Fluff 3 E-Book

RavensDagger

• Herausgeber: Podium Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Serie: Fluff
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 547

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2026

Beschreibung

A supervillain plans to dethrone the local criminals and become the new kingpin of an otherwise peaceful city in this fantasy superhero series.   A kinetic manipulator who can turn vibrations into devastating shockwaves, Rattles has already torn through Eauclaire's defenses. Buildings are in ruins, heroes are falling, and now he's coming for the city's criminal mastermind herself. But a certain gang of teenage girls—who wield powers drawn from the animal kingdom—stands in his way . . .   Loyal and cunning, they wreak havoc in the name of their leader, known as the Boss. And thanks to their fight to tip the scales in the war between good and evil, evil always comes out ahead. But the Boss is no hardened villain. She's just Emily Wright, a college student with anxiety, self-doubt, and no real desire for world domination. Having accidentally summoned her devious sisters, all she wants is to keep them safe, even if it means breaking a few laws along the way.   All the while, attacks on the city persist, and Emily's fragile empire begins to crumble. To protect her sisters and her secret identity, she must form an uneasy alliance with Glamazon and the Heroic Response Force to take out this destructive new enemy.   And despite the overwhelming chaos, Emily still hopes doing good deeds might balance her moral scales—or at least keep her off the city's Most Wanted list. But Rattles has no intention of stepping down. The battle for Eauclaire will force Emily to decide whether she's a hero, a villain, or something far more dangerous.   The third volume of the hit LitRPG fantasy series—with almost two million views on Royal Road—is now available in paperback, ebook, and audiobook!

Leseprobe

Fluff 3

RavensDagger

To warm blankets, fresh socks, scalding showers, snappy winter air, and friendly hugs—as well as all the other things that make life worth living

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior written permission from Podium Publishing.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2026 by Edgar Malboeuf

Cover design by Nana Qi

ISBN: 978-1-0394-8623-2

Published in 2026 by Podium Publishing

www.podiumentertainment.com

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE Smoggy

CHAPTER TWO Kevin

CHAPTER THREE Gossip

CHAPTER FOUR Hospital Visit

CHAPTER FIVE Predictable

CHAPTER SIX Banking, the Villain Way

CHAPTER SEVEN Minion Hunting

CHAPTER EIGHT Recruitment Drive-By

CHAPTER NINE Train Station

CHAPTER TEN Minion Meeting

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Pizza Place

CHAPTER TWELVE Head Minion

CHAPTER THIRTEEN Run-In with Rattles

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Mapley Mood

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Rapscallion

CHAPTER SIXTEEN Debrief

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Pulling the Funds out of Fundraisers

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Beaver Shopping

CHAPTER NINETEEN Charity Case

CHAPTER TWENTY Gift Giving

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE Chi-cane-ry

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO Three Jobs

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Concern

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR Skill Check

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE Masks Off

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX The Report

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Betrayal

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Guilt

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE Steffie’s Mom

CHAPTER THIRTY Bundle of Worry

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE Bears Just Wanna Bear

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Expendable in School

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE School Smarts

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR Dreaming Big

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE Landfill/Paradise

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX Athena’s Trashy Morning

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN Big Sister Still Loves You

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT No Worries

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE Doing This

CHAPTER FORTY The Angry Rattler

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE Not One Bit

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO Bad Vibes

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE Bar Hopping

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR Powers

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE Toy Soldiers

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX Rolling

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN Gyms and Abstracts

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT Cheater?

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE Wanna Go

CHAPTER FIFTY Sickly Sorts

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE Up to Something

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO Coiffed?

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE Unhurt

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR PR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE In Want of a Plan

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX The Sleepy

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN Jezebelle the Brave

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT Don’t Wanna Do It

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE Booger Brain

CHAPTER SIXTY Easy Peasy

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE Properly Shook

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO Hollow

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE Moosin’ Around

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR Borealis

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE Hover Mode

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX The Grand Bosses

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN The New Girl

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT Commiserate

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE Glowing Betrayal

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Prologue

Emily genuinely disliked moving.

Not that she’d moved much. Once, when she was too young for the memories to be entirely clear, her family had moved to a nearby town. Her dad had gotten a new job away from Eauclaire and the commute would be better. She didn’t really recall living there, though her mom had once pointed out the house when they were driving through that little town, and she had seen pictures here and there of a baby Emily in an unfamiliar home.

No, the home she grew up in was the only home she’d known her entire thinking life. It was … home.

So really, her dislike of moving was more recent.

First, moving from home to the dorm a little over a month ago. That had been kind of awful. It meant a hard disconnect from her life at home, a loss of her comfortable bedroom and her own private little space.

And then there was moving now.

“Teddy, no,” Emily said without looking up from the box she was repacking. She didn’t have much, and yet it felt like a lot when she had to fit it all into a few boxes to be carried across the city.

“What? C’mon, Boss, you didn’t even look up!” Teddy complained.

Emily did look up this time and turned to find Teddy standing, her eyes distinctly not meeting Emily’s gaze and her hands tucked at the small of her back. Two of Trinity’s three bodies were on the floor, as if they’d recently been shoved, and the third was clinging on to Teddy’s back while trying to look innocent.

“What were you doing, then?” Emily asked.

“Nothin’,” Teddy said.

“Mm-hmm,” Emily replied, extending a hand toward Teddy. “Sure. Give me that.”

“Don’t got anything to give, Boss,” Teddy said.

“Teddy,” Emily warned.

Teddy’s cheeks puffed out, and she finally deigned to surrender … what looked very much like half of a slice of pizza, covered in a fine dusting of hair and mold.

Emily flinched, and the pizza splattered onto the carpeted floor.

“Mine!” Trinity said as she leapt down to grab it.

“No,” Emily said as she caught the nearest Trinity by the scruff of her shirt. “No, absolutely not. Where did you even find that?” she asked.

“It was under the bed!” Trinity said. “Everyone knows the five-second rule!”

“Five seconds? This looks like it’s been there for weeks!” Emily said. “Was that what was causing that smell?”

“I thought it was Teddy’s socks,” Athena said from where she sat nearby. Athena and Maple, at least, had been helping. The two of them were taping the boxes Emily packed with great enthusiasm and not-so-great skill.

“If you want to smell my socks so bad, I can stuff them into your nose,” Teddy shot back.

Emily clapped her hands twice, catching everyone’s attention. It was a trick she’d picked up from Mrs. Headerson, the kindly woman who taught her sisters and somehow managed to corral them into something approaching orderliness. “Let’s not turn this into a fight,” she said. “Teddy, Trinity, you can’t have the, uh …”

“Floor pizza?” Trinity asked. “But the five-second rule!”

“I don’t see how that rule applies here,” Emily said.

“It’s been more than five seconds, so it’s mine,” Trinity said.

Emily considered that, then dismissed it. “No. No, absolutely not. Athena, put the floor pizza in the No-Trinity-Trash-Can.”

Athena made a face, but she ripped her arm away from a big bundle of tape, then tugged another piece from around her leg and made her way across the room to pick up the pizza slice. She held it out at arm’s length and then tossed it into the No-Trinity-Trash-Can, which was just a normal trash bin with a sticky note on the side that had an X over a cartoony doodle of a raccoon.

Trinity pouted, and Teddy grumbled, so Emily decided to distract them.

Her dorm room was nearly empty already. Her books were in one box, her other belongings in a few others. Fortunately, a number of things from home had never been unpacked to begin with, so she didn’t need to worry too much.

The rest was all stuff she’d accumulated in the month since her semester had started. Mostly there were a few toys, lots of small Maple inventions that did all sorts of things, and a number of necessities for her sisters.

There were a lot of blankets and clothes still left to pack away, but it was coming along. Enough so that Emily did a count of the boxes that were … mostly taped shut thanks to Athena and Maple’s efforts.

“All right,” Emily said. “Trinity, you have the most hands, so you can grab three times as many boxes as anyone else. Take those there, there, there, and there. Teddy, you take that one there, the heavy-looking one, since you’re so strong.”

“You hear that?” Teddy asked Trinity. “I’m strong.”

Trinity rolled her eyes, all six of them, which was a rather impressive amount of eye-rolling from a single girl. “Yeah, but there’s more of me, so blergh!” She stuck her tongues out at Teddy, and Emily worried that it might all turn into a scuffle.

Her sisters were rather excited about the move. As far as they were concerned, it was all fun and games, but then again, they didn’t have to worry about the logistics of it all.

“What do you want me and Maple to grab?” Athena asked, her voice raised just loud enough to cut off Teddy’s rebuttal.

Emily knew that she shouldn’t play favorites with her sisters, but sometimes …

“Just grab that one there,” Emily said. “I’ll take my school bag, and this, and … Maple, do you think you can handle that box there? It’s all of your gizmos.”

“Okay!” Maple piped up. She looked up at Emily and smiled. Then she winced as she tugged a strip of tape away from her hair.

Emily grabbed a box of her own, then looked around the room. It was almost entirely empty except for her chair and a few bits of furniture that were too big to move easily. She’d need to grab those with her dad’s help, but he didn’t have time off for another day or two.

In any case, the room was essentially empty now.

It felt a little strange but not that bad. This room had only been her home for a month and a little bit, but … a lot had happened here. It was where she met her sisters, where she gained her powers.

But now it was too small. She had four sisters and, including herself, that made seven bodies squeezed into a room meant for one college student to sleep in. The rooms here weren’t even supposed to be living spaces. There was a shared living area on each floor and a kitchen on the ground level for that kind of thing, apparently so that more rooms could be crammed into the building and so that people would have to socialize to get things done. Emily had avoided socializing at all costs, though, and had done a pretty good job of not even learning the names of the people who lived right next to her, with one exception.

Emily filed into the elevator with her gaggle of sisters, then trooped back out once they were on the ground floor. She had to pause to help one of Trinity pick up a smaller box that had fallen, then it was out the front of the dorm.

Sam was waiting for her there, eyes on her phone and back leaning against her brand-new car.

After their last big … adventure, Sam’s car had been totaled and the insurance company had written it off as a loss. But Sam, being clever and prone to fraud, had gotten the best insurance she could afford a few weeks prior, including a hefty insurance payout that only kicked in if the car was damaged by Heroic or Villainous actions.

Which was exactly what had happened. Never mind that Sam had used her car to stop some bad guys from getting away on purpose.

Now Sam was the owner of a seven-year-old mint-green minivan.

It had seating for eight, more if the passengers were small and prone to ignoring the law, and plenty of room for all of Emily’s boxes.

“Heya, Boss,” Sam said as she lowered her phone. “Got all your stuff?”

“Yeah,” Emily said. “Think it’ll fit in the trunk?”

“Can I fit in the trunk?” Trinity asked.

“Oh, um … can I be in the trunk too?” Maple asked.

“No one’s going in the trunk,” Emily said. “The only thing going in the trunk is our stuff. Now come on, let’s sort this all out. We might have to keep a few boxes closer to the front.”

She was always a little worried that they didn’t have car seats or whatever, but then her sisters would probably rather die than have to use a booster seat.

Emily shook her head as she closed the trunk, the last box packed away and her sisters fighting for the best seats. She looked up at the Quantum Mothman House, then smiled to herself. It was time for a new—hopefully calmer—chapter in her life.

One that was, unfortunately, going to start in an underpass.

Chapter One

Smoggy

The worst part of living under an underpass—other than the constant rumble above and that persistent smell of exhaust fumes from all the cars—was that Emily always felt terribly self-conscious when they arrived at the entrance of their base.

Sure, this one underpass wasn’t in the trendiest part of Eauclaire. But it wasn’t like anyone was around to notice. Any traffic would be on the underpass, not beneath it. The road it was on curved out a bit, so it wasn’t even like people in the nearby apartment buildings could see that their van had stopped in the maintenance lane on the side, and this particular part of town was relatively quiet.

It was close to the college, but not so close that it was surrounded by dormitories. It was situated in just about the weirdest little nook, and that was probably what was best about it. No one would go looking for them here, or so she hoped.

Emily opened the side door of the van and jumped aside as two Trinitys spilled out. “Were you wearing your seatbelt?” she asked.

“I was wearing one of them,” Trinity said as she jumped to her feet.

Emily decided not to pursue that line of inquiry. “All right. Girls, help me with the boxes?”

Soon they had the van’s trunk open and Emily was handing out boxes to her sisters. She took a few of the heavier ones for herself, then made sure she could juggle them one-handed for a moment.

“I’ll go park while you take all of that down,” Sam said from within the van.

“That sounds fair,” Emily said. “Will you come down after?”

“Yeah, sure, I can spare a few minutes. Besides, I’ve got your cash.”

Emily nodded, then closed the trunk of the minivan and told Maple to shut the side door. Then she guided her gaggle of sisters to the interior wall of the overpass. A splash of old graffiti—with words she’d rather her sisters not learn but feared it was too late—hid the entrance, but the door into the base was still relatively easy to open … if she had more than one free hand.

Emily popped open a little panel, pushed aside the wires within, then wiggled her key into the lock and twisted the handle.

The door, a flat panel of concrete with its edges so tight that they were almost invisible, hissed open, sliding back and away from the wall.

Her sisters, of course, had no fear of what might lurk inside and eagerly pressed into the base. The corridor beyond had been a dusty, gray passage once, but a couple of weekends spent exploring the place had improved it … somewhat.

The walls were now a lively pastel green. The paint had been on sale at the local hardware store in large enough quantities to cover everything.

Splotches and speckles dotted the floor where Emily had failed to cover it with enough newspaper, and the edging was … not fantastic. But it was better than the flat gray it had once been.

The door at the end of the corridor, which led to the main part of the base, now featured a surprisingly well-done painting. Trinity had some real talent when it came to drawing and painting, and with six arms and three heads, she was quite quick as well.

The painting featured a large bear, three raccoons, a beaver, and an owl, all smiling and all wearing domino masks. It was cute. Less cute was the large image of a blond woman in the background wearing what looked like a windswept toga with her arms spread wide. Sunrays splashed out of her and onto the backs of the animals, giving the entire background an almost … religious feel to it that always made Emily uncomfortable.

Maple got the painted door open, and soon they were in their new home.

The base’s main section featured a dormitory of sorts, with several rooms that were each just large enough to hold a bed and a small desk. Farther in was the kitchen space and a single larger room that Emily had taken as her own.

The middle of the base had several pillars rising to the ceiling, big stout ones that looked strong enough to support the world, which was comforting whenever a semitrailer rumbled past on the highway above. There was a recess in the floor with a big wraparound sofa—all made of concrete. They’d purchased a number of bright cushions, however, and the girls had added stickers to their doors, and some curtains had been placed at the entrance of the kitchen to split it off from the rest.

Her dad had donated an old TV from his workplace, which now sat on a shelf to one side. They didn’t get any signal down here, but they had a DVD player and Teddy had several nature documentaries she could put on to fill the space with a bit of ambient noise.

It wasn’t … home, not the way the dorm had been. It was still too sterile for that. But maybe it would be something like a home soon.

In any case, Emily set down her boxes with a sigh and rubbed at the small of her back. “Okay, let’s unpack everything,” she said.

As much as her sisters had hated packing, they seemed to love tearing their boxes apart. Maybe they felt like it was opening presents? Even if they’d been the ones to pack everything away just a bit ago.

Emily found herself smiling as they made a mess. She’d get them to clean up afterward, of course, but sometimes it was nice seeing all four of her sisters just having fun.

Maple met Emily’s eyes, then smiled shyly. For a moment, Emily figured that things were looking up.

Sam opened the door then and looked at the mess, one eyebrow perking up. “You know, someone’s going to have to clean that up,” she said.

“Not me!” Athena said.

The others all jumped to say the same, but then an argument broke out about who called dibs on not being the one to have to pick up, and Emily tuned it all out.

“Did you find a place to park?” she asked Sam.

Sam nodded. “Oh, yeah. There’s a corner store just around the bend near the exit ramp. It’s one of those combo gas-station ones. Terrible coffee, lots of overpriced snacks … they have these little hot dogs on this machine that rotates them that taste way better than they should.”

“I think I know the one,” Emily said.

“Yeah, anyway, I parked there. The guy manning the counter said it was fine after I buttered him up a little.”

“Buttered him up?” Emily asked.

“That’s when you put butter on someone,” Teddy said. “So they taste better, right?”

Sam laughed and rubbed the top of Teddy’s head so that her ears wiggled. “Sure, that’s one definition. Once you’re a little older and start thinking that boys look like more than just snacks, ask me again and I’ll tell you about the other.”

She was talking about flirting, Emily realized, a subject she knew less than nothing about herself. “Let’s hope that’s not for a while,” Emily said.

“Boys are disgusting,” Athena said.

“They’ve got cooties,” Trinity agreed. “I heard about them on TV.”

“What are those?” Maple asked.

“It’s a sickness they’ve got that makes them stupid and gross,” Trinity said. She stopped picking her nose to cross her arms.

Sam laughed and nodded. “That’s exactly right.”

“Maybe we can cure them?” Maple mumbled, just loud enough that Emily could hear. She had that vacant look in her eyes, like she always did before taking something apart. Emilydecided to leave her to it for now. It wasn’t like cooties were an actual thing, so she figured Maple would just spend some time building and having fun.

“Wanna talk finances?” Sam asked.

“Sure,” Emily said. “The kitchen?”

They wandered over to the kitchen, the sisters having some fun on their own, properly distracted by the TV as Teddy turned on one of her nature documentaries.

“So, we’ve got a lot to cover,” Sam said as she pulled out her phone and opened, of all things, an accounting app. “Expenses are actually pretty low, but I’m totally counting gas costs in all of this, and I set aside an amount for costuming. The girls will need new clothes, and even if the laundromat is technically paying us protection money, we still need to use their services discreetly, which costs a premium. Otherwise, though, we’re making bank.”

“Really?” Emily asked.

“Well, in a manner of speaking. A couple hundred a week? It’s enough to keep ahead of the food bills and such. Not even a fraction of what a real Villain would need to operate, I don’t think. But hey, this is Eauclaire.”

“Yeah, we don’t have real Villains here,” Emily said.

And thank goodness for that.

Chapter Two

Kevin

Kevin revved the engine on his bike, leaned forward, then zipped around the car ahead of him while it was still slowing down. The traffic on these highways was way too much for such a nowhere city like Eauclaire.

But maybe he’d have to get used to it.

As he zoomed past congested traffic, riding on the line between the bus lane and the innermost lane of traffic, Kevin got a decent view out over the city itself.

Eauclaire wasn’t all that big. Just a few bridges, a handful of distinct sections, the school, and the downtown. It was more suburb than city, really. It didn’t even have a proper crop of skyscrapers in the middle. Kind of pathetic, for a city.

Still, this place was going to be his soon enough.

He rode down an off-ramp, then navigated his way through the city, aware the entire time of the hustle and bustle around him. Despite never having been here before, with a power like his, it was easy to drive around and avoid the worst of the traffic. Hell, he could do it with his eyes closed.

Kevin wasn’t some nobody. He’d been in the business for two years now. But all that time, he’d been held back, forced into some pitiful role on the sidelines.

He kind of even understood it, now that he had a year or so under his belt.

The first gang that he joined didn’t want him on the front lines, and it had chafed. He was strong, he could prove it. Now he knew that it had been a bit of arrogance on his part. Sure, he was strong, but he hadn’t known how to use it yet.

After a while, though … No, if anything, Kevin deserved to be the head honcho, the big Villain that made all the others quake in their boots and who kept the Heroes up at night.

He’d been held back, time and again. But that was over now.

The last group of idiots he’d been part of, Skeever’s Crew, had tried to hold him back. He’d turned their base into a pile of rubble the day he left. Even beat the crap out of Skeever himself.

Kevin was done being held back.

It had hit him a few weeks ago. Power Day came, and with it a whole new crop of Heroes and Villains, all ready to play the game again. They were all so … weak. Sure, he’d been one of them, once, but now, with two years under his belt, he could snap the best of them over his knee with hardly any effort.

So then, why was he still listed as some C-tier Villain? Why was he not even the second-in-command of his own gang?

What had he been doing those last two years?

He was a little young for a midlife crisis, but then, Villains didn’t live all that long to begin with, so maybe he was overdue.

Kevin had decided to turn over a new leaf, to set out and take what he wanted. But he couldn’t do that in the city he’d been living in. That city had proper Heroes, established gangs of Villains—quiet and loud—and while Kevin was confident in himself, he had a good idea of what his limits were.

No, if he wanted to start fresh, he’d need to do it somewhere like here. A place that barely deserved the moniker of city, but which also had no competition. The Heroes were weak and fat, the sorts pushed to the edges, toward safe little havens where their weakness wouldn’t cause any issues.

The city wasn’t rich, but it wasn’t poor. Plenty of college kids, plenty of money flowing in and out. Yeah, he could work with it.

Kevin found an empty alleyway to park in and kicked the stand out of the side of his bike. Her name was Charlotte, and she was a classic Espa motorized scooter, all done up in black and chrome.

Kevin stepped off Charlotte and stretched his back out. Then he got to work, pulling Charlotte’s bench up to reveal the compartment where his costume was hidden.

He had gone through a few Villainous identities. Shaker when he was new, then for a long time he was known as Tremble.

But Shaker was a nobody who no one remembered, and Tremble was a C-lister whose Villainpedia page had little information on it. Even his pictures there were distant and blurry.

Because no one trusted him to stand in the limelight.

He shrugged on a coat. An expensive leather piece, with reinforced panels on the inside made by some gadgeteer he’d run into. It was supposed to be bulletproof to a ridiculous degree. A bit too heavy for comfort, but he didn’t mind that.

Then he put on his new mask. It was bone white, a lower jaw meant to look like it had been torn off the face of some poor skeleton. It was fixed to his head in the back, with a cushioned plate there that would be disguised by the collar of his coat.

It wouldn’t protect his upper head, but that was fine. Sometimes sacrifices had to be made in the name of looking the part.

Kevin pulled out a mirror and fixed his eye shadow, then adjusted the fit of his mask. Now he was stuck in a perpetual grin.

The last piece of his kit was an aluminum baseball bat with all of the markings shaved off. Nothing fancy, nothing complicated. He tapped the bat against his palm, feeling the vibration running through it and up into his arm. It would do.

He closed Charlotte up, tucked her keys away into an inner pocket of his coat, and set off walking with a twirl of his bat and a whistle on his lips.

He hadn’t quite decided on a new name yet, but he thought he should settle on something appropriate. Maybe Rattles? It fit his new theme.

“Rattles,” he said. “Rattles. Rattles. Yeah. I’m Rattles and I’m gonna shake yer bones … no, no, that’s … no,” he muttered, “that’s way too much.”

He noticed a few people on the sidewalk giving him looks, but no one was running away screaming yet. Back in some of the cities he’d lived in, the presence of anyone who might be a Mask would have everyone running for cover.

Eauclaire was going to be so easy to take.

He let his bat drag along the ground behind him, the end of it clanging against the sidewalk. Then it was a simple matter of picking up on that and making it more.

The noise grew and grew, and soon people were noticing that something was deeply wrong.

Windows started to vibrate in their panes in time with the rattle of his bat, and Kevin—Rattles—grinned under his mask.

Ahead of him, at the end of the street, was the Heroic Response Force headquarters for Eauclaire.

He picked his bat up, twirled it once for show, then rammed the head of it into the ground.

A wave, invisible to most, radiated out from him with a loud clang.

Windows exploded, people screamed, a car driving by turned sharply as its driver was sprayed with broken glass and it rammed into another parked car. Their alarms joined the cacophony.

Rattles continued to walk along, laughing under his breath. Yes, this was what he was capable of! This was what he could have been if he hadn’t been held back for so long!

He spun his bat around and rammed the side of it into an HRF van parked on the side of the road. The hit did little, but the vibrations running through the van grew stronger and stronger until the entire vehicle was shaking itself apart. Metal crumpled, bolts sheared themselves apart, and tanks ruptured.

He laughed harder and started to hit every car he passed, turning them into no more than scrap metal on the roadside.

The HRF headquarters was finally starting to respond, agents in armor rushing out of the front doors. Rattles laughed harder. Did they think a few nobody cops could stop him? He stomped a foot down and a wave of power traveled along the road. It was a terrible conductor for his power, the asphalt cracking and snapping, but it still reached the officers and robbed them of their footing while he ran closer.

He was going to show Eauclaire who their new boss was, and he was going to do it in as spectacular a way as possible!

The HRF was useless. Their guns vibrated apart in their hands and their armor shattered easily under the lightest of his blows. Then he turned his attention toward their headquarters. It was a big old building, all brick and mortar. Tricky, for its size, but he figured he could work with it.

Rattles ran past the fallen HRF troopers and kicked the building itself. Then it was time for him to make himself scarce. He was tough, but he didn’t want to be there when the entire building came tumbling down.

So he’d leave it there as a monument and as a warning that there was a new boss in town.

Chapter Three

Gossip

Did you hear?” Sam asked.

Emily felt a little strange here, like she didn’t yet belong, even though she was in the right age range and was a student at the college. Sam, on the other hand, looked like a veteran collegiate. She was in joggers and a loose blouse, her sports bra showing and her many colorful earrings catching the light. Basically, she exuded the kind of confidence and lack of care that Emily only wished she could show.

The two of them were meeting in one of the college cafeterias. Well, technically there was only one “college” cafeteria, right near the center of the campus, but it was widely considered a boring place to be. The food was about what one would expect from a place that accepted vouchers instead of cash, and the room hadn’t been renovated since the early nineties and it showed.

Instead, they were right on the edge of the campus, where an enterprising businessman had bulldozed a couple of lots and then built a ring of restaurants around the now open space. It was packed with tables that had umbrellas hanging above them, and the air was filled with a dangerous amount of fatty oils from the various restaurants all around the outdoor food court.

It was, in essence, the perfect place for college kids to hang out if they had a bit of money to spare, and Emily happened to be one of those at the moment.

“I don’t exactly keep an ear open for all of the local gossip,” Emily said before biting into an Ubway sandwich she’d just bought. It was too much for her to finish, but she had a lot of eager sisters who’d want her leftovers. She’d have to pocket the cookies for later.

Sam grinned as she shifted forward in her seat. “Okay, so this isn’t confirmed, but Sparkles hasn’t shown up today, and there’s a second rumor that says she’s in the hospital.”

“What?” Emily asked. She wasn’t exactly friends with Spark—with Glamazon, she mentally corrected herself—but the older woman was a friend-like acquaintance, which was basically the closest thing to a friend Emily had ever had.

“Mm-hmm! So, you know the Villain attack on the HRF headquarters yesterday?” Sam continued.

Emily lowered her sandwich. “There was a what?”

“Oh. My. God. How can you not know that?” Sam asked. “Girl, you need to spend more time listening to the news. It was all over.” Sam pulled out her phone, and with a few taps placed it in front of Emily, who tugged it a bit closer to read the article Sam had placed on it.

It was from the Eauclaire Gazette, a small but pretty okay local paper. Emily wasn’t sure if that would make it more trustworthy than one of the big media outlets, but for local news she figured it wasn’t a bad place to look.

New Villain Attack Defaces HRF Headquarters!

Yesterday, at around 4:50 p.m., an unidentified Villain attacked the local HRF headquarters in downtown Eauclaire. The Villain announced their presence with several loud thumping noises that locals reported left them dizzy, then destroyed several parked vehicles before moving on to the HRF building itself.

The attack lasted no more than a dozen minutes, but in that time our brave local Heroes responded, successfully scaring off the Villain.

Injuries were reported among several civilians caught in the crossfire, and an undisclosed number of HRF troopers were incapacitated as well. HRF spokesperson Chuck Warner had this to say: “It’s unfortunate to see anyone turn to Villainy, and worse to see them try and disturb such an otherwise quiet and peaceful place as Eauclaire, but the HRF is doing their utmost to investigate and apprehend this Villain before they can cause any more harm.”

At the moment, Main and Third are both blocked as construction crews and inspectors assess the damage left behind from the clash. The city gave a statement suggesting that it may be several weeks before repairs begin in earnest, as Eauclaire isn’t a town that has to deal with such difficulties with any regularity.

The Eauclaire Gazette will continue to follow this story and update its readership in the coming days as more information surfaces.

“Whoa,” Emily said.

“Yeah, did you see the word they used?” Sam asked. “Villain. With a capital V.”

“Does that mean that they’re, you know, an actual Villain villain?” Emily asked.

Sam shrugged. “Maybe. Could be that they’re just on that end of the spectrum. The news likes to blow that kind of thing out of proportion, but usually it’s after they’ve caught the bad guy. If they haven’t caught them yet, then it just makes people skittish and worried.”

“I’m starting to be worried right now,” Emily said. She wasn’t sure where to begin. A new Villain was … a problem, probably. Her current income stream came from some not-quite-at-all-legal sources, and it was entirely possible that a new Villain would edge into that.

For that matter, a new Villain might see her as competition.

She could barely handle any of the Heroes as it was. The Cabal was very much too big of a problem for her to handle, and she wasn’t sure if she could keep her operations at the level they were on, or if it was even possible for her to downscale. Not to mention everything she should be doing to prepare for the nebulous future.

And then there was one other, smaller, more annoying worry that she tried very hard to squash.

What if her sisters thought that this Villain was a cooler Villain than her?

“What do we know about this … Is it a guy or a girl?” Emily asked. “The article didn’t say.”

“Not much is out yet,” Sam said. “No videos. But it is a guy, according to some stuff online. Mostly it’s rumors of the aftermath of his moving by.”

“No videos?” Emily asked. That sounded unlikely to her. “He was on Main, there are shops and stuff there, and people with phones.”

“All broken,” Sam said, and Emily blinked. “Yeah, I know. My bet is that it has something to do with his power. Maybe some sort of EMP effect? But power didn’t go out in the city or anything, so your guess is as good as mine. We do have one picture.”

Emily frowned. “You said there were no videos.”

“A picture’s not a video, Emily,” Sam said. She grinned and took back her phone. “Apparently he’s called Rattles. Here.”

Emily took the phone back and squinted at the picture. It was clearly taken from some ways away, with the zoom quality she’d expect from a cell-phone camera. Still, the image wasn’t entirely blurry.

In the center was a man in all-black gear, his leather coat straining against his biceps and his shoulders covered in a brace of metal spikes. It reminded her a bit of old-school punk clothing, but this guy was actually pulling it off instead of looking like someone who spent too much time at Ot Opic.

He was clearly looking in the direction of the camera, but his features, other than darkened eyes and a few artfully messy curls of black hair, were hidden by thin, vaporous smoke. His lower face stood out in sharp contrast, a grinning face full of bone-white teeth.

He was in the center of what almost looked like an explosion crater, cars crumpled, the ground cracked, a few HRF troopers flung behind him as if they’d been propelled backward by the shiny bat he held by his side.

“Oh no,” Emily said.

“What?” Sam asked.

“He looks cool.”

Sam blinked. “And that’s … a problem? He’s just a Villain, and let’s face it, Villains have it easy when it comes to looking cool, especially compared to Heroes. A Villain who tries too hard just becomes an edgelord, which is still kind of scary. A Hero who tries even a little too much becomes a tryhard, and that’s lame.”

“Right,” Emily said. She was not about to admit to Sam, of all people, that she had insecurities about how cool of a Villain she was. Sam knew about so many of Emily’s other insecurities that she didn’t think it was wise to add more to the ever-growing list. “Do you think we can find out more about this guy?”

“I can only think of one person who might know more,” Sam said.

“The information broker?” Emily asked.

Sam blinked. “Okay, two people. I was thinking of Sparkles. Hospitals have visiting hours, you know.”

And asking her wouldn’t cost Emily anything. Unlike asking Handshake or even Melaton, who might also know something. “I suppose,” Emily said. She needed some time to mentally prepare herself to visit someone in a social way.

Fortunately, she still had classes left for the day. After wrapping up her leftovers, buying some extra cookies from the shop—because otherwise she’d have to deal with a few disappointed sisters and Emily was weak—and then packing up her things, Emily walked with Sam back to campus until the two split up along the way to get to their respective classes.

Sitting down for an hour and a bit was exactly what Emily needed to get her mind into the right headspace for a potential hospital visit. By the time classes were over, she had texted Mrs. Headerson and gotten the okay to pick up her sisters an hour later than usual.

That gave her … a fairly short window to visit the hospital, but a window all the same.

Maybe, Emily figured, she would be lucky and Jezebelle wouldn’t be taking visitors today. Then she’d be able to honestly claim that she tried without having to suffer through the awkwardness of an actual conversation.

A twenty-minute bus ride later, she was going up an elevator in the Eauclaire General Hospital, no such luck in sight.

Chapter Four

Hospital Visit

Emily knew that a lot of people disliked hospitals. She could understand that.

They all had this smell to them, like a weird mix of antiseptics and warm plastic. And she imagined that most people’s hospital-related memories weren’t the best. It wasn’t somewhere people went for fun, after all.

Emily was a little more ambivalent about them. She’d never been hurt or injured before (hard to get injured when your favorite pastimes all involved strenuous amounts of lying in bed and staring at a phone), and she had always gone out of her way to avoid having to visit people.

Now she was on a mission to visit someone and grill them for information, and she wanted nothing more than to leave, but it wasn’t the hospital’s fault.

When she’d asked the secretary lady by the front desk where she could find Jezebelle, she’d been given a room number and was informed that visiting hours ended at seven. Oh, and she had to follow any floor-specific instructions with regards to wearing masks, gloves, and those weird backward scrubs that patients wore.

Fortunately, Jezebelle’s floor wasn’t under any sort of restrictions like that.

Less fortunately, there were people next to the room with the number she’d been given. Two people, both men in casual clothes, standing on either side of the door in a very un-casual way.

Emily paused at the end of the corridor and stared at them. Maybe that was the excuse she needed to leave. Were they guards? Would she have to talk to them? Emily wanted to pace, but maybe that would make her look suspicious. But then, wasn’t standing in the corridor and staring not also suspicious?

One of the men looked at her, and Emily jumped, eyes darting to the floor so she wouldn’t have to meet his gaze. Then she shored up her bravery and walked over. “Um, hi,” she said.

“Hello,” one of them said.

“Can I see Jezebelle?” she asked with a faint gesture toward the door.

“Are you family?” he asked.

“Um … no? I’m a classmate. I was worried?”

“What’s your name?” he asked. “I’ll see if she wants visitors.”

She swallowed. “Emily,” she said.

There was a very, very long pause where nothing happened. She looked up, meeting the man’s expectant gaze.

“Emily … what?” he prompted.

“Wright?” she asked.

“Uh-huh,” he said. Then he opened the door and slipped in, leaving Emily in the corridor to pray that the floor would open up and swallow her whole. The other guy just crossed his arms and stared while she waited.

Then the first guy returned, and he gave Emily one of those side-nods boys did. She squeezed past him into the room.

Unsurprisingly, Jezebelle had a room all to herself, with a hospital bed in the middle, a bathroom to one side behind a door, and a window with a nice view of the parking lot. The woman herself was, obviously, in the bed, with a few beepy machines and an IV stand next to her that had tubes and wires trailing to Jezebelle.

Jezebelle looked … not great. She wasn’t wearing any makeup, and her eyes looked sunken and tired, her skin pallid and sickly. Emily couldn’t tell what was wrong with her exactly. It looked like she still had the correct number of arms and legs. Jezebelle was usually very attractive and always put together well. Now … not so much. “Hi,” Emily said.

Jezebelle’s eyes opened, and then she blinked. “Hey,” she said. “Grab a seat.” She waved vaguely to a chair next to the bed, then reached for a remote next to her. A long press later and her bed hummed as the back rose, letting her sit up.

Emily sat down on the edge of the old pleather seat that squeaked uncomfortably beneath her. “So, uh, I heard you met a Villain?”

Jezebelle chuckled darkly. “Yeah, I met a Villain. It wasn’t all that fun.”

Emily winced. “Yeah, uh, I can imagine. I was … worried?”

“You don’t sound so certain,” Jezebelle said. “Ah, were you worried that you’d run into him too?”

“A bit of that, and a bit of worry for you,” Emily said, expertly parrying the foot on its way into her mouth. “I wanted to see if you were okay. And I guess, uh, ask about the Villain.”

Jezebelle rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you and everyone else. Urgh, but at least you have good reasons to want to know. You can’t believe how many gossips came here just to … you know, do gossip things.”

“Yeah, sure,” Emily lied. She didn’t know. She didn’t want to.

“So, right to business? You know, the HRF would probably tell you a bit if you asked them.”

“I don’t know,” Emily said.

“Eh, yeah, fair, they did just get messed up by the guy, and I wouldn’t trust whatever sanitized crap PR says after that. What do you know so far?”

Emily shrugged. “Not very much,” she admitted. “I only found out about everything a few hours ago. All I really know is that he’s a man called Rattles. I don’t even know what his power is.”

Jezebelle hummed. “That’s such a stupid name.”

Emily decided to keep her opinion about the name “Glamazon” to herself.

“Anyway, he has some sort of … shaker power.” Jezebelle made a wobbly gesture with her hand. “When I fought him, the ground shook under me the entire time, and whenever he hit someone with that bat of his, they’d … shake a bunch. I haven’t seen the official reports on it—they’ll have proper, professional speculation—but I can tell you what it felt like.”

“Did he hit you?” Emily asked.

Jezebelle nodded. “My attacks distracted him a bit, but they weren’t working on him very well. So I got in close. I’m pretty good in a scrap, and it didn’t look like he was enhanced or anything. Then he slapped me here.” She touched her chest. “Right under a breast, too. What a jerkwad. It felt like … urgh, you ever ride on a school bus down a bumpy road?”

“I … I think I know the feeling,” Emily said.

“Yeah, everything shook a lot. Felt like someone was hitting me with a jackhammer but all over. My costume got torn up pretty badly, and next thing I know I’m waking up in an ambulance with a concussion and the biggest bruise you’ve ever seen.”

“Is it … bad?” Emily asked. She didn’t exactly consider Jezebelle a friend—after all, the woman was a Hero, and if she discovered Emily’s Villainy they’d have problems—but she didn’t dislike her either, even if she was both a Hero and worse, an extrovert.

“They’re treating me for blunt force trauma, even if that’s not quite the right thing to call it. More like … I guess it wasn’t one single hit? More like lots of tiny ones? I don’t know exactly, but my insides got shaken up, and that’s apparently not healthy.”

“I can imagine, yeah,” Emily said.

“But hey, I lived.” Jezebelle shrugged. “Might be transferred to a bigger city to see a Hero who has healing powers.”

That reminded Emily of something. “Um … maybe I can try to help?” she asked.

“By capturing Rattles?” Jezebelle asked.

Emily shook her head. “I have a healing power.”

Jezebelle stared for a moment. “Huh. Yeah, you’d mentioned it. Would it work on me?”

“It’s very weak. More for, uh, boo-boos.” She realized what she’d said a moment later and wanted to die all over again. “It works via headpats?”

“Well, I’ve got more than a boo-boo to deal with, but I’ll take whatever help I can get.”

Emily flushed, then walked over to Jezebelle and patted her on the head. She focused on her Healpats ability, and fired it off between pats.

“Huh,” Jezebelle said. “I think that … might have worked … maybe?”

“It’s not very strong,” Emily said. This was a better use of the skill than most. Usually she only used it to top up her sisters’ health, just in case. She’d heard a lot of stories about how often kids caught colds, and she’d seen how many weird things ended up in Trinity’s mouths.

“Well, thanks, in any case,” Jezebelle said. “Anything that gets me out of here sooner helps. But I think we should keep this between us? You couldn’t imagine how pedantic the HRF gets whenever you do something they haven’t tested a million times.”

“Ah, that would be for the best, yeah,” Emily agreed. “Thank you for the information, about Rattles, I mean.”

“What are you planning on doing now? Track him down to beat him up?”

Emily frowned. “I hope it doesn’t come to that.”

“Hey, me too,” Jezebelle said. “Be careful with that guy, okay? He doesn’t seem like some two-bit nobody. It feels like he’s got some experience under his belt. No one just decides to attack the headquarters of something like the HRF just for fun, you know? There are easier, softer targets out there.”

“Yeah,” Emily agreed. “I’ll be careful, I promise.”

Chapter Five

Predictable

The Heroes were, for the most part, predictable.

He hadn’t always seen it. Not before he had his powers, when he watched TV and saw all the propaganda about how being a nice person was good and all the movies where the good guys always won.

No, back then he hadn’t seen the wider picture. It wasn’t until after he gained his powers and had been part of some gangs for a while that he started to notice things.

This one guy, in the first gang he joined, was an absolute lunatic. Obsessed with conspiracy theories and the like, and while Kevin was pretty sure that there wasn’t anything in milk that reduced a person’s chance of gaining powers, he did listen to the guy sometimes, and sometimes he was right.

As time went on, Kevin started to notice a pattern.

Heroes always followed the same predictable moveset.

In this case, the moves they’d make were so easy to anticipate that they were probably lifted right out of a textbook.

He shook his head as he watched the TV bolted to the wall. He was staying in a motel on the edge of the city. Just a temporary spot for now. He didn’t exactly have a ton of money to burn on nice accommodations. At least, not yet.

That was going to change soon.

On the TV, the leader of the local HRF, some thin, tall woman with graying hair and a mean look to her, was telling a gaggle of reporters the usual platitudes. The HRF was on the case. The Villain would be caught soon. No one had to worry about anything. Blah-blah.

He could have muted it and still understood the whole thing.

Point was, they were trying to reassure people, and that meant that they were playing things by the book.

He noticed that the camera often panned to the right, where three Heroes stood. He only recognized one of them: Silver Fox. The same guy whose masked face was on Kevin’s shampoo bottles.

Small world, he thought. Just a day or two ago he’d been beating up the guy’s apprentice at the HRF city headquarters.

Oh well. He got up off the motel bed, finished his lunch in a couple of bites—he was eating microwavable meat pockets, with the edges on fire and the centers somehow still cold—and then got dressed.

He was going to head out in costume again, though he’d wait to put his mask on until he was closer to his objective. He left the room with the TV still going, the news milking the local event for all it was worth.

Charlotte was waiting for him outside, the bench a little wet from a bit of early evening rain that had just started to calm down. He sat down, kicked up the kickstand, then took off.

The Heroes, if they followed their playbook—which they would—were all going to be at that press conference. They were probably hoping that he’d move while they were there, maybe attack the gathering.

Which would be stupid.

So he was going to hit something else.

Not too far from his motel was a small bank. It was the only Eauclaire branch of a major nationwide chain. There were plenty of other banks with plenty of other locations, but for this one bank chain, this was it when it came to this little nowhere city.

Kevin drove past the bank and eyed its front. The building had clearly been someone’s home before being converted and modernized into the bank. It was made of the same kind of orangey-red brick as most buildings around Eauclaire, and it looked perfectly boring on the corner of a busy intersection next to a road filled with restaurants and little shops.

He parked Charlotte in an alley a little ways down, one where he couldn’t see any cameras. Then he put his helmet on and pulled his trusty baseball bat out of Charlotte’s back compartment and thumped it against his palm a couple of times. Yeah, he’d need a new one. The bat had a small kink in the middle, and it didn’t resonate as well when he struck stuff with it.

Well, it’d be usable for this job, he figured, so that was all that mattered.

Fixing his mask on, Rattles headed to the bank.

Not the front, obviously. He wouldn’t mind taking on the cops and the HRF and even the local Heroes again, but not in such an open space. That would be stupid when they knew what to expect and might have contingency plans in place. But he didn’t think they’d show up. At least, not quickly enough.

Nah, he walked around to the back of the building and studied the undecorated rear wall. He looked up at a camera and winked at it, then, putting his full body into the swing, he smashed his bat into the wall like a striker aiming for a home run.

The vibration rattled his teeth until he bit down on it and pushed against the tremors. They rammed into the wall, and he saw a ripple cascade across the bricks as if they were no more than water.

Of course, bricks weren’t designed to ripple at the best of times.

Mortar came spitting out from between the brickwork, and he stepped back as bits of masonry came crashing down around him. The wall now had a large circle crushed into it. The center was no bigger than a quarter, but its impact spread out to the edges of the wall with fewer and fewer cracks as it went.

He judged it to be a decent hit. So he struck the wall again, then again, each smack of his bat accompanied by more cracks and snaps as the entire brickwork came apart. The moment a few bricks broke completely, the rest came crashing down all in one go.

He stepped out of the way, letting them pile up at his feet. When the dust cleared, he found himself looking at a chubby woman staring back at him with wide eyes and a phone in hand. She was crouching next to her desk. “Yo,” he said.

She whimpered and pressed herself farther back. He shrugged. Most of the time people ran, but whatever. He walked over the pile of bricks and into the bank proper. Or at least its rear section.

Already, he could see secretaries and bankers and … other office workers, cowering. He was actually kind of impressed by how quickly they all ran to hide; usually he had to threaten them a little.

Twirling his bat around, Rattles headed for the front where the vault was located. It would be a simple matter of vibrating the front door until its locking mechanism gave out. And if that didn’t work, then he could probably crack the metal of the door the same way he’d destroyed the wall. Though thick steel would take considerably longer to break through than a few old bricks.

“And who might you be?”

He stopped, then turned around to stare at a man standing on the counter at the front of the bank.

A man in a costume. He was dressed like someone out of a ren faire, with a poofy shirt and tight pants, his face covered by a cloth mask. He was also holding a long, narrow sword. A rapier?

“Are you a Hero?” Rattles asked. His grip tightened on the handle of his bat.

“ … I was in the middle of robbing the place, so no, I daresay I’m not a Hero at all.”

Rattles blinked. “Really?”

“The actual Heroes are busy on the far end of the city, so yes.”

“Right, same reason I came,” he said with a gesture over his shoulder toward the hole in the wall. “Well, this makes things awkward.”

“Nonsense,” the man said. “I am Fabien the Fabulous. Swordsman extraordinaire and Eauclaire’s greatest bandit. You must be Rattles. The nefarious Villain who recently fought the Heroes at their own base.”

Rattles grinned, then bowed to Fabien. This guy was putting on a show, and he could appreciate that. “Well met, Fabien! Now, how do you want to do this? We fight over the winnings?”

Fabien stared at him for a long moment. “No. Let us, instead, split them equally between us. Do you have a way into the vault?”

“I do,” Rattles said.

“Well, I have a way into the registers.”

Rattles nodded. He would trust this guy as far as he could throw him. But something told him this Fabien was a new Villain on the scene, and Rattles liked his chances if it came down to a fight. Besides, it would be nice to make a few friends in a new city.

“I like the way you think, Fabien. Come on, that money ain’t gonna rob itself.”

Chapter Six

Banking, the Villain Way

Rattles didn’t have to work as hard as he expected to get the vault door open. The door itself was a monstrously heavy thing, all steel and reinforced metal, but the lock on it had a plastic cover that he ripped apart with ease, and that gave him access to the interior of the door, which he let his powers loose on. Whatever cheap lock they had wasn’t resistant to his abilities.

With a grunt of effort, he pulled the door open to reveal a closet-sized safe with several shelves. Most held papers in neatly stacked folders, and only the centermost row had any cash on it, which was all in little canvas bags with zippers and small combination locks.

He pulled the bags out, tossing them into a garbage bag he pulled out of his back pocket. “Good to go,” he said.

“I have the cashiers’ money as well,” Fabien said.

Rattles paused. This would be the moment for Fabien to betray him. Hit while his back was turned and he had already opened the vault. It would be the perfect time … if Rattles wasn’t expecting it.

But Fabien didn’t try anything. “Out the back?” he asked.

“Yeah, bet they’re rushing over already.”

The great big hole blown out of the back of the bank was still right where Rattles had left it, so he led the way out, Fabien a step behind him.

“Where did you plan on going now?” Fabien asked.

“Dunno,” Rattles said. “You?”

Fabien seemed to hesitate for a moment. “If you want to split things fifty-fifty, then follow me. I wouldn’t begrudge you wanting to run off on your own, however.”