At seven minutes until closing time on a Friday evening, the bank was as bustling as it had been throughout the rest of the day. Dozens of people were still waiting in line to be seen by one of the tellers, while the tellers themselves cast glances toward the clock with varying degrees of subtlety. They would serve everyone who was already in the bank at the time of close, but they all silently willed the clock to move faster so the security guards could lock up to stop the line from getting any longer. They, after all, had families to get home to as well. Everyone here was wishing, some more patiently than others, for things to move as quickly as possible. They wanted to be done in the bank and get out of there.
Some of them would end up getting their wish much sooner than they expected.
As the clock ticked to six minutes remaining, three more shapes passed through the revolving door. These, however, were no customers. They weren’t people at all. Each was a small silver metal orb, roughly the size of a softball, with a single blue lens on one side and a red one on the opposite. They hovered several feet off the ground with a low humming sound, gliding past a startled and confused security guard before proceeding straight to the middle of the main lobby.
“Uh, better get on the line for some uniforms,” the guard, a youngish-man in his early thirties named Travis, began with his hand on the radio attached to his shoulder, unsnapping his holster as he stepped carefully after the orbs, which had just been noticed by some of the customers. “Not sure if we’ve got a prank going on, or--”
From the outward facing red lenses in each of the three orbs, a beam of crimson light shot out. The security guard aborted his conversation to shout the beginnings of a warning to get down, except the beams weren’t targeting any of the customers or employees. Each beam hit a different spot, one a wall, the second part of the floor, while the third was aimed toward the ceiling. The moment those beams struck their apparent targets, most of the lights in the lobby switched off. Which, with the heavy tinting along the front windows, left the room fairly dark. Black enough that the blue and red lights coming off the orbs were the main source of illumination, drawing the attention of everyone in the room.
Travis and several of his companions already had their weapons drawn by that point, though none opened fire. Whatever these things were, Touched-Tech was obviously involved. And standing orders were not to interfere with Touched-Tech unless you were one hundred percent sure you knew it was safe. In a totally unknown situation like this, they wouldn’t make a move without knowing a hell of a lot more than they knew right now. They certainly weren’t going to shoot at the fucking things like some trigger-happy morons.
With the lights out, save for the glowing lenses on the orbs themselves, everyone’s attention had turned that way. So everyone saw as the inner-facing blue lenses suddenly cast a trio of azure beams toward the floor. The beams crossed one another, forming a larger, brighter glow right in the central area in the middle of the three orbs. That beam began to grow brighter, while some of the confused customers started backing away, muttering about getting the hell out of there.
But that muttering was soon drowned out by loud, cackling laughter, magnified somehow to be heard throughout the building. It was high-pitched and almost frantic, like a cross between a cartoon hyena and a Disney villainess. Dark red smoke began to billow forth from the orbs, right into the central area between them where the bright blue beams still shone through the obscuring fog.
The wild laughter, which had stopped everyone’s words, gradually faded to a soft chuckle that was nonetheless easily audible throughout the room. Then, even that shifted to a pseudo-quiet voice announcing, with deceptive calm, “Those in the front row may want to take a step back. If you’re prone to seizures or have experienced problems with bright strobe lights, avert your gaze. In three… two… one...”
In that instant, as promised, the room was abruptly flooded with a dazzling array of brightly colored strobe lights, harmless lasers that seemed to flash from every inch of the orbs. The beams danced up and down the walls and ceiling, while the smoke grew thicker, yet still constrained only to that single spot in the center.
Abruptly, with a burst of energy that sounded like several balloons popping, as a handful of small-yet-bright fireworks exploded in the air, the colorful lights cut out. All save for those blue beams that were still pointed inward. A figure was there, barely visible through the rapidly dissipating red smoke. Yet there was something… off about the figure. Something that made everyone lean a bit closer, squinting to find out if their eyes were playing tricks on them, or if--
“It’s a fucking kid!” One of the customers, a heavyset man in his late fifties or so, blurted out loud.
He was right. The smoke had cleared by then, leaving the blue lights illuminating a quite small figure. The girl who stood before them, with the attention of dozens of employees and customers riveted to her, looked like she couldn’t have been older than nine or ten at most, judging from her height and build.
She wore a red bodysuit of sorts, with obvious armor panels of a slightly darker red across her shins, thighs, chest, and arms. She had black boots and gloves, with a matching black cloak that was already billowing out behind her despite the lack of wind. It simply billowed constantly, as though she was standing in front of a fan. The hood of the cloak was up over her head, and a smooth, black metal helmet covered her head. The helmet was entirely featureless aside from a pair of red glowing eyes that would have looked quite terrifying within the shadows of the hood, if the entire form hadn’t been barely over four feet tall. And very clearly that of a young child.
As everyone else in the room exchanged confused looks, the girl abruptly raised both hands, her voice still magnified. “Good evening!” she bellowed out loud, voice reverberating throughout the room, “and welcome to my first robbery!”
“Look, kid,” Travis the guard started while stepping that way with his free hand out, “that’s enough. I don’t know who you think you are, but--”
In that instant, just as he reached the spot where the orbs were, Travis suddenly found himself standing right back where he’d been when he started walking. There was no warning, no flash, nothing. He was standing over there, took another step, and suddenly he was back here. The room was suddenly filled with gasps, and a few curses of surprise.
“Who am I?” the girl echoed his words with a giggle. “I’m the Baroness of Boost, the Monarch of Movement.” As she said those words, Travis abruptly felt the pistol leap from his hand. All around him, the other guards had the same problem, their guns flying away to land on the floor at the girl’s feet as she continued. “I’m the Quicken Queen, the Ruler of Roam!
“My name is Joyride, and I’m here for your money.”
The announcement made a few of the people laugh, a couple mutter in confusion, and most simply dismiss her out of hand despite the display so far. One of the customers, a tall, blond man in a neatly pressed suit, spoke up. “Listen here, little girl, we don’t have time for your games. Some of us have work to get to. Now take your little toys, and run al--” In mid-sentence, the man’s words abruptly turned to a startled, choked cry as one of the floating orbs shot off a quick greenish beam at him. He jerked back reflexively, even as the people around him cried out as well. But he wasn’t hurt. There was no hole in the man, no damage whatsoever. Instead, the moment after the beam struck him, he was suddenly yanked off his feet and flew upward with a loud scream. Soon, he struck the ceiling about twenty feet up and lay flat against it, held there.
“Don’t worry!” the apparently dubbed Joyride called up to him. “Soon as we’re done, it’ll let you down safely!” With that, she turned her attention to the rest of the people around her. “So like, I kinda need everyone to either lay on the floor or lay on the ceiling. It’s your choice, but if you don’t wanna get on the floor, my friends here can always--”
She didn’t have to continue. Before she’d even finished the point, every other person in the room had already flattened themselves against the polished floor. No one wanted to join the first man who had spoken up.
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“See?!” They had the feeling that the little girl was beaming behind her helmet. “That was easy. Ummm, you, you, and you.” Pointing at three different tellers, she tossed each of them a white bag. “Take everything out of the tills and fill those up. You,” She pointed to the manager. “We’re going to the vault!”
“B-but listen kid, I don’t know what movies you’ve seen,” the elderly woman insisted, “but I can’t open the vault. And the cops are on their way already. The alarm went off. You should just get out of here while you can. Take the money from the tills and run, you won’t get in the vault.”
“Thanks for the advice!” Joyride blurted cheerfully, sounding completely genuine. “But I know what I’m doing. Let’s go!” She started to walk then before doing a quick pivot back to the assembled group who were still lying on the floor. “Oh! And I’m leaving two of my friends here. If you move, they’ll put you on the ceiling. So stay still!” Belatedly, she giggled, “Unless you wanna go for a quick trip!”
That was enough to keep everyone on the floor, while the two orbs hovered around playing guards. Satisfied, Joyride skipped along beside the elderly manager, heading for the vault while the third orb kept pace behind them, its red lens staring menacingly at the woman whenever she glanced that way.
“So, you worked here for a long time?” the pint-sized supervillain asked, as though they were simply going for a casual walk. “Do you like it? Do they pay you enough? I bet they don’t pay you enough.”
The woman opened her mouth, hesitated as an uncertain sound escaped her, then shook her head. “Kid, do you have any idea what you’re doing? You’re committing a felony. Do you know what a felony is?”
“Robbing a bank is a bad thing?” the girl asked with a voice of put-on surprise.
With a glance toward the orb behind them, the bank manager, a woman named Carla Pine, gave a short nod. “Uh, yes. It’s a very bad thing. You’ll go to prison for a very long time.”
“If they catch me,” Joyride pointed out with a giggle. “And it’s a bad thing to rob a bank, but it’s okay for a bank to rob other people?”
“What?” the woman blinked. “The bank doesn’t rob people.”
“Ma’am,” the young thief retorted, “with all due respect, I’ve seen your loan interest rates and overdraft fees. You guys are one secret volcano base away from being a James Bond nemesis. You charge thirty-five dollars every time someone makes a tiny mistake and pays for something or has a bill go through before their deposit happens. So if someone doesn’t have any money in their account and tries to buy something, even accidentally, you think the answer is to take more money, which they don’t have, away from them? And then their money is still in the negative when another charge goes through, so you take another thirty-five dollars. You know how much money banks in the United States took from people in overdraft fees last year? Twenty-five billion dollars. And I’m the supervillain?”
While Carla made confused, affronted noises, her young escort stopped, pointing at the large vault door ahead of them. “This is it, right?”
“Yes,” the woman confirmed. “But as I said, we can’t open it. The door will only open when it’s time, and it won’t be time for another hour. You can’t wait around that long. The police and Star-Touched--”
“Uh huh, but they’re not even through the second layer yet.” With those mysterious words, Joyride reached down to grab something inside her cloak. She came out with what appeared to be a strange looking pistol with a small radar dish on the end rather than a full barrel, and a complicated keypad at the back. Humming to herself, the girl punched a few numbers in, then pointed the device toward the vault. When she pulled the trigger, a rapidly pulsing, circular series of rays poured into the large metal door before gradually narrowing into a smaller rectangle, about five and a half feet high and a couple feet across.
For ten seconds, the girl held that rectangular beam on the metal, then stepped backward. As she did so, the piece of vault door that the beam had been hitting came with her. It was attached to the beam, which appeared to have wrapped itself around the thick metal. Humming, Joyride turned, moving the chunk of vault door out of the way before turning off her device, dropping the thing to the floor with a very loud, reverberating thud.
“Oops!” Sounding chastened and embarrassed briefly, the girl quickly amended herself. “I mean, yeah! See, that’s what you get… door!” She looked toward her orb-drone, which appeared to be staring at her judgmentally. “Oh shut up, let’s get the money.”
A minute later, the trio reemerged from the vault, now with the bank manager lugging a heavy sack of cash. On the way, Joyride tilted her head before remarking. “Oh, now they’re through the third layer.”
“What--what layers are you talking about?” Carla hesitantly asked.
That question made the young villainess give an excited and cheerful, “Oh! It’s really cool! See, before I came in here, I put some traps down outside. You know, things that teleport people away, or slow them down, or make them spin in circles, or hangs them upside down, or traps them in this thick jelly stuff. There’s four layers of it and they’re on the fourth one, right by the doors. So I guess I better get going. Could you hurry up, please?”
For a moment, the elderly woman just stared at her, before carefully pointing out, “You’re going awfully far out of your way not to hurt anyone, little girl. What if I say no and refuse to give it to you? What’ll you do, stick me to the ceiling? Then you’ll have to carry this by yourself.” She indicated the bag that she could barely get a few inches off the ground with both hands.
“Oh! I’m sorry, I forgot.” With that, Joyride pointed to the bag. “Tin Man, grab.”
Immediately, the orb drone turned that way, a panel in its bottom opening up before a long metal arm extended, caught hold of the bag with a grapple-hand, and easily pulled it away from the woman. It hovered there with the bag, seemingly having no trouble keeping it off the ground.
“There,” Joyride noted with a satisfied nod. “Now we can--”
As she was in the midst of saying that, another security guard, one that hadn’t been seen before, abruptly jumped out of a nearby doorway with his gun raised. “Get down on the floor! Let me s-aaaaahh!” That last bit was because a different drone, this one about twice the size of the others and painted bright blue, suddenly appeared out of thin air and fired two beams. The first hit the man’s gun, making it tear its way out of the man’s hand to stick against the floor with a heavy thud. The second beam struck the man himself, and launched him toward the ceiling where he ‘lay’ flat against it, struggling and cursing, yet unable to so much as lift a finger away from it.
“Thanks, Dorothy!” Reaching out, Joyride patted the larger blue drone, which seemed to almost purr with appreciation before vanishing from sight once more. Then she focused on the woman nearby. “You’re right, I don’t wanna hurt anybody. But the line between being super-annoyingly inconvenient and hurting someone is really wide. So c’mon!” She started skipping ahead again.
Suddenly paranoid about where the previously unknown blue drone was, the woman hurried after her while casting quick looks around. “Annoyingly inconvenient? What is that supposed to mean?”
Without slowing down, Joyride cheerfully answered by rattling off a number and an address. Carla’s phone number and address. As she reacted to that, the girl continued. “Tin Man, show her the house.”
Immediately, the drone carrying the heavy money bag lowered itself down a bit, a slot in its top opening up before a small screen emerged. As Carla stared, she recognized a view through one of the security cameras in her own home. It was an image of the kitchen.
“Deploy pacification procedures level one at five percent, then cancel after four seconds.” the young girl recited.
Instantly, the view in the camera changed. There was a flash of light, and suddenly the kitchen had about three inches of water in it. It only stayed there for those brief few seconds before vanishing once more.
“If you actually made me mad,” Joyride informed her, “I’d fill your entire house with it. And that’s not just water. It’s stink-juice. It smells really, really bad. You don’t wanna lose all your electronics and ruin your furniture and have everything you own smell like skunk, right?
“See? I don’t have to hurt you. I can be super-annoyingly inconvenient.”
As she finished saying that, they reached the front lobby, where everyone was still waiting. Well, almost everyone. Two more people were stuck to the ceiling, having apparently decided to try testing their guards.
“Scarecrow, Lion, everything okay?” Joyride asked quickly, getting affirmative beeps. “Good, now--oh! Here they come.” Quickly, she hurried to the center area where she had appeared. The bags of money collected by the tellers were sitting nearby. “Aaand three… two… one…”
Abruptly, the doors into the bank slammed open, as a SWAT team, accompanied by Flea, Silversmith, and Kriegspiel quickly flooded their way in, stopping short at the sight that confronted them. In that short pause, every weapon the SWAT members held, along with Flea’s swords, were yanked away and flew over to land in a pile near Joyride.
Spreading her arms high and wide above her head, the nine-year-old girl gave another loud, cackling maniacal laugh that was magnified to be heard throughout the room. In her very best evil villain voice, she declared, “You’re too late, heroes! The Fleet Felon escapes again! Err, for the first time! But there’ll be other times!” She seemed to hesitate, deciding whether to amend herself again, before simply settling on that loud, cackling laugh that she had very clearly practiced for a long time.
Silversmith was the first to react, his hand lashing out in order to create a much larger liquid-metal hand, big enough to catch the girl and hold her entire body in its grasp. But, just before it would have found its target, there was another bright flash, more fireworks exploded into the air along with a brief laser light show. In that instant, the girl, along with her drones and all the money they had collected, were gone. A moment later, everyone who had been pinned to the ceiling was gently lowered back to the floor, none the worse for wear.
As the metaphorical dust settled, Flea looked to their leader. “Smith?
“What the fuck just happened?”