Silhouette

"I'm home everyone!"

""Squeaks!""

James entered the nest, currently transformed into a liquid mass, and put down the mechanical spider he was still carrying before solidifying and taking on his humanoid form. He bent and twisted to work out non-existent kinks in his non-existent bones, old habits die hard after all.

"Is everyone ok? No one's hurt?"

"Squeak!"

"Splendid!"

James approached the ratlings and "knelt" down as they sat on their haunches to be - roughly - face to face.

"You all did a great job, I'm very proud of you."

"Squeak!"

All of the ratlings held their heads high, even Goliath, who had "only" taken the loot already put into the tunnel by his siblings and brought it to the cache, was proud of himself - every member of a bucket chain is important, after all.

Though, looking again, there was one ratling who didn't seem as pleased as the others about their contribution to the heist. A ratling who, instead of boasting, was currently looking at the ground, avoiding James' gaze - had he had eyes and not sensed the world with some kind of sphere-like "domain", of course.

"Are you alright, David?"

The small young male rat flinched when hearing his name, still avoiding looking at James' face.

"I know stealth is more Lucille's thing but, what happened? You should have been quick enough to avoid getting noticed, especially since they were so distracted."

The rat said nothing, only turning his head the other way.

"Why were you even sniffing this crate? It wasn't one of the ones I told you about. I can understand confusing it for one at the start, but near the end? When every crate we wanted to steal from has already been opened at least once?"

Once more, silence. The ratlings looked at their sibling, uneased by the situation.

"Look, I'm not mad, David, nor disappointed. I just want to understand, I'm worried about-"

James stopped talking. It had finally clicked.

"It was one of the crates filled with Red Dust, wasn't it?"

Again, David flinched. James looked at him without saying a word for what felt like minutes before finally speaking once more, his voice cold and devoid of all emotion.

"We will talk about this later. For now, let us go check on what we managed to take. David, you stay here. Goliath, do you wish to watch over your brother?"

The larger-than-normal ratling looked at James then David, his gaze going from to one to the other a few times, before nodding.

"Thank you, Goliath. Lucille, Blanche, Foudre, let's go."

James turned into his Skitter form and walked out of the nest, followed by the three rat sisters, to go to the dug tunnel's cache. Goliath watched them go before turning towards his younger brother, a worried look in his eyes. David didn't even face him and simply walked away, settling down in a corner of the nest and curling up, showing his back, brooding. Goliath sighed before going to the defunct mechanical spider and messing around with it, never leaving his brother out of sight for long.

Silence filled the nest, only occasionally broken by the creaking of metal plates and pieces.

The trip to the cache was just as silent as the nest, even the local fauna seemed to perceive James' bad mood and avoided him like the plague - though, considering where they were, some of them may have already had it. The only thing that hadn't picked up on the hint was a cockroach the size of a small dog, like the mechanical spider.

Unlike the spider, however, it wasn't made of metal, allowing James' hardening technique to show its worth. The Skitter body jumped high, narrowly evading the cockroach's mad charge, before dropping back down, all four tentacles tips as hard as bones - even as hard as metal on the very very tips - and pierced the stupid insect in four vital spots.

The fight had lasted less than a minute, the ratlings didn't even have the time to react. James grew another four tentacles to hold the cockroach's corpse, after all, he may have been angry but he was still sensible enough to know better than leave potential food to scavengers and opportunists.

Once they finally reached the base of the tunnel, an issue arose: the cockroach was too large to pass through. James had no choice but to enlarge the entrance if he wanted to keep the corpse out of harm's way-

Or cut it into pieces. That worked too. The supplementary tentacles each carried a piece, each one leaking goop everywhere as he moved forward.

James put the cut-up corpse down once they reached the cache, wiped his sticky tentacles on the walls to get rid of the remaining insect juice covering them, and began to sort through the ill-gotten loot, still under the sisters' gaze.

James began by picking up the wads of money, quickly sorting between the real and fake ones to make two different piles. There was even a third "pile", only a dozen tickets or so, made out of the ones he had infused with shadows to serve as trackers. The tickets still looked the same, only a slightly darker shade of purple marking a difference, but James didn't want to risk it and leave these things in the thugs' hands, just in case they had some way to use them to track HIM down.

Money was always good, of course, but in the short term, this was the less useful loot of the heist. The next item on the list was the pair of guns and the corresponding ammo, slightly more useful loot but still things James felt like he wouldn't need to use. He couldn't fire them to test if they worked correctly - they were still trying to hide after all, and this tunnel was still connected to the warehouse - and had absolutely no knowledge on firearms besides the usual stuff in fiction, but these looked good.

He began to inspect them using his shadows and found no particular device that could potentially be used to locate the guns, he did get a new idea, however, what if he tried infusing these with shadows? He would only do half of the ammunition and one gun, to test out the differences later.

Infusing the ammo was easy, he could even do it en masse, as he had done with the stone. The only somewhat annoying thing was that he needed to infuse the casing before infusing the content of the bullets but, since both were quicker to do than rock, it was a non-issue. As expected, they turned darker in the process.

The gun, however, proved to be somewhat of a challenge. It was much more complex than a brick or a bullet and each mechanism needed some focus to be fully converted, but ultimately it was just a matter of time and concentration. Though, seeing how awkward it was to infuse a simple gun, James was glad he hadn't tried this procedure on the spider yet - what if it broke it?

The newly enhanced gun was, again, a darker copy of the original. It was still closer to the original process on stones, where bad quality materials got enhanced into something better - in the case of old dusty stones, black marble - than the bullet, which had stayed the exact same besides the obvious color shift.

The normal gun was already black and had a plastic-y look, not quite fake but still something cheap enough to make in large quantities. The infused one, however, had a more metallic feel to it, with some reflections and even a few engravings for some reason, probably the same reason infused bricks had perfect cuts even if they used to be a pile of dust.

"I don't think they could trace back these, same with the money, it should be safe to bring those back home."

The sisters nodded as James put the gun down and took a look at the last pile of loot, the various knick-knacks that didn't seem particularly valuable to the thugs - ironically, the items James had the most hopes for.

Regular tools like screwdrivers, hammers and wrenches, nuts, bolts, nails, screws, batteries, some odd scraps of metal James couldn't identify - overall, stuff you would find in a hobbyist engineer or inventor's garage. There was even a welding mask and the associated gloves and blowtorch - though the latter sounded empty.

Honestly, James had no idea what most of this stuff was used for and neither did his new instincts. If he wanted to make those useful he would have to mess around with it. Still, there were a few more items that got his full attention

Three phones, all three black. They had a touch screen and were thankfully very similar to his old world's ones, the main difference being the logo on the back: a white "X", all four of its branches pointing to the left, and a "C" surrounding a slightly smaller "O", making the logo look like some kind of stylized amoeba about to eat something.

Now was the time of truth. James tried to turn them on, one by one.

First phone, no success.

Second phone, no success.

Third phone-

A rumbling sound resonated through the tunnel, something was happening on the surface.

James left the cache, taking the ratlings in his tentacle-arms, quickly infused the cache in shadows while breaking off a section of the tunnel which he also infused before using the newly acquired rocks to cover the cache's entrance and fusing them all together. Once done, he rushed away.

Joe and his pals, standing in line, looked up to the sky. They had NOT expected the gang to react so quickly, especially not by sending a helicopter, if the loud monstrosity flying in the sky could be considered one. It looked like someone had taken an actual helicopter's carcass and repaired it using nothing but car, boat, and even a few tank pieces found in an old abandoned scrapyard - which, now that Joe thought about it, was probably exactly what happened.

The ugly, rusty thing landed, or more accurately lightly fell down, and a man got out. And no one was pleased or glad to see who the gang had sent to check on the situation, no, in fact, they were all quite horrified.

A sleek, black and spiky robotic suit, the joints way too thin to fit an actual human body, lit by some gaps and small circular openings in the armor revealing glowing orange insides in a way Joe could only describe as forge-like. There was a small black emblem where the heart should be, in the classic shield shape, with the gang's haloed skull crying blood - except this one also had red dots in its orbits and was grinning maniacally.

The only part of the suit that didn't look robotic was the head, in fact, the suit stopped at the nose like a gas mask, exposing the rest of the man's head to the world: very short dark gray hair, some light wrinkles, a pair of cold blues eyes and a couple of small scars.

When the man spoke, there was a clear yet not overly stereotypical Draskian accent - though James would probably have described it as Russian - in his deep voice, barely muffled by the gas mask.

"Who is the man in charge here?"

Brad stepped up from the line.

"I-I am, Mr. Sunburn sir."

The man, Sunburn, scoffed.

"Acceptable. I overheard the basic reports and wanted to check myself, what happened?"

"We got raided by one of the Empress' Collectors, sir."

"You're sure of that?"

"Yes sir, I got briefed on potential threats when I was chosen to oversee this operation, it was a silver mechanical spider, between a cat's and a dog's size, sir. It also had the matching screech once its cover was blown."

"Any particular sign?"

"Ah, yes sir, its eyes lacked the usual red glow."

Sunburn scratched his chin with one of his gauntlet-like hands.

"Potentially in stealth mode. It escaped, correct?"

"Ye-Yes, sir. It escaped, despite our best attempts at catching it. Our Cored guard, Mickey, almost destroyed it though-"

"And he failed. Have you checked the merchandise yet?"

"Yes sir! No Red Dust was stolen, thankfully."

"And the rest?"

"We... weren't quite so lucky. A pair of pistols and some ammunition were stolen, though those are just a drop in the bucket compared to what is stored, and some old stuff left from previous occupations. But, our main loss is..."

"Money. Lots of money."

"B-But! Sir, if I may? When checking on how much was stolen, my men realized most of it was printed, fake. Only the bare minimum was real, just enough to pass our security checks."

Sunburn frowned at that.

"So you're proud of the fact that only that was stolen was money, money which was mostly fake because of your general incompetence?"

"W-Well... When you put it like that..."

Sunburn scoffed once more before waving his hand.

"Bah, you're not exactly wrong, losing the Dust would have been much more problematic. We will have to launch a little witch hunt, though. Can't let anyone get away with tricking the Blood Angels."

"Y-Yes, sir."

"Not you. You and your men are barely what I'd consider an actual team, you're the left-overs, grunt workers, at best."

"I'm sorry sir, I-"

"But, I will tolerate this level of mediocrity. This time. Only one real Cored, not even Super level, one specialized in brute force, against one of the Empress' Collectors, even a Small one? There being no casualty or loss of Dust is good enough."

"Oh thank you, sir-"

"I'll just ask your team a couple of questions before going on my way."

"O-Oh, very well sir."

Sunburn walked past Brad and began examining the rest of the thugs, his gaze lingering a little longer on Mickey.

"Which one of you was in charge of checking the money?"

Jerome raised his hand with no hesitation, Joe guessed he probably didn't realize who was the man facing them.

"Which one of you was the one to notice the intruder?"

The guards exchanged glances, not quite sure on how to respond before, once more, Jerome opened his big mouth.

"We all saw it at the same time, sir, when it made a box fall. But maybe Joe and me heard it before that? We both heard something at the same time, when Joe went to check it was only a rat, so I'm not sure."

Sunburn stared at Jerome before searching for Joe in the line. His slight flinch when his eyes met the Draskian's cold blue ones gave his position away.

"Joe, I suppose? Is your colleague correct?"

"W-why, yes sir-"

"No."

Joe froze at that, Sunburn's cold gaze beginning to gain something that scared Joe to the core - a hint of anger.

"N-no, sir?"

"You're lying, I can tell."

"Well, I... I may have... Heard something before that? I just didn't think it was important so-"

"How long."

"W-Well, I'm not exactly sure-"

"How. Long."

"M-Maybe... One hour?"

Silence filled the street. Even Brad's and Mickey's faces had turned pale. It took a few seconds before something happened : Sunburn rolled his neck.

"Joe, was it? You may have noticed that I did not erupt in anger or harm your colleague despite his clear feats of incompetence. Why?"

He turned some dial on the top of his torso and the black metal plates constituting the gas-mask apparatus on his face began to retract and merge with the rest of the armor, revealing what was hidden underneath.

A melted face. Scarred reddened flesh, burnt to a crisp, a lipless mouth with exposed gums and no cheeks, letting all see through the hole between the mandible and the rest of the skull. No nose, only a hole. Only the parts of his face that were already exposed - those normally covered by a domino mask - were free of any damage.

"I know what making mistakes is like. I can forgive failing. I can forgive incompetence."

Sunburn stepped forth and lifted Joe by the collar.

"I do not tolerate apathy."

Joe ignited. The fire burned, flames consuming his flesh, his clothes, his hair, his notebook, his everything. It hurt. It hurt so much.

The fire burned, the fire burned, THE FIRE BURNED-

Sunburn dropped Joe on the ground, all of the flames disappearing in a blink of an eye and yet the damage remaining. Joe was alive for he breathed, barely, only a crispy husk of a man.

"Bring him to the Patcher, they always need new patients. And who knows, if the punk's lucky, they might even fix him."

All of the remaining thugs gulped as Sunburn put his mask back on and got back up in his helicopter.

Everyone in the slums knew where the Patcher lived.

Because no one ever wanted to go there.