Season 1, Episode 6 - The Tree Plot VIII - "California Dreamin'"
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Five years ago, in the dead of night, under the darkness of an empty moon. In the district of Russet, you could find a row of mansions along a hill, signs of the new wealth flowing into the district courtesy of unregulated Asian investment into New England. In one mansion in particular, a wealthy family was currently out vacationing down in the Cape; the security guard that kept watch over their home while they were away currently felt head over heels for the girl standing before him.
“You want to unlock the safe for me, right?” Eos asked him as she stood across from him in the living room of the mansion. Signs of opulence could be seen all around them - a grand fireplace with a Triple Kingdom painting hanging over the mantle; statues and statuettes from Italy watched the robbery with blank, uncaring eyes; baubles and icons purchased from struggling Slavic immigrants fresh off the boat rounded out the scene.
As Clayton got to work on securing the goods, he watched the guard struggle with Eos’s Rddhi ability. Red Rddhi, bound together in the form of a long string, stretched from her chest, wrapped itself around her finger within its black glove, and extended across the living room until it caught the guard’s finger in its trap.
Once the rumor mill informed them the family would be away for a week, Clayton and his partner-in-crime, Eos, spent the past month staking out the place and keeping a close eye on the valuables inside and, once the family left, the habits and routines of the security guard. They decided to strike near the end of the vacation, when the guard would presumably have his, well, guard down.
Long after the sun set on their chosen date, Clayton took a well-shadowed path within the mansion gardens that allowed him to get close and use his wind ability to levitate himself up to the roof of the mansion's back porch. His ability only let him “hop” into the air rather than fly, but the cascading roofs gave him a path up to the chimney, cushioning each contact between his shoes and the rooftop tiles. He hopped up the lip of the brick chimney, peering down into darkness, where the fireplace awaited him; there would be no fires on a midsummer's night. Clayton slipped inside, descending lightly downwards, using the air to cushion himself when he arrived in the fireplace.
The lights inside the mansion were on; as he poked his head out, Clayton found himself in the mansion living room, filled with more wealth than in his entire home district of Fore River. Did that bother him? He wasn't sure. Not a whole lot bothered him. He stepped out into the living room; just as expected, the guard was nowhere nearby. According to their stakeout, the guard usually "patrolled" the front porch at this time.
The guard had indeed stuck to his schedule, enabling Clayton to sneak over to a side window and allow a waiting Eos inside. Once they were inside, all it took was for Eos to activate her ability and send her Heartstrings - she was poetic like that - across the floor until it seized the guard, who was sitting in chair on the front porch, reading a dime novel, occasionally looking up to see the city lights of Russet below him.
Clayton watched Rddhi spark along Eos's heartstring as it stretched from the living room to the front porch. They heard the sound of the guard standing and a moment later, he stumbled inside, his cheeks flushed with red. Eos made a "come here' motion with her finger. As Clayton stuffed statuettes into a leather sack, the guard struggled to speak out. Clayton had seen Eos's power in action before - a part of the target's subconscious tried to resist, but a back-alley Rddhi specialist had calculated Eos's power as Class 4. Little could be done against Class 4.
"The safe, please," Eos reminded him, her voice a sickly sweet.
The guard tried to reach for his pistol at his side, but he could only reach up and wipe the sweat off his brow. “I…I do want to unlock the safe for you.”
Bowing his head in a mixture of unconscious shame and conscious embarrassment over such a beautiful girl, the guard led Eos upstairs. Eos gave Clayton a smirk as she ascended behind the guard; he grinned in return as he cleared an entire shelf of Latvian religious icons. With the living room emptied to a reasonable amount (don’t steal more than you sell!) Clayton sat on a Polish luxury couch and ran a hand through his hair, looking over the living room.
Comparing it to the back alleys and seedy underbellies he grew up in, Clayton could only grin at the sights before him. He could imagine Eos’s angry face - which, combined with her long blonde hair, made her appear larger than her short frame - explaining the situation to him.
Take to the rich and give to the poor! We grew up in poor circumstances. We’re lucky to make it out! Many people didn’t. It’s only fair we take back some of the wealth that could’ve helped them. What’s fair is fair!
Clayton chuckled. Why am I robbing a house right now? It’s because it’ll keep me fed and off the streets. Can’t beat that!
A few minutes later, the guard lumbered down the stairs, Eos still keeping him chained to her using her Heartstring. She held a large sack across her shoulder.
“How much?” Clayton asked, dollar signs in his eyes at the size of the burlap bag.
Eos smirked. “A whole lot, I can tell you that much.”
Clayton nodded with a grin, then followed Eos and the guard out of the back door. They arrived in the mansion's large backyard, Greek statues decorating the path that ended at a stone wall across the edge of the hill. Clayton peered over the edge and saw the cliff face and abrupt drop down into urban jungle, tens of feet below them. A running van waited down there for them, their boss Carmine leaning against the back of it, the light of his cigarette giving Clayton his drop target.
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“You’re up,” Eos told him, tightening her grip on the guard when he tried to look over the edge.
Clayton nodded, grabbed the nearest bag of baubles, and dropped it off the edge of the cliff. A moment later, Rddhi crackled in his Class 4 hands; a sharp wind blew below the bags, gently guiding them down the cliff until they landed into Carmine’s waiting hands. He tossed them into the back of the van just in time for the arrival of the next bag. The dark night sky and empty moon meant that the likelihood of being spotted was very low. Conversely, the only light sources being the distant cigarette and his own red Rddhi sparks meant that about halfway down, things got dicey in the dark, yet Clayton didn't mind. If they lost some of the loot, it wasn't any skin off his nose (though some skin might be taken off his back courtesy of Eos caning him, since she definitely didn't want to lose the loot).
Eos tossed Clayton the last bag; he followed the same process. When Carmine deposited it and looked back up, Clayton gave off two distinctive flashes of red Rddhi, indicating they were done.
Clayton looked back at the guard. “Well, we’re done, Eos. What about him-”
Eos rammed a knife through the guard's neck. The life left his eyes, as did her Heartstring. He toppled forward, right over the stone wall.
“Eos!” Clayton hissed as he used his wind to cushion his fall. Down below, the cigarette light bounced back-and-forth; Carmine was shaking his head vigorously. If Clayton listened closely, he could hear the light thumps of Carmine banging his fist off the van in anger. Nevertheless, he produced a large garbage bag and positioned it just right so that the guard fell into it.
When that was done, Clayton sighed and glanced at Eos. She merely shrugged. “No witnesses. And plus, he was just a dog of the wealthy.”
“Aren’t we just dogs of the poor, then?” Clayton asked as he and Eos stepped up onto the stone wall.
“There’s a difference,” she said. “He’s biting down. We’re biting up.”
Clayton wondered about that for a moment, then shrugged. Philosophy wasn’t his thing.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Hold on,” she said. Clayton realized she had kept one bag hidden from him; she pulled out a Shenzhen-produced boombox and fancy-looking cassette tape. She placed the cassette tape inside and pressed PLAY. An old Pre-Unleashing song came on, one that Clayton didn’t recognize. Then he froze; he felt something snake-like crawl up his side. He looked down and saw a Heartstring tie itself around his pinky.
“I won’t control you,” Eos said, hoisting the boombox over her shoulder. “But just in case. I’m relying on you to get me down a fifty foot cliff, after all. I’m not taking chances.”
Clayton raised an eyebrow. “You don’t trust me?”
Eos took his hand in her own. “I don’t trust anybody.”
Then she pulled him off the stone wall, laughing madly when the two tumbled into open air, the only connection being their hands and the Heartstring. Clayton quickly swiped his hand through the air, forming a gust of wind that slowed them down to maybe a foot per second. He needed to continually apply his wind, resulting in a constant air current that gently spun them around as they descended.
Eos nodded her head to the music, then the music spread to the rest of her body. Her arms moved in time to the beat and she pretended to step back and forth, her legs moving through open air.
“Dance with me,” she told him.
“Don’t move too much,” he warned, looking down toward the ground. “This is a delicate operation as it is.”
Clayton felt Eos move his hand; their intertwined fingers lifted his face back up. “Dance with me,” she said again.
Whether it was his own volition or the Heartstring, Clayton couldn’t tell. He could never tell, and that was the problem; he could never tell if her voice was truly sweet, her smile warm, her hands inviting. There was always the possibility that he only loved her because of the Heartstring.
Clayton kept up the air current with his powered hand while twirling Eos with the hand she held. She leaned back, letting him do a makeshift job of dipping her, her grip on his hand tightening, holding it close.
It would be the closest they ever were.
“You know what this song is about?” Eos asked as they continued their twirling descent. She rolled her eyes when Clayton shook his head. “I’ve told you before. Your memory’s terrible.”
Saxophones and flutes played as the song entered its instrumental section, the melody bouncing off the cliff face, blanketing them with its music.
“Maybe you should do a better job telling me,” Clayton supposed with a cheeky grin.
Eos chuckled. “This song’s about wanting to be somewhere else. Anywhere but here. Somewhere warm on a cold day. It’s a basic want.”
Eos pulled him close to her. “Don’t you want that, too? Don’t you want to leave this rotting country?” She whispered into his ear, her breath hot. “We could kill Carmine and make off with everything ourselves. Just the two of us. We don’t need him to sell this, and it’s better to split it two ways, anyway.”
Clayton swallowed, the air taking on a chill as the song entered its climactic verse.
“Don’t you ever dream of leaving?” she continued. “The day after we sell all this, we could be on a flight to any Legation city on the West Coast. San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego…there’s work there. We’d be happy.”
Clayton hesitated for a moment; his cheeks felt flushed and something tugged at his heart. “You’re not happy here?”
Eos shook her head. “Who could be happy here? Who could be content here?”
Clayton didn’t answer.
Eos sighed. “You’re happy. You’re content. But that’s because you have no ambitions. You don’t have a dream like I do.”
The ground approached them. Carmine still leaned against the van, his cigarette providing a homing beacon.
Eos pulled away from Clayton, then looked him square in the eyes. “Last chance. Do you want to dream with me?”
Clayton’s lips felt dry and his head pounded. “I…I don’t mind just doing this. It’s a nice life, don’t you think? Rather than go away with you, don’t you want to stay here with me?”
They landed on the ground before Eos could answer. Carmine rose from the van, his big arms crossed his body. He towered over both of them. “The price of getting rid of that body is coming out of your cut, Eos," he said in his deep voice.
Eos threw her hands up and whined, making no moves to kill the man she just discussed killing. As Carmine ushered Eos into the van, Clayton took a moment to look back up at the mansion atop the cliff, twelve stars shining down on it.
Biting up, huh…