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13/07/2003 (TT)
Alchemist rolled a large, yellow crystal down the length of his fingers. Looking at it, he didn't necessarily have a plan. He had an idea, yes, but no plan.
A plan might imply that he had more knowledge than he actually did.
Instead, as the wizard held the Shard up to the light and looked into it, he had a set of vague ideas based on interactions.
"...So, what's that one supposed to do?" Jinx asked him. The two of them were sitting on the steps of the dilapidated apartment complex Alchemist had hidden his door inside of. Inside, Tiffany and Yuffie were messing around with the two repair spells that Alchemist knew.
Getting Tiffany to actually learn magic, even if she needed to borrow a staff and a Magic Grail accessory to feel capable, was working to help her get around the giant block of 'Useless' the girl had attached herself to.
"It's a Shard of Resist Thunder," Alchemist answered, rolling the object back and forth in his hands. "They're not able to make someone immune to electrical damage, but they help."
"Hmm..." Jinx hummed. "How good are you looking at with that thing?"
"Maybe twenty percent at full strength. Forty when combined with Resist Magic," Alchemist told the girl as Yuffie or Tiffany were in the process of ripping a board off of a window. The nails protested, loudly, but there wasn't anyone nearby to listen. Or care. "It has an equal chance to prevent the damage entirely."
"...Kinda not worth it, is it?" Jinx asked as she dug into the inventory and extracted one as well. "We can't get multiple abilities with the same name, so wouldn't this kind of make it hard to get some kind of better resistance skill?"
"Might be able to get better skills out of Devouring magatama but I kind of don't trust those, now," Alchemist admitted. "Not if Tiamat is suggesting them. She's a champion of Chaos -and- Evil. Telling me something that's true but misleading would be right up her alley."
"...So, why do you care?" Jinx asked him as she held her own Shard up to the light of the sun. "Our gear doesn't just make us immune, it lets us eat electrical damage."
"Well, it doesn't make me sick. Not like eating Materia," Alchemist explained. "And we have a perk that lets us stack elemental resistance into absorption. I kind of want to see if this would let me absorb more damage as health. So, if this fully leveled up, combined with the perk that boosts electrical damage while lowering it by twenty-five percent, that'd be forty-five percent. Then there's Resist Magic which could add another twenty. Sixty-five percent resistance, with a forty percent chance to outright negate isn't anything to sneeze at, especially if we can't wear our armor for some reason. That can tick over to twnty-five percent absorption if we just factor in the overleveled shards in our Psyphers."
"This'd be a little cooler if I could, y'know, eat these things," Jinx complained with a quiet sigh. "But I tried that with an Alchemic Bounty shard and I just hurt myself."
"You...? Huh." Alchemist hummed quietly, turning his gaze back down to the yellow manifestation of twisted reality. "Did you ever eat that Mime Materia?"
"Never saw the point," Jinx admitted. "I can just equip the Materia and bam, access to the skill without puking up my guts."
"Fair enough." Alchemist wasn't going to admit that he might actually regret having done that himself. "Go ahead and equip one, we can try something."
The wizard waited a moment for Jinx to call up her gloves, then to slot in a yellow orb. Once she'd done so, however, Alchemist stepped off the stoop and shifted into his true form.
Then he jumped nearly a meter into the air when a plank slammed into the ground next to him, followed by Yuffie shouting 'Sorry!' from overhead.
The wizard wouldn't have been hurt, no, but it still shocked him regardless.
Instead he just inhaled slowly to calm his racing heart and waited for Jinx to transform, too. He needn't have bothered; Jinx didn't transform, her body shimmered for a moment as she dropped the illusion around herself and the significantly smaller Havoc Dragon looked up at him.
He rubbed the shard against his clothing like he was buffing an apple, expanded to fit his far larger form, and [Devour]ed it. Crystal cracked between teeth capable of shattering diamond and the smaller shards slid smoothly down his throat.
It was a far cry better than when he'd attempted the same thing as a human.
~~ Ability Gained! ~~
~~ Resist Thunder: 1 ~~
~~ Reduce electrical damage or sometimes negate it entirely! (1%/10 Levels) ~~
Across from him, Jinx rubbed her shard against the scales on her chest in a perfect imitation of what Alchemist had done and then tossed the crystal into her mouth. It shattered with a loud 'Crunch!' as she bit down.
"...Huh," Jinx mumbled after swallowing her mouthful of sharp, stabby crystal bits. "That actually worked."
"Do you still have the Devour ability?" Alchemist asked as he rooted through the inventory for the next shard he intended to eat.
In front of the apartment complex, several cars drove by. None of the people inside stopped to look at what Alchemist or his people were doing, however. They had jobs to get to.
And the wards Alchemist had anchored around the corners of the property made everything within uninteresting to people without some measure of actual magic.
"...Sort of?" Jinx seemed a bit unsure as she dug through her menus. "It's there, but it's also grayed out. It's level zero...? It only has half the needed experience to reach level one?"
"Huh. Neat." Alchemist hadn't even known that it was possible to have less than enough experience to have a skill at level one.
Or, well, technically he supposed that it wasn't possible at all. Instead Jinx was just aware of the skill existing and that she could imitate using a skill until it reached level one through mimicking it.
Close enough.
"Here," Alchemist said aloud as he tossed a Shard of Resist Magic to the girl. "Let's keep going."
The duo would work their way through most of the rest of the Resist Shards on the admittedly lazy Sunday afternoon. Slash, Blunt, Pierce made up the physical ones. Lightning, Water, Fire, Ice, Earth, Wind, Light and Dark covered the elements. Though, for ailments they only ate the Shards for Poison and Petrification.
As the day wound down and Jinx returned to the dormitory she was supposed to be sleeping in at the HIVE academy, Alchemist was left to wonder about a handful of things.
Primary among them?
How, exactly, was he supposed to level up the various resistance skills he'd acquired?
The mage wasn't at all sure. Not yet. But he was certain he would figure something out.
-----
14/07/2003 (TT)
Goldie watched, its beady black eyes staring with pure malevolence, as its creator performed a series of minor but critical tasks.
It was stuffed in its creators pockets, alongside its siblings, Freddy and Foxy, as Alchemist and the woman, Kary, invisibly drew the blinds closed in a domicile they'd broken into.
The duo were incredibly silent as they worked, ensuring none would witness them as they acted.
"...That should be good," the creator whispered, his voice low as they crept throughout the now darkened building. "Everyone out, let's start looking."
With a quick shake, the dolls were released from Alchemist's pockets.
"Check out any dark corners, any hiding places you can think of," the mage instructed as Goldie and the others spread throughout the house. "Don't move anything you find, just let me know if you find something."
Goldie nodded silently as it began helping Freddy open drawers in a desk in the living room.
"...Yarr, think we be findin' the booty what the creator be searchin' fer?" Foxy asked as it crawled underneath of the drawer to check the underside.
"No idea," Freddy admitted as it rifled through the documents inside of the desk drawer. "Maybe? The creator said we're looking for something that might exist, not that he was sure it existed."
Goldie waited, patient as a stone as its siblings finished their tasks. As they worked, Goldie scanned the room. Observing, noting, searching...
The target that lived within the home was an older man of significant importance and influence, though he rarely actually spent more than a few months home at a time. And, while significant wealth passed through the target's hands, the amount of it that remained with the target was comparatively insignificant.
Or, that was what the creator believed.
The home they'd broken into belonged to Wade Eiling, a man their creator seemed to have some sort of vendetta against.
A motivation Goldie approved of, if the little plush was going to be honest.
"Nothin' here," Freddy said as they crawled out of the drawer where it'd been rifling through papers. "Just the guy's taxes for the last thirty years. Think I oughtta take some pictures?"
"May as well," Foxy said as they crawled out from underneath of the drawers. "Weren't nothin' underneath fer me ta find."
Goldie pretended to sigh as they looked around the room. The target wasn't stupid, according to the creator, but he was getting old and comfortable. Flush with legitimate wealth to hide the illegal gains within, actually finding anything was a long shot.
As such, it wasn't their only goal.
Goldie wandered off as its siblings carefully took photos of decades' worth of taxes, thinking all the while. The creator had told them to look for hiding places, spots where something had formerly been but no longer had anything, documents... Anything incriminating.
And, if Goldie couldn't find anything?
They'd made plans to place something incriminating.
Going down the stairs to the basement was a slow and difficult process. Goldie might have the magic to teleport more freely, now, but their pool wasn't infinite and it had no idea if the plush party might need an emergency evacuation. Using that tool for the sake of convenience simply wasn't very feasable.
The basement was dark but enough light filtered in through a window for the golem to work with, if only barely. The room was filled with cardboard boxes, some of which had labels stenciled on the sides. Quite a few did not.
Goldie checked around the back of the stairs, a common hiding place according to the creator, but only found an old washing machine. Still, the small golem climbed the device and pulled it open, checking its contents.
Mildew, but nothing else.
Letting the lid drop, Goldie nearly jumped off of the machine in fright at the sudden 'Clang!' that came from the machine slamming shut. The golem froze in place, listening for anything...
It heard nothing. Like as not, its cohort had all frozen at the sound and they, too, were listening for any interlopers.
After nearly fifteen seconds, Goldie got moving. It hopped off the washing machine and began to look around the room more thoroughly. However, it found nothing as it did so. The boxes stacked throughout the room were all coated in a fine layer of dust and none of them had any obvious signs of tampering. No fingerprints, no smudges, none of them were newer than the others.
The plush golem debated growling, attempting to mimic the bear it was initially modeled after, but gave up on the impulse in short order. It was the Knife Master, the next best thing to an assassin and potentially even more deadly.
Perhaps a good ten minutes of searching, of scanning the rafters and checking the various nooks and crannies turned up nothing.
Wade Eiling was not foolish enough to hide evidence of his misdeeds in his home, where his wife could find it.
The bear froze as the floor overhead creaked. As the door leading into the basement closed shut with a gentle, quiet 'click'.
And unfroze as it saw the creator descending the steps, Freddy and Foxy on his shoulders. The man's eyes scanned across the room, quickly coming to rest on the little golden bear.
"Did you find anything?" the man asked, his quiet voice rumbling slightly.
Goldie shook its head in the negative.
"I didn't expect you would," the mage admitted as he leaned down and held a hand out for Goldie. The golem hopped on, its balance precarious as the creator lifted it up atop his head. "Wade is arrogant, not stupid. How about any good hiding places?"
Goldie thought for a moment, then leaned down so the creator could see its paws as it pointed back around the stairs, to the washing machine.
"Yar, we didn't find nothin', either," Foxy admitted from the creator's shoulder. "This feller ain't so dim as we'd been hopin'."
"Maybe not," the creator disagreed as he opened the empty washing machine. The man looked into it for a long moment and Goldie could practically feel him thinking underneath of its paws. Finally, after Goldie thought he was about to decide on a different location, the creator opened his inventory and carefully extracted a duffle bag.
"...I spent a good five hours last night under Standstill sorting through all of this," the creator lamented as they opened the duffel bag, filled to the brim with rubber banded money rolls. Then he zipped it back up and stuffed the duffel bag into the machine. "Making sure none of the bills came from after this year. Everything they find out about the cash is just going to bring up more and more questions, none of which Wade is going to enjoy answering."
"Where did all of that come from?" Freddy asked as the creator carefully closed the lid, shutting it softly so as to keep it from banging shut like Goldie had let it, earlier.
"Zombie Earth, a sort of training reality that Player One could enter," the creator quietly explained as they began to head back up. "It's all legitimate, technically... and has the same numbers printed on it as bills that are currently in circulation."
It took a moment for Goldie to understand the implications in its creators words. Once it did, however?
The little golem began to shake as it silently laughed. Its siblings didn't quite seem to understand, not yet, but they didn't watch the same shows that Goldie enjoyed. And it certainly wasn't going to explain the kind of bomb that the creator had just left in Eiling's basement.
Silence, after all, is Goldie.
-----
Jinx, well, 'Nessa was bored. Bored out of her skull.
"-the average theft actually earns roughly as much as a minimum wage job," Selina Kyle explained from the front of the classroom. "Often less. Between the depreciated value of a stolen item, the cut a fence will demand and the very real risk of being caught? It's simply not worth the difficulty to divest the middle class of material goods."
'Nessa might have had the physical capabilities to join the more advanced courses but, honestly? She was lacking in a lot of the knowledge of crime and criminality that her classmates took for granted. She simply did not have the skills that she and Alchemist usually covered with magic.
"With this in mind, we instead should turn our attention to high value targets. Unfortunately, this encompasses both the wealthy and the well secured in the forms of corporate espionage, art requisitions, intellectual property thefts and various other crimes which are, given the nature of what we're after, not simple or easy to accomplish," Selina continued as she used her good arm to manipulate a remote that activated an old-fashioned projector embedded in the cieling. It displayed lights across the whiteboard which quickly focused into images of things like ridiculously expensive gated houses, a front-shot of Lexcorp, the vault of a bank. Forms of wealth, at least the ones that 'Nessa's classmates would recognize. "Now, who here can tell me what the best risk versus reward targets would be?"
Selina's eyes traveled across the room. Sliding over Mammoth, Kyd Wykyd and a few others before settling on 'Nessa.
"The rich," 'Nessa answered without being prompted.
It wasn't like the other people in class were going to answer. Some of them were dumb and the others were really dumb.
"And why would the houses of the rich make for an ideal target, Darknessa?"
"...Because most of their security is just for show," 'Nessa slowly answered as she tried to remember that video Alchemist liked, the one on physical penetration testing.
And, alright, she might have teased him about the title but it was one of the few pieces of actual knowledge she had going for her.
"Why do you think the rich would have fake security?" Selina pressed. It wasn't rude or demeaning, the woman sounded like she genuinely wanted to hear what the girl was thinking.
"...A lot of the ten percenters don't really care about how secure their stuff is. They care about showing off to the other ten percenters how much money they spend on keeping it safe, though. It's, uh, keeping up with the Joneses? Jones? So, like, the top three security companies have been using the same sets of keys to their automatic gate kiosk things for literal decades. I could buy all of them for about ten dollars on the internet."
"Quite correct!" Selina said as she pantomimed clapping at 'Nessa's answer. "The upper crust of society does tend to have better security than the middle class, that's a simple fact that we have to deal with, but at the same time most of their security is relatively simple to bypass or else has already been solved by someone else. Those of you with an interest in this field might consider visiting the international security conference, hosted in Las Vegas."
"With that said," Selina continued as she flipped to a different slide, showing a series of pictures with green 'up' arrows next to some and red 'down' arrows next to others. "An equally important topic for theft is what should be targeted. While art, statues and paintings would be considered high-value targets, they are also incredibly hard to move. Finding a collector willing to purchase stolen merchandise can be more difficult than planning the initial heist. As such, it's more important to focus on smaller, easier targets of opportunity. Jewelry, gold, silver and various collectables actually have a very lucrative market..."
'Nessa leaned forward, her elbow on her desk and her cheek in her palm as she started to zone out.
She'd thought going to a villain school would be exciting. And, from time to time, it was!
Then there was the rest of the time. Where, despite the topics being covered?
It was still just school.
?!?!
