The day before the heist, I ordered a few hoodlums around to make sure everyone was properly evacuated from the area and the guards closed off every entry. It was also the day where I started to hear complaints from Pauline about her work.

“Do you know how hard it is to abduct men during the day? Seriously, can you imagine working with a mute assassin to abduct five men!?” She was already complaining the whole day, but this time, she gave me a bit of crucial information.

“You two were successful?”

“Aye, they are all bound in one of the rooms. I´m pretty sure they have some sweet, drug-induced dreams at this point.” She said while grinning wildly. I didn’t even want to know more and interrupted her before she could have any chance of giving me a more vivid picture of them.

“Have you fucked them?” Felix asked out of the blue. He was working on the last touches of his explosives right next to me which made me sweat the whole time.

“Only two.” She said and smiled lewdly. Felix laughed loudly while I only shook my head. This wasn’t planned at all. “What Tom, are you jealous?”

“Why should I?” I asked. I never had any intention of monopolizing her. She was a whore … a whore who basically slept with everyone who paid.

“Uhh, too bad. Maybe I should do it with your mistress next time.” I laughed loudly, already imagining all the blood that would flow if she actually tried to go through with such a thing.

“Go ahead.” I pressed out between my laughs.

“What´s so funny?” Jack, our mole asked, just as he entered the underground room. My laughter died down, mostly because everyone except Pauline looked at me strangely.

“Nothing.” I said and watched how Jack put his cockroach, which was clinging onto his shoulder, into its box. This thing seriously sent shivers down my spine whenever I looked at it. I still didn’t know why Jack was keeping it, even though he claimed the cockroach helped with digging.

“Okay … so when will we start whatever you have planned?” He was strangely eager to start, probably because he was the only one of us who had nothing to do so shortly before the crucial day.

“Tomorrow around twelve.” I said.

“Well … how are we going to rob that place anyway? I know … secret organisation and stuff, but I seriously want to know how bad it can get tomorrow.” Jack said, probably more concerned about his wife than losing out on money.

“I never told you for good reason. If anyone of you got captured and interrogated, it would all be for nought.”

“Well, that would be the case now anyway. I don’t know how you spread the mana disease around the merchant’s headquarters, but without it, we probably won´t be able to do it anyway. Just pointing at that building now will be enough for your plan to fail … probably.”

“Mana stones.” I said.

“Huh?” Jack couldn’t quite follow.

“There are a bunch of mana stones in the wells around the target. Everyone who drank out of them is poisoned.” I revealed. The only way to give another one the symptoms of a mana disease were to actually give it to them. Luckily, it wasn’t deadly, if treated correctly which the state already did for us. This was probably the only disease where the correct reaction was to get everyone out of an area instead of containing them within.

“Mana stones don’t leak enough for that.” Jack, the good old earth mage said.

“And that’s why Felix and I liquified them.” I claimed.

“Are you insane? They are incredibly unstable, one sneeze and you would blow up.” That was … something I didn’t know. Angrily, I looked at Felix who told me this wouldn’t be an issue at all.

“Chill, I know how to let stuff explode, but I also know how to keep everything stable.” He claimed which was not entirely unfounded. Nothing important exploded so far, even though he worked quite carelessly sometimes. “Anyway, this is enough to blow up a whole street. Are we going to blow all the riches up or what?”

“Not quite. We will destroy everything in the area around the guild.”

“For what?”

“Isn´t that obvious? There are secondary systems that will sound an alarm once the mana stone runs out of energy. And for that reason, you build these nice devices which will detect any sound and start an unstoppable reaction.” Pauline said. Well, she was the one who got the info about the secondary protections, so it was no wonder she knew why the explosives needed to go off exactly when the siren goes off. The goal was to create as much destruction as possible to hinder any progress the guards could make. Luckily for us, the surrounding buildings were way less secured, making it relatively easy for a skilled assassin to lace them with our explosives.

“That’s the plan? Blow the surrounding shit up and steal everything in the mess?” Felix asked.

“Precisely.” I answered.

“… fine by me.” He said and shrugged.

“And why do I need to be there?” Jack asked.

“You need to identify anything magical for us. That´s too risky to steal. We do have a list of everything stored, but it is better to stay on the safe side.” I explained.

“Alright … can I go home now? I kind of promised my wife to be back early today.” Jack told us.

“Early? It's nearly midnight.” Felix said, nearly bursting out into laugher which seemed to scare him a few seconds afterwards for some reason.

“… Shit.” Jack dashed up the stairs, leaving us alone with a distressed Felix who did his best to shut all of us up as we burst into laughter.

“It´s finished.” He said quietly. Nervously, I backed off from the table and slowly made my way upwards as well, closely followed by a visibly paler Pauline. “Just kidding.”

This guy … he seriously needed to stop. These explosives were going off by sound, meaning one wrong laugh and we could all blow up if he really activated them.

“Fuck you Jack! I´m going to jack off Tom now.” Pauline exclaimed. Well, that was an invitation I couldn’t turn down, could I?