So, robbing a bank. It wasn't something to do casually; you needed a plan. Equipment. To make it worthwhile, it needed to be the right bank, on the right day. During the week, most banks didn't have enough cash on hand to make it worthwhile; you either wanted to hit them right after a delivery, or after tons of people had brought in cash; and you couldn't predict the latter.
Granted, first, he needed a new car. Preferably a van, or.. While searching through Craigslist ads, he found a listing for an old Ford truck. Really old; before all the latest engine innovations, one of those pieces of junk that still got less than twenty miles per gallon. Selling for, of course, dirt cheap; nobody wanted one of those for anything other than a farm truck that would only go for a few miles at a time.
Looking over the beat-up, rusted piece of junk selling for less than a grand, he broke out in a grin. That would be perfect. Could fit the bike in the back, cover it with a tarp, and have tons of other gear space. And screw the expensive gas; after he robbed the bank, he'd get a better car. Somewhere far, far away.
Two days later, he pulled into Crater City Colorado in an antique truck, with the product of a handful of other Craigslist sales in the back. Solar panels. A tent. Paints. Tools. All sorts of random nonsense, leaving the back of his truck looking like a well-worn work truck driven by someone who worked for a living. The tent, of course, had a purpose; after the job, he'd probably be camping out in the wilderness for a while, letting the heat die down, while laundering the money as slowly as he could stand. And even more importantly, right now, it was covering the bike; a nice, quick, emergency getaway that could outrun most of the cop cars.
But... not Lightning.
He stopped at a La Quinta Inn; a fairly nice, budget, hotel; told them he was in town for work, and managed to avoid giving them a card by paying a full week up front; they still wanted to see an ID, however, and he responded with one of the fakes; a nice, blurry, terrible rendition of his face that would be worthless in the future.
While the place had a pool, a gym, vending machines, and was overall nice and clean, it had a far more important feature; there were three banks within sight of the window he'd chosen. Two cameras in place, a laptop setup to record... and he could start gathering information on the comings and goings of the employees of Crater City Credit, Colorado Bank and Trust, and ColCorp West.
The banks were all directly connected to the highway less than a quarter-mile away; a nice, long, clear path with trees overhanging it in dozens of sections, making overwatch with a sattelite or helicopter impossible. Anyone that could outrun his pursuers long enough to make the highway could simply turn off in one of dozens of spots... and vanish.
When the time came, his truck, and his tent, would be in one of these spots; somewhere he could legally camp; and he'd have a hole with some loose brush he could pile over it to hide his bike. He'd escape with as much cash as he could carry out on the bike, ride out here, hide the cash and the bike... and if some cops happened by? He'd be cooking some sausages over a campfire.
Watching the banks would be a long, boring process; but he'd probably need to do it for at least a couple of weeks. Make sure he was seeing patterns and not one-off events. When is the cash delivered?
The first day, he got to see the standard closing; and after-hours; process at the CCC. A few employees; a couple of pretty young women, both blonde, and an older, darker-haired woman. The younger women waited at the door; the older activated an alarm; and the three all walked out, locking the door on the way.
The vault, of course, had already been closed and secured. And if he recalled correctly, there should be a time-lock; at this point, even if you broke in, unless you melted the door down you'd be unable to get in til morning; and if you did melt the door down? Well. An alarm. And within seconds.. Lightning.
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***
Every country had speedsters on the payroll, at least one or two. People who could outrun a car, or a helicopter, were fairly common; thousands of them. Metas who could dodge bullets? Hundreds. None of them were quite like Lightning, however.
A Titan in the truest sense of the word, Mark Maxwell's speed was limited only by the laws of physics; and seemed to bend those fairly well. His first sprint after gaining his powers had been well past Mach 10; and the casualties involved astronomical, including some of his friends and family. A drunk driver had hopped a curb, almost hitting Mark and his sister; and Mark had grabbed his sister, run across the street; and by the time he stopped, had generated a sonic shockwave that killed his sister, the driver, hundreds of people in nearby traffic and homes, causing massive destruction.
All by moving 30 feet at a speed somewhere between the speeds of sound and light; but according to the doctors who studied him; the only reason he couldn't exceed the speed of light would be due to the simple fact it would cause the destruction of the planet.
Jason had heard of Lightning; he'd trained to deal with Speedsters in the army. And by trained to deal with, it had basically come down to something simple. As soon as one guy gets hit by a speedster; everybody deploys Shroud grenades. They create a cloud of particles that, if the speedster tries to pass through at too great a speed, they get shredded. The truly high-end ones like Lightning could actually vibrate in some strange way to pass through air molecules without creating shockwaves; its why he could effectively patrol several entire states; cruising down 500 miles of interstate in a second; dodging flecks of dust as if they were walls in his path.
But if it wasn't just air? If it was dirt, dust, smoke, water.. a whole blend of different kinds of molecules? They'd have to slow down. Massively. Criminals in the past had tried to deal with Lightning by using tear gas grenades, or setting off sprinkler systems. He'd responded by forming a vortex to pull the gas out, or simply phasing through water and causing shockwaves in the air, blowing out windows but not killing anyone.
And with that sort of precision, and speed? Lightning had turned the midwest into a retirement ground for heroes. Once you couldn't cut it anymore, were too old, too slow, the government would drop you here; Colorado had an official metahuman response team based out of Denver, but all of them were retired members of associations from the coasts; and generally only saw much work during blizzards and other situations that forced him to slow down.
And of course, the moment the bank set off the alarm... Lightning would be there. Within seconds. And if he wasn't already gone when the alarm went off? He needed a plan to deal with it.
A normal shroud grenade wouldn't do the job. A billowing cloud of dust wouldn't do the job even if it was made up of all sorts of things; Lightning would see it, suck the air out of the bank, kick the grenade out a window, and then grab his target.
Hitting the sprinklers wouldn't work. Sure, he would have to slow down; phase through the water instead of the air. But even still... he could probably outrun bullets without killing everyone with a shockwave.
So this called for a different solution. Most things just wouldn't work. Fortunately, Jason had an advantage that nobody else did when dealing with a speedster.
Jason could see him coming. Know where he would be, seconds before he would be there. Which made the solution obvious. he started breaking apart the Shroud grenades, carefully disassembling the tiny cannisters inside, each designed to spray out a different material to form the vile-smelling but non-toxic clouds the grenades were so well known for.
Jason assembled what would be, hopefully, his one-time-only 'Supervillain' outfit. A simple leather jacket, with a strap for the grenades, and a couple of generic leather bags -just- big enough to fit in the saddlebags of his motorcycle. A few 'Smoke bombs'.. not made so much to cloud out a room, but to set off a smoke detector, and thus the sprinklers. The primary component of these would be... well. Hair. A cheap wig, chopped into bits, dipped in oil, and wrapped around some firecrackers. And, well. If anybody asked? He was Eyeball. Painting a pupil and a few veins on that shiny reflective helmet would work for that purpose.
He hadn't even done it, but he could smell it already. He would toss them into the bank, set them off, and head in as soon as the sprinklers came on.
The only question, of course, was which bank, and when. Best case scenario? He could avoid triggering alarms, never see Lightning, and be gone. If he actually ran into the hero, and actually to win? Well then. The cops always took their time showing up when Lightning was on the job; they knew he'd handle things. He could probably just rob all three banks; or at least two; before he left.
So he had his plan. Now, all he needed to do was keep an eye out, decide the best time to strike.. and just keep getting ready. The better prepared you were, the better things went.
Though of course... no plan survives contact with the enemy, as they say.