Settling in to live with some supervillains was shockingly easy. Bitch was the simplest to deal with. I pressed her on details on how to interact with her dogs which pissed her off, but prevented most other problems from coming up. Boiled down to not letting them jump on me, and only petting them if they've crawled on top of me in some fashion. Bitch herself just ignored me when she was here. Alec was... Well I have undeniable proof he still finds me attractive even at my most monstrous. Normally I would've socked him in his stupid face for the shenanigans he pulls, but when Mom gave me the talk she told me never to lie to myself in matters of romance. And the fact is no matter how hamfisted he is about it, his blunt and incessant flirting is a massive ego boost.
Lisa comes over sporadically. Ostensibly to check up on us. Probably even the truth too. Also to communicate to us jobs the boss wants done. Nothing going on so far though. No updates on Coil either. Brian is actually the one I get along with the most. We scheduled regular spars and coaching in the mornings. A real consistent guy who's teaching me genuinely useful ways to leverage my strength and a few martial arts stances to ground myself. Apparently I'm a good student.
I'm also keeping in contact with my Dad through a proxy. I'm visiting a certain restaurant for dinner every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Unfortunately I missed this Monday due to how busy I was with the meeting and sparring with Brian. A dockworker meets me there and he passes messages back and forth for us. That is how I found out that my transfer went through and I start attending Arcadia on Monday. Oh joy, school again. Hopefully it goes light-years better than last time, my God.
Using the route Lisa made for me was easy enough. I just walked a little bit quickly through some alleyways, which both obscured my origin point, and lost any tails I might have had. We made sure nobody was keeping an eye out here either. During the day at least. I brought the paperwork to the front gate, and they let me in without a fuss, with instructions to go to the front office. I ended up having to stay and do scheduling paperwork until lunch, at which point I was given a voucher because I wasn't in the system yet. Being in a new cafeteria was nerve-wracking, but I muddled through and sat down at a relatively isolated table. Unfortunately somebody sat down right next to me almost immediately.
"Hello there, my name is Dean Stansfield. What's yours?"
"..." Maybe if I ignore him he'll go away. I start eating my food faster.
"So are you new here?" Aw crap he's engaging me.
"How do you figure?"
"You underestimate the power of the rumor mill. Also you're the only one here with a faded gray sweatshirt." I look around. Everybody is in vibrant colors. Hell, even the goths are dressed in crisp blacks. Just about the only color absent here is of the melatonin variety. Oh wait no, I see a black guy over there.
"What do you want?"
"I was curious about the new girl."
"What, come to gawk? Fuck off." He frowns as I start eating again. He's about to open his mouth again when I feel weirdly elated.
"Hey there Dean! Who's this?" I feel the slightest bit of trepidation at the question. I look over to see a blonde bombshell hovering slightly off of the ground. Victoria Dallon then. Glory Girl.
"I have no idea." As she floats over to his shoulder and hugs him from behind. Her breasts have taken an interesting position in relation to his face, and she's staring at me like she's expecting me to start something for some reason. I give her a suspicious look, but quickly go back to eating my food. I feel like I missed a memo here somewhere, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna go searching for it. Enough for me that they're actually leaving me alone.
"So, there's a party going on at Dean's place Friday night. Wanna come over?"
"Buh-wha?" Party?
"Yeah a party. Short skirts, buff dudes, big pool, and lots of booze. We never bring that last one but it never fails to appear anyways." She winks. "What'ya say?"
"Sure, yeah." I mumble into my food.
"Cool. I'm gonna take you shopping later. Can't show up in that. C'mon Dean." As she practically drags him away. As she leaves that nice feeling that started when she got here fades away. Must've been her aura.
Wait a minute.
What did I just agree to?
The rest of the day wasn't all that eventful. I got to the rest of my classes relatively pain free. Had to share books when the work required it, but nobody gave me shit over it. Nobody gave me shit over anything. It was weird. Made me feel paranoid for the complicated routes I took through the school. After all the classes ended I went to the office to get my books and locker combination. Got my update to Dad at the restaurant and went back to the loft. About an hour after that Brian and Lisa came in at the same time.
"Guys, we got a job!!" From Lisa. Me and Alec both set down the controllers and look behind us. Once they're both in view Alec kisses me on the cheek. I shove him off of the couch. Bitch walks in followed by two of her dogs as he's picking himself up.
"What?" She demands.
"Boss wants us to knock over three ABB safehouse over the course of the week. It can be all at once or throughout the week, but it's gotta be done by Friday. We taking this job?"
"Yes." From Bitch.
""Yeah."" From Alec and Lisa.
"Yes." From Brian.
"Uh, what's going on?"
"We're voting to take the job or not." Says Brian. "Do you not wanna do it?" Ha! That's a trick question. One nay to four yays isn't gonna make any difference.
"Yeah, I'll do it. But I'd like a little more of a lead up than that! Like how many goons are we likely to be facing?"
"Usually only about three to four per location." Answers Lisa. "The gangs run a pretty decentralized shindig. Only central depots and Cape hangouts have any real heavy security. These are more like apartments that are over capacity with drug pushers than anything."
"Drug pushers? Hey, does that mean I could turn any drugs we find into diamond? I might not get a perfect one to one ratio, but that's gotta be worth more by weight. Whole helluva lot less risky to carry around too. Legally speaking that is." Brian looks like he's thinking it over.
"You know what? Yeah sure. I got family that's hooked on a couple hard substances, and I say fuck that noise. We'll have to test the markets to make sure it's worth it first though."
"Hey, uh, guys." Says Alec. "Oo ra ra, fuck drugs and alcohol, stay in school, all that jazz, yeah. But if there's weed could we save some for me? Shits less of a drug than beer." I narrow my eyes at him.
"Sure." From Brian. "Anything else you need to know?"
"Well this would be my first time doing something like this. What's the plan?"
"You know this is less dangerous than that surveillance van stunt you pulled, right?" I frown at him. "So the plan is to break the door down and bruise, taze, threaten them with a gun, or whatever needs doing to incapacitate them, and tie themselves up with zip ties. You good with that?"
"I'll need the zip ties."
"When we get there. Go get dressed everybody, we're hitting the first location tonight." Everybody files into their rooms and I do too. Well... I guess I'll have to go naked. Technically. Slime biology really isn't all that titillating unless you're into silhouettes, and at that point it's kinda pointless trying to dress modestly. And I can always fake wearing clothes if I need to. Given this non choice in apparel, I'm one of the first two ready in the living room. The other is Brian.
"Hey, uh... You missed practice today."
"Ah crap. The transfer went through on Friday. I'm going to Arcadia now. I forgot to tell you, sorry. Should we move it up to before school?"
"Sure, sure. I might not make it the day after we do a job though."
"That's fine..." The next ten minutes are spent in awkward silence.
I ended up riding with Alec to the job location. Riding on an enhanced dog was an experience, let me tell you that. Good thing I can't get saddlesore. We cased the location for about a half hour so Lisa, Tattletale in that ridiculous purple spandex of hers, could tell us if there were any nasty surprises for us. There weren't.
Getting in and finishing the job was contemptuously easy. Grue didn't even use his power. Tattletale just punched in a code for the door, and me and Grue broke down the door of the apartment we're robbing. Two of the guys were taken down immediately to Grue and me cause we caught them with their metaphorical pants down, and the third one got tripped by Alec. We ziptied them real quick. Tattletale found most of the cash and drug stashes. I found one hidden deep in the couch. We skedaddled real quick after that cause apparently there was a fourth dude who was just out to get some smokes or something.
All in all we got two thousand dollars cash and a half kilo of various drugs. Mostly low quality or cheap stuff. Once we were back at the base I started converting it to diamonds. Lisa tried to help advising me on the shapes and tiny sizes I should make them, but it's kinda hard to make a straight edge with this. I mean I'll probably get it eventually, but this is only my second time doing this kinda stuff.
"So I was thinking we would do the same thing for the next two days with the other location." Says Brian.
"Not tonight?" I ask.
"No not tonight. I had things to do today, and I'm beat. Why, you got anything going on this week?"
"Glory Girl is gonna be taking me shopping sometime this week. I don't know how long it's gonna take."
"Glory Girl." He breathes in and out. "Explain."
"Hey it's not my fault this happened! Her boyfriend tried to strike up a conversation with me during lunch. I told him to fuck off, but he didn't leave before she came over and started acting all territorial. Thought she was gonna start dumping on me, but I got invited to a party and a shopping trip instead."
"Oh my God!" From Alec. "Do you have mad game Taylor?" I stop what I'm doing with the diamonds to walk over to him.
I start beating the crap out of him with a couch cushion.
