After meeting a runaway fox in a cave on West Side Island, Rouge the Bat and her newfound little buddy have made it back to Sunset City.
Now she's gotta try and find the kid a job.
Fandom: Sonic the Hedgehog
By the time she set foot in her apartment, Rouge the Bat was pretty sure she never wanted to leave the city again. People might talk about clean country air and the beauty of nature, and she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t appreciated those parts at least a little, but what they never mentioned was how much of a pain it was trying to have a halfway-decent shower when you were on the road. That was saying nothing of keeping her clothes clean – she’d never been so jealous of the way nobody thought it was weird if a guy went around in nothing but shoes and gloves.
Her companion Miles “Fingers” Prower followed behind, equally tired but buzzing with curiosity. Some of the towns they’d stopped over in during their journey from West Side Island had been pretty large, but the brief view of urban life he’d had during the journey to her apartment building was the first time he’d ever seen a city. He’d never even seen one in daylight, as by the time they had landed at Sunset City airport and found a reasonably-priced place to keep their purloined plane the Tornado (rename and new paintjob pending) the city had been bathed in its namesake. Tomorrow she was going to take him out to see what it really looked like, but for now it was late and they both needed a good night’s sleep. For Fingers, it would be his first in a long time that wasn’t on a folding campbed.
She guided him to the bathroom, thanking Gaia all the way that she had a spare toothbrush left over from a guy who hadn’t really worked out. Along the way she pointed to the kitchen and the balcony, which she figured counted as enough of a guided tour for one night. He’d get a chance to see it more clearly in the morning anyway. Teeth brushed, she took him to the living room and told him, "You can sleep on the couch. I know you're not really meant to do that, but there's plenty of room." It was warm enough that he probably wouldn’t need a blanket, as indeed it almost always was in Sunset City. The old joke went that they only got weather once every 50 years, but when they did it was a doozy.
"Thanks!" Fingers wasted no time piling up cushions to serve as pillows during the night. This done, he looked back up at her and asked, "So, uh, where's your bedroom? I don't think I've seen one so far."
"Don't have one."
"You don't have a bedroom?"
"Well I don't really need one with no bed, do I?" She pointed at the ceiling, which proudly displayed a set of sleeping latches much like the ones she'd used on trees (and on one occasion the underside of a bridge) during their journey from West Side Island. There were jokes that could be made about bats like her, and why they might own a bed despite not really needing one, but the kid was a little young for her to crack wise about that around him. On the plus side, bats tended to save a lot of money on rent. She’d never be able to afford an apartment with a balcony as nice as hers if she had to pay for some dumb old bedroom.
Fingers looked up at the ceiling and blinked, "Huh! Neat."
"Anyway, you get yourself ready for bed and then tomorrow we can get you settled in properly." Sooner or later they would have to see about getting him taken on as an apprentice or intern or whatever it was normal people did with kids. However, Rouge didn’t see any reason to rush it. His talents with machines would always be in high demand, and he deserved a little while to get used to living in a big city.
They passed a peaceful night’s sleep in her apartment. After their time on the road together, Rouge found it perfectly natural to sleep with the gentle sounds of someone else below her. If the kid had any problems sleeping with someone else suspended above him, he gave no sign of it. She woke the next morning to find Fingers already awake, staring around the room in the awkward manner of the first kid to wake up at a sleepover.
“Hey down there”, she said.
He jumped, and she didn’t bother to contain a giggle. “Ah! Uh, good morning!”
She fluttered down to the floor and stretched. “Good morning. You wanna get ready for the day? We’re gonna go grocery shopping.”
“Are we?”
“Well, I knew I was going to be gone for a while before I left for that island job, so the only food I have here is stuff that basically lasts forever. It’s all good to have, but none of it is what I’d call gourmet. So, we’re gonna pick up some groceries and since you had two hands last time I counted, you get to help me carry it.”
“Oh, well, sure! It’s just that I don’t really know where anything is.”
“I showed you last night, didn’t I?”
“You waved your hand at some stuff, but I was pretty tired so I didn’t really take a lot in.”
She tried and failed to contain an embarrassed sigh. “OK, I guess I wasn’t as helpful as I thought I was. So, uh, on your left here is the kitchen…”
One somewhat-more-thorough tour later, and they were ready to go. They stepped out onto the balcony and took off into the bright morning sunlight. As she had expected, Fingers gazed around him in sheer wonder at the various sights of the big city. It was lucky there weren’t more fliers out and about that morning, as if there had been he’d be liable to crash. Even the simplest things caught his eye and set him buzzing over to take a look before hurrying to catch back up to her. By the time they landed, Rouge guessed he must have gone twice as far as her on the same journey simply by zig-zagging around to see everything he could up close. Sights that were totally normal to her, like a news station helicopter hovering above a major intersection or an open-topped bus full of tourists, were like something from outer space to a kid from a podunk village in the islands. He also goggled at the sight of a mixed human-mobian couple walking down the street hand in hand, but he at least had the presence of mind not to go over and stare at them, for which Rouge was grateful.
As they reached the store she advised him, “I know we ‘supplemented our groceries’ on the way here, but don’t take anything we won’t pay for. This is the closest store to me, and I don’t want to give them any reason to kick me out. It’d be a pain in the butt to go to one further away, especially if I needed something heavy. Capisce?”
He struck a salute and declared “Roger!” Once he’d gotten over his ingrained fear of getting caught, the kid had turned out to be a natural – his favourite trick was to grab something small in one of his tails, and then wrap the other around it to hide whatever he’d taken. As it happened, he had a taste for mints, and Rouge had never had to buy him a single packet during the journey from West Side Island to Sunset City. All it had taken had been some gentle reassurance that the people making and selling tins of mints wouldn’t go out of business over losing one or two, and it had been off to the races.
At first they were able to grab their groceries without much trouble; even if the supermarket was larger than ones Fingers had seen before it was still fundamentally a supermarket and not the most exciting place in the world. However, soon they ran into an unexpected hiccup. There was a human in the dairy aisle, a woman trying to decide between two kinds of almond milk. In the enclosed environment, she fairly towered over the two mobians, especially the diminutive young fox. Rouge heard a muffled gasp from behind her, and realised this was the first human Miles had ever seen up close. Having grown up in the city herself, surrounded by any kind of person she could imagine, that was still a little tricky for her to wrap her head around. Rouge couldn’t recall the first time she’d met a human for the same reason she couldn’t recall the first time she’d met a fox, or someone with green fur – because it had probably been on a train with 50 other people of various shapes and sizes. Growing up in the islands seemed to be a vastly different experience.
She leaned down to him and said quietly, “C’mon bud, don’t stare”. He nodded mutely, and let himself be half-guided-half-pushed into the next aisle. Once the human was no longer actually visible, he snapped out of the strange trance he seemed to have fallen into.
“Oh gosh!” he exclaimed quietly, “That was super rude of me!”
She patted his shoulder gently, “It would’ve been, if she’d noticed, but I think you got away with it.”
He looked up at her with sad eyes and asked “Can you, uh, poke me if I’m rude again? Just in case I don’t notice or I get lost in my own head.”
“Lost in your own head?”
“Yeah, I think that’s what it’s called. You know, when you’re thinking about something and you just kinda stand there and creep everyone out?”
“I don’t think you’re creepy.”
He blushed and averted his eyes, as he always did when Rouge disagreed with whatever negative thing he was saying about himself. “Thanks, Rouge.”
“And I think most people call that zoning out.”
“Which one?”
“Hm?”
“Which zone is it?”
She blinked, and realised she had no idea. “You know, I never asked.”
With groceries in hand, they flew their (somewhat slower) way back to Rouge’s apartment. One hearty brunch later, they were ready to hit the town. Fingers was still absolutely buzzing with energy, so Rouge figured she could give him a bat’s eye view of some of the major landmarks and attractions of the city. The kid wouldn’t have to feel self-conscious about looking like a tourist, at least; nobody ever looked up.
The Red Road Bridge was famous for its beautiful golden paintjob, which she supposed was probably why there were always teams of workers repainting it. There was a house shaped like a hexagon, which she wasn’t really sure counted as an attraction, but which was distinct enough from the air that she liked to use it to get her bearings. The Sunset Mint looked like a fortress, and could probably serve as one too so as far as she was concerned only a fool would try to rob it without an army at their disposal. Fingers was pretty disappointed when she explained it wasn’t that kind of mint, and he didn’t seem to see why she found that so funny. She’d never seriously considered stealing from the art museum; it was such a nice place to spend time that she didn’t want the vibe ruined by all the extra security that would inevitably get put in place if she did pull off a heist.
After a few hours of flying they landed on the sidewalk and began slowly heading back to Rouge’s apartment. On their way, they came across a garage. A small, bright green car was up on the hydraulic jack and a hefty darker green boar was peering at it with a look of intense concentration on his face. From further inside there was the sound of a radio, and of someone else singing along to it with more enthusiasm than talent.
“Oh, this is perfect!" she said, "Let’s poke our noses in and ask about work.”
“You really think I’ll get a job just like that?” asked the kid.
Rouge wracked her brain for any knowledge she might have about job-hunting. Unfortunately the last time she’d had legal employment was a holiday temp stint at a jewellery store. She’d helped make the store a lot of money selling earrings and necklaces for people’s sweethearts, and then on the last day she’d worked there she’d walked out with two registers’ worth of cash and a bracelet that went brilliantly with her white fur. As it turned out, being a model employee and a charming young woman really helped out when it came to casing the joint. She brought herself back to the present and replied “Well, no, I don’t think it works like that. But maybe he’ll know someone who could take on an apprentice.”
Once she had said it, it somehow became real. Some day – not today, but soon – she really was going to pack Fingers off to some kind of respectable employment, and from there their paths would split, probably for good. Once she thought of it in those terms, she felt something she could not have defined or named, had she been asked. It wasn’t quite regret, because anything had to be better for the kid than leaving him hiding out in a cave.
The person singing along turned out to be some kind of bright pink bird, but beyond that Rouge couldn’t have guessed at a more specific species. She hoped that didn’t make her some kind of prejudiced. While she was undergoing this crisis of social conscience, the unidentified bird shrugged their shoulders and said “Whaddya say, Jay?”
“An apprentice, huh? Well, truth be told we don’t get enough work to really warrant it, but I can always ask around. We ain’t exactly the only mechanics in town, and I’m sure someone could use a good pair of hands.”
“So he’s Jay, and you’re…”
“Marty, at your service. The big fella usually handles more of the repair side of things and I handle decals and paints.”
“Oh, that’s perfect! Do you only do cars, or do you also take on other vehicles?”
“If it’s got a surface to paint, I’ll at least take a look.” He looked Rouge up and down and said “You seem like a motorbike kinda gal.”
She gave a demure laugh and replied “No, think bigger.”
Marty rubbed a finger under his beak and considered it for a moment before replying “Dune buggy?”
“Oh I should totally get a dune buggy! No, I’ve recently come into ownership of a plane, of all things, and the previous owner liked bright red a lot more than I do.”
“How much of a plane?” he looked concerned, “If it’s one’a them executive jets that might be beyond me.”
“No, a biplane. Single-seat, the wheels don’t even fold up.”
“Oh, a rugged little island-hopper, huh? Yeah, I’ll take a look. You got anything in mind for the colour?”
“I’m leaning towards purple as the main colour, a nice dark purple.”
They discussed the finer points of contrasts and highlights until they were interrupted by Jay the Boar grunting “Just where the heck is that 3/8 wrench?”
“Excuse me a moment”, said Marty gently before leaning past Rouge and hollering “Whaddya mean where’s the 3/8? Ya just had it earlier ya big lug!”
“I know I just had it earlier, you harpy! And now it’s gone!”
“Oh, harpy is it? I shoulda listened to my mother!”
She left them to their bickering and meandered over to her little buddy. She thought she’d seen something flash, and she wanted to confirm a hunch. Once she got close enough, she saw that she had been right. She leaned down and asked him, “What do you have wrapped up in your tails, Fingers?”
He looked down at the wrench, bright silver against his yellow-orange fur. “Oops.”
She gave him a gentle smile and told him, “Just tell him you found it.” She didn’t whisper, because whispers had a way of carrying, but she kept her voice quiet enough that neither of the men would hear her.
He stepped forward, and in a hand that wasn’t trembling but was close to it he held out the wrench. “Uh, sir? Is this what you wanted?”
Somewhere in the background Marty scoffed at the idea of Jay the Boar being referred to as sir, but Jay himself resolutely ignored it to say “It is! Thanks, kid. Where was it?”
He pointed at a corner and said “Uh… over there.”
Jay scratched his head and mused “I’m sure I looked in that corner.”
“You did, I saw you”, replied Marty sounding a lot less belligerent.
He chuckled, “Darn thing musta’ been right in front of me and I still missed it. Thanks, kid.” He ruffled Fingers’ hair, until the fox squirmed out from under the giant hand and grinned up at him bashfully.
As they were leaving she grinned down at him and said, “I’ve heard of the hand being quicker than the eye, but never the tail being quicker than the mind!”
He made a wordless, miserable noise and her heart sank. It seemed to be so hard for him to stay cheerful for very long, and she always felt an utter brute when she accidentally touched a nerve. On his good days, he could have taken that kind of gentle jab and come right back at her with one of his own until they were both giggling. Today had been a good day, up to a point.
“Rouge, I love being with you, but what if that means I can’t get a job? What if I go somewhere and all I do is take their stuff? I didn’t even know I was doing it that time!” He looked down at his tails with a gloomy look on his face, and she struggled not to imagine what horrible things he might be thinking about his own body.
Privately she thought he was still too young to be worrying about gainful employment, but of course telling a kid they were too young for something was sometimes just the best way to make them want it more. He needed a distraction.
It came in the form of a fast food joint.
"You feeling hungry?”, she asked almost rhetorically – it had been long enough since they’d eaten that she knew for a fact he would be. “Their actual burger burgers are nothing to rave about, but their bean burgers are pretty good. Is that OK?" She had learned early in their journey that as a fox, Fingers was omnivorous with a preference for meat or meat-substitute whenever he could get it. That matched her own diet reasonably well, which at least meant it usually wasn’t hard to pick meals they could share.
"I guess that’s fine."
They headed inside and she sent him off to grab a table before sauntering up to the counter "Hey, can I get a large and a regular herbivore meal?" It was probably too much to hope that the sheer novelty of getting an adult-sized burger would cheer him up, but she figured he was a growing boy anyway so he might as well get his calories somewhere.
The kid behind the counter, nodded and replied "Sure thing, what drinks?"
"Low-fat Type O Positive for the large, and for the regular...uh... dang, I didn't ask."
"We got lemon-lime”, suggested the clerk.
"Great, everyone likes lemon-lime. We’ll have that for the regular."
Tray in hand, she set their burgers down on the table Fingers had chosen. It was tucked into a corner and gave them a good line of sight on the exit without any immediate neighbours. She wanted to commend his instincts, but more than anything he needed cheering up.
“Hey, Fingers. Look at me? I know you’re upset, and I won’t tell you not to be. But we’ll figure it out, OK?”
He said “OK”, but she could tell he was forcing himself. But then, if she called him out on it that would only add to the problem, so in the end she let it slide. It wasn’t like you could browbeat people into feeling good, or else everyone would probably save a heck of a lot of money on therapy. All she could do for the time being was to be there for him. That thought crystallised somewhere inside her, where it sat uncomfortably next to the idea that he would have to leave when they found him an apprenticeship. She hoped his sensei, or whatever they were called, would at least let him keep in touch.
By the time they got back to the apartment his low mood had cleared up a little, but he still wasn’t quite back to his usual self. She gently suggested that he might like to turn in early, and blessedly he didn’t argue. She was sure getting a solid eight hours would do him some good, but beyond that she’d need the privacy to put the finishing touches on the plan for her next heist. It was going to be a harder target, and the last thing she’d want was for the kid to get hurt tagging along.
Any large city would have somewhere to gamble, and Sunset was no different. Rouge had started this little project by casing one particular casino, but she soon found that several were owned by the same company, registered somewhere in the human countries. That was relevant to her because all the casinos owned by Eggshell Inc sent their proceeds back to HQ on the same ships – and that meant she only had to find which dock they used to potentially be in for a big, juicy payday.
Of course, in the modern world, most large sums of money were handled and transferred electronically. But cash had the advantage of being harder to trace, and gambling was an infamously shady business. A casino owner never knew when it might be useful to pay someone under the table, or to procure certain services and have the taxman be none the wiser. Thus, each of the Eggshell casinos sent an armoured van to the docks once a month, in addition to trucks of more mundane cargo. A casino could see a lot of patrons in a night, and that meant a lot of wear and tear. Regular maintenance could be handled in-house, or perhaps at workshops within the city, but for more serious overhauls the equipment was sent overseas.
Sunset had originally been a port town, and though now it was a city for all kinds of business it was still one of the busiest cargo shipping centres in the mobian islands. The docks were extensive, and during the days they were often bustling and crowded. At night, however, they were a lot quieter with only a few individual ships and plenty of dark, empty space between them. That made them perfect for anyone shipping or receiving cargo they would rather people not look at too closely, and that made them the perfect spot for Rouge to get a little spending money.
Hitting a casino’s transport truck again would be risky, but given the Eggshell casinos were sending their cargo in the middle of the night, they probably wouldn’t call the cops on her even if they did see her. That meant all she had to worry about was getting her butt shot, which would probably be a more frightening prospect if she weren’t evolved from a nocturnal predator species. Some primitive part of her brain lived for hunting in dark places, and it was easy enough to see security guards as just another predator in the jungle gloom – stronger than her, much stronger, but so slow and blind that all she had to do was avoid fighting them to stay safe.
She would teach whoever ran Eggshell Casinos why people feared thieves in the night.
It was fortunate, in Rouge’s opinion, that the people who designed security for places like this often seemed to forget that some people could fly. A chainlink fence, even a tall one topped with barbed wire, was nothing in particular for her. Once she was in the port facility proper, she was in danger of detection from two directions. Not only did she have to avoid guards and any cameras that might be around, but until she was further in she also risked being seen by some passerby outside who might decide to be a good citizen and call the cops about a suspicious character sneaking around the docks at night. Why, she thought with a grin, for all they know I could be some kind of criminal! She quickly made her way further in, all the while debating internally if it would be worth pilfering a hi-vis vest and a hardhat to look like she belonged there. Would being easier to spot be a good trade for having an excuse when someone did spot her? Difficult to say.
She tried to avoid combat when she could help it, and not just because people who got hired for security work tended to be bigger and stronger than her. When it came to a fight muscle wasn’t the only thing to consider, and she knew she was sneaky enough to have a good chance of getting the drop on any opponent. The problem was that once guards started getting knocked out, that would change the entire situation. They would go from thinking there might be an intruder, or even suspecting that there probably was an intruder, and instead would know that there was an intruder and that they’d be safer to get her first and ask questions later. She’d never been tased, but she was given to understand it was an unpleasant experience.
Besides, there were always more of the guards than there was of her.
Instead, it was far better for her to see without being seen. Any security operation would have a central hub for someone to keep an eye on all the cameras and stay in touch with patrolling guards over radio. A really big and professional set-up would have a small team in the hub, each handling a different element and ensuring close observation of every possible angle. She’d never been bold enough to try robbing somewhere with that kind of security detail.
The dock had that kind of security detail.
It had been easy enough to tell where the security hub was owing to the profusion of radio masts and antennae growing from the roof like an electronic forest, and she’d been able to creep between long, silent rows of shipping containers to make her way towards it. She peered in the window and took stock of what she was up against. At first glance there seemed to be three guards in a darkened office lit only by banks of screens, one smaller one – which was to say, only a little larger than her – and two positively huge.
On closer inspection, only the smaller one was an actual person – a canine, either a large dog or a small wolf. The larger two were moving perfectly in sync, without a single wasted motion, and when she caught a reflection in a dark screen she saw exactly why – they were robots. They were vaguely shaped like people, but with round, featureless torsos and heads. There were lights approximately where eyes would be, but it was impossible to tell if they served the same purpose.
Mindful that the canine guard would surely have excellent hearing, she waited while the ordinary working noises of the dock drifted around her. An industrial facility never remains peaceful for very long, and she didn’t have to wait more than a few minutes for some distant crane to drop something with a nasty screeching sound and a particularly impressive clang. One of the cameras must have picked the sound up on its mic, for the living guard flinched at just the same time she did. While she was still folding her ears against her head and cringing, she gently eased open a window and crept inside, sliding it closed behind her just before the guard could get his equilibrium back.
Once inside, she could get a closer look at the two robots. Each had some kind of small antenna poking out of their back, and when she had ducked behind an unused row of consoles she took the opportunity to look around the room. On the back wall there was what appeared to be some kind of router, and even to her untrained eye it clearly hadn’t been part of the original office setup before Eggshell Inc had set up shop. Reasoning that it had to be something important, she eased a black wingtip over to it and swiped downwards, pulling a few cables out of the setup. Even before she had turned to peer around the corner of the console, she could hear the robots making some distinctly unhealthy-sounding buzzes and beeps, and the canine guard swearing under his breath. The robots both slumped forward, utterly still and silent.
The guard grabbed a radio handset and stormed towards the door, slamming it shut behind him to vent a little frustration at the “faulty” robots. Rouge locked the door behind him and jammed a chair under the handle for good measure. Most people never thought to go through the windows, so she figured she should have enough time to get the lay of the land before he could force his way back in, even assuming he came back quick.
She turned back to the bank of monitors, but before she could start looking them over to try to find her target she was distracted by motion from the direction of the rear window. Fearing that the guards had a bird on staff, she spun around to face her assailant only to find no such thing. Hovering outside the window was perhaps the one person she would have least expected to see – Fingers. He pointed at the closed window and she opened it to let him in, almost against her better judgement.
“What are you doing here?” she asked as loudly as she dared.
He had the gall to look affronted, “You said we’d find work for me, didn’t you?”
“Yeah! I meant fixing computers or something!” She gestured at the control room around her to demonstrate how much of a computer repair shop it was not.
“Come on! Why can’t I help?”
“Because if I get caught, I can escape.”
“And I can’t?”, he shot back, clearly insulted, “I can fly just as well as you!”
“You’re a kid!” She felt like it was insane that she had to point that out to him, “I don’t want you getting arrested because of me!”
“Aw come on, I was fine the first time!”
She flinched. She couldn’t tell if it was lucky or not that he was only focusing on how she had got him out, not on the fact that most children don’t get thrown in jail cells to begin with. “The first time you were in hoosegow in some rinkydink one horse town. This is Sunset PD, they don’t play around. You get caught here, and we might never see each other again.”
“Then I won’t get caught!”
“Just like that, huh?”
“Just like that.” Once again the childish optimism in his eyes was tempered with something stronger. There was a real determination there, the same that she had briefly seen when they first met and he had intended to go anywhere that wasn’t home. She could tell there would be no dissuading him.
She sighed, and grabbed a headset from a rack next to one of the control panels. “Alright. Looks like the guards are using these headsets to communicate, or at least the living ones are. We each take one, and if anyone comes back to this office you go get somewhere high up and out of sight. You let me know if anyone’s coming or if anything big changes. Anything goes wrong, you get out of here. I get caught, you get out of here. Got it?”
“But-”
“Got it?” She grabbed his shoulders and looked him in the eye until he turned away.
“Yeah, I got it.” He didn’t look at all happy about it, but Rouge hoped he’d understand that it was the best deal he was going to get.
She decided to throw him a bone, just to mollify him a little and keep him from jumping the gun any more than he already had. “If this goes well, maybe we can see about working you into the plan from the start next time, OK?”
“OK.” She knew what he looked like when he was trying not to smile, and it was clearly taking all his willpower not to grin at that moment.
“Great. Now, I’m gonna head back out.”
She took off, and after a long moment Rouge heard him through her headset. “There’s nobody nearby, they’re mostly over by the water.”
She landed once more and as she picked her way through the crates and containers, sticking to the copious shadows, she replied, “Makes sense. There’s a ship due in about half an hour, they must need to get everything ready. I think the trucks are over by the cranes, right?”
“Yeah – wait.”
She froze.
“Now go. Sorry, one of them turned around for a moment.”
“Don’t be sorry, that’s exactly the kind of eyes in the back of my head I want.”
“There’s a few different trucks, which one do you want?”
"The big ones are going to be regular transport trucks – these ones look custom-made, sure, but nothing out of the ordinary. What we're looking for is something smaller and heavier, like a van that wants to be a tank when it grows up."
"So what's in the big ones?"
"Oh, typical casino junk. Slot machines, roulette wheels, those big dumb pizza boards they use for baccarat."
“I can see a couple smaller ones. The closest is by that white crane. Uh, the machine, not the bird.”
She peered round the corner of the crate. There, underneath a white crane with a truly impressive variety of different shades of rust, was parked exactly the armoured van she was hoping for. Even parked, it was bulky and angular enough to have a menacing look. “Good eye, Fingers.”
“So is that the kind of truck you were trying to rob when that guy got you with a bolas?”
“Brat. Yes.”
“There’s a robot coming.”
She ducked into a crate.
After a few minutes he came back on the headset, “It’s passed you by now. Kinda cute, like a big ol’ ladybug.”
“Must be internal security from the casino pulling double duty.”
“A bug at a casino? I thought they were supposed to be fancy.”
“The spots on its back are kinda like dice, right?” She was pretty sure ladybugs were supposed to be something to do with good luck. Either she’d read that in a magazine one time, or she was just fully misremembering. In either case, Fingers accepted her logic without comment.
Perhaps the ladybug really had brought her good fortune, for luckily there was nobody in the van. If it had been winter, maybe the driver would have stayed inside with the heating on instead of heading out to get some air. If it had been raining, naturally they would have stayed in the van and listened to the radio to pass the time. As it was, they were nowhere to be seen.
She crept around the back of the van, and hoped that in the apparent security of the docks, with the ship soon to arrive, the driver would have gotten lazy and left the doors unlocked. Indeed they had, but on opening them a lock proved to be the least of her worries. Two robotic arms extended from the ceiling, ending in terrible grasping claws with cruelly sharp points. One of them lunged for her, and then the other, and somehow worse than her own fear of what they’d do to her was the fear she could hear in Fingers’ voice on the other end of the headset.
“Get outta there!” he cried.
She crouched to take off, and then had to dodge away from another swipe from the arms. “I can’t!” she replied. She could already tell that even if she could launch, the arms would surely grab her by the ankle and hold her in place until living guards could arrive – to say nothing of what the claws would do to her leg. Just when she thought things couldn’t get any worse, she heard the one sound she had been dreading all night blare across the concrete landscape.
“The alarm! I’ve been made!”
“No you haven’t”, replied Fingers in a self-satisfied tone, “I triggered that alarm, and I put out an alert about intruders on the south fence, near all those old warehouses.”
“That’s…” she ducked one of the swinging arms as she tried to recall the layout of the port, “The other side of the docks. Fingers, you’re brilliant!”
“Figure that’ll give you enough time to get out safe?”
As the two arms reached towards her, an idea came to her. “I’ll do you one better”, she smirked as she dived into the van. The arms each shot out to grab her, but as she passed between them they both tried to grab the same place at once, and the claw hands collided with an ugly clamour. The arms, locked together by their own razor-sharp talons, twitched and shuddered as they attempted to disentangle themselves. She knew it couldn’t last forever, so she quickly grabbed a few money bags and flew out the way she’d come in.
As she soared away into the night she saw torches and spotlights playing across the southern end of the docks, looking for intruders that weren’t there to find. An orange speck detached itself from the office in the middle of the facility and zoomed up into the night sky to join her. She passed off the lightest of the bags she’d taken to Fingers, and the two began the flight home.
Once they got back, they sat out on the balcony to count their takings. With the breeze taking the edge off the lingering heat, it was such a pleasant summer evening that it seemed a shame not to take the time to enjoy it. There was some danger of being spotted from the air, but in a city as large as Sunset there was no reason anyone should have been looking at her apartment in particular. Maybe one day they’d be considered a big enough threat to law and order to have to worry about police helicopters, but that wasn’t a concern for the time being.
"There's just one thing that's been bugging me this whole time."
"Oh yeah? What's that?"
"What's the logo supposed to be, anyway?" He held up one of the money bags, which had a round logo with two jagged portions sticking out the side. In the round part were three semi-circles arranged like a cartoon of a grinning face.
"I'm not sure. I think it might be the part in the middle of a roulette wheel, with the little handles on it - and it's smiling to say, hey, look at me, I'm a friendly casino."
Fingers held up one of the bags and smirked, "I'd say this one was pretty friendly."