Chapter 9
Silkie wasn't really sure what she expected when she was told to "request" Torchwick's services. She thought she would be skulking around the usual seedy bars and warehouses, not this.
She stood in front of an unassuming town home in the residential zone of Vale. A simple, baby blue, two story town home. It was even listed under his actual name, which she supposed was fine since ,legally, his name wasn't attached to any crimes. He, like most all professional criminals, used a pseudonym when conducting his typical activity. Probably the strangest thing of all was the fact that he had a legal source of income.
She felt a little underdressed in her gray hoodie, ripped jeans, and black undershirt. She pulled the key from her hoodie and inserted it into the lock. It clicked open. She let herself into the building. She was greeted by an empty living room, that meant the girls were likely upstairs or with Roman. She passed through the room with an even gait, not stopping to look at the furniture. She headed towards the back of the house, through a hallway connected to the living room.
She figured he was either dramatic enough to have his room be in the very back, or he didn't want people to have immediate access to it. Either way, she'd find him.
It didn't take very long as the room at the far end of the hall was open, and she could hear the distinct sounds of typing coming from it. She peered through to find him sitting at a desk in front of one if the at-home terminals.
"I wasn't aware that you played the stocks."
Torchwick spun around in his chair to stare at her before turning back around muttering something about changing locks. Shutting down his Scrollstation, Torchwick turned back to face her.
"What can I say… it's easy money." He laid on the suave thick.
Needless to say, Silkie wasn't convinced. "Yeah, and I'm the heiress to the Schnee Dust Company."
The thief rolled his eyes. "Trust me. It really is pretty easy. You just have to have a sense for these things, and, with a bit of luck, you can reap the rewards with little investment."
Silkie tossed a manilla folder at him that he snatched out of the air. He raised an eyebrow. "This is…"
"A request."
He sighed deeply. "Right. A 'request'. How could it be anything else?"
He started flipping through the papers inside before pausing on a page partway through. "Why does he want that?"
"He doesn't. He just wants it out of the hands of the guy that has it. Something on it is enough of a threat that the Chief wants it out of the picture." Silkie leaned against the doorframe. "Personally, I think it has some map to a hidden treasure outside of Vale."
Torchwick gave her a bewildered look. She glared at him. "What? I like conspiracies."
"Right." He tossed the folder onto the desk. "Tell the Chief I'll get on it as soon as I can."
Silkie turned to leave. "Tell the girls I said 'Hi'."
With her piece said, she left.
"What a pain." Roman sighed. He turned to his right, staring at his closet. "You heard her girls. She said, 'Hi.'"
The closet didn't respond to him. He continued to stare at it, trying to break its stalwart defiance of him. The battle waged long and hard, countless perished in the endless eons that passed since Roman Torchwick engaged the closet in the bloodiest war Remnant had ever seen. None knew if the war would ever see an end, but everyone knew that it had changed the planet forever.
Neo's Semblance shattered with her Aura as the two girls were revealed to have been standing directly were he had been staring. The handful of seconds that had passed between Roman calling them out and Neo's Aura breaking still hung in the air.
The two girls looked at one another, a panicked plea for the other to have a plan.
"Now, now. You're not in trouble… Maybe. Really, I suppose it would have to do if you were planning some poor joke or not."
The already quite pale girls seemed to go even paler. Roman's stare grew thoughtful.
"You know, I don't think we've ever really talked about how your Semblance worked, Neo."
The girls' quickly took the out handed to them, nodding their heads vigorously. Roman leaned back in his chair. "So how does it work? Is it like an imprint onto a person's mind?"
Neo shook her head and signed out her answer. "No. People can touch them. They don't seem to notice anything about it."
Roman crossed his arms. "So a physical projection of a mental image. What's it like on the other side?"
This time Red answered, her signs slower than Neo's. "There is a weird light thing. Like a broken mirror."
"So you're hidden behind the illusion, and it can be interacted with, but breaks when Neo runs out of Aura."
Neo punched one hand into the other.
"Or if it is broken. So what about when you aren't behind it, can the change be permanent. Like what you did with your whole getup."
Neo looked astonished at the remark. Roman quirked an eyebrow. "Did'ja think I wouldn't notice? Sure, people have all different kinds of crazy hair colors but yours takes the cake for the strangest I've seen."
He shrugged. "Nothing wrong with it, but it definitely doesn't come across as natural. So that leaves some Semblance shenanigans or dyeing it, and seeing as how you haven't some much as looked in the direction of the hair dyes in the three years you've been with me, that leaves us with Semblances. Yours just so happens to incur some sort of physical change, even if temporary."
Neo hadn't thought about that at all. She knew she had been the one to cause the change, but she thought of it as a one time thing that she had done more on accident. Red looked between the two, confused.
"Well, Red, Neo here at some point likely changed her appearance using her Semblance, but as we both know, her Aura is currently broken. This means that any effect that her Semblance had should be cancelled out due to the energy supplying the transformation being cut off. This implies that she is capable of creating a permanent change and not just temporary. The question is 'How did she do that?'"
For the most part, Red still looked confused. Roman sighed. "You know how your Semblance lets you phase through things?"
Red nodded.
"And you can make things that you touch share that property."
Again she nodded. It wasn't exactly at that level yet, but it got the general idea across.
"Well, think about it like this. What would happen if something you touched was permanently like that? It would just fall forever. Now apply this to Neo here. She managed to make a change to herself that lasted indefinitely. This begs the next question, is this an effect that she can apply to other people or things? Is this only applicable to her because her body is just a physical representation of her soul and, given the mechanics of how we presume her Semblance to work, she was allowed to make a permanent change because how she looked no longer represented her?"
"Is the reason that the illusions shatter because reality is trying to exert how it wants things to look and behave, thus degrading the illusion slowly, meaning Neo needs to constantly supply Aura to it in order to maintain it? Would these hypothetical permanent changes be possible on another person, or would their soul's metaphysical impression fight against the change?"
Neo and Red looked rather lost. Roman sighed. "Right. Don't try to talk advanced Aura theory with an eight and a ten year old."
He clapped. "Point is Neo's Semblance could have a higher level application but is kept in check by some means. Either way it should prove useful in the future. That being said…"
He grabbed the manilla folder off his desk. "I think you girls are old enough. Who wants to help with some heists?"
To say Red was disappointed would be an understatement. She was led to believe that they would be going all sneaky sneaky. Breaking into people's homes and scouring the place for any valuables they could find. Yeah, there had been some sneaking around the initial places, but when they got to the wealthier looking houses, stealth fell off.
Like this house, Roman had said it would be their final stop for the night. She wasn't nearly satisfied. All she and Neo did was carry some bags full of stuff back to Roman's warehouse. They were simply walking up to the fence surrounding it. The moonlight did little to show whatever grandioseness the place might have had, especially since she wasn't paying all that much attention to it as she quietly followed Roman and Neo through a hole in the fence hidden by the overgrowth.
Roman lockpicked the door and held it open for them. Neo stepped through quickly, but Red looked up at him and signed. "This isn't very fun."
Roman sighed. "A good heist is a boring heist. We should count ourselves lucky that nothing bad has happened. Some of these guys usually take extra precautions with regard to their stuff. I guess everyone had the night off."
Red wasn't happy with the answer she was given, but she walked through the door anyway. A caw echoed throughout the night. Roman looked around, he wasn't normally superstitious, but things had been going too easy. He knew the families they were stealing from, especially this one. This house was normally under tight wraps with patrols all over the place.
He had brought the kids out so they could get used to using their Semblances in a less controlled environment, but that plan was thrown out when he saw nobody guarding the place. If someone was watching them and clearing out the places ahead of time, then he sure hoped that this wasn't a trap.
He hurriedly entered after the girls, closing the door behind him. He led the girls through the marble hallways, keeping himself ready in case someone tried to ambush them. The mansion was normally quite pleasant to look at, but Roman could hardly find it within himself to appreciate it.
Soon they found themselves at the room that housed what they wanted. Opening the door revealed an open room filled with pedestals. Each one home to some object. One housed an old looking book, another an ancient, rusted sword. The pattern continued as they journeyed through the room, occasionally glancing at some relic of times passed housed within a glass barricade. They came to a stop before one such pedestal. Resting on it was a bust, a bust of the last king of Vale.
"Alright, Red. Think you can grab it?"
The young girl nodded as Roman lifted her up to it. She took a deep breath as she focused on directing her Semblance towards her arms. Once he lifted her into position, Red moved her arms towards the stature. Her arms passed through the glass unimpeded. As her hands approached the bust, she further focused on her Semblance, pooling her Aura around her hands. She stretched her Aura once her hands should have it. Purple light flowed from her hands and covered the statue.
Sweat started pouring down her head as her Aura covered the bust. Roman slowly started moving her away. Her face scrunched up as the weight hit her, her Aura straining under the constant drain. Soon she was placed back on the ground when she practically dropped the bust onto the ground. It fell with a loud thump onto the solid floor.
Red was hunched over, breathing deeply. Neo ran over to the girl, a worried look on her face. Roman picked up the bust and placed it into the small bag he had brought. He looked at the girls.
"Alright. Let's head out."
They both looked a bit confused. There was a whole bunch of really old and probably really valuable stuff ripe for the taking and all they were leaving with was a rather unimpressive bust. Roman seemed to know what they were thinking.
"Look, Red is probably at her limit, so we'd have to do the rest the old fashion way and I'd rather not have to take the chance that the pressure sensors go off, then have to hurry out. Besides, we were only asked to grab this thing. Let's leave before things go to the Beowolves."
With that he picked up the tired Red and headed back the way they came with Neo hot on his heels.
Roman set the bag down on a nearby crate as Red and Neo climbed up next to it. He walked a little away from them before turning to face them. "So, ladies. What did you learn?"
The girls looked at each other, then Neo started signing. "If nothing is happening, then things are going your way."
Roman waved his hand in a so-so manner. "Not quite. If things are going your way, then that means nothing has happened. Red, how about you?"
Red huffed. "Heists are boring."
Roman shook his head. "Heists aren't usually that easy, but generally you want things to be fairly boring. That means nobody saw you, which means you don't have to deal with whatever security there is."
Red rolled her eyes. At least if she were fighting someone then that meant that she could get it all over with quickly. Though there was probably some truth to what Roman was saying.
"Then again, I was hoping that things wouldn't have gone so smoothly."
The girls gave him questioning looks.
"Practicing in the warehouses and at home is fine and all, but you girls will need real experience if you want to be successful in this industry. Dealing with goons and guard patterns would help you understand the intricacies of the job. That being said, I think we did alright with the rather random assortment of items required."
Neo quirked an eyebrow. "Why did take all this stuff anyway?"
"Honestly, I have no idea why the chief wants this stuff. Probably wants to put some of it into a museum or use it as blackmail material or something." He shook his head. "Anyway, let's put the bust with the rest of the stuff and head back home."
Red and Neo hopped down from the crate. Unfortunately, the bag snagged on one of them and was pulled along. It quickly fell and crashed onto the floor. Roman quickly ran over to it, unzipping the bag. Pieces of the statue fell out along with a map.
The three looked at it. The thief cautiously picked it up. "Well, shit. Silkie was right."
He spent a moment thinking before a mischievous smile bloomed on his face.
"How do you girls feel about a treasure hunt?"
