7 MONTHS! 7 MONTHS!
[Oh MAH God . jpg ]
WHERE HAS THE TIME GONE!?
Hope you enjoy the writing!
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One does not simply find a specific diamond in the world and unfortunately for Kurt and Lacey, Danny was very specific about the things he needed.
And even more unfortunately, He wanted some really hard to acquire things…
A salt crystal from a specific University lab at Harvard? Easy.
A prototype Laser cannon from the Chinese military? Lacey had done more complicated infiltrations while drunk.
Stealing a specific page from a book of old songs that was in the monster-filled Ellisburg? Kurt's morning exercise routine was more strenuous.
…
Stealing the 2053rd diamond on the Imperial State Crown of the Crown Jewels in the tower of London?
That was difficult…
That was also why Kurt, clad in his signature uniform, and Lacey, in an almost exact replica uniform of the Queen's Guard, were being chased up the tower of London.
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"Honey… *pant* Why didn't. You. Stop. At. Complimenting. His. Work. Ethic? *Gasp*."
Kurt turned towards his exhausted wife as they ran up the steps, perfectly climbing the steps backwards. His wife in contrast was doing her best impression of doing a flopping fish while keeping pace with her husband.
"Oh you know… I just had to give them at least some credit to how well they are guarding this tower. That they did all the proper background checks and didn't let their feelings get in the way. Yessir, no pretty woman was getting past them…" Kurt said, the smile on his face that somehow did not indicate joy.
"Is this about that one student?" She panted, her mind turning to the student she had seduced at Harvard by disguising as his childhood crush to get at the salt crystal lab. "I didn't do anything, Kurt!"
"Oh, didn't you? You did seem really eager to 'show him what he had been missing' and 'what you had been feeling since freshman year'"
"I had to be!" Lacey pleaded as she jumped up a few more steps, wary of the British yelling coming lower down the tower's steps. "That kid was so repressed that I was sure that he hadn't noticed any of the normal advances that work ninety percent of the time! It was super awkward..."
Kurt tilted his head in thought while crossing his arms, an impressive feat considering that his backwards flight up the steps remained constant.
"Yeah, he did seem to be kind of thick. Ehh, I'm not really blaming you for that anyway. What I am blaming you for is stealing the Jammie Dodgers I had bought this morning."
Lacey took a moment to stare at her husband before continuing.
"But they were delicious! You can't expect me not to take some!"
"You took all of them! Out of a pack of fifty! You do the same thing when I steal your tea."
"Okay. Good point."
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The three hundred kilogram door to the vault slammed shut as Kurt closed it behind him.
"Okay, Honey, Go find the diamond that Dan needs and I'll hold the door closed."
There was a distinct bang on the other side of the door as it shifted. Jumping to it, Kurt held the vault door closed even as he felt several more impacts hit the door.
"Wow. The Royal lances pack a real punch. I'm kind of wishing that I hadn't broken the lock getting in here. Hey Honey? How are you doing finding that diamond?"
…
"Honey?"
"Kurt! Look!"
Turning his gaze away from the rapidly crumbling vault door, and turned to look at his wife who was standing in the center of the large vault. It took his brain a second to realise that, instead of the case containing the crown jewels being the only thing in the room, the vault itself was filled with gold.
Gold stamped with the symbol of Geschellcraft.
"Oh shit…"
Lacey looked back at her husband.
"Do you think that this is why the guards outside have Tinkertech guns?" Lacey asked, a worried expression on her face as she clearly thought what her husband was thinking.
"Lets find that diamond before the Guard come for their looted Nazi gold."
"Agreed"
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30 MINUTES LATER.
"Hurry up, honey!" Kurt yelled as yet another impact hit the terribly abused Vault door. By now, the door had lost its shape, having been partially melted and warped by repeated thermal lance blasts from the guard on the other side..
"Don't rush me! I'll lose count again!" Lacey yelled from across the room.
"Just take the whole crown!"
"You know we can't do that! The room will be filled with robot bulldogs and I don't want robo bite marks again! Just give me a little more time!"
"I am literally the only reason this slab of metal is still in the doorway!:
"I know,dear! You're doing great!"
Kurt grumbled as he shifted his grip on the destroyed door. Lacey was definitely taking her time but he guessed it was better than going back to Danny with the wrong diamond.
I guess it's lucky that they only shoot one at a time! Kurt thought to himself.
"What in God's name are you doing?" Kurt heard a soft, italin accented voice from the other side of the door.
"We're trying to break down the door, sir!" said a distinctly British voice.
"Well, why are you firing one at a time?"
"We're trying to be sporting, sir!"
"What the Hell? All of you, fire all at once!"
"Lacey!" Kurt yelled to his wife.
"3"
"Yes?"
"2"
"We're about to have company!"
"1"
With a sudden burst of sound and heat, Kurt and the door went flying across the vault. Lacey heard the a sharp thud as Kurt collided with the vault wall and an even deeper thud when the door smashed into the wall, right on top of Kurt.
"YES!" Lacey yelled as she found the correct diamond, plucking it from the crown with a swipe.
The room was silent except for both her husband and the Vault door falling to the ground, disturbing a particularly large pile of gold
"Shit…" As what her husband had shouted to her finally made its way into her comprehension.
Okay, She thought. Kurt will be back up in a minute or so, spinal injuries always took the longest to heal, so all I need to do is delay the guards until then.
As she turned towards the smoke filled Vault entrance, she felt hundreds of different deceptions run through her mind, hoping that just one could work.
All of those plans disappeared as she saw who had walked in with the Royal Guard…
The armour was different from how she remembered, it was thicker and definitely more mechanised than it had been twenty years ago. It was definitely bulkier than it had been, probably to accommodate thicker armour and probably some sort of computer system based on how the T-shaped visor on his cylindrical helmet emitted a blue light. The rest sent pangs of nostalgia through her. It was still coloured red and white, a large red cross clearly visible on the armour and a flowing white cape connected to the armour's shoulders.
"Well. Look what we have here…" Crusader drawled out, his thick italian accent punctuating every word. "It is the fairer half of the pair of thevies with the blasphemous name. Likely working for the blasphemous genius, who seeks to steal God's domain from him."
Lacey blanched at the subtle aggression in Crusader's words. It wasn't their fault that the media called them that!
"Now look, Fernando." Lacy's voice almost wavered as she took a small step away from the hulking Knight. "It wasn't our idea to be called Adam and Ev-"
Lacey squeaked as Crusader suddenly crossed the distance between them faster than she could even think to dodge and grab a hold of her.
But it wasn't his speed that caused her to squeak. She was used to that.
It was how he was holding her.
"Um…" Lacy stated eloquently as she felt one of Crusader's massive hands support her at the small of her back while the other caressed her cheek.
"I am not blaming you for that, my dear." Crusader spoke slowly, with an odd gentleness. "No one knows more about how the media can twist the truth more than I. Too many times I have been portrayed as some sort of dangerous fanatic instead of someone who simply gave his heart to the Lord."
Once again, Lacey was surprised how Crusader was suddenly a step away, clutching his fist in apparent anger as she balanced herself from the sudden absence of his support.
"Of course," He continued, rage tinting his normally light tone. "Such slander is normally only spread by Godless Heathens and those of little faith in the Lord"
"...Okay…"
Lacy was only mildly surprised this time when she, in a blur of motion, found herself held by the religious Italian.
"No, What I was talking about, my dear, was your career."
"My...Career?" Lacey dumbly asked as she tried to ignore how Crusader's chest armour seemed to be emphasising just how broad his chest was.
No Lacey! Bad Thoughts! Your husband is a lot better than that anyway.
"Yes. The passion of youth brings many to… Unfortunate paths in life." Crusader spoke softly. "I was hoping that, over the past two decades, you had seen the error of your criminal ways."
"Um… I don't?" Lacey guessed, still trying to calm herself down from comparing Crusader and her husband's… attributes.
Crusader's helmet moved close enough to Lacey's face that she thought that she could almost see Fernando's deep blue eyes behind the helmet's visor.
"Not even some doubt?" He asked the smaller villainess, his voice having dropped to a soft but powerful whisper.
"I… Uh."
"My Lord! You forgot your sword downstairs so I…" Lacey heard the voice of a young woman trail off behind Crusader.
Crusader turned towards the voice, giving Lacey a clear view of the woman who spoke.
The first thing that Lacey noticed about the new arrival was just how young she was. Her face was smooth with none of the telltale signs of cosmetics and her hair was bright blonde and tied behind her head in a large bun. From her sheer youthful look, Lacy would place her in her early twenties. The second thing that Lacey noticed was her attire. Besides her head, the rest of her body was covered in armour that almost mirrored Crusader's exactly except for being significantly lighter and being more… form fitting.
And while Crusader failed to notice, the shifting eyes of the Royal guardsmen showed that they very much did.
Lacey wasn't afraid to admit that the mini-crusader looked good, even with the massive sword dragging behind her tired arms.
"Simone," Crusader addressed the new arrival with a sigh. " One cannot simply run with such a weapon. If I were to have carried my trusty blade, I would not have made it here in time to try and redeem this fair maiden and these guards would have lay defeated on the very floor they stand on."
Ignoring the awkward shuffling from the guards, Simone looked at Lacey, who had just recovered from the lack of Crusader's support with an expression that could have set alight water itself with the amount of rage it was expressing.
Oh… So that's how it is it? She thought to herself. She had wondered when Crusader would have attained a unnoticed crush eventually.
"Leave my wife alone!" Kurt shouted and then suddenly there were Robot bulldogs.
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SBBE Science Floor (Under construction. Any attempt to steal the specimens will result in feeding offenders to them.)
"No. No. No." An Irate Danny said to the confused couple. "That is not how you tell a story."
Danny tuned out Lacey's objection that she had learned enough in High School to be able to tell a story and looked around his personal lab. He sighed, it always looked so cliche with all the smooth curves and the steel flooring blending well with the high tech instruments.
Maybe a rug would help… he mused as he looked at the steel flooring.
"I don't care, Lacey." Danny interrupted the lithe infiltrator before she could start her, often exaggerated, lecture about her experience as a romance writer. "You can't put the middle of the story in the beginning. And why is this a story anyway? I just asked how your trip to Paris went."
"We thought that you would have appreciated some drama in the retelling" Kurt spoke up, red eyes peeking past the rim of his sunglasses.
"Then explain the holes in your story then, and that terrible ending" Danny challenged them, leaning back in his chair with a stony expression.
"What terrible ending?" Lacey asked, making a visible effort at appearing innocently ignorant.
That hadn't worked on Danny for twenty years.
"Yes, Lacey. Using a single, badly worded sentence is not actually a good ending to a story. Where did the dogs come from? What happened after Kurt shouted, what was he doing?"
"I-"
"And what is this about the Jammie Dodgers…"
"Well…"
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As Lacey was about to enter the apartment she and her husband were sharing, after attaining some much needed groceries, she heard a terrible sound.
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" She heard Kurt yell in utter despair inside the room.
Unbeknownst to her, Kurt had found the empty packet of Jammie Dodgers that Kurt had bought the previous day but Lacey had eaten through a midnight snack binge the previous day.
She had hoped for the action to go forgotten, just like when she would borrow her husband's favorite Coffee mug to hold her Hot chocolate.
But alas, the plots of revenge were already-
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Lacey was interrupted by a blank stare from Danny, the Evil Genius' gaze boring into her.
"Is something wrong?" She asked, hopeful that nothing was.
"…"
"…"
"You can't do that in a flashback." Danny finally stated after a moment of silence.
"Do what?"
"Okay, the flashback is from your point of view correct?"
"Yes…" She answered uncertainly, unsure where her old friend was going with this.
"Then you can't tell us what Kurt was thinking, as you personally aren't Kurt."
"I-"
Danny raised a hand to interrupt her.
"At the moment. I meant you aren't Kurt at the moment. And, as you are not him in your 'POV' as Annette liked to say, you can't just include someone else's experience in your experience."
"You know a lot about that?" Lacey asked, slightly chuffed at the thought of being corrected like a school girl.
Thankfully, Danny never really reads these transcripts and I, G-Bot, have a 99% likelihood of never being lectured in a similar fashion.
"Annette used to mark narrative essays from her students at home. Trust me, I am more than familiar with rants of the narrative kind," Danny spoke slowly as if remembering the, no doubt, large number of rants fondly.
"Moving on, let's review a more pressing error you made in your telling of events."
"I have no ide-"
"And what about the fact that you totally misrepresented Crusader?"
"No. Crusader was totally like that… Honest." Lacey deflected, rubbing the back of her neck nervously.
"Lacey…" Danny drawled slowly, his blank stare not shifting its focus away from the lithe Infiltrator's face. "Crusader isn't Italian."
"What!? O-of Course he is. I heard him back in England, that's what I said."
"Lacey…"
"O-okay. It happened somewhat differently…"
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Aye lassie, urr ye ready tae repent noo or am ah aff tae hae tae gang a' Old testament oan yer braw self?"
Lacey would have loved to give Crusader a scathing remark. It wasn't often that she had the opportunity to make fun of such a thick accent and she had been saving up quite the repertoire of witty banter.
Unfortunately, being held a significant distance above the ground, Crusader's armoured hand wrapped around her neck, gave her little opportunity for witty banter, let alone breathing.
"Urk." Lacey grunted out as she let out a choked breath that was meant to insinuate Crusader's mouth had some relationship with the Lochness Monster. Her eyes roved across the room, spotting her husband bodily throwing around several of the Tower Guard as he dodged the wild swings from a white-haired woman wearing a more form-fitting version of Crusader's armour.
"Let go of my Wife, you celibate pervert!" Suddenly, as though called by Lacey's choked gurgling, Kurt teleported behind Crusader and lifted him up in a suplex, causing her to be dropped by the Faithful Scottsman.
She watched in horror as Kurt slammed him down on a very specific display case.
The one that contained the crown jewles.
Lacey could only manage a weird hybrid of a cough and a sigh as the Vault's roof opened and disgorged its cargo of Robotic Bulldogs, barking in excitement.
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"Hmmm."
"Yes?" Lacey looked towards Danny, a hopeful look on her face at the contemplating Evil Genius.
After a second of silence, Danny sighed.
"Mechanically, its better. You are still wrong though."
Lacey gave out a sigh of exasperation.
"So what is exactly wrong this time?"
"Crusader is Irish, not Scottish…"
Lacey froze, and one could have sworn that an inaudible crack was heard as Lacey's train of thought derailed.
I did not inform the medical team as, my audible sensors being immune to metaphor, did not detect an audible crack.
"Why don't you tell me what really happened?" Danny asked slowly.
Lacey nodded equally slowly and opened her mouth to speak.
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Lacey couldn't keep the grin off her face as she slowly picked the lock on the case that contained the British Imperial state crown.
Well, if you could call hacking a tinker-tech keypad and the more mundane but more complex bioscanner behind it simultaneously while picking the actual lock above the keypad as merely lock-picking.
Lacey did, she opened worse locks during her old career, the one that Myrridan designed to shoot boulders at people who didn't do the right dance infront of it was a particularly fond memory.
It was all worth it to see his face as he watched him use his spare staff as stripper pole when she crashed Alexandria's Birthday party, and consequently ruined her birthday cake as she burst out of it.
That wasn't what was making her smile though.
The infiltration had been perfect.
After obtaining uniforms from a particularly amorous couple of Tower Guards, Kurt's skill at forging documents had allowed them to pretty much stroll into the Tower of London's secure vault.
After seeing the amount of gold, in the vault with them, their sly grins had gotten even wider.
Surely, Danny wouldn't mind if they took some home? The gold bars in their house's safe were getting lonely.
And who didn't want to brag that they looted some Nazi gold, even if the one being looted weren't Nazis themselves.
Of course, the job came first after all and Lacey let out a laugh as her efforts on the lock provided fruit and the display case's door clicked open.
Just like taking candy from SABRE.
Honestly, she could feel only a tinge of disappointment at the ease of the theft she was committing. Back when SABRE was in charge of England's security, Lacey and her husband had to be the most careful whenever they tried to steal anything that had to do with the royal family.
Because otherwise they would be facing at least a hundred John Steele wannabes popping out of every mail box and pub.
And there were a lot of those in London especially.
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"Wait, where does Crusader fall into this?"
"He doesn't. I saw him and his 'assistant'," Lacey winked at Danny. "on a tour of one of the Cahtedrals in London as he sulked moodily about 'protestant heathens' or something like that."
"Hmm... Okay. Go on..."
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"Hey, Lacey, Catch!" Lacey was brought out of her thoughts suddenly by Kurt's call.
In her distracted state, she failed to notice the thrown gold bar go past her.
And crash into the display case.
The lock might have been disabled but the sensors on the glass were not.
Lacey could only sigh loudly as the alarm went off, the noise barely concealing the excited barking of the Robot Bulldogs dropping from, now open, slots in the celing.
"Oops. Sorry!" Kurt yelled as he was glomped by a pack of cybernetic hounds.
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This time, Danny's stare was meant for Kurt.
"…"
"I said I was sorry!" Kurt caved into the pressure near instantly, not being able to withstand a stare from his old Friend.
"You will have to work this off. Lacey's outfits are expensive and no one alive can fix that dog bitten scrap of rubber that used to be her combat suit." Danny said as Kurt flinched. They had managed to escape with the diamond but not without the Robots ripping Lacey's suit to literal shreds somehow.
The argument had not been fun, being put in a metaphorical dog-house never was.
What came after was a lot more fun though.
"For goodness sake Kurt, Stop thinking about your wife for one second!" An Irate Danny yelled at the distracted Kurt while Lacey smiled, simultaneously glad that Kurt was the one in trouble with their friend/boss and she was partly the reason why.
"Right.., So, What do I do?" Kurt asked, slightly eager to get to work if only to avoid the seemingly building wrath of the Evil Genius.
Danny sighed as he leaned back into his chair, forcefully calming himself down. His short temper was always a problem when it came to business.
"Kurt. You are going to clean the Docks of ABB and Merchants so that Evil Corp can move in when Alan is ready to do so,"
"Okay the-"
"Aaaand." Danny continued. "You are going to help Alan with the finances after you are done."
Kurt deflated a bit.
"I… Don't know how to do that?" Kurt tried.
"Kurt, you are an accountant. Get going." Danny ordered and watched as Kurt silently turned and left the Lab.
"As for you, Lacey."
"Y-Yes boss?" She stammered out, the glare that Danny was giving her not exactly making her feel very comfortable.
"I need you on the Canary thing. Get the trial hosted either here or Boston. New York has too many heroes in it to make it a clean extraction."
"Umm… Working without Kurt is going to make it a lot harder to do…"
Danny rolled his eyes.
"I know, and this is partially your punishment for letting your combat skills degrade enough that your modesty was defeated by hyperactive Dog bots. I'm also prescribing you mandatory evasion training, make sure you're there when G-Bot schedules you in or I am getting Jimmy to drag you there."
"Speaking of G-Bot, can't he help me. He is named Government Bot after all." Lacey asked, ignoring the threat of both the training and the Elder Minion's version of it.
Danny shook his head.
"G-Bot is busy 'investigating a possible nemesis' or something like that. Now get going."
Danny sighed as Lacey left the lab.
"Hopefully your nemesis doesn't have to deal with this type of nonsense…" Danny said to the 'empty' lab.
…
Unfortunately Danny was not completely correct…
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"I'm telling you Dragon, based on the impact patterns on the Dog Chassis, it indicates that the attacker was skilled in a mixed-martial art style popular in America. If I cross-reference the open studios teaching this art twenty years ago-"
"Collin! Stop working and Go to bed! Not sleeping for eight days is not good for you no matter how 'efficient' you are."
"That is exactly what they want you to think"
"Sigh"
