totalwildcard | Around the Mainland; So Late Thursday Night It's Actually Friday

Around the Mainland; So Late Thursday Night It's Actually Friday

As established, Harley now had a great big bland-looking van.

But that was not all: Harley also had an accomplice! No, not the kid this time, because Cass had begged off on the basis of having gotten her little life's worth of dusty antique shops in just scouting all of them over the past couple of weeks, and also because Harley had need of someone who actually knew how to drive and who had a smidge more experience breaking into places.

So... She'd ~~handwavily~~ roped in Remy.

And now the van, Remy, Harley, and the whispersilk cloak currently still shoved into a bag were all nearing their first target, an antique shop in a part of town that was probably relatively quiet even when it wasn't the dead of night - and when it was, well... It really was dead out there. No movement along the street outside of the van itself.

Perfect conditions for the start of a heist!

"Okay, we should be... two blocks out," Harley said from the passenger side, surveying her map - yes, a physical one with squiggles and notes all over it. "Ca-- my associate says there's an alley on the left side of the place? With a side door into the building. That's how we get the goods."

(NFB because off the island again, and for the fellow criminal modded in the post)

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“Through the side door in the alley,” Remy echoed. He did not voice the ‘how pedestrian’ thought running through his head.

This wasn’t a Guild run. Harley was anything but high tech. But he was allowed to be a little disappointed he wasn’t scaling in on a line from the ceiling.

“Your associate mention any alarm systems?”

Remy, please, you were an untested accomplice. Harley's map had many places marked on it, and there was a slight performance review aspect to the order they were numbered in.

Anyway, Harley consulted her notes.

"Yeah, but by the sound of it it's ancient." She paused, for a thought. "And my associate will call lotsa things 'really old' that aren't, but I checked with her on this one - genuinely old tech, not just 'it doesn't have a touch screen and I'm a toddler' old."

Remy nodded. (Not that lack of touch screens meant something wasn't high tech where he was from. It was still a decent indicator of age when you weren't busting into, say, Tony Stark's suit storage.) "How about security guards? They got a night watchman or . . . a dog, maybe?"

There were some tiny stick figure like drawings of pigs and dogs next to some of the spots on Harley's map.

None on this one, though.

"Nope!" Harley said, and looked over at Remy. She flashed him a grin. "Call it a warm-up, Frenchie."

A warm-up. There was a concept.

Not even remotely one Remy had ever subscribed to, but sure.

"You're the chef," Remy said with a nod. "You want me inside, or just keeping the van warm?"

"Depends, how good an eye ya think you've developed for what'll sell?"

All their targets were places that by definition already thought all of their wares would sell. And yet, Harley.

Remy coughed faintly.

"My eye is no match for yours," he said.

She had . . . distinctive tastes.

Harley responded with, "Ha! Nice answer!" which seemed to indicate he'd chosen well. Or that she'd taken it well, at least, which was really more or less the same thing.

And then she looked out the windshield, made an excitable little noise, and pointed ahead. "Ooh, there it is, that's our spot!" And, yes, that seemed to be an antique store just up ahead, with a cute little sign with it a fancy name on it. The alley by it was where Cass had said it would be, too.

"Mais oui," Remy agreed, palming the wheel to turn them into the alleyway. (It was nice that his charm -- not Charm, mind you, he saved that for special occasions and people he wasn't already kind of attached to -- was finally working on Harley.) "This how you stocked the store in the first place?"

He suspected not, since she was talking about hitting places she herself hadn't seen yet. But maybe she was just careful not to hit the same place twice?

(Ha! Harley, careful. Sure.)

There were some garage guys across town with some fresh perspective on whether Harley would hit something twice or not, even. But admittedly, that had been a little more literal.

(Though not by much. She'd actually played it fairly nice once they'd cooperated.)

"Nah," she replied, gesturing for the side door, also where it'd been advertised to be. "Place came with most of the stuff already in it. I just... filled in some more small stuff. Yanno, trinkets."

Stolen jewelry, mostly.

Remy nodded idly. That . . . honestly explained a lot.

"Well. We have lots of space to fill now. Let's get started!"

"Let's," Harley said, with a spark in her eyes. In case anyone was somehow still wondering how she felt about crime.

She grabbed the bag that was at her feet, and the baseball bat that had been under her seat (what, there were always potential uses for one of those! just in case!) and practically launched herself out the door.

"I'll even let ya work your magic with the lock!"

A baseball bat. How very low-tech.

"Oh? Merci." Remy slid out of the van with less speed, but not less enthusiasm, let's be real. This was deeply low-stakes and kind of beneath him, but -- Harley wasn't the only one here who got a rush out of crime, okay?

The "lock" in question was laughable. "Could have picked this when I was in diapers," he murmured, setting to work. In short order, the aging alarm system was offline and the door swinging open.

"That ain't saying much, you coulda been in diapers yesterday for all I know," Harley told him, much too sincerely for what she was actually saying. Still, when the door opened, she clapped her hands with delight and swanned right in, bat resting against her shoulder.

The little back room was all dusty administrative junk, so Harley passed through it quickly, into the store proper. It had a familiar vibe, a relatively small establishment of a couple of rooms packed tight with all manner of antique and vintage pieces. A little bit of furniture, but mostly other decorative stuff for the home, with some more eclectic curiosities thrown in.

"Ya wanna know why I wanted to come here?"

She was probably going to tell him regardless of what he said, but at least she was pausing long enough to give him a genuine shot at getting a word in.

Edited 2025-08-28 20:44 (UTC)

"Why?" Remy answered back. Unlike Harley, he took a moment with the back room, looking for a safe.

What? While he was here, he might as well steal something valuable too.

There was a safe. It kind of looked like an antique piece in itself.

"'Cause the kid sent me pictures of the window," Harley called back, from where she was making her way towards the front of the store. And, yeah, apparently she was now too distracted to keep up her 'my associate' thing, but oh well. "And it had something I wanted."

Remy tried to think of what that might be, even as he went in for a closer look at the safe. (It was classic. He was getting so much nostalgia out of this job.)

"What's that?" he asked, finally. It wasn't that he couldn't think of anything, he just couldn't think of which crazy thing that popped into his head was the right kind of crazy.

Plus, it seemed like Harley liked it better when she was running the conversation.

Harley did very much like it when people just got out of the way of whatever direction her runaway train of thought happened to be traveling in, it was true. It was also kind of unfortunate, but, true.

"You'll see in a sec!" she informed him, as she paused to dig the cloak out of the bag and throw it on. Hey, she had it, might as well keep herself from anyone spotting her through the window! (You know, any of the... absolutely no people that were outside.) "But, I can give ya a hint: there's two of 'em."

That would not help him at all. But she was traipsing her way to the window, in her trippy new get-up, to grab said two things... and a few others, that conveniently fit in the bag.

That didn't so much narrow his choices as take them wildly in a new direction.

He debated whether he could concentrate on cracking the safe and listening to Harley at the same time. It'd be more of a test of his abilities than anything else on this heist was so far. He set to work.

"Can't split up a set."

Well, he also bought himself a moment of concentration with that comment, not that he could have predicted it was going to have the effect that it did. Harley found herself looking down at the two kitschy, goofy poodle lamps in her hands with a weird melancholy pang in her chest.

Except it wasn't weird because it was the same fucking thing it always was, lately.

"Dunno about that," she called, a little too late for it to sound natural. Also, her tone had lost some of the aggressive pep. "Teams split up sometimes."

That was a suspiciously long pause, yes. Remy thought about what she'd been through lately and winced as he fiddled with the safe.

"That's true. I been on . . . three or four teams so far."

Depended on how you counted quitting a team to work with their nemeses and then coming back.

Multiple times.

"Yeah, so, see? Actually pretty easy to split up a set."

Sigh.

After some hesitation, Harley put the lamps into the bag, carefully, then looked around at what else there was.

"Nothing's forever, right? Teams change and that's just how it is."

"Teams do," Remy agreed. Thinking about Rogue now. Off on the Avengers. Telling them to consider him.

Then telling them not to take him.

"But some things . . . some things are permanent."

"Like what?"

There was a pretty significant price tag on a nearby candelabra. Harley grabbed it, a little listlessly.

He knew better than to try for romantic love, here.

"Family," he suggested instead. "And not the blood kind, non? Got a best friend, Stormy, we're ride or die. Basically siblings."

She also hated it when he called her "Stormy".

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