“What do you mean, I can’t make that my Touched name?” Cassidy Evans demanded, hands on her hips as she stared down the man in the golden mask. “It’s perfect! Tell me it’s not perfect.”
Blackjack, in turn, squinted at the girl. “You want to join La Casa,” he carefully noted. The two of them were standing alone in his office at the casino his people ran.
She, in turn, bobbed her head, grinning. “Yup. You guys are cool. I mean, cool enough for what you’ve been so far. But you know what’d make you even cooler?” Answering her own question, the girl made a point of waving her hand up and down herself as though in demonstration. Even as she did so, her civilian clothes and skin turned various colors. The words ‘She’s Awesome’ also appeared on her forehead and cycled through all of her colors as well, for emphasis.
Clearing his throat, Blackjack pushed on. “Cassidy Evans wants to join La Casa, and you want your name to be…” He trailed off, clearly unable to make himself finish saying it out loud.
“La Cassidy!” Grinning in that way that made it very unclear whether she was kidding or not, the girl spread her arms wide over her head. “It’s the perfect name! La Cassidy! Don’t you love it?”
Despite the golden mask covering his face, Blackjack somehow managed to look very much like he was somehow regretting several parts of this conversation. “Touched names are supposed to hide who you really are. Something tells me people might work out your secret identity.”
“But that’s the genius part,” she insisted, tone continuing to make her actual seriousness completely impossible to decipher. She could be truly committed to the ridiculous idea, or simply be screwing with him for shits and giggles. “Who’s gonna guess that someone calling themselves The Cassidy is actually named Cassidy? It’s ridiculous! It’s the one name they’ll never guess. They’ll think ‘well no one’s that stupid’, and bam!” Her fist slammed into her palm.
“It’ll turn out that you… are that stupid?” Blackjack finished, lifting his chin curiously.
Raising a finger to retort to that, Cassidy abruptly stopped. Her head tilted as though running all of that through her brain. Then she blew out a long, heavy sigh. “Weeeelll, maybe I can work up to La Cassidy. You know, after I make a name for myself. Errr, a different name. After I show what I can do! If you’re sure we can’t start with that one?” She gave him puppy dog eyes.
Blackjack, in turn, shook his head. “I’m sure. Besides,” he quickly added, “if you really want to be part of the team, you’ll need to be named like the team. Not… in a parody of the team.”
The girl seemed to consider that for a moment, before giving a nod of acceptance. “Okay, I guess you’ve got a point. I’ll be a good little team player.” With those words, she paused, expression turning thoughtful. “But what’s a good name for me that does fit your motif?”
******
“Fisher?” Eits asked a couple days later as he and Pack headed out to the garage with the new girl. He hesitated, trying to work out the meaning before shaking his head. “Sorry, I got nothing.”
“Yeah,” Pack put in immediately, “What does fishing have to do with gambling or casinos?”
Cassidy, in turn, grinned. Not that they could see it, with her new La Casa-approved costume. It was a pair of black, loose-fitting cargo pants, with a white long-sleeved shirt that was textured to look and feel from the outside like chainmail while still being comfortable, a long red jacket, and black gloves. Her face (and thus her expression) was covered by a red metal helmet that clipped tightly over her entire head and face, with a thin black visor where her eyes were.
“Not Fisher,” she corrected brightly, snickering a little bit. “Ficheur.” She carefully pronounced it, over-enunciating so that it sounded more like Fissure than Fisher. Then she spelled the word out. “It’s the name for the machine they use to separate different color chips.” With that, she pivoted to face the other two, walking backward so they could see as images of red, black, and blue poker chips appeared on her white costume top, along with the word itself written above. “See? Ficheur, not Fisher. Colors are kinda my jam.”
“I hope making money is your jam too,” Pack replied, reaching out to open the back door of the sedan they’d reached before gesturing for their newest teammate to get in. “Cuz as soon as we graduate from villain school, that’s totally what I’m focusing on.”
“Mostly I’m focused on having fun without anyone telling me what to do or how to do it,” Cassidy admitted before hopping in. “But I guess having more money isn’t a bad thing. Especially if it’s money that doesn’t come from my super do-gooder family.”
Her words made the other two exchange glances, before Eits cleared his throat and stepped down into the driver’s seat. As one of his mites started the car and Pack got in the other side, the boy asked, “Super do-gooder family?”
“Oh, right.” From her place in the backseat, the girl reached up to tug the helmet off. “We’re supposed to be teammates and all in this villainy thing, so hi!” She shook the long side of her dark hair out, holding the helmet against her chest. “I’m Cassidy Evans. Yeah, of those Evans.”
The words, and revelation of her identity, made both Eits and Pack spin in their seats to stare into the back at her. “Dude,” Dani slowly drawled in a voice that was full of awe. “You know how much money you’re worth? You know how much money your whole family is worth?”
Cassidy, in turn, gave a slight nod. “Yeah, and believe me, I know what it’d sound like if I started pulling the ‘poor neglected me’ act. My family’s house is basically big enough to have its own zip code. I’ve been on vacation to more countries than you can probably name. My allowance is better than a lot of people’s entire salaries. I am not suffering.”
Again, Pack and Eits exchanged looks, before the latter spoke up curiously. “Are you… bragging about all that?” It was weird, her tone didn’t exactly match the words she was saying, leaving both of her new teammates unsure of her point.
With a shrug, Cassidy corrected, “Not trying to. Just being honest. I know I’m privileged as shit. Trust me, I know all about it. My parents aren’t around much… at all. But they compensated by throwing everything I could ever want at me. They spend like… maybe one night a week at home, otherwise they’re out. We don’t do anything together, not even vacations. Most of those trips I talked about, I went on with just the nanny. So yeah, they’re never home, they act like they barely know what my name is most of the time, and they make up for it by throwing mountains and mountains of money at me. Could be a hell of a lot worse.”
“So why’re you here?” Pack found herself asking. “Why do you wanna join a bunch of criminals when you could just sit at home, play video games, and make more money than any of us ever could just by existing?” She found it a bit hard to keep all the jealousy out of her voice.
Cassidy exhaled, her next words very pointed. “Because it’s boring. Look, I know how that sounds, right? I know. Poor me, my super-privileged and perfect life isn’t exciting enough. But I just--I just want to do my own thing. I wanna have fun. I wanna get out and have a little excitement, a little danger. I want to… see what I can do without my parents as a safety net. I wanna see what I’m capable of, without all those rules and restrictions. Just me, with my own powers. I mean, and you all. But not my family. That’s my point. I wanna see what I can do. Yeah, it’s not some tragic, dark and emotional backstory. But at least it’s me. If I succeed, I want to do it my way, without them.”
“So I guess that means no asking you for a few hundred thousand dollar loans?” Pack (mostly) teased after recovering from that whole revelation.
“Even my parents might have questions about that,” Cassidy retorted before adding, “Besides, that would kinda be going against my whole ‘see what I can do by myself without their money’ thing. But hey, I could help you get rich. That’s part of being the whole criminal thing, right? I mean, after we go to this school thing. Wait, is it really a school? I thought Blackjack might be fucking with me.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
“Nope, it’s really a school,” Eits assured her. “He wants everyone to have training before he lets them start… working. Touched or Prevs. Doesn’t matter. If you work for Blackjack, you get training.”
“Okay then,” Cassidy reluctantly agreed, “I guess we should hurry up and get there then. Sooner we get through these classes, the sooner we can get to the fun stuff.
“And speaking of fun stuff, let me tell you about a name that’s even better than Ficheur…”
*******
Several Months Later
Two armed security guards patrolled the outside of the En Route (an online store and delivery service) warehouse on the outskirts of Detroit together. Their radios crackled now and then, giving reports from other guards on duty spread throughout the extensive complex. The warehouse, where orders were packaged and shipped throughout the state, was a tempting target for would-be thieves. Thus, they were not only protected by over a dozen armed guards at any given time, but those guards were trained and supplied by the Ten Towers alliance of companies. And there was always at least one Touched member of the Ten Towers on-site at all times, with others available to be called in when needed. En Route was a member company of Ten Towers itself, the second-to-latest to ally with the organization before Aether Airlines.
All of this, combined with the fact that the local police precinct was deliberately close enough to provide assistance very quickly, made the warehouse a poor target, however tempting it might have been. Outside of a full-on assault, stealing from the place was generally dismissed by most as being too costly and dangerous. Stealing from the trucks that delivered goods back and forth was one thing, but the idea of actually getting into the warehouse and out again with the amount of protection it had was something only entertained by the semi-crazy and those who wanted to make a name for themselves.
Or, perhaps in this case, both.
The two guards had just paused to look at one another for a momentary chat, when a voice abruptly spoke from the top of the nearby wall. “You know what I really hate?”
Both men’s gazes jerked that way in time to see Cassidy, in her La Casa costume, perched directly next to the security camera there. The camera had stopped rotating. As they reacted, she continued, “You know when you’re shopping online, you run the search, and the results come up? You see exactly what you want, click it, and it’s perfect, right? It’s totally perfect. But then it says the item is unavailable. If it’s unavailable, why is it in the search results?!”
While she was talking, neither man noticed the two glowing, five-inch tall ghost-like figures fly out of the darkness behind them to land in their radios. It was one of those radios that one of the men grabbed, hitting the button as he blurted, “We’ve got a situation here.”
At the same time, the second man jerked his pistol from its holster, pointing upward. “I don’t know who you are, but don’t move! You’re on private property, and--”
Two things happened then. First, the man with his gun out suddenly found it torn from his hand by a large, invisible figure that had been standing beside him. Twinkletoes, the chameleon-gorilla, lifted the man by his arm while plucking the gun from his grip. He started to scream, but a shot of black paint silenced him so that he simply flailed soundlessly.
Simultaneously, there was a response from the radio in the other man’s hand. But it wasn’t the response he expected. Instead of acknowledgment and promise of back-up being on its way, the sound of someone giving a very obnoxious raspberry filled the air. A moment later, the radio vibrated violently in his hand, making the man yelp and drop it.
By then, of course, he had recognized the danger his partner was in, being held off the ground by an invisible creature. Hurriedly, he jerked his own pistol out, only for it to be hit by a shot of red paint and yanked away from him while Cassidy leapt, caught the weapon, and landed beside him.
She examined the gun briefly before tossing it aside with a shrug. “First, hiya! Name’s Ficheur. Good to meet ya. Second, gonna need you guys to--uhh, Twinkle?”
Before the men could try to figure out what in the name of God she meant by apparently asking them to ‘twinkle’, the invisible gorilla obediently dropped the first man next to his partner.
“Thanks, Twinkle,” Ficheur brightly chirped before focusing on the men. “Anyway, gonna need you to hand over your keys. We can fake most of the tech stuff, but since your boss insists on having real, physical keys on top of all those other things, we need those too.”
“Wh-why would we give you that?” one of the men demanded. “In five minutes, this whole place is gonna be swarming with reinforcements. More armed guards and Touched. Believe me, kid, you’ll never get in the building. Might as well take off now while you still can. Why do you think you’re the only ones to try to rob this place in the past year?”
A bright blue smiling face appeared on the front of Ficheur’s (currently white) metal helmet, as she spread her arms to both sides while proudly declaring, “Cuz we have style! Also, a giant lizard-bear.” She added that last bit with a nod of her head to a point behind them.
“A giant lizard-be--” The man who had been picked up by Twinkletoes started to turn to look while echoing her words, only to find himself face-to-face with Mars Bar. Both men started to scream, but once again Cassidy silenced them with black paint. The lizard-bear, meanwhile, slammed both paws down just hard enough to knock the men to the ground.
“Yeah,” Pack confirmed while stepping out from behind her pet. “Giant lizard-bear.” She had a shotgun pointed at the prone men, not that she needed it, given the presence not only of Mars Bar on her left, but also Holiday the panther-lizard on her right. Both mutated creatures ensured that neither man had any plans of trying anything heroic just then.
“Now, like the girl said,” Pack continued pointedly. “Hand over the keys. Quick quick like little bunnies. Or, you know, I can get Holiday here to chase you like little bunnies.” She patted the animal in question, who growled at the men.
Reluctantly, both men handed over their keys. They weren’t normal keys, of course. Those were too easily copied or reproduced. These were slightly larger than ordinary modern keys, sized and shaped more like those old heavy-duty versions used in the eighteen hundreds. They were made of a special, secret material. When inserted into the proper locks, anything made out of something other than the material these keys were would simply melt. It was a security system used by the Ten Towers organization to protect their products, though the material for the keys was still rare enough that it hadn’t yet spread everywhere they did business.
With both keys in hand, Ficheur waved cheerfully. “Thanks! Now, turn over and lay on your stomachs.”
The men, after a brief hesitation, did so. Once they did, Cassidy shot a circle of pink paint near each of their hands. She and Pack each took a man, pushing their hands into the clay-like asphalt until it turned back to normal, leaving them both trapped there. They then quickly gagged the men with tape and cloth, rose, and started off together, flanked by Pack’s lizard friends.
Soon, they met up with the other two members of their quartet partway across the lot, Eits and Broadway. The two were standing over another pair of guards who had come around the corner of the building while all that was going on.
“We still good?” Pack asked.
“Totally clear,” came the response from Eits. He gestured to the far end of the complex. “The rest of security is busy dealing with my friends over there.” His ‘friends’, in that case, were more of his mites, which had taken over a couple delivery vans and took off with them for a joyride around the parking lot, drawing everyone’s attention save for the four guards who had already been on this side and were now dealt with. “Should have a few minutes before they figure out it’s a distraction.”
Together, the four La Casa Touched jogged through the shadows to one of the warehouse entrances. Eits’ mites took care of any electronic surveillance issues, just as he had with the camera back at the wall. As far as those inside the security center were concerned, this side of the building was clear. Helped, of course, by the distraction on the far side of the complex.
They used the physical keys they’d taken from the other guards, combined with manual security codes they’d acquired earlier that day, and another of the mites, to get through the three security doors and into the warehouse proper, where thousands upon thousands of racks of various things were stored. Everything from expensive electronics, to small chew toys for dogs, to pet food, to painting, clocks, furniture, and more were stored here, waiting to be shipped.
Wasting no time looking around, the quartet headed straight for one particular corner of the warehouse in particular. They knew where they were going, and had planned their entrance for this very spot. On the way, Eits sent another mite to grab a forklift, bringing it over with a steady hum.
“This it?” Pack asked, patting a large metal crate, five feet across by three feet high, with 3839AZB73 stamped across the side.
“That’s the one,” Cassidy confirmed. “Two thousand state of the art cell phones ready to be delivered to one of the technical consulting firms owned by the Evans family. After all, if their employees are gonna inspire confidence, they’ve gotta show up with the very best in communication technology.”
With a snicker, Broadway put in, “Yeah, well, too bad for them we’ve got an inside source about that kind of thing. Makes it hard to keep secrets.”
“They caught the vans,” Eits abruptly announced. “Figured out there’s no one inside. Think we should probably get a move on.” Even as he spoke, the boy was sending his commandeered forklift to pick up the crate.
“Right, let’s go.” Pack gestured for her animals to accompany them before glancing to the other two Touched. “Broadway, Ficheur, you ready for your next part?”
The two exchanged looks, before Cassidy spoke with a clear grin in her voice. “You mean the part where we go get the security and heroes to chase us while you guys sneak out the back with the goods?” With those words, she and Broadway exchanged high fives. “Yeah, I think we can handle it.”
That said, she and Broadway took off together, sprinting through the warehouse to get to the other end. The time for being subtle and quiet was over.
Time for a little fun.