Chapter 305: Four Idiots, One Very Expensive Mistake

Lyra and Cherry reached Ami by the ordinary visitor route, then immediately asked why we had spent so much money on lifts when they could now breathe underwater.

I told them new abilities deserved practice before replacing sensible transport. Bridget looked at me with the quiet delight of someone hearing a criminal warn other people about bad decisions.

The casino locksmith had completed the cylinder change before they left. Lyra kept the new access list on her own phone, and the old keys stayed useless rather than becoming a magical route back into the building whenever the plot wanted trouble.

We ate first, checked everyone’s basic skill controls and traveled together to the surface warehouse through the dry freight passage. Lukas stayed with the hired cargo cart, where his job involved driving and watching the loading door rather than pretending his ribs had become decorative.

The mermaid’s frame appeared through the warehouse’s open side bay, resting on a low rolling cradle. Its pearl-patterned support matched the photograph, and a small tracking unit had been fastened beneath it during collection.

Old Mate offered the objective while we watched from behind a parked delivery van. Recover the marked frame and disable its tracker, five thousand EXP and twenty-five IP, with no extra prize for getting distracted by the snack machine beside the entrance.

I disliked that he’d mentioned the machine before I had even decided whether it looked worth robbing.

[System: Mate, your eyes went to the crisps before the armed bloke. I’ve seen dogs respect for a fucking mission briefing.]

The plan used the frame’s actual size. It could fit through the loading lane, but not through the narrow pedestrian gate, and each theft needed its center within three meters of the person using the skill.

We couldn’t pass it across the warehouse like an invisible delivery network. We needed bodies in the correct places and empty ground where several hundred pounds of equipment could arrive without removing someone’s legs.

Lyra took the inside position after slipping through the side bay as smoke, keeping her own shape when she became solid behind a stack of packing sheets. Cherry moved to the clear space beyond the loading doorway, while Bridget waited beside the cart and I created a distraction at the front.

My distraction began as a complaint about the fundraiser poster. It became significantly more convincing when the receptionist recognized my face and called the supervisor instead of asking whether snakes usually booked appointments.

"I’d come about my appearance fee, mate. Apparently I was attending your charity event, and nobody had mentioned whether I got paid before or after the inevitable lawsuit."

He assured me everything had been arranged through the family. I asked which family, because I had recently adopted something with eighty teeth and it might have developed a surprisingly professional email style.

The supervisor arrived carrying the same charity release sheets the mermaid had shown us. He described the frame as a voluntary loan and my face as approved promotional material, then grew less comfortable when I asked to see the actual approval.

Behind him, Lyra reached the marked position and signaled through the shared phone call. She moved the frame into the empty space touching her hand, with the rolling cradle included as one secured transport assembly.

The load arrived correctly. Unfortunately, the cradle’s brake had been released, and the slight slope of the warehouse floor became interested in helping.

Cherry caught the frame at her position using her own theft activation. It arrived on the same wheels with the same tendency to move, nudging her backward until she let it roll instead of trying to prove her ankles were stronger than industrial equipment.

I heard the scrape through the call and briefly considered whether I had invented a family sport nobody should insure.

[System: Going well, champ. You’ve got three clever women and somehow the smartest person in the operation is still the fucking handbrake.]

The handbrake hadn’t volunteered a plan, so I didn’t think it deserved management credit yet.

The receptionist looked toward the noise. I moved closer to the counter and asked whether the fundraiser accepted donations in the form of outstanding complaints, which bought exactly the amount of attention the joke deserved.

Not much, as it turned out. The supervisor saw the empty place where the frame had stood and shouted for the loading door to close.

Bridget was still more than three meters from the frame’s center. She didn’t pretend wishing made the distance smaller; she moved quickly toward it while Cherry guided the cradle away from her feet.

The powered door began descending between them. Lyra’s theft remained on cooldown, Cherry’s had just started, and the frame’s upper support was heading toward a gap that would become much too small in another second.

I left the counter, slid beneath the supervisor’s reaching arm and raced for the side bay. My own skill was ready, but I couldn’t reach the correct range before the door hit the frame.

Bridget did. She pulled the emergency stop on the wall instead of trying to solve a mechanical problem with a power that wasn’t positioned to work.

The door halted inches above the pearl support. Cherry swore through the call, Lyra laughed once with pure relief and Lukas asked whether the retrieval always included this much enthusiastic furniture noise.

The supervisor reached the loading lane with two guards behind him. I moved into his path while Bridget reached the frame’s center line and prepared to shift it beside the waiting cart.

Then a second crew opened the warehouse’s rear door, wearing the collection company’s badges and pointing directly at the same frame we were stealing back.

Bridget stayed beside the loaded side of the cart, while Cherry and Lyra remained between the frame and the doorway, leaving all four of us visible.

Their leader announced that nobody was leaving with his boss’s property, and I recognized the eel-shaped bastard who had first tried to repossess our stage.