Announcement

New Volume 3 Chapter(s) Weekly. Volumes 1 and 2 now complete!

“My name is Trycen Hasper. Fourteen years ago, my home was destroyed in the Drazah War when I was just a child, but now I’ve found a new home here in Cotagerie. When crime nearly consumed the city a few years ago, I was helpless. Luckily, a hero stepped forth. The Vivacious Vixen single-handedly saved this city from the brink of destruction.”

“But that same hero was revealed to be the daughter of the most hated people in history, the same villains that destroyed my home. She can no longer be trusted. Who knows what evil she is planning. This city needs a new hero to keep the darkness away. I will be that hero, I will save this city!... AHHHHHH!”

Hasper’s body lurched forward as he was flung from the roof he was standing on. Phon was now standing where he’d been, her leg still raised, having just kicked him off. Drim, who was standing off to the side, lowered his monocle that he’d been looking through and asked, “Did you just kill him?”

“Eh, I’m sure he’s fine,” Phon dismissed it while waving her hands as if she was brushing something away. A scream of ‘Ahhh my leg! I think it’s broken!’ could be heard below. “See, totally fine. Besides, did you hear the way he bad mouthed me? Plus, I hate it when people are all like, ‘I’m gonna save my city,’” she mocked while doing air quotes. “Nobody cares about their city that much!”

“It seems you do a little,” Drim teased her.”I’m guessing this is more about someone moving in on your turf when you’ve only been gone for a little more than a week. It’s a shame. I think you two could have gotten along, you both suffer from a bad case of monologue syndrome after all.”

“Stop saying annoying but truthful things!” Phon whined. “Me not being trustworthy has yet to be determined. He shouldn’t be prejudiced like that. I mean, we’re about to do something that will totally make people not trust us, but couldn’t he have waited a day?! This job should be fun though, and it’s our first one too. I’m getting really excited!”

“It’s a little more excessive than I would have liked for our first job, but I guess we need the publicity,” Drim said as he returned his monocle to his eye. He was looking at and analyzing the Cotagerie Museum with the new zoom feature Nathym had installed on its lense. It was their first target and first official job as the ‘Fiends For Hire’

It had taken a while for them to get a decent job worthy of being their first.A little over a week had passed since that night at Prosper. Immediately after, the police, under orders from the Central Peace, had done their best to confiscate all the cards that Phon had rained down. A few managed to slip through the cracks, however, and over the next few days that information leaked and spread online and through word of mouth.

There were two ways to contact the Fiends For Hire to make a request. The first was a website which took the person to a form they’d have to fill out. It asked them what their request was, what they were willing to pay for it, and required a phone number or email if further negotiations or details were needed.

The phone number on the card would redirect the caller to an automated machine. The caller was required to answer preliminary questions with button presses before they could leave a message with the details of their request. Such questions included things like, “Is there a specific time frame you need it to be completed in?” and, “Do you believe your request will require breaking any laws?”

The Central Peace had tried everything they could to either take down the two methods of contact or get a location on the Drazah siblings from them, but failed miserably at both; even with their vast array of resources. The website was definitely the more popular of the two for submitting requests because of its simplicity, but not everyone had internet access. The phone requests were more common among older demographics and people who lived in more rural areas. However, for both, the requests definitely weren’t up to par over the last few days.

They were mostly joke requests, and the ones that weren’t, they considered too subpar for their big debut. There were also a few that were just hate mails or messages directed at the two, requesting that they turn themselves in or commit suicide. There was one that stood out, even though the submitter almost assuredly hadn’t been serious. What they most likely didn’t notice was the fine print on the website which stated that the Fiends For Hire can take any requests submitted even without notifying the client, and the client will still be required to pay upon completion.

The request was to steal the ‘World’s Heart’ from the Cotagerie Museum, a large red jewel that had been donated to it. It was called such partly because of the color but mostly because of the location. Cotagerie was the very center of the continent with the museum at the center of the city. The Heart was placed at the very center of that as well, making it the converging point of everything.

The payout for the request was almost nothing, definitely not something worthy of such a grand job, and it would even be less than the expenses they paid to complete it. However, they decided that the money didn’t really matter for this. Attention was what they were after, and this job was perfect for it. It would show the world what they could accomplish and hopefully lead to more steady clientele in the future.

For the past week, the Central Peace hadn’t just limited themselves to attempting to impede the Drazah’s business ventures. After the PCN broadcast, they tried to pass several new legislations, including trying to ban hair dye, tattoo parlors, and color contacts to make Fiends more recognizable. None of them managed to get enough support to pass, however. They also released an official statement on the existence of Fiends. It was quite long and needlessly wordy. To briefly sum it up, it basically just said ‘we acknowledge that Fiends are real, and we’re looking into it.’

The CP wanted Drim and Phon Drazah to be dealt with as swiftly as possible, so they wanted to nail them with as many criminal charges as they could. However, legally speaking, they hadn’t done much wrong. The evidence of the Mayor’s crimes would have lead to him being on the DoA list, so they couldn’t be charged with his murder. Crihound refused to press charges under any circumstances, so they could not be charged with his kidnapping.

In the end, they were only charged with Disturbing the Peace, Destruction of Public Property, and Littering. Official criminal records were issued for both of them, but only a measly score of 140 for each of them was applied. Following protocol, a summons needed to be issued, but with no legal address to send them to, they were just sitting on someone’s desk indefinitely.

◆◆◆

Drim and Phon strolled through the main hallway of the museum. After it had closed for the night, they waited until Phon could confirm that not a single person was left in the building. “Ugh, this is so disappointing!” Phon complained. Drim tilted his head at her in confusion, even knowing that she wouldn’t need someone’s acknowledgement to continue.

“I know we can’t turn off the alarm, so we used my power to get in, but they have no other security. There’s no motion detectors, no laser grids, there’s not even a Cosdamn security camera! I knew it would be super easy for us and all, but I wanted to go all like super-spy on this!” Drim’s mind wandered off a bit while she was talking. They had only been living together again for a little while, but this had to be at least her 30th monologue.

She never used to talk this much, he thought. She was never reserved when we were young, but she wouldn’t just talk someone’s ear off like this. Guess I’m not the only one who’s changed a bit, but I don’t hate it. I’m glad she’s found a way to enjoy life. Phon continued to rant and Drim simply enjoyed the time with his sister until they reached the end of the main hallway.

Like the rest of Cotagerie, the museum was a giant circle. It consisted of 3 rings that looped around back to the main hallway. The location of exhibits for countries in those rings corresponded to their actual geographical relation to Cotagerie itself. Horage was in the outermost ring on the West side and Segrevide was in the middle ring on the Eastern side. In the middle of it all, which could only be entered directly from the main hallway, was the World’s Heart.

Where Drim and Phon had stopped now was the new Drazah exhibit being built just before it. The thinking behind putting it in the center also stemmed from the idea that it impacted the entire world. “Wow, it really looks just like them, huh?” Phon remarked. Drim nodded in agreement as they stared at lifelike replicas of their parents.

The exhibit was a fair bit larger than Drim had been expecting. The museum had clearly been putting a lot of effort into it. There were several artifacts, including the shell of a deactivated nuclear bomb that was never used. Drim walked over to a wall which had a timeline painted on it; containing information from the first battle their parents ever fought to the night of the Cosmic Boon, ending with the forming of the Central Peace.

There was an electric terminal in front of the exhibits which contained more dates and detailed events of each. However, after one look at the table of contents, he grimaced. There were an egregious amount of dates and events missing, countless untold stories of lives lost; likely because there was no one to tell them. Drim guessed that over half of the information he read from his parent’s records wasn’t there. He thought to himself, Maybe when I have free time I’ll donate some of that information. There’s no physical records left I’m aware of, but I remember all of it, every word.

“Hey Drim, come look at this,” Phon shouted from the other side of the exhibit. When he got closer, she continued, “Now these don’t look anything like the real deal.” As she spoke she gestured to two smaller figures. Based on the nameplate, it seemed that they were supposed to be replicas of the child versions of Drim and Phon Drazah, but Phon was right. They looked nothing like the two of them when they were children.

I guess every photo of us burned up with the mansion, and our parents never really showed us off publicly. Mallea might have some, if she’s even still alive. Drim’s mind now drifted off to thinking about her. None of the servants who served under the Drazahs were charged with any crimes, but there had been reports of a few being killed in crimes of passion by people wanting to kill anyone related to their parents. Drim also thought briefly that a few of the townspeople might have photos, but doubted that any of them would be willing to help with such an exhibit.

“The people who work on this have been lazy too. It still has us listed with a death date under our names,” Phon mentioned before setting down the large duffle bag she had been carrying with her this whole time. She didn’t seem the type to over prepare, but when Drim asked her about its contents, she just replied, “Fun Stuff.” She unzipped it a little and pulled out a black permanent marker.

She walked over to their father’s replica and began doodling all over his face; including things like buck teeth, an eyepatch, and a ‘Fiends For Hire’ logo on his forehead. When she was done, she handed the marker over to Drim and asked, “You want to do any?” Drim approached their mother’s replica and drew for a second. He stopped after just applying a toothbrush mustache. He had thought about doing more but felt that it suited her just right for some reason.

Content with their vandalism, they headed through the narrow hallway that led from the Drazah Exhibit to the Heart Exhibit. When they walked in, they glanced around; it was clear someone had put a lot of work into it. The floor was a very detailed map of the main continent and the outlying islands. The domed roof was an ever changing skyline that was steadily going through the course of a day; from sunrise to sunset and back, the bright high noon sun and countless stars at night.

On the walls were the leaders of each nation, as well as children from every race, all holding hands. At the very center of it, at the Cotagerie spot on the map, was a pedestal which held the World’s Heart encased in glass on top. “It’s very pretty and super heartwarming… Makes me want to throw up a little,” Phon exaggerated as she pretended to gag. Drim stared at her with a slightly sad expression, about to say something, but was beaten to it.

“I know what you’re gonna say… I’ll do my best to not get a lot of blood on it, okay,” Phon said as she walked towards the center. She waved back at him and said, “I’ll get set up over here, you go take care of your preparations that I know you explained to me and I totally haven’t forgotten the specifics of.” Drim headed back over to the narrow hallway while thinking, I know she actually paid attention and could probably recite everything I said word for word, but she just doesn’t want to admit it.

He paced along one side of the hallway then back along the other. While he walked, he placed the fingers of his right hand on the wall and slid them along. The wall emitted a green glow that streaked behind his fingers before fading away. Once he was done, he headed back over to the center and couldn’t help but inquire about the state of things. “I’m finished… but, err, what are you doing exactly?”

Phon had set up two folding chairs on either side of the Heart’s pedestal, the kind people would usually take to sporting events. She was now dividing up snacks between the two of them. Among the options were several flavors of chips, a few candy packs, a bag of trail mix, and a bag of pre-popped popcorn. There were also a variety of bottled sodas, water, sports drinks, and tea. “Well I didn’t know what you’d be in the mood for, so I thought I should bring lots of choices.”

“No… I mean why… why did you bring any of this?!” Drim replied, a little annoyed, but mostly just dumbfounded.

“Oh right,” Phon said, now pulling out a large chess clock. “I didn’t know how long we’d be waiting here, and I wanted us to have some fun. Also, I didn’t know which one of us would be fighting, so I thought it would be nice for the other one to have a place to sit and something to munch on. Oh, and I kind of wanted to give off a nice nonchalant vibe for the broadcast.”

“Right, I forgot about the broadcast bit,” Drim responded, feeling a bit nervous now. “It’s still going to take some getting used to, being in the spotlight and all. Also, why aren’t both of us fighting, wouldn’t that make this a lot easier?”

“That’s exactly why,” Phon remarked. “It would be too easy and be over too quickly if both of us fought. We need to put on a good show after all… Oh right, I almost forgot something.” She began rummaging through her duffle bag again, pulled out a large stack of cards, and began shuffling through them. They didn’t look like the business cards she had thrown out at the celebration, but closer to trading cards Drim had collected as a kid.

“So, what are those?” Drim asked, feeling a little annoyed there was something else she hadn’t told him.

“Crime Cards! I thought it would be fun for the police to have something to collect while they’re chasing us. On the back is our logo, and on the front is a crime. I had ones made for every crime I could think of, but there are lots of crimes and duplicates of each so there’s lots to sort through.” Phon said as she continued sifting through them. “Oh, there’s no sexual assault ones, though, since we agreed that’s something we’ll never do.”

Drim was a little happy that Phon had done something like this; going out of her way to do something for their goal. Most of it had been entirely his idea, so he wasn’t completely sure that she shared the same level of ambition. He was glad she found a way to embrace it, even if it was a little eccentric. “Is there one for littering?” he asked genuinely intrigued.

“Yo,” Phon said as she lifted a card up between two of her fingers.

Drim took the card from her and looked it over. On the top it said ‘Littering’ in big bold letters. Beneath it, there was a little picture of a figure dropping something on the ground next to a trash can. At the bottom it said ‘Misdemeanor’ with ‘5’ written in the bottom right corner. He assumed that this was the criminal score for it. When he was content, he dropped the card on the ground, smiled as he looked back at Phon, and said cheerfully, “I like them!”

Phon finally finished finding the cards she wanted, and placed ones for ‘Breaking and Entering’ and ‘Grand Larceny’ by the base of the pedestal. They both then sat down in their chairs; from the entrance, Drim was in the left chair and Phon was in the right. She placed the chess clock on the edge of the pedestal that wasn’t covered in glass and dug through her bag once more.

This time she pulled out a small orb. Drim recognized it instantly as the latest invention Nathym had just sent them. It was a specially made camera that would sync to an app on Phon’s phone. On her phone, she pressed a few buttons, then a small propeller shot out of the top of the orb and it began to hover in mid air.

She pressed a few more buttons and the camera let out a ray of red light which scanned her. Next she pointed it at Drim and had the orb scan him too. “Okay, I just enabled tracker mode. The camera will now track whoever I set it to,” Phon said before pressing a few more buttons. Drim guessed that she was just configuring a few more options before she asked excitedly, “You ready to get this started?”

“Yeah, guess I should try to be a bit more energetic like you, huh?” Drim replied while Phon gave a little nod. The orb was floating a few feet in front of them with the camera facing them. Phon pushed the ‘broadcast’ button on her phone and a little red light started glowing on the orb. It was now broadcasting to the internet. They currently didn’t have the right technology to hack every internet-capable device to force the broadcast on them.

The best they could manage was making a little notification that said ‘Fiends For Hire - Live from the Cotagerie Museum’ pop up on every device. They couldn’t force anyone to click on the notification, but if someone did, it would bring them to a dedicated website with a livestream from the orb which used the internet connection on Phon’s phone to broadcast it.

Phon waited a few seconds and smiled as the number of watchers rose quickly to a few thousand. When the number started to slow down, she faced the camera and addressed their audience. “Good evening, everyone!” Phon shouted with a big smile. “We are Drim and Phon Drazah of the Fiends For Hire, and tonight we’re bringing you an exceptional spectacle. Tonight we will be performing our very first job, and we wanted to share it with everyone. But before I go on, Drim, would you like to say anything to our viewers?”

“Oh… errr uhh… Thank you for tuning in. We hope you enjoy the show,” Drim stammered while bowing his head.

“Riveting…” Phon said with a bored look on her face. She pulled the orb close to her and whispered, “Be patient with him. I think he’s still a little shy,” before pushing it back to its original spot. “Alright, let’s continue. The details of our first job, which someone definitely legitimately requested we do, is to steal the World’s Heart from the Cotagerie Museum.”

“But as you all can see, we’re already here, right next to the heart. We made it in super easily without triggering a single alarm. We could just take it and go, but that would be boring. There’s also a good chance they would pin it on someone else, but we don’t want to give them that opportunity. So, we’re going to give the police a sporting chance to catch us. Tick tock ladies and gents, the timer starts now!”

Phon lifted her hand up to the chess clock and pushed one of the buttons to start the timer. Not even a second after, she flicked the glass case that contained the Heart. It probably didn’t look like much from the audience’s perspective, but it was enough force to shatter the glass into thousands of tiny pieces, some almost fine enough to call it dust. Without hesitation, an alarm started blaring.

◆◆◆

About 15 minutes had passed since the alarm went off. Drim had been regularly apologizing to the camera for it taking so long. Phon would keep looking at the chess clock, then her phone, and sigh at the steadily decreasing amount of viewers, with more leaving every minute. She was currently throwing popcorn at the camera, trying to hit it right on the lense to make things more interesting for the viewers and alleviate her own boredom. It was also to help distract herself from the constant noise of the alarm that she swore was getting louder.

She would also regularly close her eyes to check if there was anyone approaching the museum. So far, there had been just a random passerby or two, then a bit more seemed to gather; the alarm was likely getting attention outside. It was only on the 20th time she closed her eyes that she could finally sense people inside the museum. “Ooo yay!” Phon yelled, sitting up from the slumped position she was in. “Thank you for your patience everyone, the show is about to begin!”

The alarm shut off a few seconds later, likely the work of their incoming guests. She grabbed the orb and threw it at the wall. Since it was a circular room, there were no corners to speak of, but she did her best to get it where she thought the northeast corner would be. She had the camera zoom out as far as it could go, leaving it with a nice shot of the pair of siblings from an over the shoulder angle and included a good portion of the hallway leading into the room.

Another minute passed and they could now hear loud, heavy, slow footsteps. What approached was ten officers in full riot gear. The five in the front had large riot shields. They stopped at the end of the hallway, at the entrance of the Heart room, crouched down, and lined up their shields. This effectively formed a wall with only slight cracks between each shield, completely blocking any escape route.

Four more officers approached from behind the first wave. They were carrying automatic rifles and aimed them between the cracks of the shields. The last officer, who brought up the rear, was carrying a pistol in one hand, and two pairs of handcuffs in the other. Phon guessed he was the commanding officer, and by the lack of concern in the way he carried himself, she guessed he expected things to end peacefully or felt very good in his odds of detaining them.

She looked at the clock one last time and shouted in annoyance at the group, “Eighteen minutes! It took you all eighteen minutes to get here! Do you know how many times we could have escaped by now! What the mawhg took you all so long?!”

Surprisingly, one of the rifleman actually responded. Their voice was muffled because of the helmet they were wearing so Phon hoped people could make it out well enough on the livestream. “There’s no need to cuss. We were just going to send a few officers when we got the alarm, but someone saw the notification on their computer. When we saw it was you two, and that you didn’t have any intention of going anywhere, we took the time to fully prepare.”

“You idiot, why would you tell her all that?” the commander said scornfully while hitting the offender with the butt of his gun on their helmet. “Listen Drazahs. As you can see, there’s no escape. We can end this peacefully. If you surrender now, I can promise no harm will come to either of you. You haven’t actually stolen anything yet so your offenses would be rather minor.”

“Nah, we’re good,” Phon said while crossing her legs and arms and sitting back in her chair. Drim was drinking tea at the moment, so he just responded with a thumbs down.

“What kind of a response is that?!” the commander yelled furiously. “Alright, we’ll have to do this the way that involves lots of paperwork then. Remember men, stun rounds only, our orders are to bring them in alive. No one fire until I give the order!”

“Yay, only alive, that means I get to have fun, right Drim?” Phon asked while gazing at him with eager anticipation. Drim simply nodded and took this as his cue to open a bag of trail mix and relax. She took the black ribbon off of her hat, wrapped it around her eyes, and tied it behind her head. In the past, she would use the button on her mask to replicate the same effect. In doing so, it triggered the second aspect of her curse.

Whenever her eyes were encased in total darkness, a special room was created; one that existed only in her mind. In this room, there were only three things: another version of herself which she now also saw through, a chair, and a table. There was nothing else around anywhere. It was an empty void. She could change the decor to whatever she wanted, but felt like keeping it simple for now.

Phon sat down in the chair in her mind, and the surface of the table changed to a layout of the museum. She could see the room they were in clearly, as well as the hallway with the officers. Like with her vision, she could expand the range farther if she wanted but the details would also become less and less refined the further it extended. There were also currently twelve pieces on the table: two that represented Drim and Phon, and the remaining ten were the officers.

Each piece matched that person’s location in reality. She could change the appearance of the layout if she wanted, such as making it a 3d model but she felt leaving it as a 2d plane would be fine for now. As for what the pieces looked like, in the theme of the clock, she decided to go with chess pieces. She and her brother were represented by king and queen pieces and all of the officers were enemy pawns.

Several floating screens lit up in a circle around her. They gave a full 360 degrees of vision outside of her body, in the same vision she got when she closed her eyes. She did not need to look at any of these screens to see through them however, and could look through any in first person without moving her head at all. Really they were completely unnecessary, but she liked the aesthetic of it in her mind.

Phon could still move her real body when this was happening. The two versions of herself worked independently of each other but shared the same thoughts. When talking to others, mostly Drim, about her curse, she found it difficult to keep mentioning her mind version without a proper name, so she took to calling it Phonscience. While she was aware that it sounded weird, she mostly just enjoyed the pun of it.

Phon stood up from her chair and began very slowly walking towards the group of officers. Two of the riflemen had been aiming at Drim, but now all of them were pointing at her. “Stop right there. If you keep moving, we will fire. If you wish to surrender, then get down on the ground and…” The commander’s words were drowned out by Phon who was now hysterically laughing at the fact they were even being said. She was a Drazah after all, surrender wasn’t in her blood.

The commander raised his pistol, aimed with the rest of them, and began the order, “On my mark! Ready. Aim. Fire!” While he had been counting, Phonscience had already been preparing her move. She had picked up the pieces for Phon and the commander and had moved them, holding them above new positions. Just as the last words left the commander’s mouth, and they were about to pull the trigger, she placed the two pieces back down.

Phon had vanished from her spot instantly. She was now sitting back in her chair and picking up a soda to take a drink. In the exact spot she had been standing was now the commander. She felt kudos had to be given to him. The shot he’d fired had hit a painting of one of the world’s leaders square in the forehead.

He only managed to get off the one shot, though. Before he could fire any others, his back was riddled with stun rounds. Since he was in swat gear, it would have dampened them, but he was hit with enough in quick succession that it rendered him completely unconscious as his now limp body collapsed onto the ground. Phon couldn’t see their expressions and could only imagine the shock on the other officer’s faces; a thought she relished in.

Nothing happened for the next few moments, as Phon continued to down her drink. The officers looked at each other wildly, dazed at what had happened and unsure of what to do next. Finally, one of the shield-bearing officers took charge and addressed his fellows, “I don’t know exactly what just happened, but we do know that Fiends possess strange abilities. For now, focus on the brother, we have a better idea of what he can do.”

On that order, the riflemen re-aimed and let loose several shots headed directly at Drim. Before they could connect, Drim vanished and a few of the rounds hit the chair instead, knocking it over. Drim, who had been meticulously picking raisins from the trail mix by the handful this entire time, barely even acknowledged he had been moved one seat over to Phon’s chair.

Phon was now standing directly in front of the officer that gave the order while gripping her yo-yo in her sleeve. She was close enough that the rifles couldn’t get a shot on her with the little room they had to work with in the cracks. Behind her ribbon, she glared at the officer with burning eyes of hatred and an enraged expression on her face that would scare anyone.

She screamed at them at the top of her lungs, “Don’t you dare aim at Drim again! This fight is between you and me, got it?! ...and because you upset me, you don’t get to keep your shields anymore!” Phon swung out her yo-yo in a horizontal slash. She had already set it to its buzzsaw mode which sliced cleanly through all of the shields, cutting each of them in half. Before the riflemen could take advantage of the new room to aim, she had popped away to a different spot in the room.

Phonscience continued to move Phon's piece all around, hopping from one spot to the next so the riflemen couldn’t get a shot on her. Eventually, they gave up trying to aim and dropped their guns. Both they and the now shieldless shieldbearers pulled out stun batons. Phon stopped moving at a space near the center of the room, looked at them with a crooked smile, tucked her yo-yo back up her sleeve, raised her arms to taunt them, and yelled, “Now that’s more like it, come at me!”

The group of officers all charged at her. One ran ahead while the others followed closely behind. Phon wasn’t reacting at all, so when the first officer reached her, he took a heavy swing at her. Just before impact, Phonscience swapped Phon with another officer who took the hit on their back. It wasn’t enough to down them, but it would definitely hurt. Phon, who was now behind them, taunted them again and they resumed their charge.

This continued on for quite some time. Anytime one of the officers took a swing at her, they would just be replaced with one of their own. While this was going on, Drim looked down at his left hand, which was completely full of raisins, and spoke in a raised voice, “Hey Phon…”

“Yeah, what’s up?” Phon replied in a genuinely calm tone, without a hint of concern with what was happening around her.

“Next time you buy trail mix, can you get the kind without raisins in it?” Drim asked completely seriously.

“Really?! You who will hunt and eat literally anything with a pulse doesn’t like raisins?” Phon asked dumbfounded as she dodged another attack. The officer that replaced her let out a loud yelp before collapsing, seeming that this was the last hit they could take.

“Well, it’s not the taste really,” Drim said as he continued to stare at the handful of raisins, dismayed. “It’s more the texture, I just don’t like how they feel when I chew them. I don’t know why, but it really bothers me.”

“Alright alright, no more raisins. The kind without is a bit harder to find but if it makes you happy…” Phon replied. Truthfully, she would have done as he asked even if he didn’t have a good reason. She liked doing anything that would make him happy, even if it was small. She snapped out of these complacent thoughts to respond to an impulsive move made by one of the officers.

They had run back towards the guns and Phon guessed they wanted to take a shot at her while she was distracted. It didn’t work of course, and she replaced herself with the officer who fired and was hit directly in the neck with their own stun round. As time went on the officers began to fall one after the other; either from just complete exhaustion, repeated injury from the blunt attacks, or the stun effect had finally gotten to them.

Eventually, only one officer was left standing. They were breathing heavily and seemed to just barely be keeping themself upright. Phon moved back over next to the clock and checked it. She had pressed the button on the other side when she first got up to record the length of this bout. She teleported back in front of the debilitated officer and pulled her yo-yo back out.

She flung it down towards the ground and the blades just barely scraped against the ground as it whirred. “So, it’s down to just the two of us now,” Phon said in a derisive tone. “In sixteen minutes you all managed to defeat yourselves one after the other, and I didn’t even attack once. Would you like to see what I could do in sixteen seconds when I actually fight?”

The officer just stood there, beyond exhausted, and didn’t say anything. Phon guessed that they weren’t sure what to say, or that they were just too stubborn to give up. “Alright, I’ll make this easier for you,” Phon said as she teleported over to the commander and let her yo-yo spin next to his head. “I’ll change up what this one said earlier. I can’t promise that no harm will come to any of you, it’s a little late for that. But if you surrender now, I promise I won’t kill anyone. If you don’t, I will kill him, then you, then everyone else here.”

The officer raised their hand as if they were trying to tell her to stop, but couldn’t seem to get any words out. Phon stopped her yo-yo, tucked it away for now, and said, “If you understand and accept, then knock yourself out.” The officer raised their stun baton and looked a few times between it, the commander, and Phon who was now prodding at him with her foot. The officer took the baton, jammed it into their neck, and passed out on the ground.

Phon took the ribbon off of her eyes and retied it in a bow around her hat. She headed back over to where Drim was sitting with a little skip in her step. He was shoving a giant handful of trail mix into his mouth as he saw her approach. He looked at her, then looked around at all the unconscious officers, and mumbled with his mouth full, “Oh, are you done?”

“Yeah, you should probably work on your situational awareness,” Phon replied snidely.

Drim swallowed and rebutted, “Well, normally I’m very attentive when I feel threatened, but I didn’t feel that way at all. I knew you’d have it handled.” He finished off speaking with a sweet smile, one that caused Phon to have a swift flashback to him as a kid. The smile was exactly the same as when he would rely on her in the past. This flooded her with a feeling of warmth, completely overtaking the satisfaction of having manipulated a bunch of people into hurting each other, which is something that pleased her to no end.

Phon began to hum happily as she started packing things back into her bag, seemingly oblivious as to where she was or that she was still being watched. “Uhh, Phon, aren’t you forgetting something?” Drim asked has he stared at her with a confused look.

“Oh right, the Heart, can’t forget that or this all would have been pointless,” she said as she reached up for the shining red jewel.

“No, not that, well yes that too, but I meant that,” Drim said as he pointed at the orb still floating high in the northeast part of the room.

“Oh, duh of course,” Phon said as she pulled out her phone. She checked the number of people watching. She smirked when she saw the current tally. It had multiplied several times over from when she’d last checked. She pressed a button that caused the orb to come soaring over to her. She pulled the camera right near her face and began to address everyone watching.

“Thank you everyone who watched our livestream tonight. I hope you enjoyed coming along with us on our first job. I doubt we’ll really broadcast many of them in the future, but keep up with the news. I’m sure you’ll hear a lot more about us and…” Phon had taken a brief moment to blink, and during that split second she could sense more auras closing in on them.

“Now wait just a second folks. It would seem that the show is not over. It would appear that the police want to go another round.” She looked over towards Drim and asked, “I’ve had my fun, do you want to wrap this up quickly?” Drim nodded as he stood up and walked towards the hallway, stopping about halfway. Phon repositioned the orb so people could watch him while she went back to packing up.

She took a longer look with her vision while she packed, and said to Drim, “Looks like another ten. They’re armed differently though; looks like canister launchers. I’m guessing they’re going to try to use tear gas on us.”

“Would that actually affect us at all?” Drim asked.

“Don’t know, don’t wanna know. More importantly, it would likely make it harder for people watching the stream to see, so it’s probably best to avoid it.” Phon responded just before her prediction came true. Seconds later a canister came flying into the room, but before it had time to release anything a plant shot out from Drim.

It was a fly-trap. It flew over to the canister, leaving a long vine trailing behind it that connected to a glowing dot near his wrist. It scooped up the canister in its mouth and clamped down on it hard, sealing it away. A second later the sound of pressure leaving the can could be heard reverberating inside the trap.

Likely unaware that their canister had failed, officers came charging in after it, wearing full gas masks. Just as they were about to reach the end of the hallway, Drim snapped his fingers and thorns came leaping out of the walls from the glow lines he had placed earlier. They didn’t actually break through the walls but appeared directly next to them.

The thorns wrapped around the officers and pulled them to the sides of the walls, completely incapacitating them. Phon watched them writhe for a little bit until she got bored and grabbed the orb. “Once again, thanks for watching. Bye bye for real this time!” She pressed a button and the livestream ended. She chucked the orb and then the World’s Heart into her duffle bag and zipped it up.

After she put it around her shoulder, she started walking around to all the collapsed officers and began putting crime cards on them. She had picked out the ones she wanted earlier, and was placing ‘Resisting Arrest’ on each of them. When she was finished there, she headed over to the restrained officers and said, “I guess this technically counts as assault,” and tucked the appropriate cards into the side of their gas masks.

She also dropped two ‘Aiding and Abetting’ cards on the ground for good measure, one for herself and one for Drim. When Phon was satisfied, she waved at Drim and the two headed out. She made sure to drop a ‘Vandalism’ card next to their parent’s replicas on the way. A large crowd had gathered outside the museum, but not a single person saw them leave.

Fiends For Hire Job Report			Job No. 000001
Status: Completed	Date Received: 1/9/2077	Date Accepted: 1/9/2077	Date Completed: 1/10/2077
Client: Jayce Rufter		Reward: 20$
Original Request: “I’ll give you guys 20 bucks if you steal the World’s Heart from the Cotagerie Museum. Lol XD”
Requirements for Completion: Steal World’s Heart from Cotagerie Museum Deliver specified item to client
Job accepted by: Drim Drazah Phon Drazah
Additional Notes: (Drim) When we showed up at his house he just panicked, threw his wallet at us, then went and hid in his closet. Took 20$ from it and put the wallet in his mailbox. (Phon) He didn’t take the Heart either. Not sure what we’re going to do with it, maybe use it as a paperweight or something. Not like we could sell it for a long time.

 

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