Yesterday's Heroes (Consortium of Chaos Book 1) (24 page)

He blinked.  “What?  …You mean as
back-up?”

She laughed nervously, and shook
her head.  “Oh no, I don’t need it.”

He was confused now.  “Wait…you
mean…like some kind of
date?” 
His mind raced as he tried to rationalize
how a ‘date’ could really mean simply a friendly outing with a co-worker.

She laughed a little too loudly.  “No. 
No-no-no-no-no.”

“So… it’d just be a chance to spend
some time together in a non-work related environment.”

She nodded.

He pursed his lips as he considered
that.  “Hmmm…that still sounds like a date to me.”  Dating her would probably
be wrong.  He really didn’t think he could come up with an excuse for how
dating her was a necessary part of NOT dating her.  No, he’d best sit out this
endeavor, just to be sure.  He could slip, and that would be bad.  He didn’t
want to be anywhere NEAR this situation.  “A job you need to do for work, but
it has nothing to do with your job.”  He’d have to be strong, that’s all. 
Break this thing off before it went too far.  He WASN’T getting involved.  “…Makes
sense to me.”  He ducked back into his room for a moment and came back out
carrying his briefcase.  “Yes, Harlot.  I would love to go on your non-date
date with you.”

Damn.

Well…
technically
, as long as
it wasn’t called a ‘date’, then it wasn’t a date, right?  He could spend one
evening in the company of a beautiful coworker alone and not have to worry
about getting too close to her.  He was a
professional. 
Nothing to
worry about at all. 

She beamed.  “Awesome!  Okay, we’re
going to go steal that diamond thing that Dad wants.”

He followed her down the hallway.  “I
thought you said this wasn’t work related?”

“It’s not.”

“Then
you
want to steal this
diamond for some reason?”

She snorted.  “Nope.  Don’t care. 
I mean, I’m going to steal it
eventually
just to prove that I CAN, but I
have no real desire to possess the stupid thing, no.”

He pressed the button for the
elevator to the motor pool.  “So, if you don’t WANT it, then why are we going
to go steal it on our non-date?”  He looked down at her.  “Seems like a waste
of time and resources to steal something that’s completely
useless
to
Consortium plans.”  He shook his head.  “We should do something which will be
more productive in the long run towards achieving our goals.”

She stared up into his eyes.  “You
know?  You’re right.  We should go steal something
BETTER!”

He walked into the elevator.  “Umm…That
really isn’t what I was getting at.  What I meant was that…”

She laughed.  “No, no.  You’re
right.  We don’t NEED to steal anything tonight, so we should go steal
something we WANT to steal!”

He blinked down at her.  “But I
have no desire to steal anything.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Then you
lack imagination.  I can think of at least three dozen things that I want to
steal, right now!”  She nodded as her plan came into focus.  “Don’t worry, you
can borrow one of mine.”

******

Half an hour later, they were
sitting in the car in front of the Museum of Heroes. 

Wyatt frowned disapprovingly as she
pulled the car into an open spot.  “You can’t park here.”  He pointed to the
sign on the curb which featured the image of a little stick figure man in a
cape, putting his hands on his hips.  “It’s reserved for heroes, and you don’t
have a sticker.  It’s illegal.”

She made a face.  “Oh, no one pays
any attention to those things anyway.”  She beamed.  “Besides, I’ve got
FABRICATOR in the car for god’s sake!  That’s like having the Pope with you and
worrying about parking at the
Vatican
.”

His frown deepened.  “I just don’t
want us to complete the crime you’re planning and escape, only to find that our
getaway vehicle has been towed because you were unwilling to pay the .25 cents
for a parking meter.”

She rolled her eyes.  “Oh, calm
down.  You’re new at the crime thing; trust me.  The car will be
fine
. 
What’s the worst that could happen?”

His frown turned into a
full-fledged scowl as his head no doubt concocted all manner of farfetched
consequences of an innocent traffic infraction. 

She sighed dramatically.  “Jeez.” 
She opened her car door and walked around to the trunk of the car.  “I can see
you’re just not going to let this go, are you?”  She found what she was looking
for and trudged over to the “hero parking only” sign.  The stupid things were
all over the city, and they always reserved the best spots.  It made no sense! 
Half of the heroes didn’t even drive, and the other half were like super-strong
and stuff, so it wasn’t like the walk from a parking  spot further away would
tire them or anything. 

“Here, This should make you
happier…”  She shook the spray-paint can, and quickly added a crossed circle
‘no’ symbol over the image, and then turned around; a look of triumph on her face. 
“There.  See?  Now it’s ‘No Hero Parking’ sign.”  She squinted at her work in
consideration.  “…Which I guess could either mean that only villains can park
here, or that heroes can’t, and in either case, we’re covered.”  She tossed the
spray paint back into the car.  “No need to thank me.”

He looked up at her new urban
artwork.  “Yes, nicely done.  Now the parking ticket can be compounded with a destruction
of property charge, and
also
alert everyone that nefarious activities are
going on here.”  He looked down at the can as he got out of the car to join
her.  “And why exactly do you carry a can of red spray paint with you?”

She winked at him.  “It lets me
park for free, of course.  Don’t be silly.”  She giggled.  “
Nefarious.” 
She
smiled at him.  “You say funny things. 
Nefarious. 
I like that word;
I’m going to start using it.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes again and
blinked up at the marble expanse of the museum.  “You know…maybe stealing that
diamond
would
have been more fun.  Why the hell would you want anything
from
this
place?  I don’t understand the point.”

She started making her way around
to the back of the museum.  “There IS no point; just to have fun.”

He squinted, visibly trying to
process that.  “So…you want to rob a public museum for no reason other than the
fact that you find stealing stuff enjoyable?”

She nodded and began trying to pick
the lock on the maintenance door.  “Yep.  Pretty much.”  The door popped ajar
and she held it open for him.  “Tell me you’re not having fun?”

He glanced into the darkness
inside.  “I just don’t understand why we’d risk capture and jail time for
something so
utterly
inconsequential?”

She ushered him inside.  “Duh! 
What did I tell you before?  To feel ALIVE!  Having fun is NEVER
inconsequential!”  He looked around at what appeared to be a storeroom, his eyes
once again trying to memorize the interior.  She swatted his arm.  “Stop that! 
We’re here to have fun, not work!”

He rubbed his arm.  “Yes.  How
silly of me to worry about serving time in federal prison for so worthy a
cause.”  He sighed.  “So…what are we here to steal?”

She waived a dismissive hand.  “Oh,
we’ll worry about that later.  Right now, we just need to find the exhibit
halls without getting caught.”  She beamed, practically vibrating with
enthusiasm.  “Isn’t this
exciting!?!
”

He made a non-committal sound. “Thrilling.”
He deadpanned.

She walked over to a security box
and pried it open.  She stared down at the wires inside and reached to her belt
for her tools…and then stopped.  Uh-oh.  She had been so excited to get going
that she had forgotten her wire cutters.  Whoops.

She looked up at him.  “Umm…I kinda
forgot my thingies…”

He sighed dramatically and quickly
formed a sharp looking knife out of thin air and handed it to her.  She tested
the shiny, transparent tool in her hands for a moment.  Wow.  Totally cool.

“That’s really neat.”  She began
carefully stripping the wires with it.  “How do you do it?”

He looked over his shoulder, watching
for an attack from behind.  “It’s just what I do.”  He refocused on her, voice
more serious.  “It takes a hell of a lot of concentration, though.  It’s
like…Okay…Imagine an orange.  What it looks like; feels like.  It’s weight,
color, density, texture.  Everything about the orange…”  He held out a hand and
a telekinetic orange filled his palm.  “But you have to constantly be thinking
about all aspects of that orange simultaneously, because if you let your mind
wander, even for a second…”  The orange distorted and fell through his hand and
disappeared.  “You lose it.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to have a
conversation while still thinking about an orange or a sword or a knife?  It took
me
years
to build the necessary level of concentration.”

She finished her work at deactivating
the security system.  Apparently the museum wasn’t overly concerned with being
robbed, as the system was pitiful.  A drunken child could bypass their piss
poor alarm.  He reached out to hand him back the tool, but it disappeared from
her grasp.  She blinked down at where it had formally been for an instant.

“Well, however it’s done, it’s
pretty darn cool.”  She shook her head sadly.  “I don’t
have
any
powers.”

He held the door to the exhibit
hall open for her.  “Oh come on now!  You’ve got loads of useful abilities, you
don’t
need
a super-power.”

She laughed.  “Oh yeah, name ONE?”

He scanned the interior.

“Well…you’re the best thief I’ve
ever seen.  And I watched you beat the hell out of that team of security guards
at the airshow that time.”  He smiled.  “…And I don’t know
anyone
else
who could wear that uniform and look so good.”

She laughed.  “Holy crap…Are you
actually FLIRTING with me?”

He shook his head.  “No.  That
would be something I’d do on a
date
, and this obviously isn’t one.  It
would be
terribly
unprofessional to flirt on a non-work business trip
with a non-coworker.”  He gestured to the room.  “Which way did you want to
go?”

She pointed down the corridor for
the east wing.  “I think it’s this way.”

They strolled past display cases
and exhibits on the various super-heroes who had saved the city over the
years. 

She beamed.  “When I was a kid, my
dad used to take me here.  He HATED it, but he came anyway because he knew I
loved it.”

Wyatt stared at a large wooden
cutout of Captain Dauntless set up for the visitors to the museum to pose for
photographs beside.  “I’m inclined to agree with your father.  This place is
boring and pointless.”  He shook his head in disgust.  “Present company
excluded.”

She blinked.  That was sweet.

“Jeez.  You’re always so down on
your old profession.”  She began sifting through the various souvenirs at the
gift shop.  Some of this stuff was actually new, she hadn’t seen it before. 
She tried on a pair of Mr. Lonesome sunglasses and began looking through the
racks of Swamp Fella shirts for one in her size….

Wyatt absently picked up a “Missile-Strike
Architect” action figure from the seventh assortment of the Freedom Squad “Grand
Heroes” line and stared down at it.  “Because they’re all
parasites
; billionaires
who sit in their mansions and have no idea what the real world is like.  Even
their civilian identities are out of touch with reality.  They don’t pay taxes,
they don’t have families, they don’t even mow their own lawns.”  He waived the
figure at her.  “You think someone like Architect contributes anything to
society?  No.  He lives off of the hard work of his company’s employees, a
company his FATHER built I might add, and which he is singlehandedly
outsourcing overseas, and tries to keep his
latest
statutory rape charge
from making the papers.  He himself has done next to nothing to help anyone; he
just uses his inheritance to indulge his every selfish whim, and uses his
political and Union influence to manipulate the free-market in order to crush
his business competitors.  He and the Squad have a stranglehold on every aspect
of life in this city, and try to convince people that they’re protecting the
‘little guy.’  He’s not a hero because he believes in it, he’s only a Cape
because it gets him
women
.  Now, I’m not a villain because I’m claiming
that super-villains are good people, far from it obviously, I’m merely saying
that if villains are scum, than those ‘heroes’ are
worse
, because they
pretend to be serving some bullshit higher moral ideal.  It’s all about
control.  I don’t care that they’re selfish people, but they shouldn’t pretend
like they’re better than everyone else.  The reason why your family has never
been able to take over the world…aside from the fact that they’re inept?  It’s
because the heroes already
have
.”

She laughed and added a hat to her
bag of stolen goods.  “I think you’re being a little hard on them.  They’re
just trying to do their part to make the city a better place.”

He tossed the figure towards the
wall and it exploded in a shower of multicolored parts.  “No, they’re NOT!”  He
gestured to the stuff around them.  “
THIS
is what it’s all about to
them.  Who do you think is BEHIND all this merchandise?  Huh? 
They are.
 
They get a cut of all of this shit, so they make sure never to rock the boat. 
They only care about their image, so they won’t do anything which could
jeopardize that.”

She paused considering that for a
moment and then added a die-cast Badgermobile toy to her sack.  “Merchandising…Huh….You
know…
WE
should totally do that!”  She beamed as the idea began to take
shape.  “I’d TOTALLY buy stuff with US on it to go with my collection!  Aside
from that figure of Dad they did years back though…which he didn’t get a PENNY
from by the way…all the collectibles have been of the heroes…Hey!  We can
TOTALLY have that Harlot figure you gave me produced!  We wouldn’t even need to
redesign it…Oh!  We should open a
villain museum
too!  Wouldn’t that be…”