To Butterfly: Thanks; it's been a while since I watched any British shows. I'm glad you're curious about Iron Maiden! Her story's actually one of the reasons I decided to write this story this way…
To yellow 14: And fixed! The dynamic between the Hound and the Iron Maiden is so much fun; my premise for the Hound is basically that he's Cat Noir… but a dick.
As he tore down the street away from the carnage in front of the bank, Antoine slammed his fist on the steering wheel and let out a grunt of frustration. This was supposed to be a simple bank heist, just him, Gaston, and a couple of locals they'd picked up in a bar the other night. Quick, simple, and lucrative. The Lloyd's had received a large shipment of new £1 coins from the mint that afternoon which was waiting to be sorted for distribution. Mecha-Man would break them into the bank – a process of no more than a minute for the suit – and provide cover while their hired English muscle carried the crates and bags of pre-packaged coins out to the waiting truck. If everything went according to plan they would have been in and out in less than 15 minutes and, after paying their hired guns and putting some aside for upgrades, he and Gaston would each have been about six figures richer. With the cops on the lookout for this serial killer/rapist, a bank job was bound to catch them off-guard – especially one with Mecha-Man as the muscle.
Not that the idea of the Stripper Ripper running around London and targeting young women was exactly a comfort otherwise for Antoine…
"What the hell happened back there?" he demanded, jerking the wheel hard to the left into another sharp turn down another winding side street, hardly paying attention to where he was going. Instead of taking any of the pre-scouted escape routes, he was just improvising, hoping not to see anyone following them – especially not anyone in a mech-suit. In the back of the truck the two thugs were thrown about by the momentum of the turns. One tumbled into the side of the truck with a startled yelp, and the shift nearly caused the truck to overturn. Loose coins rattled around in the handful of bags they had managed to load when the plan went to hell. He glanced down at the tablet balanced in a stand on the dashboard showing footage from the drone he'd programmed to observe the heist from the air. The screen showed a couple flares from burning cars and wreckage, the silhouettes of the two heroes dancing in the shadows cast through the smoke by fires and streetlights. Mecha-Man wasn't visible on the screen, and as they finally parted the heroes didn't seem to be following either Mecha-Man or the truck. At least that meant they were in the clear. For now. He turned back to the rearview mirror and glared at his passengers, hardly paying attention as he turned down yet another deserted street, one that would bring them a little closer to the river. "Well?"
The one on the left shrugged, grabbing onto a rack built into the side of the truck to stabilize himself. "I don't know what happened," he finally answered. "We was carrying out the loot when that other suit showed up and started blasting us."
"Everything was fine one minute, and it all went to hell the next. We just grabbed what we could and ran," added the other. He winced as a bag of coins rolled into his thigh. "It was lucky we managed to get these bags in while Mecha-Man was distracting that other."
"Yeah, real lucky," retorted Antoine, glaring back at them. "Instead of the crate of £50.000, you first grabbed a couple bags with maybe £7.500 in coins apiece – and none of the banknotes, which would at least have been lighter. All we need is a couple hundred more jobs as 'lucky' as this one was and maybe we can retire!"
"Hey, it wasn't exactly their fault, boss," argued Mecha-Man over the radio as the abandoned warehouse they had converted into their hideout came into view around the corner, Mecha-Man standing to one side of the locked gate with his arms folded. Antoine pulled to a stop in front of the gate as Mecha-Man undid the padlock and pushed the gate open just wide enough for the truck to fit through. Antoine stopped halfway across the yard and waited impatiently while Mecha-Man relocked the gate and jogged over to open the door. "That other mech-suit came out of nowhere and ambushed us. And then that dog hero showed up? We were lucky to get away period!"
"We would have been luckier if we had more than… about £30.000 to show for it," Antoine grumbled, counting the bags quickly.
"So what does that mean for our cut?" the first guy asked, his lips turning down in a frown. "You said 10 Gs each …"
Antoine narrowed his eyes at him in the rearview mirror. "That original agreement assumed a successful job, and we did not succeed," he informed him, surreptitiously withdrawing the energy pistol from his holster out of the man's sight as he did so. He turned partway around in his seat and pointed the pistol through the seat at the man. "So you have two options. Option one: the two of you split one of those bags, each get around £3.250 for your trouble tonight, and we call you up in a day or two when we have another job – potentially a more lucrative one. Option two: the two of you get split between several bags and dumped in the Thames and we bring in a couple different lugs for the next job. So take your pick – I will be fine either way."
The two men exchanged a look and stared past Antoine's head at Mecha-Man, the glowing eyes of whose helmet illuminated the interior of the truck. Their eyes widened in fear. "I'll take the payment," the second one said, the first one nodding along fervently.
Antoine let out a relieved breath and smirked, holstering the pistol. "Good choice."
As the two hired men carried the bags of coins over to a worktable, Antoine stepped outside to recover the drone that had finally made its way back to them. He inspected the rotor blades and struts carefully for damage, but found it still in working condition. He had to admit, although he did not have the same resources that Pegasus and the Heroes of Paris clearly had at their disposal, repurposing a cheap commercial drone was a simple but effective way to improve his ability to monitor their jobs. Unfortunately, this time the hero in the metal suit had appeared from the opposite direction and he hadn't gotten more than fifteen seconds of forewarning. And they didn't have the funds to add another drone to their setup just yet. The remaining £22.500 from this job would have to go to so many other improvements on the suit itself before they could even consider purchasing another drone.
"Any chance you can help me get this thing off?" Mecha-Man called from the other workbench, holding up a screwdriver and pair of pliers.
Antoine jogged over to join him. "You never had this much trouble getting out of the old suit," he observed, selecting a wrench and smacking the side of one of the chest plate bolts that had gotten stuck. It made a hollow thud, and he squirted it with WD-40 before prying it out.
"Well, the old suit wasn't held together by duct tape and silly putty, so…" Gaston finally got the helmet off and set it on the workbench before lifting one leg to undo the straps on the front. "Any chance we got enough for some improvements?"
"We didn't get enough to replace the chest piece," Antoine told him, frowning. "But my supplier did receive the miniature servos we need for the upgraded leg armor Those shouldn't cost more than £5.000, leaving a little left over to get the new targeting circuitry for your arm cannons – hopefully that will cut down on the misses. If you pick up the parts in the shopping center parking lot in Soho tomorrow morning, I can get the installation finished after lunch."
"If it means I can actually move again, I'll make a pick-up on the moon, boss!" Gaston joked, finally shrugging his way out of the armor. He furrowed his brows as he looked around the small warehouse. Their hired men were on the other side of the room dividing up their cut and arguing quietly, but he lowered his voice anyways. "Any chance you can give me any anti-miraculous weapons now?" he asked seriously. "The other suit was bad enough, but I could have handled him, at least long enough for us to get more of the loot. But that other guy, the dog hero? He was definitely using a miraculous. I mean, why else that costume with those stupid ears? Or carry around a dog leash like a weapon? And somehow his dog leash deflected my energy blasts. Definitely a miraculous. And if we've got a miraculous user running around now, I'd like something I can use to counter him."
Antoine shook his head. "No such luck," he replied, detaching the chest plate and giving it a couple raps with his ball peen hammer to smooth out an old dent. He frowned at the flakes of rust knocked loose by the action. "The Prior wouldn't part with any of his chi-putty, and since he didn't let any of his novices come with us, we're on our own." He sighed. "I guess we'll just have to come up with our own 'anti-miraculous plans.'"
Gaston snorted and fingered one of the arm cannons. "Well if there's heroes here in London, maybe our 'anti-miraculous plan' should include moving and setting up shop somewhere else," he suggested. "Do you think Ireland has any heroes? Or the Low Countries?"
"As far as I am aware, neither of those places has heroes of its own," Antoine acknowledged slowly, shaking his head. "However, as far as I was aware two hours ago, neither did London. Nor, for that matter, did Portugal – before those Heroes of Lisbon appeared on the Ladyblog and in Rouen over the summer." He sighed in resignation and tossed his hammer on the workbench. "We'll just have to accept it: there's no guarantee anymore that we can go anywhere and not find some sort of heroes waiting for us. And even if we did, what's stopping locals from playing hero to try and stop us? Or, for that matter, what's stopping the Heroes of Paris from dropping in out of the blue to try and stop us?"
Gaston picked up a paintbrush and can of tan paint and hummed. "I'm just saying, it's still a possibility," he argued, going over to start repainting the truck where the paint had been melted off.
"Leave if you want to," Antoine called after him. "But I'm staying. You know perfectly well why we chose London!"
Gaston chuckled in acknowledgment. "Is she taking your calls yet?"
"As a matter of fact, I'm seeing her tomorrow," Antoine replied, allowing himself a small smile. He selected a wrench from the workbench and set about removing the old leg pieces that they would replace, placing the old pieces to the side where they might eventually be repurposed. So much of this suit was already repurposed from other parts and inventions that it was hard to imagine that less than a month ago they'd had a cutting-edge exo-suit in which Gaston was capable of going toe-to-toe against even Taureau Dechaine or Cat Noir and holding his own. Now he was lucky to escape from a miraculous user and someone in a knock-off mech-suit with his own suit intact. But all they needed was one or two successful jobs, and they would be back on top.