Hi.
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Crimewave
Chapter VI -The Jewelry Store Job I
He took a long drag from his cigarette, welcoming the acrid burn that filled his senses to overcome him. In a practiced ritual, the smoke that condensed within his lungs curled from his nostrils, like the dying embers of a fire reaching from a chimney into the sky.
He cracked half of a dry smile as the warm buzz of nicotine made itself known. While his long beige trench coat did well to combat the crisp air of the Valean Spring evening, the man never truly felt warm without a smoke in one hand and a glass in the other.
His half-smirk dropped down into the same flat expression he was told he was infamous for. Of course, Instead of his lounge he was here, on the job loitering on a street corner at the edge of L'Ariane as the last of his Saturday bled away with the setting sun. What's worse? He wasn't even on assignment.
He blew the last dregs of his smoke out with a sigh, eyeing the police perimeter across the street from where he leaned on a news stand.
No, the man had sacrificed his evening, one of the few he got a month, on nothing but a glimpsed case file and spark of curiosity.
While L'Arianewas a rather poor district of Vale squished into the southeastern crook of the city, its western edges, where it transitioned into the lower to stable middle class Quartiersof Riquier and Ventabrun, often received enough lien to shed the iron-barred facades of pawn shops and corner stores for office complexes and industrial parks.
A small fleet of squad cars injected a vibrant array of red, white and blue into the otherwise rather dreary commercial district. They sat in front of an unremarkable three-story building, not unlike the others that lined the street. The first floor was reserved for retail space with the upper two floors serving as some flavor of residential or office space. The building that had caught the attention of the gendarmeshappened to be a small family jewelry store of middling prestige.
The man took another long drag of his cigarette, purposefully staring past the beat cop giving him suspicious looks from the perimeter line.
The wood paneled façade looked weary with age. Not destitute but showing the plastic imperfection of one too many cheap touch ups. The marquee sign hanging above the doorway, on the other hand, looked brand new, proudly displaying Gioielli Di Famiglia in a vertical arrangement with scaffolding and bags of construction materials stacked in it's shadow. The man recognized the name - it was a middle-prestige jewelry chain that catered to suburbanites and housewives who started their days with a fifth of vodka and a handful of codine. Strange to see one this far West.
The cop that had been eyeing him up slipped beneath the police tape and began sauntering over. He tried to play it cool, but he really wasn't cute enough for it. Scrawny build that told of a stint in high-school athletics, young simple features pulled into an adolescent scowl. Another failed ball-handler given a gun and badge to go with his victim complex. Joy.
A slow intake of smoke, he tapped the ash out on the newspaper stand.
In the contrast between the well-lit interior of the jewelry store and rapidly dimming sunlight, the man clearly picked out Precious Things emblazoned on the store front windows. It was in a completely different style to the marquee signs and at a glance more closely resembled the age of the building. A recent change in management then. Seems Di Famiglia were trying to move beyond their cornered market of dealing Lien-store rocks to Mur Street ghouls - all the way into the working-class Faunus neighborhoods of the West Bank.
The gendarme had approached him and begun spewing words out of his uninteresting face. The trench coat-clad man took another drag of his cigarette.
Through the store window he could make out her form, a middle-aged woman with tan skin and striped cat ears. She wore a grey pantsuit accented by a tasteful array of bracelets and necklaces. She spoke with one of the detectives in a muted manner. If the man had to guess? Owner. The original one, too. She lacked the PR-trained composure of a corporate manager.
The man tiled his head to the side. A Human corporation buys up a local Faunus business in L'Ariane and suddenly its done for 140,000 Lien by a group of masked bandits? Even here on the outskirts it'd take five seconds to identify Fang markings hidden in graffiti and etched on lamp posts. The story was clean.
The cop stepped between himself and the store, obscuring his view.
Squeaky fucking clean.
"Sir, I said show me some identification or else I'll be forced to detain you." The cop said, squaring his shoulders and placing a hand on the cuffs clipped at his waist.
The man chuckled, "cuffs or no pipsqueak I'd still crack your pelvis in half," the cop narrowly caught the leatherbound wallet flicked at his head, "but if you still wanna ride, drinks are on me." He finished with a wink.
"What the fff…" The cop trailed off, staring down with wide eyes at the contents of the wallet. The man couldn't help but smirk as he snapped to sudden attention. "Apologies Mr. Kingfisher Sir! I-I di- My superiors didn't tell me the VBI would be coming!"
"Whatdya know, neither did I," He took his wallet back. "And its Harrier, but you can call me Harry."
Special Agent Harrier Du Ponte Kingfisher slipped past the stunned cop with a patronizing pat on the cheek. The sooner he got this over with the better. Numerous jurisdictional violations and inter-departmental regulations were being shattered just by Harrier's presence on this side of the city let alone at an active crime scene. He'd like the dressing down from the good Madame Director tomorrow to be short and sweet.
Harrier shouldered through the front door and into the main showroom. Quickly, his hazel eyes picked through the crime scene techs milling about. Two men stood near the back of the store speaking with the owner he had identified earlier. They wore plain white button ups with black slacks and had matching aviators which was just adorable. Both human, one with short black hair and a matching full-faced beard and the other clean shaven with a head of wild gunmetal grey hair. Bearded wonder brandished his service weapon - a Luna & Shawcross DL-25 Dust thrower - in a lazy, vaguely threatening manner. All the while his partner solemnly nodded and took down notes.
West End cops indeed, Harrier wondered if they'd mind a third.
"I keep telling you, I have never seen those people in my life! I-I don't even know what they look like in the first place, they were all wearing masks!"
"Mighty big coincidence then that they knew the exact date and time your security systems would be down for migration," Bearded wonder touched the barrel of his gun to his chin in a thinking posture. "Ain't that right Detective Burns?"
His mouse-faced partner hummed. "Gotta admit, it's pretty convenient Detective Heyman."
"Exactly," Detective Heyman said, "Now why don't you just make things easier and tell us the truth?"
The woman bristled, eyes wide with fear, indignation and panic. "I am-"
"Gentlemen, gentlemen, have some decorum." Harrier stepped between them; his badge pre-loaded. "Can't you see, you're giving this poor lady a heart attack."
"The fuck are you?" Heyman said.
Harrier raised an eyebrow and gestured to his badge. "Can't you read?"
"Bad eyes," His partner said, squinting to get a look at the finely printed information.
Maybe if they didn't wear 70% tint sunglasses inside at night - Harrier sighed, "VBI Special Agent Harrier Kingfisher-"
"Is that- you're fuckn' Stagecoach?" Burns blurted out. Harrier rolled his eyes as Heyman inflated like a challenged gorilla.
"Woah, woah, woah. I ain't got time for Center City spooks comin' around stickin' their nose where it ain't belong. If it's got to do with the Fang it's ours, that was the deal."
"And if it was just Fang I wouldn't be here. We've got good intel the Malnatti's are up to the elbows in this one." A white lie it may be but there was a chance it could be true. The Malnatti crime family certainly loved a good ol' fashioned stick up.
"Bullshit, Malnatti's don't cross the river, everyone without a hole in their braincase knows it." Burns said.
Harrier held up his hands. "That's what I'm here to find out. The sooner I figure out what's going on the sooner I get out of here and you gentlemen can carry on with your…" He glanced at the Faunus owner, still lightly trembling," … police work." And the lesser the chance someone with the authority to hold light up to his shady backstory could show up and fuck him.
Heyman cast a long look in his direction - probably, Harrier couldn't actually see his eyes of course - before sharply whistling at one of the techs.
"Lonnie! Take the lady down to the station. Ain't done with her yet."
One of the techs drew himself away from an emptied display case and began cuffing the owner. "Hey- what- You can't arrest me! I was the one who got robbed! Get your fucking hands off-."
"Relax tootsie pop," Heyman said, drawing a cigar from his breast pocket. "You're just being detained until we're done with our investigation. Of course, this'd been avoided if you could cooperate but oh well," he flicked his zippo open, "That ship has sailed."
Harrier took a half step back as the officer escorted the owner out kicking and screaming, his Hazel eyes lingering a beat as a younger woman with similar features had to be restrained outside the front door, tears streaming down her face as she pleaded with the cop.
"So," Detective Burns began, flipping a couple pages back in his notepad, "let's start from the top, eh?"
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The first thing Jaune noticed was the damp smell of age.
For the past fifteen minutes his new band of bank robbers and war criminals (what a joy that was to think out loud… out quiet… whatever) had shuffled and groped their way through a hastily connected network of stuffy catacombs and disused access tunnels hidden beneath the stone table they had been sitting at.
"Ugh, I think I chipped a nail." Melanie said, exiting the passage and examining her fingers.
"Oh no, what a tragedy. You weren't the one that had a fucking skeleton dropped on you." Mercury said with what Jaune almost thought was a shudder. "Those things suck."
Melanie and Jaune shared a look. "Aren't you a hitman?" Jaune tried.
"Well yeah, I don't make a habit of taking people's bones out of their bodies. Not a fucking psycho, geez." He grumbled, straightening out the lapel on his coat.
Jaune opted to take that one on the nose.
"Whatever, where in Oum's name are we?" Melanie said, stepping out into the darkened room.
As if hearing her words, a resonate electronic thrum filled the air. Distant clacks progressively grew closer and closer until the overhead fluorescent lights switched on with a flood of blinding light.
The room it illuminated was not at all what Jaune had expected. They stood at the top of some kind of control room arranged in a way that kind of reminded Jaune of a lecture hall at Beacon. Three tiers of dust covered consoles were placed in an open semi-circle facing large floor-to-ceiling windows. Whatever was beyond remained unlit.
"The fuck…" Mercury muttered.
"Fuckn' ell you lot are quick. Ruined me damn surprise." Barkeep's voice suddenly interjected.
Turning, Jaune noticed they had entered the room via a hole burrowed into the back wall. Barkeep came through it and offered Harriet behind him an exaggerated hand. The ex-Atlesian took it and stepped into the chamber.
Jaune approached one of the consoles. It was old and bulky, like something out of a retro Spruce Willis fic. He ran a finger across the surface, coming away with a thick glob of dust.
"Well come on then if yer in sucha' hurry," Barkeep chirped, nearly skipping down the staircase that bisected the room, "Let's see the rest of 'er."
At the central edge of the control room - where the professor would be in an actual lecture hall - was a small, raised platform right up against the windows. Placed on it was a modern-looking computer setup that clashed heavily with the antique surroundings. Six screens split into horizontal blocks of three were wired into a multicolored mess of a PC tower. In Jaune's professional opinion it was some of the worst cable management he had ever seen, but what was even more bemusing was the plush burgundy grandfather chair situated in front of it.
Jaune rounded the setup and joined the other four at the window.
"Come on ye fuckn'…" Barkeep grumbled, fiddling with a remote.
"Do you guys have any clue what's going on?" Jaune asked lowly.
Melanie shrugged her shoulders. Mercury ignored him in favor of pressing random buttons on Barkeep's - at least he assumed it was Barkeep's - keyboard. Harriet looked back towards the rows of consoles with narrowed eyes.
Great, this relationship was getting off swimmingly.
A loud bang and sudden flash of light answered Jaune's question instead. Barkeep whooped loudly as light filled the chamber below.
It was a warehouse-esque concrete room except instead of crates it's floor was filled with a tidy grid of dust-covered office desks, maybe 15 in total. Some had been pushed aside to fit a small shipping container and white board near the center of the room. A large archway on the far wall led down onto what looked like an unfinished subway tunnel with a curved platform and art deco styling. On the wall across from them was a massive dormant screen, it's sleek black surface reflecting Jaune's slackjawed expression.
"Welcome to the Opera House lads." Barkeep said with a self-satisfied smile.
"This is a VSS Switchboard."
Everyone turned their eyes to Harriet, Barkeeps smile strained.
"VSS. Like Valean Secret Service VSS?" Mercury asked.
Harriet pointed down towards the center of the room. There, distorted by the desks and shipping container, was unmistakably the crest of the VSS painted on the floor. Twin axes crossed over the floral crown of Vale. Written in old Atlesian on the edge of the crest were the words PERSPICIO. AMEVEO. SERVO.
"Setting up shop in a government building," Melanie looked to Barkeep. "You're a lot of things, Barkeep, but I didn't think you were such a dumbass."
"Ah, ah. Abandoned government building. It was a counter-terrorism surveillance station for the Royale back durin' the Revolution, hasn't been touched by a Kingsman since then either."
He turned to the rest of the crew. "Look, I get it, but were practically invisible 'ere. The Tube, catacombs, sewers, if its underground, this place 'as a way in. We can disappear and crop up anywhere in Vale. And its VSS, meanin' anything under the Council - including Center City - has no bleedin' clue this is even here. Have some trust."
Pushing past the initial absurdity, Jaune couldn't deny the logic. Hiding in plain sight wasn't an insane plan, especially with such a small team. Entrances could be monitored by the built-in security systems, and they could never be truly boxed in given how labyrinthine the Valean Underground was.
"Whatever, long as I got a way out, I don't care," Mercury said. "Now are we gonna do what we came here to do or stand around and gawk at the pretty lights all day?"
"As you wish, lad."
Barkeep turned and marched through a door at the corner of the room with Mercury, Harriet, and Melanie in tow. Jaune lingered at the window, looking down on the VSS crest. The crossed axes reminded him of the ones on Beacon's seal. His eyes flicked up to the dormant jumbotron where a muddy figure stared back at him. He stood tall in a clean, well-fitted suit looking perfectly at home. In control.
Comfortable.
"Coming, Sparky?" Melanie's words cut through his thoughts. She held the door open with her heel. Her green eyes caught a glint of light which, in the shadowed corner, caused them to almost glow.
"Yeah," Jaune coughed. "I'm cool."
The last ones down, Jaune and Melanie joined the rest of the group leaning on the desks near the whiteboard at the center of the room. From below, Jaune noted that the control room was a kind of raised viewing platform and below it was a massive time-worn vault door.
Barkeep pulled the sheet from the whiteboard - the guy really likes whiteboards apparently - revealing the façade of a quiet looking jewelry store.
"What's that?" Mercury asked.
"Yer first mark."
"I thought we were doing the First Valean." Melanie cut in.
"Aye you are, but not as yer first job," he chuckled incredulously. "Are ye suicidal? The Valean is top o' the line, best GenSec wiring and CA muscle Lien can buy, over the table at least. You expect me to send an untested, untrained crew at that?"
"Kinda."
"Oum, I like confidence lass, but don' be daft. 'Sides, we need three things to pull off a spectacular like that; can you tell me what they are?"
"Weapons," Harriet answered immediately.
"Hmm… Cash," Mercury followed up, "Ops aren't free, gotta pay off insiders and buy up equipment that's too inconvenient to steal."
A beat of silence passed before he realized they were staring at him. "Uh… "What would Pyrrha say what would Pyrrha say, "Bi- no! Intelligence."
Barkeep smiled, "Bang on. Unfortunately, I spent me last note getting you four in this room and, grh," He swung open the shipping container door, "arming ye with somethin' a little heavier than can openers." Inside was an assortment of old-looking firearms and crates of ammunition. "Whatever ye don't use, we can re-sell, but even then, we're a Lien-store visit from destitution."
He stepped back over to the whiteboard, "Get this job done, make enough Lien to keep the lights on, and then we can go about pullin' the biggest stick-up job in Valean history, yeah? Think of her as a training mission. Low stakes, low danger, perfect learnin' environment."
"We still getting paid?" Mercury said.
"Pfft. Are ye gettin' paid, who you think I am? Course you are," he waived his hand dismissively. "10k each. A signing bonus, if ye fancy."
Jaune's eyes nearly popped out of his skull.
"That's it?" Mercury asked, somehow disappointed with getting almost 1/3rd of the average Valean's yearly salary.
"For the work that's a lot. I can clean this place out with a blumin' walkin' stick and strong verbs. You'll be in n' out faster than an ATM withdrawal." Mercury shrugged, seemingly satisfied, and laid back across the desk.
"What's the Op?" Harriet asked instead.
Barkeep lit up a cigar. "For you lot to decide. I'm just a contractor. I supply the info and equipment, you go about deliverin' how you see fit."
Mercury sat up from where he laid down on the desk, "Sweet. Well in that case I say we punch through the fron-"
"Weelllll, I do have one condition, Non-negotiable" Barkeep interrupted, holding up his index finger. Jaune watching with a rising sense of dread as that index finger turned towards him, "The kid takes the lead."
"Fuck off," Mercury barked out immediately.
In almost the exact opposite reaction Harriet nodded once then turned to face him in a posture akin to a soldier awaiting orders.
Melanie fell somewhere in the vast mountain range of 'reserved exasperation'.
Jaune? He was out right now, you can leave a message though and he'll get back to you later.
Barkeep took a drag. "Rough crowd, eh? Have some faith in the kid, he was a team leader in the Big Leagues, probably the only one of us with any actual strategic or leadership training honestly."
And he was at the bottom of his class in both!
Barkeep gave him a glance that said, 'they don't need to know that.'
"Has he ever even held a gun before!?"
All eyes turned to him. He should probably say something. "… totally, yeah." He'd held Magnhild once. In hammer form sure but that counted, right?
RIGHT?
"Un-fucking-believable. I'm not taking orders from a Boy Scout, closeted basket case or not." Mercury said.
Barkeep gestured to the stairs with his cigar. "You can let yourself out then, Mister Black. But rest assured, once that door shuts it will never open again." He puffed out a ring of smoke. "Those are my terms."
Mercury clenched his jaw, his steel grey eyes sharpened into iron pikes that failed to penetrate Barkeep's stalwart presence and so turned on Jaune. The Arc would like to have said he met the assassin's challenge and stood up to him with a straight back, but all the failed Huntsman could do was look away.
"Tch, fine." Mercury said with a huff, dropping his glare in favor of trying to melt the concrete floor.
Barkeep bobbed his head. "Captial." And turned his attention back to Jaune. The cigar broke the profile of his face but Jaune could still see the smile.
The urge to protest danced on the tip of his tongue. His blue eyes navigated up to the silent jumbotron, to the muddy blonde figure that stood on the edge of its façade, gazing down at him with a blank face and slightly tilted head.
He was the worst person to lead this group, everybody knew it, and yet Barkeep still wanted him to. The man had proven himself to be many things, incompetent or dumb were not on that list. So why the insistence? What did Jaune have that the others didn't?
He looked to Melanie, the mafia enforcer. Mercury, the destitute assassin. Harriet, the convicted war criminal. If push came to shove, these three wouldn't bat an eye at enacting gut-wrenching levels of violence onto others if it was more convenient than the alternative. Something prevented him from outright calling them monsters, though. They didn't actively seek suffering - well, maybe Mercury did - they had just been raised in it. Chaos was all they knew, and Jaune had experienced firsthand what that kind of desperation could do to someone.
This way, perhaps the needless bloodshed could be avoided. Jaune could find a better way - one that kept everyone alive and the mission complete. Because if he failed, if someone like Mercury got his way?
The wet crunch of ruined joints. Hollow eyes gazed up through swollen flesh.
Would anything actually change?
"What's the move then, boss?" Melanie asked with a grin. Jaune blinked away his thoughts.
Then again, maybe Miss Goodwitch should have just thrown him over the Beacon cliffs when she had the chance.
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Harrier dropped his cigarette butt to the tiled floor as smushed it with his polished dress shoes. "Yeah, I got that in the preliminary report. Four bandits, right?"
Burns nodded. "Even split between birds and guys from what we gathered. Full get ups though," He said, waving his pen, "Masks, gloves, fuck even matching color contacts. Got nothing to Id with except tone of voice."
"Spoke in codes, too. Misters Green, Blue, Pink, and Purple." Heyman interjected. "No rhyme or reason neither, seems they just plucked out of thin air to make it more confusing."
Harrier hummed. Sounds like they had experience. His hazel eyes flicked to the dormant security camera in the top corner of the room. That, or they had someone with experience guiding them.
"Weaponry?"
"Basic led throwers," Burns gestured to the camera, "No images 'course, but a mix of close to mid-range rifles and boom sticks with the basic knowledge to use them. At least in the eyes of a civilian."
"How'd they get in then? Report I saw made no mention of transport."
Burns and Heyman shared a look. "Yeah, about that…"
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Part 1 is in the bag baby, and we have our second POV! Rest assured I'm not gonna start adding POVs like crazy, I just wanted an outside perspective of the coming events. Sort of like an FBI-files but we have a character telling it to us rather than just some supplemental documentation.
I played around a little bit with the idea of a third POV of someone in Beacon, that way we have a view from Beacon, the City of Vale, and from Payday. Let me know if that would be interesting.
I felt going straight into First World would have been a little too much, so instead I'm breaking it up into a whole arc to introduce Jaune and Payday to the world of the Valean Underground, setup the character storylines we'll take with us for the rest of the story, and help establish Jaune as the Dallas we all know he can be.
We'll have three preliminary heists before the big one: Lien, equipment, and intel. I'll let you guess which heist is inspired by what.
If you're interested and want a visual reference, the Opera House is sort of a three-way cross over amongst the Switchboard from Fallout 4/Bohdi's Laundromat hideout from PD2/and the Old City Hall subway station in NYC.
See ya later.
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I received a request in the last chapter to provide translations for the foreign terms I've included. I'm happy to oblige, though I'll say that they are minor spoilers when placed in context. For those wondering:
Strigoaică - Romanian for 'female vampire'.
Tiocfaidh ár lá - An Irish toast meaning 'Our Day Will Come". Commonly used as a slogan by the Irish Republican Army.
Mur Street - 'Mur' is literally just French for wall. 10 points if you can figure out what goes on there.
Gendarmes - French slang for cops
PERSPICIO. AMEVEO. SERVO. - Observe. Dismantle. Protect.