Chapter 306: The Thieves Had Brought Their Own Thieves

The collection boss looked offended to find somebody else stealing during his scheduled theft, which gave the situation an unexpected professional warmth.

He pointed at the frame, pointed at me and told the warehouse supervisor that the family had already paid for the equipment. The supervisor replied that the charity only had a temporary loan, and both men seemed surprised that lying to different customers created paperwork they couldn’t agree on.

I used their argument to move between the guards and the loading doorway. Bridget shifted the frame into the clear space beside the cart, keeping it grounded while Lukas lowered the ramp through its powered control.

[System: Look at that, mate. Two separate groups of thieves, and neither brought enough common sense to check whether the other lot had stolen the same fucking thing.]

I thought cooperation was important, but I’d rather they developed it after we left.

The collection boss recognized Bridget. He made a nasty remark about her keeping company with me, and the small change in her expression immediately moved him farther up my list of people who deserved a difficult future.

She didn’t wait for me to answer for her. She told him the last employee he had sent to our club was still sealed in a bucket, then calmly checked the cart ramp while he decided how seriously to take that information.

Lyra reached the side of the frame and engaged its brake. Cherry used a smoke tendril to unclip the tracking unit from the visible mounting beneath it, holding the device away from the equipment while its light blinked.

Breaking the tracker required no dramatic new power. She put it on the ground, brought the heavy wheel chock down on it and checked that the housing, battery connection and indicator were actually destroyed.

I appreciated competence in a woman. I also appreciated the expression on the collection boss when he realized nobody in my little group intended to stand quietly while he performed authority at us.

One guard raised a launcher. Bridget used Red Light when its projectile entered the six-meter area, buying two seconds while the rest of us moved clear of its path.

The bolt continued afterward and buried itself in an empty packing stack. It didn’t vanish, lose all danger or become a friendly decoration simply because she had interrupted its afternoon.

I caught the guard’s exposed weapon with Mine Now once I reached three meters. It landed against my coils at full weight, so I let it drop flat and slid clear rather than repeating the tail-crushing lesson from my first purchase.

The guard lunged for it. Lyra pulled a loose packing sheet across his path with a tendril, sending him into an awkward collision with the supervisor, who hadn’t signed up to become the soft part of a security system.

Cherry’s theft cooled while the argument and attack consumed time. She used it to move the frame from the cart’s approach onto the lowered ramp, where Lukas’s winch could pull it the rest of the way without anyone pretending muscles ignored mass.

The collection boss tried reaching Bridget around the doorway. I put myself between them and showed him exactly how much of my smile consisted of teeth.

"You could chase the equipment, mate, or you could keep talking about her. I wanted you to understand those options produced very different versions of me."

He chose to shout for his guards instead. That wasn’t an apology, and I didn’t mistake it for one, but it let Bridget step into the cart while I backed toward the ramp.

Lyra closed the loading door with its own control. We ducked beneath it before it came down, leaving the warehouse supervisor and collection crew arguing on the wrong side of their equipment.

Lukas drove when the frame restraints locked. Nobody swung from a roof, nobody carried more than their body could handle and his ribs remained sore rather than magically renewed by excitement.

We took the busy public freight route back to the guarded visitor lift. The collection crew couldn’t follow quietly through the checkpoint with weapons out, and their shouted claim of ownership failed when the mermaid’s original serial record appeared on Lyra’s phone.

At the club, the actual owner inspected the frame and its pearl supports before signing that it had returned intact. The tracker was destroyed, the equipment was back and Old Mate finally released the mission payment.

Five thousand EXP took me to fifty-two thousand five hundred toward the evolution target. Twenty-five IP raised the balance to two hundred and sixty, while the women received usable powers rather than duplicate deposits into accounts that didn’t exist.

[System: One successful family outing, champ. Nobody lost a limb, the expensive pole came home and you’ve only made the same arsehole hate you more, which saves time introducing a new one.]

I felt that last part represented excellent efficiency and should probably earn a small bonus.

Bridget rubbed the hand she had scraped against the crate, reminding me that shared abilities had not made any of us immune to ordinary bad landings.

It didn’t. The mermaid thanked the girls, checked the frame again and informed me that if I wanted to flirt during her next performance, I could start by arriving without a collection truck behind me.

Bridget laughed, Lyra called that a reasonable standard and Cherry asked whether the fundraiser had realized its advertised guest had stolen back the stage equipment.

The answer arrived through the public event feed. Hansen appeared on a polished display, talking about community support while a large imitation snake mascot stood beside him under the charity banner.

He announced that the evening’s donations would help repair damage caused by reckless vigilantes, then offered the crowd a chance to bid on recovered assets linked to Cobra’s Casino.

I stared at my uncle’s smiling face beside the mascot and decided that if he wanted to raise money using my reputation, I deserved the pleasure of personally collecting it.