Heist (Gift of Gab + MachineHeart)

The old padlock pulsed orange light under Luke’s latex clad hands. He absently hummed as he altered the surface friction of the metal to shed its accumulated rust, then took the lock between his cupped hands. The orange glow increased and lightened rapidly, quickly shifting through green, blue, indigo, violet to an invisible heat.

“Good as new.” He opened his hands and twelve dollars in coins tumbled onto his work desk.

He grabbed the lock in his calloused hands and tossed it into a box of several of its ilk. The problem, he reflected, with counterfeiting quarters is that they may be unmarked and otherwise undetectable, but they were only quarters. Dollars had too much fine material to effectively create, and the serial numbers were a hassle to get right each time. Fine metals and diamonds needed papers unless you knew the right people, and Luke didn’t.

Instead he knew Greg and Sophia and Cedar.

Which reminded him, he needed to call Greg.

After a few rings, “Yeah, what’s up?”

“Dude. Do you know what day it is?”

“Uh…” There was the sound of a thumb thumping a screen several times. “Right, right, right: had to check my calendar, man.”

Luke swallowed, skipped a beat, “Your calendar.”

“Yeah, man, it’s my little sister’s birthday!” Followed by the sound of bubbling water.

Luke gave the sigh of the frequently disappointed, shaking his head on the other side of the phone call. He slid off the chair in the self storage unit that doubled as his paltry shop, a side business that never took off. “Well, we’ve gotta hang out, so stop smoking weed.”

“Aight, man, see you soon.”

“Bye.”

Luke removed the vestiges of his work clothes: Carhartt coveralls, latex gloves, thick boots, flannel button up. All so that he could quietly transmute this into that, fixing a short with a touch or a car engine with a whisper. Growing up his mother had made him learn to fix things by hand, as was the way in the family trade.

What better way was there to learn how a thing worked, and what stresses it could take, and more over how to make something appear as though it had been hand repaired. You could never be perfect. You had to include some imperfection—coloring, pattern, texture.

He was sick of being less than perfect to fit in.

The sorcerer changed into jeans, a white t-shirt, a thick peacoat and high tops automatically as he studied himself in the mirror. He looked like a normal man: auburn hair, hazel eyes, thick eyebrows, kissing lips, a medium sized nose, no strange scars or auras or halos or horns or anything. He didn’t even have to file down his nails.

20 minutes later

Greg was still smoking weed when Luke walked into their place, but at least he had his pants on, so that was a definite bonus. “Come on, man, get your shit together: we’re robbing a bank today!”

Remembering that, oh yeah, there was something going on besides his little sister’s birthday he quickly went into his room and threw on a change of clothes over his sweats and t-shirt, so that when they made their escape he could leave the outer layer of clothes behind and they would all think he was this great teleporting bank robber.

Yeah.

Greg nodded at himself as he put his shoes on. He was a big bad bridge troll, and today, for the only time in his life he would be able to tap into that integral part of himself. Even from behind the haze of his bloodshot eyes he could see a future that was a reflection of the past when his kind was mighty.

Taxes were their idea, after all.

The troll was six foot six and weighed somewhere in the realm of twenty hundred and fifty pounds of solid muscle coated with a layer of fat that added to his belly and made his smiles all the merrier. Otherwise he was a normal, albeit unusually ruddy skinned for someone who never went outside, man in his early twenties.

Clad in a hoodie and sweatpants, Greg joined Luke as they left to go to the bank.

15 minutes later

Greg and Luke had parked the car across from the street, waiting on the confirmation signal from Cedar at the appointed time.

It came at precisely 2:15 PM, just on time.

The two of them left the car, each with a messenger bag, and waltzed into the bank without masks on.

It was all part of the plan, after all.

A short young woman was the first out of the door, "You did great Cedar!" Her voice chirped, she gave a slight bounce to release her excitement, her bobbed blonde hair bouncing with her. Her taller companion offered her a small smile, her green eyes shinning happily. Cedar stood at five feet ten inches, beating Sophia by half a foot. They moved away from the door, letting their fellow coworkers out of the conference room.

"Yes, Miss McKinley, be sure to email me that presentation once you get back to your desk." a white haired man in a suit said, smiling as he passed them.

"Actually Mr. Sanders, I have that dentist appointment, remember? And Cedar is my ride." Sophia piped up, her gray eyes darkening, gripping the hem of her blouse nervously. She hated lying because she wasn't very good at it. Mr. Sanders looked to Cedar for confirmation and the young woman merely nodded her head, keeping from glancing at her friend.

"Right, I had forgotten. Send it from your phone then Miss McKinley. I will see you and Miss Coleman tomorrow. Good day." he smiled at them again before following after some other coworkers who had been in the meeting, continuing the discussion Cedar had presented. Sophia let out a long sigh and Cedar nudged her on, they had to get to the bank.

"Let me just grab my purse." Sophia mumbled, their approaching heist weighing her down. Cedar grimaced at the lack of energy coming from the short blonde, it was what she was known for. Once Sophia had trudged back to her side, Cedar led the way out of the building and to her car.

Ten minutes and a very one sided conversation later the two young woman arrived in the bank parking lot.

"I just don't know if this is the best thing for him. What do you th-" Sophia's endless chattering was cut off as Cedar shut her door as she exited. Nothing could keep her down for long. Cedar yawned in an attempt to sooth her aching ears. As the young blonde scrambled out of the passenger seat Cedar adjusted her dark blue pant suit. Her fingers itched to release her chestnut hair from the confides of her ponytail but she resisted. As Sophia came to join her in her pale pink blouse and white skirt they appeared to be nothing more than professional women stopping to grab some funds from the local bank. Cedar began the confident stroll, Sophia held back by her doubts for only a second before matching her friend's pace.

Cedar stood in line, her expression unreadable as Sophia chewed her lip nervously. Sophia worried over what was about to occur, twitching slightly as her electricity spiked with her stress. As Cedar caught a flash of light coming from her friend out of the corner of her eye she rumbled quietly to her. Almost like a purring sound while keeping an eye on the man in front of her for signs of alarm. Sophia leaned against her, ignoring the stiffening of her friend as she did so. Cedar had her doubts too, being new to the group of friends she wouldn't normally do this, not that she would show her lack of commitment. If she did Sophia would lose it and electrify everything prematurely. As the line shortened Cedar pulled out her phone and texted Luke on time. She continued on to sending the email to her boss, trying to act normal so Sophia would calm down.

“Greg, you smell like weed.”

“I accept your alternative lifestyle, accept mine.”

“If I were gay you’d be my wife.”

“Naw, man, you’d be my wife.”

The two casually bickered as Greg slowly filled out a deposit slip at the desk nearest the door. Luke closed his eyes as he leaned back against the wall, hands pressed against its smooth surface. One deep breath and he was in the right frame of mind for will working.

His awareness grew, expanding through the wallpaper and wall, tracing the wires until he found a junction box. Now with his target lodged firmly in his minds eye he began to reshaped the metal box, coaxing the metal to twist into his preferred formation.

The power to the lights, silent alarm, phones, security cameras, computers: almost everything went out. The only power left feeding into the building was for the vault itself, which they needed Sophia to jolt to force a system reset.

Now that the power was off it was Greg’s turn. In a half a second his aspect transformed as his body crackled and snapped, muscle bunching up and in turn expanding as he grew to nearly eight feet tall. His double layer of clothing was pressed tight around his body, dragging up sleeves and pants legs up to his elbows and knees.

Just as he increased in size he became more monstrous, teeth expanding to fill his mouth, hair shooting down his back. “Fee-fi-fo get the fuck on the ground!” He screamed in a hair raising tone as saliva dripped down from his veritable tusks. While Greg began to terrify, and by proxy control, the crowd Luke turned his abilities to shape and later matter up a notch and disintegrated the iron grating behind the front door, leading it to slam down on the ground and bite into the carpet.

Next down came the blinds, released as the metal locks that held them into place warped out of shape. From there the front doors were darkened to a smoky brown, further blinding the mundanes screaming and shouting and crying in the bank.

“It’s your phones or your life!” Greg snarled as he moved between the remaining customers and employees that still milled around the lobby, pushing them to the ground and collecting their phones, which he returned by crushing in his hand and dropping the remains to the floor.

Once he reached the plexiglass dividers behind which the tellers stood he stepped forward into a punch, shattering their protection in one blow.

“Your phones. Or. Your. Life!” He bellowed to the huddled workers, quickly receiving each of them in turn.

Now it was time to single out the bank manager, for which they needed Cedar’s excellent nose.

Cedar paid no attention as the two young men entered the building, continuing to mess around on her phone, waiting for her turn in line. Sophia was much more nonchalant at looking at them but hopefully it passed off as her checking them out rather than a nervous glare. Cedar stepped up to be next in line, gently guiding Sophia with her. The young chestnut haired woman heard the creaking of the metal changing and an excited growl began to rumble in her throat. As the lights went out Sophia cried out along with the others, her fear sending sparks of electricity flying off her, making her resemble a little flickering flashlight. The two young woman watched as Greg morphed into his true form, Sophia stood with mouth hung open while Cedar itched to turn as well. She grabbed Sophia's arm to lure her to a corner where she could change properly but a spark caught her hand and she yelped out in pain.

"Sorry! I'm so sorry Cedar!" she squeaked, panic threatening to overwhelm her. Cedar gently took her friend's face in her hands and looked into Sophia's eyes. After a few moments the shorter girl began to calm and Cedar nodded toward the corner. Sophia stumbled along numbly, trying to block out the roar of Greg's voice as he demanded the people's phones. Cedar began to strip down, folding her clothes and handing them to Sophia to hold. She wasn't as lucky as Greg when she changed, her clothes would be damaged beyond repair. Sophia gazed around at the darkness, the shut door and blinds somewhat calming her. 'At least the Council won't see what's going on...' she thought, shuddering at what would happen if they were caught. Cedar growled in carnal pleasure as she removed her hair tie and began shifting, her chestnut covering her body in a thick fur, her hands and feet morphing into canine paws with sharp claws. Her muzzle sprouted with a smirk, her tail swishing at being free. The only likeness that remained was her green eyes, in this form she could pass for a large dog if no one paid too close attention to her.

Once she saw her friend had shifted successfully Sophia made her way over to Greg, casting sympathetic looks at the people cowering in fear. She kept trying to tell herself Luke needed the money but she still didn't think this was the right way. Waiting for her direction she helped Greg collect the phones, trying to keep her stress under control so her electricity wouldn't spark up and frighten the people more.

Cedar knew her next role and she made a running jump on top of the teller desks, her thick pads unbothered by the broken glass. She growled menacingly down at them, making eye contact with each one before stalking on. She knew what she was looking for, a man not unlike her boss. He would reek of fear and scent and would either be the one to boldly challenge her to protect his coworkers or be a coward trying to sneak off to save his own skin.

"Which one..which one..." she grumbled, her voice more of a growl than human language. She finally spotted one middle aged man near a closed office room who was whispering to the others around him. As she approached he met her gaze defiantly. A primal laughter rattled in her chest and she jumped at him with a snarl. Dodging his poorly aimed blows she grabbed his shirt in her teeth and began to drag him toward Luke. She ignored his outrage which bubbled into begging and once in front of Luke she released him only to move an inch from his face. Locking eyes with him she snarled a warning before backing up only far enough to let Luke look at him.

Sophia was slipping, she had never seen Cedar so rough in her true form. She had only seen her a few times after a full moon night, after she had gotten out all of her energy. Sophia's own energy surged, sparking again, streaking out across the floor, causing the lights to flicker on and off for a few heartbeats before she controlled herself again.

Once his cousin joined Greg, Luke dug into his messenger bag, pulling a ghoul mask on over his face and latex gloves over his fingers. Next up, he pulled out a flash light to play over the ground and found his cousin and best friend.

“Put these on,” he whispered, pressing gloves and a balaclava into her hands. There was no reason to leave any fingerprints, and if they continued to play it right and in the dark the witnesses would be too confused to really know what was going on. One might latch onto the wolf, another onto the scary hairy guy screaming, another onto the balaclava, another onto the screaming white ghoul mask.

The police would never be able to unravel the twisted narrative.

He moved away, towards the door that lead to the vault, hating how hot and humid the inside of the mask was and how his lips pressed flat against the voice modulator he had installed in the mask. Somehow, in the middle of all this, that was what he was thinking about. In the middle of his jackhammering heart, the sweat beading down his forehead and the fact he was breaking two different sets of laws and that they were going to get away with it.

So far, so good. Everything was going to plan.

When Cedar brought him the bank manager he was taken aback for a moment, silently peering down at the man with the flashlight in his face.

Then something kicked in and Luke brought the flashlight down closer to the manager’s eyes.

“There are three realities you need at address.” Luke’s voice came out modulated and abnormally deep, uninflected and monotone.

“One: you are our hostage. Two: your life depends on the whims of myself and my colleagues. Three: how are you best going to ingratiate yourself to us?”

Luke turned the flashlight to the ground, hauling the now night blind manager to his feet by his collar and unceremoniously hauled him towards the bank vault, signaling Sophia to follow. Her turn was coming up.

The sorcerer laid his hand on the door handle, weakening the lock enough that a sharp kick to the door caused it to burst open to reveal an open gate and the vault. The safe was huge, the door a thick circular porthole with a wheel on its right side.

Nestled in the middle of the vault was a keypad with a red LED bar above it currently reading LOCKED.

“Vault code, now.” Luke pushed the bank manager to the vault.

“But you need two—“

“Vault code.”

This was where Sophia became so crucial. The vault’s electronic lock worked off of a dual authorization system where the bank manager and certain bank customers and bank officials both had to enter their respective codes to open the vault. However, due to a flaw in the vault’s electronics entering the bank manager’s code followed by a large electrical surge would force its system to enter maintenance mode, automatically unlocking and opening the door.

Now it was just time to see if the vault manager would enter the door, and if Sophia had the voltage necessary to make it work.

Meanwhile, while Luke had been dragging the bank manager to the vault Greg was herding the crowd to lay facedown on the carpet with their fingers laced over his head. Along the way he learned several important lessons about being a bridge troll.

First and foremost being was that there was no not roaring at people in his truer self’s form. As giddy and excited being able to satisfy his desire to intimidate and extract compliance, he found that the experience was getting to be unnecessarily traumatic for the assorted hostages.

“Yuh thdun heb… du…” Greg grunted through his overabundance of rending fangs, realizing that he couldn’t be intelligible through these things without full on yelling. The room already reeked of fear sweat and for all that Greg was enjoying stomping around and screaming at people, he didn’t enjoy making girls cry.

There was one girl sobbing softly into the ground, like a beaten, broken thing.

The giant loped away, his apish hairy arms swinging low, bent forward with a certain tiredness, only to turn back around and patrol around the group in an irregular circle.

The second important lesson was that after the shift between human and troll forms there was a period of adjustment. With his stride elongated Greg found himself barely dodging walls, accidentally shoving his hand through partitions and tables when he wasn’t paying attention and making an absolute mess of things. Not to mention a lingering sense of vertigo from his perspective suddenly changing.

The third was that being a troll felt good. It was so rare to get an opportunity to cut loose these days, you usually had to go deep into backwoods. With the proliferation of drones and smartphones even that wasn’t safe anymore, and the sasquatch nuts kept you on your toes. Now that Greg thought about it, he hadn’t been in his troll form since he was a teenager at his adulthood ritual.

This felt like his real skin. All his little aches and pains had faded away, leaving him feeling suddenly more free and light than he had in years. This was exactly how he was meant to be.

Sophia looked at the mask her cousin had handed her, trembling as she put it on. She nearly dropped the gloves as they slid over her small hands, but at least she was able to focus on something and calm herself down. She was uncomfortable with the balaclava on her face, pinching at it a few times and attempting to adjust her blonde hair. The young woman tried to block out the noise of Greg parading around and the people crying in fear. She almost missed her cousin's signal, staring after him for a few heartbeats before following, subdued. She grimaced as Luke pushed the man and slowly made her way over to the vault door. Sophia stood a few feet away from the bank manager, avoiding his gaze, and instead inspected the door. Her gray eyes lingered on the blaringly red LED lights, a defiant glow in the dark of the room. She began her deep breathing exercises, pacing a short distance repeatedly as she flexed her hands. She could feel the energy growing inside her, swelling into a massive surge at her core. Sophia had used great amounts of her power before, she just hoped this task wouldn't be more challenging. If she gave too much she wouldn't be able to walk, let alone run, out of here without help. She looked to her cousin, her worry apparent in her eyes. Still, she waited patiently for the man to enter his code, the electricity still rising inside of her.

Cedar chuckled a throaty growl as Luke vanished with Sophia. The scent of fear was exciting her. As she paced around the room her claws clicked on the tile and scratched on the carpet. She made eye contact with everyone she passed, lingering on those who chose not to look to make sure they weren't hiding a phone. 'This will end when we choose, not before.' she thought, looking to the entrance of the building. With the door shut and the blinds drawn it looked as if the bank closed unexpectedly early. Hopefully any passerby's wouldn't linger around too long to hear the muffled cries inside.

She moved to the center of the room and sat down, her ears perked, taking in every scrap of noise. In this form she was less of her quiet, observing self and more of a short tempered animal. Her lips curled into a smile as her gaze fell upon the sobbing girl. 'She has no need for tears, so long as she doesn't do anything stupid we won't hurt her.' she thought to herself, shaking her head at the human's stupidity. Part of her wanted someone to try to make a break for it, her muscles yearned to give chase to something drenched in it's own fear. Soon enough her thoughts drifted to food, and she was so involved in figuring out what she would eat she didn't notice Greg loping close to her. As the giant knocked over a nearby table Cedar jumped to her paws, letting out a cry of alarm. As she found it was only her companion her ears flung back against her head and her hackles raised menacingly.

"Watch it you beast." she snarled at the giant, more out of surprise at being caught off guard than real anger.