As crimes went, a smash-and-grab was one of the simplest. You just smashed into a place, grabbed everything that was worth anything – thus the name – then left as quickly as possible. No worry about alarms or police or anything of the sort. Just in and out.
Of course, as with everything, there were problems. If there weren't, then every criminal, parahuman or otherwise, would've been doing them.
The most obvious problem was that, since you went in and out as quickly as possible, you inevitably left evidence behind. You'd be on camera at a bare minimum, and your getaway vehicle probably would be too. There really wasn't any getting around that. It might not have seemed like much to some people, but evidence like that mattered a lot in court, if you got caught.
And getting caught was much more likely than was worth the trouble. Especially if you made it a habit. Smash-and-grabs were obvious crimes, after all. The fact that their effects lingered in the light of day for everyone to see left people feeling on edge, demanding someone in authority take action.
It didn't help that they were a go-to crime for the less intelligent and less connected criminals. The sort that were more likely to get caught to begin with.
But all of that could be worked around. Being on camera didn't matter as much if you were wearing a costume, especially if you planned to be in the business for the long haul. The police and PRT would have your information eventually anyway, no matter what you did. But even there you had options. The general trend in the cape community meant that going after villains out of costume wasn't something that the authorities did very often. Certainly it wasn't something you could rely on a hundred percent, but it meant that you didn't have to worry too much about a police cruiser parking outside your house and an awkward conversation with your parents, much less a handcuffed walk of shame.
Not that either of those was likely in my future anyway, but still. The team was more than just me.
No, the real issue with a smash-and-grab, and the reason they weren't more common, was location.
It wasn't easy to find a good target, one that had a good balance between ease of entry and a high level of valuables to take.
You wanted jewelry? Too bad, there was a reason most jewelry stores were inside malls these days. Cash? Most places didn't keep it on-hand, shipping it out or locking it up long before it was safe to try anything. Antiques? Artwork? Good luck finding any that you could fence without knowing a guy. Over the counter meds, guns? Too securely locked up to be able to make it in and out in time. Alcohol, or cigarettes, or something else easy to sell? No chance you could stuff your car with enough to actually get a profit from before someone showed up to answer the alarm.
And even if we did find somewhere good to hit, we'd still have to fence anything that wasn't cash, which had its own ream of problems that went along with it. It wasn't that I couldn't find a buyer, and more that I wasn't certain I could find one without the help of my father, which meant it was a no-go.
To add to all that, we were a gang that actively held territory, which meant we had to avoid stepping on the toes of larger gangs, because they knew where to find us. If we broke into a place downtown? We might catch Coil's interest. Pull a job in the north end? Lung might take notice.
This meant that we were really only able to work in the South End, which cut out almost all of the really good targets.
If it had been just up to me, I was pretty sure I wouldn't have been able to find us a place to hit. At least not one that would be worth more than a few hundred bucks for each of us, if that.
So there was no question that I was grateful to Chariot's contact, whoever they were, for finding us a good target.
But even so...
"You sure this place actually keeps cash around?" Turismo asked.
I felt a brief moment of gratitude that he'd asked the question I hadn't been able to.
"I'm sure," Chariot said. "My guy hasn't been wrong yet."
Turismo grunted, and I had to admit I shared the sentiment, even if I couldn't show it.
The target that Chariot's contact had provided us was a little two-story office building, one of a thousand that were scattered around the south side of the city. The kind of place that squatted in an otherwise residential area, and could house anything from a dentist's office to an accounting firm, or anything in between.
Not the sort of place I'd usually expect to have thousands of dollars of cash on-hand.
But the die had been cast. There was no longer any choice but to go forward; calling everything off now would mean looking stupid in front of the team, indecisive and ineffective.
"Come on," I said, hopping out the back of the getaway van and walking forward. Turismo had parked the van in an alley a few buildings down from our target, next to a restaurant. Somewhere that might be expected to receive deliveries in the middle of the night, and also somewhere with a few different exits, either back out into the street or through the parking lot, onto a different road.
It was a small thing to focus on, and I knew myself well enough to know why I was doing it. I was procrastinating, trying to put off the job for as long as I could.
Still a bad habit, but one I wasn't sure I'd break at this point.
The others followed me out of the van, but not on foot. Our target was on the second floor, and if we wanted to be in and out as quickly as possible, that meant going in directly. Going in the first floor, setting off the alarm there and working our way up, would have taken too long. So when the others exited the van it was on top of a sheet of corrugated aluminum provided by Rune's power.
It was a bit crowded, and wouldn't last that long at the rate Rune's runes faded, but it would do.
I didn't join them. I had my own way up.
As soon as I saw that everyone else was on the way and nobody was likely to fall off, I activated my newest piece of tinkertech.
A jetpack.
Or at least, a backpack that let me fly. It wasn't technically jet powered.
I hovered upward, wobbling slightly at the unfamiliar motion. The jetpack was still crude. Something Chariot and I had worked up in a single night, as much for this job as anything. It wasn't pretty, either. It was a dark red boxy thing that attached on the back of my breastplate; two arms projected away from my lower back with a number of nozzles on them that emitted enough compressed gas to keep me in the air for a while. For now, the controls were on my belt, operated by hand, but I had plans to hook it up to the same HUD control my shock wire operated on; an easy enough change.
Despite my discomfort with the system, though, it was easy enough to use, and I rose ahead of the others, up above the streetlights, where I'd be difficult to see from the ground.
Our target building fronted the street, with a small parking lot on one side and an alley on the other. Going in through the side would have been ideal, since it would draw less attention and leave a less obvious hole, but sadly the only windows were on the front and back, and the back half of the second floor was in use by some other company, apparently. So that left just one real option.
I flew toward the window with one hand on my belt controlling the flight, and with the other I drew my heat axe, activating it with a flick of my thumb. I headed straight for the nearest window and swiped at it, cutting it out of its frame with the sound of breaking glass and the smell of burnt wood. Then I kicked it inward and flew through the hole, landing on dull, grey carpet. The others followed without issue and dismounted their aluminum conveyance.
And just like that, we were in.
For my first real, serious crime, it was pretty easy. Admittedly, it was only breaking and entering so far, and the grand theft would come later. But still, I wasn't feeling the moral ambiguity I had expected. For the moment all I felt was nerves and anxiety.
"Sp- split up," I said, my voice catching slightly. "We're looking for cash, maybe up to ten thousand dollars. The contact wasn't certain where it was kept, but expect a safe or strongbox."
Nobody spoke as they got to work, maybe feeling the same tension I did. They moved to different parts of the office, each searching in their own way. I eyed Vasistha for a moment as she went to go sit at a desk and started pulling out drawers, examining them for a moment before dropping them on the ground, then moving on to another.
It would have been nice to have her do recon, find out where the money was kept, but that would have taken time we didn't have. For now we'd just have to make do on our own.
Rune, like Vasistha, was searching somewhat haphazardly, drawing runes on everything she passed, then flipping them over or floating them up into the air to inspect. She was quick, examining and dismissing everything in just a few seconds. Turismo was doing something similar, though without a power to help him. He just walked from desk to desk, flipping them over. I wanted to ask what he was doing – checking by weight, maybe, looking for a safe? – but we weren't there yet, and we really didn't have the time.
Chariot was searching in a way that was completely alien to me, sliding and skidding around the room with a spanner in his hands, tapping at the walls in some pattern I couldn't discern. Up till now his eccentricities hadn't failed me, and I saw no reason to start questioning them now.
For my part, I walked through the office and headed for an old wooden door. The office we were robbing wasn't a big one, and most of it just consisted of the single, large room we'd entered, full of desks, computers, and potted plants. There were only two doors, one of which led into the rest of the building, and the other of which was my goal.
I didn't bother to check if it was locked, just chopped through the handle with my axe, then depowered it and used it as a hook to pull the door open.
My jetpack's arms caught on the door as I tried to step through, and I shot a look over my shoulder, but nobody seemed to have noticed. I tried again, turning sideways a bit, and entered.
Inside it was pretty clearly a manager's office. It had a bulky, curved desk, plastered in detailed shapes and curves. Behind it sat a leather chair, likely tall enough that even Donnie's head wouldn't peek out over the rear. Bookshelves and filing cabinets lined the walls; a couple upholstered chairs – for visitors, I assumed – and a few paintings were arranged along the back wall. It was clearly designed to impress, but I'd seen better when I was five years old, and a simple mahogany desk and leather office chair didn't do anything for me.
I got to work right away, pulling the drawers out of the desk as Vasistha had, shooting each one a glance before tossing it to the carpet, then looking into the slot they'd come out of, looking for anything hidden. I didn't find anything, though my eyes did catch on a small revolver taped to the bottom of the desk. In a moment of no forethought, I grabbed the gun and shoved it into my belt, a small victory, but those were important now.
The bookshelves and filing cabinets weren't any better, only full of books and files, and the walls behind them were bare. The walls behind the paintings were equally unexciting.
Think! Where in an office like this would someone keep thousands of dollars in cash?
It wasn't an easy question to answer, especially not on as tight a schedule as we were on. My thoughts once again turned to the gun. Was the business illegal? Under threat from a gang, maybe? In debt? Each would influence things, help determine where the money might be kept.
Unfortunately I couldn't bring any terribly clever ideas to mind. My most brilliant thought was 'under the carpet, maybe'.
I'd just moved to a corner to see if I could pull it up, though, when Chariot's voice rang out from the other room.
"I've got it!" he called, and I felt my heart rise into my throat in a combination of fear and relief.
I hurried back out to see him standing next to an unassuming patch of wall, with a section folded out to reveal a very old-looking safe door. Black, but smudged, and with flakes of paint peeling off to reveal rusted steel underneath.
"Rune, can you get it out of there?" I asked as she hurried over.
"No way, boss," she said. "I could shake it around a bit, but pulling it out? Nah."
I looked down at the axe in my hand. "I can burn through, but that might set the cash on fire, assuming it's loose in there."
"Well whatever you do, do it fast," Chariot said, rapping a knuckle against the safe. "Because we don't have long."
"That sounds like a good line to come in on!"
The voice was loud enough that it almost covered the sound of a door opening, and it definitely did send a shock of fear up my spine.
I spun toward the source, to see the other door had opened and someone was sauntering through. Someone in costume.
He was wearing armor that I could only think of as gladiator-themed, with a lion motif splashed across it. Shoulder pads, clawed gloves, shaped belt buckle, and most obviously, the leonine helmet.
I recognized him right away. Triumph. The leader of the Wards, the junior branch of the city's only government-sponsored hero team.
What his appearance meant was obvious, but for a moment my brain refused to process it. In that moment, Triumph cleared the door and three more figures entered behind him. A bulky, older teen in a red helmet and bodysuit with white and silver trim. Aegis. A girl clearly younger than Rune in a white and green costume with a skirt and visor. Vista. A tall figure in power armor, futuristic but clearly designed to evoke historical imagery. Gallant.
"Aw, bloody fucking Christ," Rune said.
"Classy," Vista said, screwing her mouth up in disgust. Her voice was just as young as her appearance, but that didn't at all reduce the dread I felt at seeing her. Young or not, I couldn't think of many heroes in the city I would want to fight less.
"Well, I haven't heard of most of you," Triumph said, coming to a stop with his hands on his hips, looking between us and grinning. "Introductions?"
Almost as one, Vasistha, Rune, Turismo, and Chariot looked toward me. That more than anything shocked me out of my frozen state, and I took a step forward.
"You can call me the Red Comet," I said, "and we're Solomon."
"Any relation to the Crimson Lighting?" Triumph asked. "I was always a fan of his."
"No," I said. "Though I'm a fan too."
"Well, at least your taste is good," Triumph replied, his grin growing. "And Solomon isn't exactly the most sinister name for a team. Any chance that, present company excepted"—he nodded to Rune— "you're all heroes, and there's a good reason for tearing apart all this innocent furniture?"
I looked around for a moment, barely more than a flick of my eyes. We really had torn the place up. Almost all the desks had been either flipped or pushed around, and a good number of chairs had been toppled, with the rest pushed to one corner of the room for some reason.
I looked back at Triumph. "If I say we're heroes, I don't suppose we can just shake hands and go our separate ways?"
"Sadly not," he replied. "One way or another I'll have to ask you to come to the PRT building with me. Just that if you're heroes we can hang out in the break room and eat some pizza, instead of you hanging out in the cells."
"Do we still get pizza in the cells?" Chariot asked. The words were joking, but there was no hiding the worry underneath them. It was a bit relieving. For a minute after Triumph had shown up I'd been worried that Chariot had sold us out. Of course, that was still a possibility, but I classed it as unlikely.
Triumph threw his head back and laughed. I'd never really heard anything I could have described better as 'peals'.
"Sure, why not?" he said. "You all agree to come in quietly and I'll even deliver it myself."
"I'm afraid that's not going to happen," I said. "And no, we aren't heroes."
"So you plan to resist?" Triumph asked, tilting his head to the side. "That's a shame. We were getting along so well."
In response I just flicked the switch on my axe, sending waves of red flowing down the blade.
"Guess that's as clear an answer as any," Triumph said. "Well then," he began, raising his voice. "Wards! Let's go!"
My gun snapped into my hand, rising toward Triumph, but I hesitated, my father's advice clashing with my desire to avoid serious harm, and the wasted time was costly. Vista raised her arms, hands spread, and the room seemed to stretch away from me, growing rapidly larger, the ceiling retracting away to give Aegis space to fly. And fly he did, soaring upward for a moment before descending, headed straight for me, fists-first.
I jumped to the side, planting a foot on a still-upright desk and kicking off it to gain more height, moving to meet him as much by instinct as anything.
He adjusted his flight path slightly, ignoring my axe and gun, not even attempting to dodge. It would have given me a perfect chance to hit him, maybe even cut off an arm, but again I hesitated. Aegis's power was more than just flight. He was strong, and more than tough, but his durability wasn't the kind that made him difficult to damage. It just meant he wouldn't die, and could ignore any wound.
But cutting off an arm? I wasn't sure how he'd respond to that, especially with the heated edge added to the mix. I could hit him with the back side, or the flat of the blade, but I couldn't imagine either would do much.
Again, my indecision cost me, and only my mask's mysterious effect prevented the cost from being catastrophic. Aegis barreled in, and I found myself turning in mid-air, just a sliver of an inch away from being hit, before ramming my elbow into the small of his back.
It hurt. My elbow wasn't armored, and the hit was pretty hard, but Aegis barely seemed to notice. He didn't go crashing into the ground, as I'd half-hoped he would. He barely even flinched. By the time I touched down again, shifting my feet to get better footing on the carpet, he was already turning toward me and coming in again. No hesitation. Zero acknowledgment of the hit.
I dodged another swing as he advanced, feet off the ground, using his flight to try to corner me. I responded by thrusting the blunt top of my axe into his face, bashing his nose with it. It bloodied him, what little of his face I could see through the visor of his helmet, but he paid that no more mind than he had my elbow, kicking off the ground and reaching out to grapple.
Again, I dodged by the skin of my teeth, this time planting a knee in his ribs as I went, before scrambling over a desk and around a chair, trying to get some separation.
He watched me go, then closed in again, arms held ready, but it gave me a moment to look around, take in the fight.
It wasn't going well.
Vista had expanded the size of the room to easily ten times its former dimensions, and now she was manipulating it, shrinking the distance to keep Gallant and Triumph in combat, or expanding it to keep Rune's projectiles away from her.
I knew her power only worked in areas free of people, but I'd thought it would be more restricted. As it stood, I couldn't see what we could do about her. She was too quick, pinching space to step away, then expanding it behind her, turning one step for her into fifty feet for anyone else.
Not that Vista was even the biggest problem. Triumph was moving after Turismo, running and jumping to get around the fistfuls of glittering dust thrown at him, moving like an athlete. He was laughing the whole while, clearly not trying too hard, and I had to worry what would happen if he did decide to get serious.
And that was all I got a chance to see before Aegis was on me again. I clenched my fist around the haft of my axe, then angrily sheathed it, moving my hands to the controls of my jetpack. I took to the air, moving as my instincts – mine or the mask's – told me, circling around Aegis, letting his strikes whiff and staying at his back, keeping myself in his blind spot as much as I could. It was all I could really do. It wasn't like I could actually hurt him.
Besides, even if Rune or Chariot could somehow beat Gallant, I didn't see us winning this. Which really left us only one choice, assuming we could manage it.
"Retreat!" I shouted. "Turismo, light the place up! Rune, make an exit!"
It was the same tactic I'd ordered in our first fight, and I had to hope it worked as well here as it had there, though I wasn't confident. Mostly due to Vista. If she could shrink the areas affected by Turismo's dust while also keeping Rune away from the windows, we were screwed. Which meant we needed to get to her, and of all of us I thought I was the only one with a chance.
So as everybody paused to take in my shout, both us and the Wards, I shot upward, then made a break toward Vista.
Aegis turned immediately, and I could feel him closing the gap again, but I didn't have time to worry about it. I would only have an instant to deal with Vista, or even just tie her up long enough to let the others get away.
But another presence was closing in as well, faster than either of us.
Chariot.
He closed in on Aegis and took a running leap, his exoskeleton whirring and straining, giving him just enough height to tap the hero's chest before falling again. He rolled as he fell, slapping his hand against the floor once, sharply, before zipping away.
It was enough. Whatever it was Chariot had done – attached one of his mechanical bolas to him, probably – Aegis curved sharply downward, then faceplanted, hard. He sprung back up again, but he only had a moment in the air before being jerked backward, reeled in toward the spot on the carpet Chariot had smacked.
Which left me a clear run toward Vista, and she knew it just as clearly.
She raised her hands toward me, and I could feel the space between us expanding. But unlike her, I wasn't bound to the earth, and neither was my perception. I felt my mask flare with heat, barely below scorching, as I flew up, then down, riding the currents of shifting space as I closed in on her, just a fraction of a second ahead of every change.
Her eyes widened, and she stepped to the side, swinging her arms in a wide arc, but nothing happened, the space between us remaining constant. Static.
Then, out of nowhere, Gallant rammed into me, a full-body tackle. We tumbled to the ground together, rolled onto and over each other, and he swung at me clumsily, tried to grab me. I kicked him in the knee, both to keep him down and to stop my tumble, and used the momentum to rotate myself upright, getting my hand back on my belt to activate my jetpack.
Gallant didn't let me. He rolled to a stop and threw something at me, a wobbly sphere of blue energy too bright to look at, and I dropped, rolling away from it. Another followed, and another, in a steady rhythm. He threw with both hands, not stopping even while he clambered to his feet. They weren't all meant to hit. Some went to my sides, or above me, boxing me in, limiting my mobility.
He was good. Better than me. Even with my mask's power all I could do was keep the distance and avoid being hit. I didn't even have time to check on the others, see if they were making their exit or if they'd already been taken down by Triumph.
The thought of that sent a flare of anger up my chest. Damn it, they'd already stopped us getting the money, how much further did they have to go? Hell, we shouldn't have even been here in the first place. A smash-and-grab had been a bad idea from the start.
Fuck!
Whether or not the others had made their exit, I still had one card to play. It wouldn't have worked on Aegis, but against Gallant it had a chance.
I took my arm off my belt and clenched my fist and pointing it at Gallant. He tensed up for a moment, raising his hands defensively, and I fired my grappling wire straight at him.
He saw it coming and side-stepped, but I twitched my arm and the articulated wire changed direction, hitting him in the shoulder and clamping down. He grabbed at it, but arcs of electricity flowed down the wire, and he tensed up, his armor seizing.
I twitched my arm again and the wire started to reel in, pulling Gallant off-balance and sending me flying toward him. We met in mid air, my foot lashing out in a kick. It caught Gallant in the sternum, sending him tumbling to the ground and tearing my grapple loose from his armor.
I caught myself with my jetpack and stabilized in the air, using my free arm to help my balance. Gallant groaned, rolling over to push himself to his feet, and I dropped down on him, planting my feet on his back and crushing him down into the carpet.
Now, where's—
I stopped, my head whipping to the side. Triumph was closing in on me, and I couldn't see the rest of the team anywhere. Had they made it out? A gaping hole where one of the windows had been was good evidence that they had. I turned the other way to see Vista glaring at me, and I blanched at the sheer hate in the look.
Aegis was still caught in Chariot's bolo, so if the others had gone out the window, then chances were that Triumph couldn't have followed them. Which meant it was time for me to leave, too.
I spared a quick look at Gallant, stomping on his helmet once to keep him down, and took off straight up. I wove around Vista's altered space, side-slipped a roaring blast of sound from Triumph, and flipped over, heading for the windows.
Once again, Vista proved to be the greatest obstacle, and the windows began to shrink. I raised my gun toward her and let off a burst, the bullets following the warped space to impact on the carpet at her feet, drawing a shriek from her as she stumbled back, flinching, her arms raised reflexively.
It was enough. I soared out the window with space to spare, then took a hard right just ahead of a blast of light from Gallant. It lit up the street, casting everything in harsh light and shadows for a moment before it impacted the building across the way, bursting and fading away.
The van was gone, both thankfully and annoyingly. It meant that the others had escaped, but it also meant I had to get away on my own, and the jetpack didn't have that much compressed fuel.
Worse, my foot was throbbing, almost certainly from when I'd kicked Gallant's power armor with just a boot on.
I flew on, taking a route that kept me below the roofline as much as possible while still staying above the streetlights, and it took me a few moments to realize my phone was vibrating, and probably had been for a while.
I holstered my gun and fished it out of my pocket, careful not to drop it.
"Yeah?" I said.
"Boss!" Turismo said. "You alright? You get out?"
"I'm fine," I said. "I'm out."
"Well shit, good stuff," he said, voice calmer. "I was kinda afraid you were pulling some sacrificial shit or something."
"Not my plan," I said. I had to fight to get my breathing under control and keep my voice level.
"Uh, well good," Turismo said. "So, like, what now?"
"Now..."
Now I really had no idea what to do. I had no idea why the Wards had shown up. No idea if someone on the team had sold us out. I didn't think so. Triumph's words hadn't fit with that sort of thing. He'd been too... casual, really. I couldn't phrase it any better than that.
But still, the possibility had to be respected, at least until I could sort things out.
"Ditch the van," I said. "Someone may have seen us driving in, and one way or another the PRT will be here soon. You don't want to get caught on the road. Use Rune's power, get somewhere you can change out of your costumes, and get home. Avoid the Falmel for the next few days, or until you hear from me. Got it?"
"Uh, yeah, I got it," he said.
"Relay it to the others."
I listened carefully as he did so, paying as much attention as I could to his tone, and to their responses. It didn't tell me anything.
I winced as I hung up and returned the phone to my pocket. My shoulder hurt. From my trip with the wire, maybe?
"Damn it," I muttered.
I had too much to think about, too much to figure out, and I had no idea where to start. And we still hadn't got any money.
A failed robbery. A lost fight. Problems in the team. No money. A walk home in costume with an injured foot.
Today had been a very, very bad day.
And tomorrow, I got to go to a gallery opening with my father...