Love Among Thieves

[Malkavia]

"What is going on??"

By now, even the most dimwitted among the crowd had begun to poke their noses into their purses or pat down their pockets. Their cries of dismay began to blend together, a stew of Japanese expletives, questions, demands boiling over into a collective din.

Tick tock Shimbo. Fuse is burning. How long before the waxy, scowling faces from the crowd turned their demonic look on the one person they all had in common—the magician conveniently at the center of the ring affected?

She imagined herself hauled off to jail. What, exactly, would happen to her? Like many a tourist, she'd been warned—no pot. Fuck, no prescription medications of any kind. Was any truth to those stories about state-sanctioned executions for tourists who "smuggled" in Adderall?

(You know, Shim. You could blame Angelina)

Crazy thought was her first reaction. Oh, but it wasn't. Angelina would have the wallets, no? Or some wallets, and that's all the validation needed. Then she goes downtown, and we, oh Shimmer girl, we soar back to her place and to Thistledown—

TICK TOCK.

There was — thanks be to Pirate Jesus — a mostly empty cart in arm's reach. She tipped it on its side and stepped on top. "Excuse me," she said with her smoothest of inside voices. She knew from stage work, shouting over a crowd was a losing game. Get quiet instead. Then the fuckers stuff it so they can hear.

"Sumimasen." Sure enough. She was basking in the limelight, wobbly though her stage was. Best not lose her balance. She cleared her throat. "Right, sorry. So, eh. Seems to me there's been a touch of thieving. Right? That's the only explanation. And, as it seems...centered about our crew here. Well, seems like someone took advantage." She threw out her palms and shrugged. Sheepish. "Happens more than I'd care to say with street magic. I'm deeply sorry. But, point is—Miss. Shopkeeper-san. This place has got its share of cameras I imagine, yeah?"

Poor Miss Shopkeeper looked just a penny too shy to shoo Shimmerlace off her perch. She stuttered over the word. Thieving? What? In her store, in this peaceful town? She had to repeat it three times before the idea seemed to take root behind her pasty, sweat-drenched mask of self-recriminating politeness.

"Are those cameras on or not, girl?" Here was a short, thick man in khaki pants and the kind of black leather shoes you could catch your reflection in if you were to look down into them. A head shorter than Shimmerlace, she thought, but probably at least one and a half times her weight.

"Yes, yes, yes!" comes our girl of the shop in a rush to please. "Yes they're on, let me just go check on the footage—"

"Annnnnd mind if a few of us tag along to take a look ourselves?"

"Er... N-no. Company policy, ma'am, says..."

Now things were flowing nicely. A flood, yeah, but one inside dikes she could bend and control. And she had a plan to use her newfound power over the Nile. Unfortunately, that's when Jimbo "Fuck this Kid" McGee decided to pop off with his nasally little pipsqueak voice.

"WAIT!!"

Maybe, Shimmerlace thought in retrospect, she should have just let the crowd stay loud. Then they wouldn't hear this brat. They'd just get more and more angry and confused and loud, and the magician could sneak out in the din. But no. She'd got them orderly. And now, as a pit yawned in Shimmerlace's gut, their eyes turned in highly orderly fashion on the kiddo. The attention seemed to strike him dumb, and he blushed and his mouth opened and shut. His eyes turned towards Shimmerlace.

"What is it kid? Don't you see the grown-ups here are busy?!"

"Hush up you dolt! Maybe he saw something!"

Shimmerlace caught his look. She Smiled. Curious. Friendly. "Don't mind them kiddo. What's got your ears twisted, Jimbo the Wise?"

[Monsy]

Angelina entered into a longwise rectangular room running mostly to the right of her while the door was against the wall to her left. She closed and locked it, then unloaded every wallet to the desk’s brown surface. It stretched a good six feet, had metal filing cabinets on the wings, wooden shelves above, filers and paper holders, staplers, pens, sticky notes. Two monitors were streaming the CCTV across the store while a third had invoice software going.

Firstly…
Well, hmm.
( Leaving is always an option. What is she going to do, tell on herself to get my ass? Its me who deletes the footage. )

After a few moments of thought and fist against her forehead, she snapped her fingers. Right. Obviously this is on the computer. Directory! Everything is a program and no way a place like this was carrying layers over layers. She sat down in the chair, manipulated the cursor and sifted through the menus to find the file location, select them all and theeeeeeen… Had a second thought.

( It’s me who deletes the footage. )

She didn’t delete it. Instead, she sifted through the computer to ensure there was only one copy of today's footage. She deleted it from the cloud, then stopped to think. How today was going to be a mess. She gave her nose-bridge a pinch between thumb and index, stroked it, then snapped her fingers again to answer a lingering question. Just what the fuck was she doing with the wallets? Hiding them makes it easy, simple, then this makes it look fishy. It’s easy to make people accept a simple misunderstanding or malice. Conflict was scary for the average joe. They only want to defend what’s theirs.

So what if it wasn’t a mistake?

Angelina sank from the chair like a spineless slime to get knees on the floor, then crawled for the PC itself. She squeezed some nuts using the edge of a stapler to twist and unscrew the side of the computer panel. Unplugging the SSD from the motherboard, she stuffed it into her maid blouse, re-screwed the panel on, then continued onto the safety deposit box just hiding in the corner. Black on the sides with a silver face-plate, a rotary and a handle.

“Oh, it’s you.” She said, sitting cross legged in-front of it. “My low-grade friend.” She gave the box a few knocks on its side, top and front, then stroked it like a pet feline. “Today is about to be a bad day for ya.” Said Angelina, now putting her ear against the front, then over the top, then on the side all while turning the rotor slowly. She spun it till a tiny timber told her it was good. She gave it a few taps on the side, recognizing that something was now bumping into something, and not in the same pitch as before. A sort of fluck-fluck than a click-click. The next step was the opposite way, then the same thing with deliberate movement. A scrape was heard at some point, prompting a quick glance at the reference point, then a full revolution to seal the second, hearing an important click. Again she flicked the safe in different places to listen for any tones. Then she continued once last time till her last guess was punched in. The handle turned and the safe showed her papers, files and bands of yen in sliding shelves.

She took all the wallets, stuffed them into the safe, then closed it to about a slit remaining open. With her idea all in order, she exited the backroom. While she thought of what to say, a short memory hit her that gave her a chuckle.

( Learn locks for a summer, they said.
Then we can get into the lock boxes that keep our phones.
After that, it’s up to you. )

[Malkavia]

Does Jimbo even know what I did, I wonder?

Kiddos could be hard to estimate. Every mind is its own strange book written in a foreign dialect, but young kids in particular could swipe a girl sideways with what they did and did not understand about the world.

But...Alas! The kid wore his guilt plainly, like a dog. He's scared I'll be pissed. Or that the crowd will be angry. For saying nothing sooner? For existing? He probably wasn't accustomed to adults as angry as these.

Her mind shifted to the taser in her jacket pocket.

Still there, still heavy as a brick.

If the kid accused her, she decided, she'd slam it into Miss Shopkeeper and then high tail it.

Instead, he picked up his new magic deck of cards and extended it, with both hands, out towards Shimmerlace. "Can we trade please?" The question hung for a beat. Jimbo obviously thought the terms of his deal were obvious. He looked at Shimmerlace with an adult's seriousness, his chin down and eyes unblinking.

"So—I'm to understand. Your offering these magic cards for—"

"My Mom's stuff. Yeah."

As they were talking, the crowd was already getting antsy, which Shopkeeper-san must have felt, since she started shuffling away, no doubt towards her cameras. Shimmerlace raised a finger and her voice.

"Stay, Miss Shopkeeper. I wanna look at that footage with you," she said without looking up. She felt lucky no one had immediately shouted And why would she have anything of hers to return, huh, kid? "Now. Jimbo. I may be a powerful magician, but conjuring up something like that...That'd be some serious magic, right? Pretty hard. Might take a bit. But."

If it had been only the two of them, she would have put a hand on Jimbo's knee. As it was, she didn't trust her sense of local norms, so she stuck to eye contact that matched the kid's serious concern. She took the deck of cards between her thumb and fingers, took it, and stowed it in a pocket. "Aye. You have my word, sir, as a conjurer. I'll do all I can to spirit your mom's things back to her." Despite her concerns about norms, she offered her hand for Jimbo to shake. It only felt right. "What's your name, by the by?"

Jimbo, as it turned out, was actually more of a Kenji.

-

"It's... company policy ma'am."

Alas, whatever talents Miss Shopkeeper hid behind her pale face, self-confidence did not appear to be one of them. An unfortunate trait in her line of work, but a useful one for Shimmerlace.

"Miss, you know as well as I—what your distant boss cares about is problems and problems solved. Not 'policies' I bet half the people paying you have never even read."

While Shimmerlace and Kenji had been exchanging words, the crowd had thinned. Some of these poor assholes had urgent jobs to fill and trains to catch. They passed their cards or numbers onto Shopkeeper and huffed out. Clearly furious, much to the dispiritment of Miss Shopkeeper.

But they were nothing compared to the ones who had the time and fury to remain behind. They incensed. Robbed! They knew their rights, or thought they did. They thought they'd come in with full wallets and working cards, and by God, they had a right to leave with the same—and the pleasure of watching whoever had inconvenienced them thus bend her head for the guillotine. If Miss Shopkeeper couldn't make it happen, they'd find someone competent who would.

It had not been difficult to persuade this crew that they deserved a look at the footage.

"More eyes means more chances to catch important details. Besides, eh. Not to say I don't trust ya ma'am, but...how could we know you're really looking? Or that you're telling the truth about what you saw?"

"It's a privacy... I mean a—"

"Privacy!" The short, thick man coughed the word like it was bad tobacco. "For their public shopping? I don't care two bits for anyone's privacy, I just want my wallet!"

Maybe, maybe Miss shopkeeper would have had the fortitude to stave off Shimmerlace alone, but once the crowd decided what it wanted, the battle was over.

So they crowded together the shop's back room, Shimmerlace's mind already spinning about the next pivot with the flood.

Had Angelina wiped the cameras? If not, she needed to intervene, quick, to make sure they say Angelina's crimes before they saw hers.

But sure enough, the Marauder had not made life quite so easy. Shimmerlace could see it plain as day as soon as Miss Protocol over there started messing with the keyboard. Something wasn't right with their system (wonder why).

Which meant no threat to Shimmerlace from that front.

But it also meant no weapon against Angelina either.

Fuck.

"What do you mean there's no data? You said they were recording!"

Shimmerlace backed away from the crowd until her shoulderblades pressed against the plaster walls at two points. She lifted one foot against the wall. She bit her lip, and she mused over the scene.

It was a sad little room,just white walls and fluorescent light. Bad fluorescents, old fluorescents — the type that buzzzzzzz and flicker almost imperceptibly. The trash next to the computer was stuffed with crap from someone's lunch, including a Cheetohs bag with bright orange kana across its front. The whole place felt more like a rec room than a security hub.

Even the safe was open. Fuckin' shit but that was lazy. A ripple of irritation passed under Shimmerlace's skin. Fuckin' fuuuuck. How the flying fiznit had she come so close to getting caught in shop this sad?

But the more Shimmerlace stared at that tall metal safe, with its bronzed, speckled exterior and thick metal walls, the more it ate at her. Angelina had been in here—the furor around an increasingly panicked Shopkeeper was stark testament.

So she'd emptied the safe. What of it?

Maybe she'd made a mistake and left evidence behind.

Wishful fuckin' thinking. It's Angelina, cunt, get it through your skull.

But with no other leads to follow and time ticking down before someone would think to check everyone's pockets, Shimmerlace squatted down beside Kenji. Mom had wheeled him into the room but now was preoccupied with "helping" Miss Shopkeeper learn to operate her computer.

The Feychild held out a bright red marble to the boy, then flicked her hand. It became a lollipop, which he took. It didn't seem to cheer him much.

"Thanks..." He was staring at the gaggle to which his mother had made herself party. One of them now was shouting that the computer didn't even have a repository to save data in, let alone footage. He wanted to know what idiot ran this joint. Kenji winced when the man's voice cracked on the word idiot.

"'Course kiddo. Sorry if you don't like cherry. And sorry for all the eh...commotion. Adults, you know?"

"Cherry's good." As if to prove it, he popped the candy in his mouth. "When're you gonna find my mom's stuff?"

Shimmerlace sighed, bit her lip, then pointed across the room at the safe.

"See that box?"

"Yeah?"

"I gotta feeling our next clue might be inside there. You can get out of the stroller, right? Yeah? Aight. Well...Wanna go tug on the door for me?"

Turned out, there was a lot more than a clue in the safe. Fuck, there were at least a dozen billfolds in there. No one had seemed to notice or care about Kenji waddling across the room, yet as soon as he pulled the door open—it was like sharks scenting blood. Everyone saw the wallets spill onto the floor.

Shimmerlace darted to the pile before anyone could steal the moment. "Now you hold on, hold on just a fuckin' minute..."

She checked each wallet, one right after the other. Empty, of course, but that wasn't the point. After the fourth rapid-fire wallet, she made a quick exchange as she turned back to the pile. Was it pushing it, a sleight of hand while under the whole room's scrutiny? Probably—but no more than doing the same on a stage. And it brought her heart a similar tingle.

Her eyes widened. A grin crooked at the corner of her mouth. She turned to Kenji's mother.

"Miss Kaneguchi! I believe this is yours, is it not?"

Indeed it was—tada. By then, half the people remaining had fallen in next to Shimmerlace, digging through the pile of billfolds.

"Wellllll fancy that. Miss, if I might lodge a wee inquiry. Who are all the people with access to this room?"

"Wh...what?"

If it had taken Miss Shopkeeper a long time to process the concept of thieving, this line of questioning seemed to be one to which she was utterly impervious...Though Shimmerlace suspected it didn't help that the full room of angry customers were bearing down on her now, their six or seven versions of the same question overlapping and colliding in a fuckin' beautiful train wreck. They had seen a locked door, and they saw the Shopkeeper unlock it.

And there went the flood, away from the proud magician. Maybe it would have gone better for the Shopkeeper if the wallets had not been emptied of their yen. As it stood, Shimmerlace was unsure. Would they eat her alive?

She would not be there to see it, if so. She left her number with Miss Kaneguchi, in case her wallet turned up, and her magic deck of cards with her son. Well-earned, she told him, for his superlative detective work.

And with that, she slipped out of the room.

—

Shimmerlace whistled.

"'Reckon we could buy our clothes of choice three times over and have enough left over for dinner..."

Who knew pickpocketing could be so lucrative?

She and Angelina were seated in a relatively private table outside a coffee shop not far from the clothier. A perfect spot to count loot and shift costumes around.

"You got a damn light touch, you know—I mean. Well, literally with the finger work. But that personal touch with the targets, the way you could just...steer them. That's the kinda shit that's hard to teach. You learn all this yourself? There's no Shylock showing you the ropes once upon a time?"

[Monsy]

"All in a day’s work." Angelina put down an armload of her chosen pieces.

She positioned herself in the chair facing sideways with her legs piled over each other. An arm went around the backrest to hang off the side. A slouch towards the table, arm down and back into her original punk clothing. Though for a good chunk of time in their exit and checkout, she was daydreaming about the catmaid and working for an exclusive high end cafe with one particular regular.

BUT-, she did snap out of it by the time they sat down. Twas the time of celebration for the ship's boarding party.

Though she so imagined herself halfway into tossing Serona off Tokyo Bay by now. Here she sat just waiting for Shimbo to draw like some cool western. But that wasn't happening yet, clearly, the coward idiot goof-buster pink labubu. AND NOW, she supposed this pile of linen wasn't going to wear itself, so started combing through to look for the evening's tempo.

She shrugged at the question. "Nevah gave it much thought. I'm just here." Then pulled a hard drive from her maid's pouch, then tossed it to the table. "I have no history of anything cool to tell or remembah since forevah. Just makin' it up as I go and hope for the best." Then she stopped to swirl her finger at Shimmer. "And now that you're proddin' into me, do I get an apology for that headbutt? I reeeeally think you'd be a hypocrite not to tell me why the precious C word gets me smacked up miss Shimchard Burbage."

[Malkavia]

Long as you've got my rabbit, I could split your skull at the seams and it wouldn't warrant an apology. Such was perhaps the honest response, but it seemed...unconducive to present goals. So instead Shimmerlace smiled—a thin, sly smile with a slight wiggle of her eyebrows, all hinting and winking. Nudge nudge and all that, but nothing more.

"Wellll. When you're barin' your soul with making it up as you go. I mean...Pffft. She made a gesture with both hands from her forehead. Mind blown! "How could a girl do anything but disclose her deepest secrets, ey?"

And there was more sass than that she could justly have heaped on. Mountains of well-earned shit. Thing was, though, none of it was going to make Angelina forget the name, now, was it? If anything, pissing her off might just make her double down on it. Then she'd be Char Char Binks McCharlotta, chomping at Angelina's heels for God knows how long.

"But sure, we can talk about Charlotte. Charlotte..."

Gods below. How did she explain Charlotte to the Marauder? While she turned the name over in her head, she pulled a makeup kit from her purse and snapped open the mirror. After all those fuckfaces saw her near a major pickpocketing incident, least she could do is reshape her face a bit. She began cleaning off the old foundation one dab at a time with a cotton swab touched with isopropyl alcohol.

"Charlotte's everything I don't want to be. She's the quiet, tight-lipped little mouse, shivering scared of her own shadow, yes ma'am, right away ma'am little kiss-ass with no spine and fewer skills. Used, abused, discarded—and deservedly fuckin' so."

The mask came off quick, melting away into a black smudge on the cottonball. Like a hydrogenated witch. But it went back on just as quick. A slight alteration of her complexion, a deeper red on the lips, thicker eyeliner, and behold. She'd put on seven years. Tying up her hair made it ten.

"And THAT—" said Shimmerlace as she snapped the case shut. "That isn't me. I have emerged from that chrysalis, thank you very much. And when Madeleine calls me that, again and again no matter what I tell her, all she's doing is disrespecting me the deepest way she knows how. She's denying who I am—what I've made myself. Shimmerlace."

"So." Huge, round sunglasses from the purse added the final touch to the new look. Shimmerlace sighed, stowed the makeup kit, and leaned back in her chair. "Use that name. Get popped. Simple as."

[Monsy]

Duh—Thought Angelina on that first question, unflinching to that dose of sarcasm. The whole deepest secret thing didn’t ring as anything odd or unusual—but like a crab claw in sand that nipped the ankle on your way in or out from the waters. She listened with a quiet and plain look at Shimmer as she went over Charlotte. The person, so she described, was a wooden shell, unpainted and medium-detail. Someone—if an item—would be sitting in a souvenir among the mass produced than an antique store. She took that image, compared it to now, then wondered about something specific that didn’t make the full timeline fit.

Get popped. Simple as.

Angelina snorted. “Unless it’s her.” Speaking of the Blonde one, of course. The question would’ve nibbled on her cranium till a hole bored through. She adjusted in her chair to lean and prop up elbows to the table, hard drive in between and chin upon a palm. “Here’s what I don’t get. This…” She gestured to Shimmer’s entirety, “Ya got magic, props and tricks. You get on stage, yap, do all kinds of cartoony tea-time stuff. AND enough psychopathy to swindle a kid to his face. How does someone with all that push for new eras write off livin’ with their high school bully? Not to mention…”

She scratched her chin, looking to the side as if attempting to search for an answer. Of course she ‘found’ none. Just a nice patch of stone. Now b to Shim.

“You wanted her to intervene for the cottontail.”

[Malkavia]

Every God damn thing Angelina said made Shimmerlace scowl or sputter or clench her hand. Her? She spent a solid two seconds wondering who the fuck HER was meant to be, until the obvious smacked her in across the jaw and her face went all prickly-spickly with a tomato-red blush.

Cartoony, psychopathy, high school bully. Here's a gut-punch, then titty-twister, and it all came from different directions, and Shimmerlace—

...is gonna make a fool of herself here if she's not careful.

She breathed, clenched and unclenched her hands, then started cracking her knuckles, one at a time. She did it forward, then backwards for each digit and thumb. She listened and did not go for the taser, though her face remained stiff and hot and more than pink.

"I..." she began. She curled her lips, glared at her hand. Wrong start. "I mean. She..." Fuck sake, Shimmerlace, think through what you're gonna say! But every second passing by made her look more and more like a lobotomite. "She's not my fuckin' high school bully."

So what is she, then? would wonder Angelina, which was balls because that's exactly the question Shimmerlace felt least able or inclined to answer. She pivoted to the other bit of sand tearing up her eye.

"And you and I both know there's no way in Hell she was gonna get Thistlebro. Did I want her...you know, making life complicated for ya? Uh, yeah, duh. And no I'm not to apologize for throwing the punches I had. But her...getting Thistle? Nah. Never part of the plan."

[Monsy]

Ahhh. A NERVE! Clear as fuckin’ day.

Oh the drunken memories of some things.
Like a soaked photo album where images had no captions, then images with captions, then feelings, but no anything. Ooh, but now, she had this fine blush to take home like a silver nugget. This was a FINE treasure chest she was opening.

So pink. What do you say for yourself?

And on another note, she foresaw at least three ways this becomes a taser-infested fiasco. If they can fight in a store, on the street, then why not here? Basically on the street. And did she want another zap? NOPE! Hell, she didn’t even want the scrapes, bumps or bruises of the struggle. So naturally that made rotating in her seat smarter, to face Shimmer with her torso, head and watch how she tripped over her own ankles.

Her back welcomed it. A leg bounced in slow tempo. Her arms flopped into her lap, idly tapping, scratching and feeling what she wore in the same position she left.

“Give me a break.” Angelina slapped her thigh, leaned towards the table and burst in a short laugh before biting her teeth. “Ya knew what ya wanted out of that 'complicated'. You crossed ya fingahs goin' to bed.” And to be honest, a part of her felt a scorch inside her chest pondering it. Madeleine weaponized her and made her gut swim in nothing pleasant. She knew it at the time, but hearing it back was making the corner of her eye twitch. “And nothin!...” Her fist slammed on the table. “...was complicated about it.” She leaned back into the chair again, hand on her puffed out chest that spoke proudly. “She said I was clearly the bettah ownah of Cottontail and we even made a new collah for him ovah our weekend.”

Albeit the ring question might’ve escaped it from being the best day of her life.
It’ll have to settle for two and three.

“Now what I wanna know. If the magic is paid by her, the tricks outsourced to her, was the train ticket here also paid by her? That tasah.” She gestured across the table, tilting her head towards her left where she predicted the taser to be. “That from ya ex's stash too?”

[Malkavia]

"The fuck does it matter, shitface?" Her face was burning. Not just hot. Prickling with pain. "If I stomp your ass bloody into the god damn pavement, the fuck does it matter where..."

She stopped. Squinted. She could hear her pulse go whump in her ears.

Whump. Whump.

"My...ex's stash, was it now?" Her voice was quiet and felt sharp in her throat. Her eyes rose from the table to the simpering, smug Marauder's eyes. Snake eyes. Snake eyes flashing black, predatory magic.

Shimmerlace's throat felt dangerously tight. Talk and it might squeak tight. She huffed and looked away.

She always thought—Mads is done. The worst knife she could possibly own has already been buried, twisted, and spat on. Then...

Well, just then, Madeleine could have careened around the street and collapsed clutching her chest, screaming about a heart attack, and Shimmerlace's only reaction would have been to strap her yapper closed with tape.

Finally, her thoughts began to coalesce from the twelve different colors they'd been scattered into. She coughed and turned her eyes back to Angelina. She made sure her eyes stayed locked on.

"...I don't believe for a God damned second Madeleine said shit about Thistledown. You fuckin' miserable liar." She breathed deep. Stretched her back. Crossed her legs. "But you know what? I don't care if she did. Fuck her. Fuck her opinion. And fuck her money. You're right. You're absolutely fuckin' right. I don't need or want shit from her ever again. I'd sooner eat shit than take bus change from that two-faced, self-absorbed cow."

[Monsy]

Watching this slowly develop was like seeing a stick of dynamite. Its fuse gradually smothered in smoulder till it slowly made its way into the charge. Her eyes lit up bigger. A threat? So violent! She almost sneered at where that was heading. And then the fuse burnt out.

She raised a brow. Honestly, just where the fuck was the last bit of that sentence? Her payoff! Oh, bring it Shimmer, she thought. Spare her the patience and do it, then she can bite a piece of that nose off.

… Which, wait, no—bite someone and then her mouth becomes a three-way later. If any signature persisted then she’d look SO amateur hour. No peppermint. No hygiene. RAT!

So yes, she didn’t mind this pause so much. She relaxed into her natural expression of mildly pleased with herself and enjoying her existence. Shimmerlace had the floor obviously. There wasn’t so much as a flinch once she got over her silly little idea. And what she heard honestly made her cackle. “Now that’s GOLD!” After giving her nose a quick pinch, her hands clapped together.

“SO! How ya feel sayin’ all that heresy?”