What luck. The exact person Krayat wanted to see had returned home in a timely manner. Seeing that familiar monster truck nearly brought a tear to the thief’s eye—which was currently her entire being. Itsy Humdiddy, the ideal candidate for her infiltration had arrived.

Along with the contact lens she’d been given, and the idea of how to use her Curse, was a list of the members of the Fiends For Hire along with the sizes of their auras. It was something that had only been readable just recently, and not information that most people would find even remotely useful.

Unsurprisingly, the big woman had a big aura. It exuded a good foot or so in radius from her body in all directions—well encompassing and very inviting in this case. The only person with a bigger aura in the group was Drim Drazah, and that was not a risk Krayat was anywhere near ready to take.

Even more luck, and a gift from fate herself, Itsy was driving with the window down—music blasting, humming along to the tune while rapping her dangling hand against the side of her door. And thankfully, the woman was abiding the city's speed limits, so it was a pace that Krayat could keep up with.

She waited for her moment, built up a bit of energy, and then blasted forward at maximum speed. Like a bumbling bug, Krayat soared straight into the truck’s open window and landed in the backseat. While the hard part was over, she still needed to get situated quickly before Itsy could pass through the gate.

The eyeball hurried when the truck came to a stop, meaning the driver was waiting for the gate to open. She zoomed up the back of the seat as quickly as possible, making sure to stay out of range of the rearview mirror. Once behind Itsy’s head, the eyeball dove beneath the rust-red hair and into Itsy’s collar.

Krayat hadn’t planned to move any further, but she noticed the woman’s neck start to scrunch and writhe—clearly the eye’s presence was irritating her skin. So before the hand could come scratching, which it did just a moment later, the thief dove down Itsy’s back. This caused the woman to writhe even more, but quickly settled once Krayat found a good open spot in the baggy coveralls.

If she had to guess, the woman made some complaint about a bug or something along those lines, since she felt quick, subtle vibrations. But Krayat couldn’t hear them, because she currently had no ears. In this state, her body took care of breathing on its own somehow if those parts were compressed, but with no ears or nose, she couldn’t hear or smell. She also couldn’t taste, but there was no conceivable way that would be helpful.

Now buried deep in the woman’s clothing, it was almost pitch black with just a bare minimum amount of light piercing through. But Krayat definitely noticed the barrier as they passed—her world filled with a sudden wall of pink light before it vanished. They were inside now, with no feasible means of escape without being noticed until she could hitch another ride.

The idea was that Itsy’s aura would overshadow her own, and make Krayat essentially invisible to the scanners that the barriers used. She had no way of knowing if it had worked since it was a public section, but she’d likely find out soon.

Itsy was almost certainly heading to her garage. And while the area just outside of the member cubes at the compound was public space, the garage itself was off limits and had its own barrier to stop those that weren’t permitted.

This was where it would get extremely risky. If this method didn’t work, and Krayat wasn’t allowed through the barrier, it would stop her from entering while letting Itsy pass by. Unless the eye could get out of the way in time, she’d likely be squashed and killed by the monster truck as it continued forward. The woman was on edge the entire time, ready to bolt if she felt any resistance push against her.

But it never came, and when Itsy started jostling out of the truck, Krayat would have let out the biggest sigh of relief if she currently had lungs. The best she could do was raise the edges of her eyelids in joy as if they were her lips making a smile. When the woman clearly started walking, the thief rolled up her back and out the collar, dodging another aggravated slap and hiding on one of the shelves before Itsy could find the ‘bug’.

They’d definitely made it into the garage with Krayat currently hiding behind a big jug of oil. She expected to sit around and wait for a while, but the behemoth in front of her quickly raced off to the bathroom, and it looked like she’d be a while.

Not wanting to waste this opportunity, the thief floated out of her hiding spot and began looking around. There wasn’t much that immediately caught her eye until she spotted some blueprints laying on one of the workbenches. Obviously, it wasn’t something she could grab and steal, effectively anyways, but there was another form of thievery.

The eyeball floated above the bench and blinked twice to take a picture with her contact lens. Krayat could also record soundless video if she wanted to, but with the limited storage of the lens, photos were much more economical unless she really wanted to capture a crucial moment.

As for the blueprint, it was for replacing the fuel systems on vehicles with a far more efficient design—pretty useful stuff that she could sell to car manufacturers if her ‘master’ didn’t want it. Well, the actual diagrams were well done, but the instructions were all written along the lines of ‘insert the thingy into the majig.’ Maybe someone else could decipher them.

There was still no sign of the big woman returning, which was both beneficial and kind of a nightmare. It meant that the thief could thoroughly explore the garage more, but also that she was stuck there until Itsy or someone else came by. The eyeball could get the door open by herself since it looked like a simple button press, but she’d have to pass through the barrier again to leave.

Since she had time to kill, the eye landed on the blueprint and rolled on top of the edge, causing the page to flip so that she could take more pictures. At the moment, she didn’t want to risk morphing her body in case someone came in abruptly. And of course that had to happen right as she was thinking about it.

Krayat had been keeping her eye on the door that Itsy had left through, but didn’t expect someone to come in through the garage’s shutters. She never would have noticed due to her inability to hear, but thankfully a bit of extra light flooded in with the rising door, so she had a moment to hide in a nearby cup.

It had been a split decision, one that the thief now regretted. She had thought the cup was for pens, but instead there was nothing but used brushes inside. It was hard to tell if they were for paint or something else sticky, but Krayat didn’t dare descend any further into the cup, doing her best to make sure not a single drop got in her eye.

To her surprise, it was one of the few humans of the Fiends For Hire, a boy named Crucion. He wasn’t even on her radar to look into or be wary of, but he was also surprisingly high on the aura list, so he was her ticket out of here.

The boy looked around for a moment, then was clearly sad when Itsy was nowhere to be found. He set down the lunch he’d brought with him, did a quick sweep of the floor, and then prepared to leave already. While he was waiting for the door to open again, Krayat zoomed across the room and stuffed herself into one of his front jacket pockets.

Thankfully based on the design of the jacket, she could ride with part of her eye poking out without being in the boy’s line of sight. She just needed to be cautious in case he decided to shove the hands into the pocket, though it was unlikely with the warmer weather. She was also sharing the room, though, with a small toolkit—something more to be conscious of in case something suddenly needed fixing.

The thief really didn’t know where she was being taken. Her ability to explore on her own was quite limited, required to stick to someone if she wanted to move from building to building. The worst case scenario would be getting stuck out in the open with nowhere to go, perpetually waiting for a passing body to come save her. So she’d stick with the boy, wherever he may be headed as long as it wasn’t out of the compound.

Really, this whole job was just too lax in a way since it didn’t follow rule number 4 of being a thief: Keep your eye on the prize. Thieves should always have a concrete goal and know exactly what they were going to steal. Getting greedy or distracted along the way was a surefire to be caught.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

But ultimately, this caper didn’t have an end objective. She was tasked with stealing intel—demoted to a mere scout that were a common-a-dozen. Well, no one else but her could infiltrate the compound like this. But with nothing tangible as the goal, she honestly couldn’t say for certain when she’d be finished.

All she’d been told was to bring back valuable information. Given that she didn’t know who she was working for, how was she supposed to gauge what was useful? Even though her best guess wound up dead, she still had to assume the person she was working for had their hand in politics. That narrowed it down to anything that could possibly further a political career and anything that could hamper the Fiends For Hire if it got out—so… basically everything.

When they reached their destination, the barracks for the members, Crucion opened the janitorial closet and got out several items to clean. Krayat took this as her chance to jump out since she’d seen something interesting in the lobby. It was a list of all the apartments, along with lights indicating if someone was home our not—very useful, but not worth taking a picture of since she herself couldn’t access it in this state.

The lights could also indicate if someone was home but didn’t want to be disturbed, which currently only one Fiend, Rezin Anish, was indicating. From her intel, she knew he was just a big nerd. And while he might have some valuable collectors items, it was nothing worth her or her employer’s time, so there was no reason to even bother with him.

But one name did urgently grab her attention; Roque Personson, who she knew as the richest man in the world. Or so the rumor went anyways. The information among the rich was always unverifiable. They had so many accounts and secret holdings that it was hard to get an actually accurate number and ranking. She wouldn’t be surprised if the other wealthiest members of society put him on a pedestal to get attention off of themselves.

Regardless of the actual reality, surely someone with so much wealth had to have something worth stealing. She’d found out just recently that he had the single most valuable painting in his possession. If she could steal that, it would be the absolute highlight of her career as a master thief. But she also had a rudimentary understanding of how his Curse worked, and doubted it was something he’d leave lying around.

So Krayat made her way to his room after tempering her expectations. It was the last on the first floor. She darted from door frame to door frame, never knowing when someone might come barging out of their room. However, the same lights that were on the list at the lobby were also next to each door under their names, and most of them were out and about.

None of the doors immediately around Roque currently had occupants—very fortunate for her since she’d have to get more bold. As expected, the gap between the door and the threshold wasn’t enough for her to roll between, at least not without seriously squeezing and potentially damaging her eye.

The only other option in that regard was to compress herself down into her smallest finger and inch her way under like a caterpillar. However if she did that, she’d have no senses to guide herself except for touch. It was something she’d tried once before, and it was terrifying, so she opted to do literally anything else.

She’d have to pick the lock to get inside, and fortunately she’d brought a lockpick along with her, several in fact—something she never went anywhere without. The only issue was that she’d briefly have to unscrunch her hips to access them, so she’d have to find a closet or something to make the change. While a pair of floating hips probably wasn’t the weirdest thing these Fiends had seen, it certainly wasn’t an everyday occurrence.

But first, Krayat wanted to jiggle the handle, since from just a quick touch, she’d get a better idea of what kind of lock she was working with. In her time off, she’d even started a video series of picking various locks, all while hiding her identity of course. It was something to pass the days between capers. She only did big jobs, so there was a lot of downtime.

Since it wouldn’t draw enough attention to warrant hiding, Krayat lowered her eye back to the ground, not wanting to fall during the transformation process. She rolled the eye so that her vision was looking at the ceiling, and then suddenly she was raised up a few inches as her hand sprouted from the eye’s backside.

This was why she had the slit in the backs of her gloves, so she could function as just a hand with her eye embedded into it. The hand floated up to the door handle and gave it a jiggle. Her one eye jumped open in surprise when the handle kept going and the door moved an inch. She quickly let go and dropped down, scrambling inside and pushing the door shut before anyone could notice.

Once in the room, she angled her hand so that her eye could get a good glance. The surprises hadn’t stopped. Just what was this place? It wasn’t a billionaire's bachelor pad. No, it was very nostalgic to her, like stepping back in time to her very first apartment once she could finally get off the streets.

It was just basically a studio apartment, but that didn’t explain why everything was so crude. The appliances in the kitchen were the zjikiest brands possible, and Krayat recognized the cheap instant coffee sitting in a bulk can on the counter. All of his furniture looked like it had been bought second hand, or assembled out of some kit with weak wood.

His bed didn’t look comfortable at all, and his couch looked like one of those a college kid would buy that would fold out into a bed. She knew it quite well, since she’d had one herself for many years. There was no way the Fiends For Hire were this cheap, so that meant Roque himself had designed his room this way.

Maybe it was some uber rich thing she didn’t quite understand, even though she was rather well off herself—not letting themselves forget that they came from humble beginnings or some such nonsense. Or maybe Roque was just weird.

Krayat could understand living a minimalist lifestyle, since she herself wasn’t a big spender except for the occasional splurge, but the fact that his walls were completely bare was just sad. She tapped around the apartment—walking on her fingers to give herself a break from floating—looking for anything of interest.

Ultimately, she came up short, only finding one thing of insane value. For whatever reason, he had replaced the knobs on the sink of his bathroom with ones made of pure crystal. That had certainly cemented to her that he was just a crazy person. She briefly contemplated stealing them, but she wasn’t confident in her skills in removing them without damaging them, at least not without decent research into the knobs and the required techniques.

Not to mention the fact that the man would certainly notice, unless he decided it was one of the other members pulling a prank on him. So she put the knobs out of her mind for now, at least until she knew if she’d be stuck in this building for a while.

Aha! Now here’s something. After digging through his closet and grimacing at the spectrum of suits—from grossly cheap to grossly overpriced—she found a safe buried at the bottom. After sprouting an ear at the base of her wrist to listen to the mechanics, her hand quickly got to work.

It was a quality safe too, so there had to be something juicy inside. The odds that it would be something her employer wanted were slim, but she had to get some reward of her own to make it all worth it. Her requestor didn’t actually pay her for any of this. The ‘payment’ was not losing her loved-one forever. So she still had to put meat on the table—expensive, high-grade meat. At the very least, she wanted a good memento from this caper for all of her struggles.

Eventually, the safe clicked open, and her hopes skyrocketed immediately when she saw a ring. And then they were quickly dashed when she looked at that ring for even a second longer. It was a men’s wedding ring, old and dusty. And on top of that, it was clearly rather cheap and not even worth taking to a pawn shop, let alone for Krayat to steal, so she let it be.

But there was something else in the safe, a stack of papers? Maybe deeds or sensitive documents. It was definitely worth investigating, but it would be hard to pull out and examine them as just a hand. So Krayat decompressed her entire body, happy to have the reason to stretch out the cramping.

Before she touched the papers, she inspected her gloves to be safe. They were specially made to not pick up anything like dust, and they wouldn’t leave any residue either. But she always wanted to be certain they weren’t damaged, especially since she’d just been using the tips as shoes to run around on.

They were still in perfect condition, so she bent down and slid the stack out of the safe. Right away, the pages were smaller than she expected—being just an eyeball on a hand definitely warped her perspective a bit. And she immediately realized that they weren’t paper at all. They were pictures.

Pictures that someone wanted to hide—certain to be scandalous, right? Well, in a way, they were indeed. For a sleazy businessman who wanted to be known as such, these could certainly ruin his reputation. Each photo was dated, and in order, they told a story.

The first was a young Roque trying on a suit for the first time—poorly shaven in a dingy bathroom. He looked like a homeless man who’d stolen it. Maybe he was. ‘Got the job!’ was written on the back. The next picture was his first paycheck, then his first promotion, then his corner office, then as the head of the company. From there it turned into a picture of an ATM reading his account balance of over a million.

Most of the pictures after that were handshakes with other businessmen. Then it turned into pictures with employees of the companies he took over who seemed genuinely happy with their new boss. And after that, it was nothing business related at all. It was all charity work: building homes and cutting ribbons, feeding the homeless and playing with kids at parks he’d built, genuine humanitarian connection.

No pictures like this ever actually surfaced in the news, and Roque probably wanted it that way. The only value here was sentimental, and Krayat couldn’t help but feel cheated. She did briefly lay out all the pictures of business transactions and take a photo herself, just in case there was something off the books that could be exploited.

And now not only was she leaving with nothing gained. She felt she’d lost a part of herself to see someone with so much wealth, that she’d normally love to steal from, be an actual good and genuine person. It felt so contrary to the world she knew.

So she stole his tv remote out of spite.