Chapter Six - Banking the Villain Way

Rattles didn't have to work as hard as he expected to get the vault door open. The door itself was a monstrously heavy thing, all steel and reinforced metal, but the lock on it had a plastic cover that he ripped apart with ease, and that gave him access to the interior of the door, which he let his power loose on.

With a grunt of effort, he pulled the door open to reveal a closet-sized safe with several shelves. Most held papers in neatly stacked folders, and only the centremost row had any cash on it, and it was all in little canvas bags with zippers and small combination locks.

He pulled the bags out, tossing them into a garbage bag he pulled out of his back pocket. "Good to go," he said.

"I have the cashiers' money as well," Fabien said.

Rattles paused. This would be the moment for Fabien to betray him. Hit while his back was turned and he had already opened the vault. It would be the perfect time... if Rattles wasn't expecting it.

But Fabien didn't try anything. "Out the back?" he asked.

"Yeah, bet they're rushing over already."

The great big hole blown out of the back of the bank was still right where he'd left it, so he led the way out, Fabien a step behind him.

"Where did you plan on going now?" Fabien asked.

"Dunno," Rattles said. "You?"

Fabien seemed to hesitate for a moment. "If you want to split things fifty-fifty, then follow me. I wouldn't begrudge you wanting to run off on your own, however."

Kevin didn't care. He'd gotten a load of cash, enough to keep him going for a long time, even split in half. More importantly, he'd made the heroes of this city look like incompetents, which was worth more than all the money in this little hole of a city. "Sure, whatever. You got a bolthole?"

"Something like that," Fabien the Fabulous said. "Just a place to lay low for a few minutes while the heat dies down. Come!"

Rattles slung his garbage bag full of cash over his shoulder and followed Fabien through the alleys. He kept a mental map of where Charlotte was parked the entire time. He wasn't about to abandon her in this gutter for any longer than he needed to.

Then Fabien stopped next to a sewer grate in the middle of a tight alley and he casually pulled the grate up and aside. "This line was disconnected a while ago," he said. "No stink."

"Huh," Rattles said. He supposed this was one of those advantages to being a local. They got to know the ins and outs of their little city a lot better than someone like him.

It looked like the perfect spot for an ambush, but if anything, he was even less worried in the sewers than out of them. The small enclosed space, held up by old concrete, would be perfect for his power. There was even a faint echo as his boots clanked down the steps.

Fabien was already turning on a flashlight which he used to scan the tunnels. They weren't quite tall enough that either of the men could stand up straight within them, and there was an ankle-deep pool of stagnant water at the bottom, but otherwise, it looked pretty mundane. "That way," Fabien said, pointing to the end with the light.

Rattles snapped his fingers and the noise echoed out far ahead. He closed his eyes for a second and felt at his surroundings. He didn't have a bat's echolocation, but one of his minor powers did give him a fantastic sense of what was around him, especially after his vibrations bounced off of those things. There wasn't anyone ahead that he could tell, just a tunnel that branched out in a few spots.

"I don't intend to stay down here for long," Fabien said as he walked. "Just long enough to ditch that bag you have."

"My bag?" Rattles asked.

"Those little pouches you picked up. They have trackers in them. They'll lead the police right to us."

He hadn't known about that. That would have been a nasty surprise, to get his door knocked in while he was counting his cash at the motel.

They pushed through the tunnels for a while, then stopped at the base of another ladder. Rattles dumped his bag down, and then fished out one of the pouches. It didn't take much effort to rip the zipper off, and then he had a handful of five-dollar bills, and a small metal puck about the size of a dollar coin with a little led in the middle. All it had written on it was a serial number, but it was pretty suspicious-looking.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

"That's the one," Fabien said. "There should be one in each pouch."

"Right," he said. Fortunately, he had several garbage bags, so they transferred the loose cash--including what Fabien had grabbed--into a new one, then tossed all the empty pouches and trackers into the other. Then they flung the bag out the top of the sewers, into some random alleyway.

"Come on, there's a dancer's bar just around the corner. I've reserved a private room already," Fabien said.

"You do a lot of planning, huh?" Rattles asked.

Fabien paused for a moment, frowning. "Earlier on in my admittedly short career, I didn't plan ahead, and that ended with me in a lot more trouble than I wanted to be in. I've learned that overplanning is better than under planning."

The dancer's bar was about as sleazy as any Rattles had seen, especially since they were let in through the back and Fabien led him to a room with a few plush seats and a pole in the centre of the room.

They unceremoniously dumped the cash onto the raised platform around the pole, and Fabien immediately started to sort through the bills. Rattles helped. After all, counting out his winnings was one of the more fun parts of this kind of thing. "That's... twelve thousand two hundred and forty dollars," Rattle said. "Not much."

"Six thousand one hundred and twenty for both of us," Fabien said. "If you're still amenable to splitting it fifty-fifty."

Rattles shrugged. "Yeah, sure." The cash was a fun bonus to rubbing the heroes faces in the muck. The robbery had already let him finish a couple of minor quests, which was fantastic. The cash would get him a place to stay for a long while. He'd get a proper hotel, but those required ID. Maybe some awful apartment somewhere near the school? Some of those had to be more... ambivalent about the law.

Fabien nodded. "I'll take six, you can take the extra on top of that. You broke into the safe, which I couldn't do, so it's only fair."

"You're surprisingly nice, for a villain," Rattles said with a grin. It wasn't quite fair of him. He'd met his share of villains that were surprisingly helpful to their own sort.

"I'm a rogue, actually. Just... somewhat leaning towards the other side of the spectrum. And you're a full-fledged villain?"

"Yeah," Rattles said. "Eauclaire needed a proper Villain, I think."

Fabien paused mid-motion, then he glanced up. "You don't know."

"I don't know what?" Rattles asked.

"About the Boss."

"There's a villain-org here?" Rattles asked.

Fabien nodded. "Sort of, yes. It's small, very discreet. I've only run into them a couple of times, and that was enough for me to know that I shouldn't push things too hard."

"Never heard of them," he said. "Some rogues banding together or something?"

Fabien shook his head. "As far as I know, they're nearly all villains. Proper ones. Their boss is this woman called the Boss. She's... the mastermind sort."

"Ah," Rattles said. He felt something twist in his gut, but then he suppressed it hard. Mastermind types were always the worst. "It is just the Boss then?"

"The Boss and about five minions. They look harmless. Until they don't," Fabien said. He met Rattles' eyes through his mask. "I don't think Eauclaire will be as easy-pickings as you might think."

Rattles snorted. "I can handle a mastermind and their pathetic little minions."

Fabien shrugged. "Well, can't say I didn't warn you. I won't go telling her about you. We're not exactly friends. Not enemies either. I do robberies and their kind of villainy is more... white collar, I think."

"Hm," Rattles said. He was less impressed by the Boss by the minute. He'd met that kind of cowardly villain before. Always playing it safe and careful, avoiding any kind of fighting, and only hitting targets that were significantly weaker.

They weren't worth his respect.

He doubted this Boss deserved it either.

He leaned forwards and picked up his stack of cash. "Want to grab a drink for the road?" he asked.

He might not have respected this Boss, but that didn't mean he wouldn't pry what information he could out of Fabien here.

***