“Remind me what we’re doing again?”

I sighed, tamping down my frustration and the rising urge to strangle all my minions and go through with the robbery myself. “I did tell you we were robbing a bank, did I not?”

“That may have come up at some point, yes.” There was no way to tell what Peg was thinking behind her generic black mask. Her voice was as bland and featureless as her face.

“Then what, exactly, are you confused about?” Although I kept my voice polite, I hoped she would notice the distinctively frigid tone.

“If we’re supposed to be robbing the bank, why are we sitting here on the rooftop? A rooftop which, I might add, has no door leading down into the bank full of money right below our feet.” Peg either had not noticed my irritation, or was ignoring it.

Mutters from the rest of my minions rose up behind my back, a dangerous tide that I would have to get under control before it drowned me completely.

Taking a deep breath, I focused on Peg’s black sweatshirt, encouraging the threads in her collar to break free from their shape and wrap around her neck.

She jumped in surprise at the feeling of something moving on her neck, and then made a very satisfying choking sound as the threads cut off her air supply. Peg’s hands flew to her throat, clawing madly at the threads that had suddenly developed a life of their own.

“While I do appreciate the input of my beloved minions, there are some places a supervillain has to draw the line,” I said with a giggle, bounding over to Peg and patting her on the head. My hand still resting possessively on her head, I turned to face the others. Knife’s fists were clenched, and Bea looked like she was ready to leap across the space between us and strangle me with her bare hands.

“If you hurt her...” Bea took one step towards me, but stopped when Peg made another choking sound.

“Oh please, she’s perfectly fine,” I scoffed, removing my hand from Peg’s head at last and giving her a companionable punch in the shoulder. “Just a little tongue-tied right now. Or should I say...throat-tied?”

I giggled at my terrible joke, and released my mental hold on the fabric molecules surrounding Peg’s throat. They flowed back into her clothing and the smuggler dropped to her knees, gasping in the cool night air. Bea rushed to her side, yanking her mask off to give her more room to breath. She didn’t look at me, but her shoulders were tense as she patted Peg on the back and waited for her coughing to subside.

“Now, if there are no more frivolous questions...?” I smoothed down my tattered tutu, hiding my shaking hands in its layers of fluff. Peg was still coughing. Why was she still coughing? I hadn’t choked her that badly, had I?

“Ahem,” I cleared my throat, trying unsuccessfully to clear my mind at the same time. “It’s going down like this: you four are going to walk right in the front doors of the bank, guns blazing, like any ordinary bank robbery. Once you have the situation under control in there, one of you will fire a shot, which is the signal I need to begin my part of the robbery. After that, all you need to do is keep everyone distracted long enough for me to rob the vault. Any questions? No? Excellent.”

My minions remained frozen in place, almost as if they had become a part of the concrete roof themselves. Black masks and darkened rooftops do not provide ideal conditions for guessing facial expressions, but I could only assume that they were gaping at me incredulously.

“But how will we know when you’re done in the vault?” Knife asked. “And what do we do after?”

“After I’m done, your only job is to run like frightened rabbits!” I told them, bouncing a few times on the spot and then chasseing across the rooftop until I was directly in front of Knife. I leaned forward until I could see his eyes glinting behind his anonymous black mask. “As for your other question, trust me, you’ll know.”

With a giggle, I spun away from Knife and back into the centre of the roof.

“Alright, my minions, time to get moving. If everything goes according to plan we should be able to accomplish this bank robbery in less than an hour, and we can all be home in our nice warm beds by midnight.” I ushered the four of them over to the far side of the roof, where a convenient fire escape led all the way down to the back alley behind the bank.

They descended the fire escape without a word, Peg still rubbing her throat uncomfortably. It was amazing what I could convince people to do with just a mask and a thin veneer of insanity.

As soon as my minions were out of sight, I scampered back across the rooftop to check the explosives I had planted the night before. All ten charges were exactly where I had left them, arrayed in a circle around the vault. There were also explosives placed in an identical pattern on every floor beneath my feet, going all the way down to the vault.

Although I could have just slipped through the layers of brick and concrete between me and the vault, parting the building like a curtain, this way was more fun. The people of this city were going to sit up and take notice of me, and the best way to do that was with a bang. Piles of cash were not going to impress Ms. Ishida and Mr. Falcus, and all the other high-ups at RUBE. They had given me a month to create as much drama, pizzazz, and splashy headlines as possible. I had to make a scene if people were going to remember me and recognize me for who I was; the soon-to-be overlord of this city.

Once I had blasted a hole from the roof all the way down to the vault I could swoop in, grab the cash, wave to my adoring fans, and swoop right back out.

Reassured that everything was in place, I retreated to the farthest edge of the roof and crouched down, awaiting my minions’ signal. I didn’t have long to wait.

The gunshot was faint, but still audible up here on the roof, and I grinned. Even to myself, I wouldn’t admit how relieved I was that my minions had actually followed my instructions. As soon as I heard the signal, I jammed my thumb into the big red button that was connected to the explosives. The button was a little joke of mine: a throwback to the numerous superhero movies we had been required to watch and analyze in school. All good schemes involved some well-placed explosives and a big red button to set them off.

The charges detonated in perfect synchronization, blowing a large hole from the roof all the way down to the vault in the basement.

Shards of steel and concrete smashed into the wall that I had hastily constructed in front of myself. I remained crouched there until the building stopped shaking, then rose, coughing in the dust. Screams filtered up from the hole in the building, and another gun shot echoed. I would have to rely on my faithful minions to check the insanity and chaos in the bank, and hope they were good at keeping themselves calm despite the entire bank turning into rubble around them. I had failed to mention that blowing up a large section of the bank was part of my plan.

Once the smoke had cleared, I skipped across to the hole in the roof and looked down at the destruction below. At the bottom of my hole, money floated in the aftermath of the blast, a snowstorm of crisp, slightly singed paper. Although some of it had been shredded during the explosion, most was still intact and waiting for me.

I tossed six duffel bags into the hole first, watching them tumble through the air into the rubble below. One for each of my minions, and one for me. I grimaced, remembering my first bank robbery, less than a week ago, when I had failed to consider what I would carry the money away in.

I bounced on my toes a few times, then leapt headfirst into the hole, spiralling through the air like a diver at the world championships. My tutu fluttered out around me, a cloud of fire surrounding a black comet, streaking through the sky to wreak havoc on the ground below.

I thrilled at the feeling of picking up such speed as I spiralled through the air, although some part of me could not help but remember that other time two times I had fallen off the side of a building. This drop was shorter, however, and I had been practicing since then. There were a few tricks up my sleeve that should make it easy enough to walk away from this unscathed.

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I was just one storey above the ground now, and the people on the floors surrounding the hole were little screaming blurs racing past me. Their terror made the smile on my face grow even bigger.

The ground rushed up faster than I thought, and I flung out with all my power in order to slow my fall, using the walls around me, the scattered rubble, and even the air. I made the molecules reach out towards me and drag me upwards, a manoeuver that almost ripped my arms from their sockets. However, it managed to slow me down enough that when I sent the first tendrils of the floor up to greet me they did not break my legs, just gave me an unpleasant jolt.

I landed on the floor of the vault harder than I would have hoped and lay there for a moment, recovering the wind that had been knocked out of me. Everything was going well so far; I could afford a minute to catch my breath. Besides, I knew there would probably be people staring down the hole at my crumpled form on the ground, and I loved overturning peoples’ expectations. After counting to a slow sixty, I jumped to my feet and threw my arms in the air like a gymnast completing their routine. I grinned up at the shocked blobs of faces lining the ragged edges of the hole on every floor, all the way up to the roof. They recoiled, many of the heads abruptly disappearing from sight. Although I was a little disappointed they would not stay to witness my brilliant plan come to fruition, it was true that this was probably the least exciting part of the show.

My moment of showmanship over, I turned my attention to the neat stacks of money surrounding me. With a moment of regret over the inelegance of my duffel bags, I began stuffing bills into the first sack, keeping a careful eye on the black watch I had strapped to my wrist. The clunky black watch ruined the effect I was going for of a graceful, slightly deranged ballerina. Dancers do not normally run around with watches on their wrists, but in this case I had succumbed to practicality.

After precisely fifty seconds, I zipped up the first duffel bag and yanked open the next. I had given myself a good five minutes before the police got there and managed to infiltrate the vault. My minions would have to use their own judgement on when to scatter, because I realized now, as I zipped the second bag closed, that I had failed to give them instructions for when the police showed up. I paused briefly, glancing upwards in a futile attempt to catch sight of them. No. Shaking my head, I opened the next bag and continued. I had to remember this wasn’t their first caper. Besides there were five of them, so it would be merely inconvenient if one or two were captured, rather than the end of the world.

I had started on my fifth duffel bag when the first of the sirens sounded, much too close for comfort. The police station must have been nearer than I thought, because the first siren was quickly followed by another, then another, all of them rapidly converging on the bank.

Just to be on the safe side I moved on to the next bag, tossing the bills in haphazardly. Better to have six sacks with some money in them than five and none, because that would mar the perfection of my plan.

As I finished adding a final few wads of bills to the sixth sack, there were shouts from outside and boots pounded into the bank, echoing off the marble floor. I could hear it all perfectly through the large hole in the roof of the vault. It was time to leave. I did not want to be here when they realized that they could all just gather around the hole that I had made and point their guns down at me. While I thought that I would probably be able to avoid all those guns, I didn’t want to take my chances if I didn’t have to. I could make one gun melt, but more than that was stretching the limits of my superpowers, and could be problematic.

Zipping the last two bags shut, I snatched up three of them in each hand. Ready as I could be, I coaxed the concrete floor into pushing me up, out of the vault, out of the bank, and out into the freedom of the world beyond the roof. It complied, a thin tendril pushing up on each foot. I wobbled at first, before I got the hang of pulling up with even pressure on each strand of floor.

I rose up out of the depths like a demon rising from hell, and my adoring fans seemed to be just as impressed as if I had been a demon. Those that hadn’t already run away either gasped, screamed, or fainted, depending on their constitutions. Among the sparse crowd, I couldn’t see my minions anywhere. Hopefully they were already long gone, because even as I rose up through the first floor, policemen in black uniforms flowed into the bank.

Once the floor beneath me would stretch no more, I reached out to the ragged edges of floors and ceilings on either side of me, forcing them to send out thin tendrils and push me upwards as well. In this manner I was able to make it all the way to the roof. The police officers who saw me were too shocked by my miraculous ascent to even raise their guns. Their hands, guns and all, dangled limply by their sides as they gaped at me.

I didn’t try to hold back a grin at their dazed expressions. Instead, I let it spread across my face and took the opportunity to put on a brief performance. As I rose unsteadily through the air, I called on my thin tendrils of floor to spin me around in a circle. Spreading the duffel bags out as though they were wings, I lifted my face up to the ceiling and pirouetted on one foot, trusting the floor tendrils to keep me well balanced. I wobbled at first, but then steadied, the molecules of marble, concrete, and steel working together frantically to support my single foot. Then I turned my gaze back to the crowds of people on the edges of the hole and waved, despite my bags full of money. A few people were so shocked that they waved back. I favoured them with a special smile, and continued to wave until I reached the roof.

As I stepped from the unsteady platform I had created onto the solid concrete of the rooftop I sighed with relief, my grin fading as the adrenaline drained away, making me realize just how much I had overused my powers. I had one foot on the roof, one still suspended in midair, when a shot echoed beneath me.

A burning pain streaked across my right calf and the molecules that I had been controlling abruptly snapped back to their original shape, my concentration destroyed. I windmilled my arms, the heavy duffel bags throwing me off balance.

Gravity pulled on my right leg, trying to drag me back down into the depths of the bank. Gathering my last reserves of mental strength, I put all my energy into solidifying the air behind me, turning it into a battering ram that slammed into my back, knocking me forward onto the roof.

I tumbled to the ground, the bags of money yanked from my grip as I skidded to a stop amid the gravel and explosion debris. Another shot from below had me scrambling to my feet almost immediately.

My right leg was on fire, and a quick glance revealed a long cut up the back of my calf. It was shallow, the bullet having only grazed my leg, but long, and bleeding more than I would have liked.

“Just a scrape, not even worth thinking about,” I muttered to myself as I gathered up my duffel bags once more. There was no time to do the meditation trick we had learned in school, where you folded up the pain, put it in an envelope, and mailed it to the other side of the world. I would just have to do my best to ignore it. The job wasn’t over yet, and the raised voices of the police echoed from all sides of the building.

With a sinking feeling I realized that I may have overestimated my ability to get away from the bank before the police arrived. Although I had managed to escape outside, it was quite clear that I could not slip down the fire escape and out into the back alley, as I had originally planned. I risked a quick peek over the back of the building just to make sure, and cursed as I saw black uniforms swarming through the small space, the bright beams of flashlights bouncing off walls as they swung towards the roof.

Ducking back down, I took a moment to stop and think. The pain in my leg together with the mental exhaustion brought on by overextending my superpowers were making it impossible to come up with a reasonable plan. My minions had probably already revised their plans upon seeing the number of police surrounding the bank, and I would bet that they had run straight back to Bea’s clothing shop, their unofficial headquarters. I had to hurry, because it wouldn’t take the police long to find the fire escape. I was just lucky Fireball hadn’t arrived yet to back them up.

“Making trouble again, are we?”

As though my thoughts had summoned him, I turned around to find Fireball standing in the centre of the roof, Coal lurking in his shadow like a demented puppy.

“I was wondering when you would show up,” I said, smiling as though I didn’t have a care in the world, while inwardly cursing the fact that just a minute earlier and I would have been safely away from here. I was going to have to do something about the superhero sooner rather than later, I would prefer to meet him on my own terms. Instead, he kept unexpectedly showing up right when I was trying to disappear.

Making a quick decision, I pushed myself to my feet and slung the bags of money onto my shoulders. My injured leg protested this sudden movement, but I did my best to ignore its complaints.

Before the superhero could react, I took a running start and leaped over the edge of the bank roof, aiming for the slightly lower building next door. My feet had just touched the edge of it when a wave of heat washed over my back. I barely had enough time to drop to the ground and throw up a hastily put-together shield of rooftop and gravel to block the ball of fire. In my hurry to escape I had forgotten that Fireball had been aptly named for his ability to hurl balls of fire with deadly accuracy.

“Going so soon?” Fireball asked.

I rolled to my feet, readjusting my grip on the bags. The superhero was standing at the edge of the roof I had just vacated, hands on his hips, grinning as widely as I had been while robbing the bank.

“So sorry,” I said, shrugging. “Wish I could stay, but I have an appointment to keep.”

“You keep running off when I’m just trying to get to know you,” Fireball said. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness and with the mask covering it, but I was pretty sure he had just winked at me.

“Maybe next time you’ll be lucky. But right now, I really have to run.”

With that, I raised the wall of the roof I was standing on by about six feet, enough to cover my escape. There was a shout of confusion from behind me, but no sounds of pursuit as I pounded away across the rooftop.