entryway was not the same. "Put it down."
Kurt slowly pushed his glasses back, taking his time to stretch and twist before facing the originator of that command. He at last got his first look after winding his fingers behind his back and giving a knowing smile. The stranger was shorter than Kurt, but more muscular. A hero, then. Well, at least he appeared to be in those tiny little red shorts he was sporting. Kurt sighed. Heroes and their clothes never made much sense, but this was ridiculous. The mask was acceptable, Kurt had one. But a double breasted thing and a cape ruined the vibe.
"Look, Boy Wonder," Time to improvise. Kurt gave the guy a slow once-over. "All I have to do is-"
"Put the box back, delinquent." Did his eyes dilate? Maybe...
Oh, Goodie. Short Stuff thought he was taking the box out. If only he knew. Kurt snorted, but slid it back into the slot with a soft pop. "Like I found it."
"R-right. You're going to-" He quickly tuned tights-McGee out in favor of judging the distance to the door. Close enough, even with someone else taking up most of the space.
"Well, that would be a no."
Kurt took a quick running start before sliding smoothly past a pair of scuffed boots and out rolling out into the hallway into a dead sprint. He grinned over his shoulder, already halfway to the alternative exit point and rounding a sharp corner.
"See you around, Boy Toy."
"It's Robin!"
Kurt snickered as he slid down a hallway and took a hard left. He really had little to no ideas as to where he was, but that didn't matter. Wonder Pants was out of sight, and he could breathe. "Note to self: Sel makes it look way easier, per usual." Of course sprinting down a maze of hallways seemed effortless when Selena explained it. The woman could cover a mile in eight minutes and still keep her makeup perfect. Kurt wheezed from the lack of air thanks to the undignified scramble he took to launch himself in between corridors. Okay, it was hard to be graceful when you were skittering across stone like a spastic toddler, but the unevenly finished walls of the bank weren't helping matters. The were all sleek grey concrete, with unmarked doors and dead ends. He had been making slow but steady progress towards the tiny little hole he knew laid somewhere on a top corner of the tunnel; good hour hundred yards away on foot. The very dark, very long tunnel with limited time to navigate. "Oh-kay."
"Upstairs."
"What?"
"I'm going dark, and I'll meet you."
"Alright."
Kurt gave another pointless glance down the corridor before sliding to the other side and out into the blessedly dark tunnel. He eased his way fully out of the crack in the concrete. Seeing as it only took the Geltasitc Wonder a little under five minutes to correctly guess his location –yeah, he obviously guessed- it was safe to assume that the original point of entrance was compromised and he didn't have enough time to sail past the bank's cameras to find Sel. The soft magnetic pulse they planted dimmed the cameras, but didn't knock them out. The goal was to create as little suspicion as possible. Which meant no tripping any unnecessary alarms. So, plan B went into effect: an oval maybe two feet in diameter blown on the opposite side of his own neat little drop point. The back up plan was the last resort for a reason. Sel had drilled it over and over again the first time he insisted on seeing exactly what she did on her exotic trips for her 'job'.
"You can't hide for long, you know."
Still in the building, a little form the left. Kurt froze midstride. Well, maybe he was going to have to use the new tricks he picked up down in the Philippines on someone after all. The statement was echoing down the stone with enough of a delay to indicate distance, though. He had time and enough of it to slide by, but the other guy obviously had a good idea of how Kurt was planning to leave him in the dust.
The well-lit street seemed a lot shorter when Selena had first explained the job's parameters, especially when his chin was level with the asphalt. The drop down to the nearly half mile run in a stupidly dark tunnel certainly looked more inviting from the top down. Even the spaces his slipped into to hide from Super (fun sized) Ken were too small for comfort. He stifled a snort. Ken Doll would fit. But he was a little too tall to swing most of the cracks in walls for more than minutes at a time. It was a common theme with back-up locations that Selena didn't think about. He gave a quiet grunt, straining to haul himself out of a narrow grate at a higher speed than what his body wanted to go. His feet kicked uselessly at the air underneath him, several feet above the ground. The thought of being caught by a goodie two shoes in a cape gave pretty damn good incentive, but not enough for him to squeeze out any faster.
The car was sitting three blocks away in front of a packed club, a long walk when you didn't want to be seen on empty streets in New Gotham. Luckily, Selena had watched Kurt for weeks before telling him he had the proper way to blend in to a crowd down to almost an art. The key was too always look like you knew where you were going, but look unapproachable enough to be left alone. Well, at least when your were a teenager. Kurt was a specialist from dodging bullies in middle school. It wasn't easy to blend into a crowd without being slowed up in the pack mentality, but it could be achieved. That didn't make blending into an empty street a cakewalk either.
"That," Kurt sighed to himself, slumping down in the passenger seat, "Was not nearly smooth as I thought it would be."
He fumbled around for the keys, humming a bit before surfacing with the familiar blue and white logo. It's the same pattern, no matter who gets where first. Turn the car on, in drive, roll the windows down and open the sunroof. Wait. He settled down in the smooth leather for a long wait, not bothering to mess with the radio. The car was only going to be used for as long as it took to give the diamond back to whomever owned the huge rock.