Rain drowned the Sunrise Shopping Plaza.

Unending flow consumed the parking lots. The light from the sign out front twinkled against the endless barrage of droplets from the dark sky. Someone came out of a door and had to run to their car, using a book as an umbrella. Even if the woman only had to walk fifteen feet at most to get inside her coupe, that was all it took to have the woman’s jacket washed with rain.

Kay arrived at the plaza with Philly still hiding inside the bunker that was a backpack. Kay went to the doors and was pleased to find out that were unlocked and that they could explore the building at their leisure. Kay opened the door slowly, looking around to see if anyone was around, and then stepped in.

The hallways were dark, like the manager liked to cut down on the power bill so the hall lights went off at eight. Stores still had their lights on, but those were mostly on the other side of the building– the other wing. In the part of the building where the to-be burgled store was, most businesses were closed and lights were off.

The problem was Philly couldn’t remember which unit was going to be robbed. All he had for reference was a couple criminals pointing at the back of a unit from outdoors. There wasn’t a sign or a marker that showed which store it the goons were planning to rob.

“So which one is it?” asked Kay, looking down the hall.

“Uhhhh,” said Philly. “I don’t know.”

“What?” said Kay, his voice crackling down the hall. He glanced at a store off in the distance with its light glowing out into the dark floor– he had to be quiet. In a whisper, he spoke: “What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I never checked which store it was,” said Philly.

Kay sighed. “What now, then?”

Philly shrugged. “Let’s go out to the parking lot. The back lot.”

Kay put Philly back in the pack and the two left the building, careful to see anyone else around as they left the glass doors. They turned around the corner of the building and went to the back lot where Philly saw the criminals. The back lot was swimming with water, sewer grates growling as they guzzled whatever the streets had to offer.

Kay walked along the lot and looked up and down the back of the building, the walls stark, lacking in features. Only the bottom row of units had doors and only a few of the second level ones had a window.

“Which one was it?” said Kay, having to shout over the noise of the downpour.

Philly poked his head out of the backpack and looked up and down the building, squinting to see through the onslaught from above. It only took a few seconds of him having his head out of the pack to have his fur soaked. He sucked it up and gazed at the wall, pointing a foreleg at one of the units.

“That one!” he said.

Kay looked at the part of the building that Philly was pointing at. It wasn’t like there was any obvious markers to tell which unit was which. “What place is that?”

“I don’t know!” said Philly. Tired of being rained upon, he dipped back into the back and tried closing the zipper with his paws.

Kay sighed. He looked at the spot Philly pointed at and tried measuring the distance from it to the end of the building. Maybe he could have guesstimated which building it was by measuring out the length from the end of the building inside.

Philly was under assault from the night sky so Kay zipped up the backpack and hurried back inside the building. The building was still quiet and still empty, at least in that wing of the plaza. Kay let Philly back out.

Philly, his fur wet with rain, dripped on the floor. Kay, a person made of literal water, did not.

“Ugh,” said Philly, looking at his mangy fur, “now I’m all soaked!”

Kay didn’t want to have a drippy fox walking around so he bit the bullet and took his liquid arms to Philly’s body. The mass of Kay’s liquid hands combed through Philly’s fur.

“Hey, wait a– ack!”

Kay ignored Philly’s protest and the boy wiped his watery form down the fox’s body, leaving behind a dry (and clean) fur on Philly’s body, although the process left the fox’s fluff standing on end.

Kay took the hand away and Philly stood there, dry but puffy as a dandelion. “What did you do?” asked the fox, looking over his fur.

“I dried you,” said Kay. “I absorbed the water off of you.” He looked at his hands, bits of fur floating inside, drifting up into his arms. “Among other things.”

“Oh,” said Philly, caught off guard with surprise. “Neat. I didn’t know you could do that.”

“I don’t like to do that,” said Kay, waving his arms around. “It’s gross!”

“Gee, sorry.”

Kay slapped his hands at the floor and some water ejected out of him, leaving a small puddle on the ground with stray fox fur inside. Kay checked his body. It seemed clean.

“Okay,” said Kay. “Let’s go find that store.”

There was a staircase up to the second floor but there was also a ramp for handicap access, which Philly preferred to climbing steps even if the top of the ramp landed him pretty close to one of the remaining active stores. The two were thankful that part of the building didn’t have anyone around except for a business towards the fold in the building’s shape. Kay found the end of the building he used as reference and walked down the hall to see if he could guess which place the thugs were going to break into.

Most of the places were office stuff, like insurance venues or doctors. In fact, they got down most of the hall and they hadn’t come across any store that screamed robbable. Kay circled back and went over the stores again.

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“Which one is it?” he asked.

Philly sank his expression. “I... I don’t know!”

“Oh for crying out loud!” said Kay, being a little too loud for someone trying to remain undetected. He could hear a store on the floor below still active, chatter and cabinet’s clacking lively.

“Maybe if we wait,” said Philly, “we could wait for them to arrive and pick the store for us.”

Kay groaned and looked around. The hallway was as blank at a fresh sheet of paper. There were no trash cans, radiators, or corners to hide behind. There was a grille on the ceiling that Kay could hide inside. He stepped to the centre of the room and got ready to spring-jump.

Philly looked up at the vent. “Okay, you can hide there, but what about me?”

He looked at the windows. The way the light shone in the window created a dark cut beneath the sill that Philly could have camouflaged into.

Kay pointed at the bottom of the wall. “Lay up against the wall. You can hide in the shadow.”

Philly looked up, his muzzle unconvinced. “If someone walks by, they are going to see me.”

Kay pondered. He looked down the hallway. “What if you were further down the hallway?”

“Uhhh...” Philly cranked a cheek but looked down the hallway at the shadows. If the crooks didn’t get too close, and the fox was very still, the crooks wouldn’t notice him. “Okay...”

Kay walked with Philly over to the shadow and looked at Philly as the fox laid against the wall. Philly’s dark fur helped him blend into the shadow. Kay took multiple perspectives.

“How do I look?” asked Philly.

Kay rubbed a chin. “I think it’ll do.”

Philly moaned. That didn’t sound reassuring.

Kay found another grille to enter and jumped up inside. For how mobile he was in his water form, jumping up in through a grill was a tough manoeuver. He squeezed inside and reformed on top of the grill, standing his liquid feet on the grill.

But then something hit the floor. It was Kay’s backpack! He forgot he had it around his shoulders so when he dissolved himself to creep through the grate, the backpack fell off behind him and smacked to the floor.

“Hey!” whispered Philly, “Watch it!”

“Ooops,” said Kay, slithering back out and hitting the floor.

He picked up the backpack and looked around. Could he hide the thing in the hallways, too? It was a black backpack so it would have faded into the shadows. He went over to the spot where Philly was going to hide and put the backpack down with him. Then he went back to the duct and jumped on in.

Now it was time to wait.

As they waited, they couldn’t help but talk to each other, passing ghostly whispers through the vent and hall.

“Hey Philly,” Kay’s voice was tinny, “are you the only one of your kind around town?”

Philly rested his head on his paws and turned to the wall. “No. There’s a few others. They don’t bother with me, though.”

“Oh?” Kay’s voice perked up. “Like other foxes?”

“No other foxes,” said Philly. The sadness was heavy in his voice. “I know there’s a shrew around town that’s like me... intelligent. She keeps to herself. She’s paranoid, I think. It’s tough being a rodent.”

“I’d guess,” said Kay.

“The only one I see often is Night,” said Philly. “He’s a starling– a bird. We talk often but–“ Philly let out a small growl– “he’s a pain!”

Kay chuckled.

The rumble of a vehicle pulled in outside, breaking the conversation. Below, there was chatter. Then... the doors opened. Was it the crooks?

Their footfalls were quiet but in the silence of the sleepy hallway, both Kay and Philly could still hear them. There was also a squeaking. Kay took his head to the grate and peeked out into the hallway to see a man coming up the stairs: Daytona, a grizzled man with patchy facial hair and a snow cap. Then there was the squeaking. Behind Daytona there another man walking up the ramp with a hand lift. Philly recognized the man was Jung-han– and he confirmed that those two were the criminals.

He didn’t know how to signal to Kay without giving himself away. He hoped Kay figured they were the ones.

The crooks moved into the second floor and moved to a loans agency. They were quiet but kept their eyes up and down the hall. Even with the watchful gaze, they didn’t see Philly lurking in the shadows by the window sill. Daytona took out a key, its steel shimmering white, and he took it to the door, unlocking it.

He stepped in and there was a beeping. He went to the alarm panel and flipped open the console to tap in the code. The beeping stopped. It surprised him: the code was legit.

Jung-han walked in with the lift, carefully lining it up with the door so that it carted right through without bumping the sides. “Alright. Let’s get that safe.”

Daytona looked over at a windowed door to another room. That was the boss’ office. He walked up and looked inside. Maybe that dark figure in the corner was the safe they were after. He checked the door handle. Locked. They couldn’t forge a key for that one, though, so Daytona brought out a key-breaking device from his coat pocket. It looked like a clamp but with a few extra levers.

He slid it into the key hole and started turning some nobs as he puzzled out the shape of locking mechanism and what shape was necessary to fake the absent key.

Philly and Kay were still outside. Philly was wondering what was taking so long but then Kay gooped out of the duct and landed on the floor. He was quiet as he snuck close to the door. He peeked and saw the criminals huddled by the door. They looked tough and even if there was only two of them, Kay worried. Another fight was about to begin.

He turned his back against the wall and exhaled hard before tightening his face. Philly walked out of the shadows and gave Kay a nod. Kay returned the gesture.

It was time for battle.