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xarrixii · 2 years ago

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Chapter_04 : "Withdrawal" ━━━━━━━━━━━━━

CW: blood previous chapter | beginning | masterlist

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“Let’s get one thing straight,” Liam said, unrolling what looked like a blueprint of the whole building. “The plan is incredibly simple. We’re putting on a show for Storm. We’re driving the truck straight through the front door. Mass panic. Team one heads straight for the deposit boxes, team two extracts money from the accounts as fast as they can, into a flood account.

“Team three heads to the vault and starts bagging all 10% of the money Storm is legally forced to keep on hand. Team four, our new guys here, are going to make sure there’s no interference from law-abiding officers or those suit-wearing sons of bitches.

“When we’re done, pack yourselves into the truck, and Raiden over here is going to use their immense racing skills to drive us the fuck out of there.”

Harlow took a quick glance over at Raiden, whose face had been stone cold up until the driving part. Now there was a chaotic glee written on their face, and Liam closed the truck’s back doors, rolling up the blueprint and offering it to one of the Cinder operatives to burn.

Everyone pulled up their masks when the truck started moving out of the lot, weighted hoods being one of their only saving graces from being recognized and tracked by the police.

Raiden hadn’t told anyone else that their dad was part of the force, but Harlow could tell it was weighing on them. The old man wasn’t really suited for criminals, they were in the business to help kids like Harlow who couldn’t control their own abilities.

He flexed his hand a few times, staring absently into the sleeve. Him and Raiden had been given ones that covered the fingers so they didn’t go rubbing their prints everywhere.

Then he heard the glass shatter in on itself. The screaming followed suit.

“Go, go, go!” Liam yelled, ushering everyone out through the truck doors. Harlow and Raiden took position in the front, Harlow whisking out his lighter with expertise he’d practiced an uncounted number of times.

Him and Raiden exchanged a weary glance. They’d never done something so reckless or organized before.

“Everyone on the floor! Get the fuck down!” One of the Cinder operatives called out across the building, Harlow and Raiden specifically preventing people from leaving for now. Raiden had a full-on assault rifle in their hands, Harlow with a pistol to keep a hand open for his lighter.

“On the fucking ground!”

“Police have already been called! Move, move, move!” Liam shouted, helping team three toss the cash into the truck.

It went by in a blur, Harlow taking a step backward and yelling back into the bank, “Cops ETA sixty seconds! Sirens blaring!”

Raiden took the hint and covered the other half of the building Harlow wasn’t, careful not to step in the glass. That’d become a hassle soon. The first thing the cops did was form their blockades, second thing was the megaphone. Harlow barely listened to it, scanning the faces of the officers. Raiden’s old man wasn’t in the crowd.

He could feel Liam talking through his head. Remember, kid. This isn’t a bloodbath. Keep them off, don’t hurt them. Despite how much they want to kill you.

Yeah, Harlow thought back. Obviously.

He felt something oddly like guilt before it pulled away.

It was like any other experience with the cops. “Raiden!”

“On it!”

Just like that, the tiny red flame from the lighter Harlow strung across the length of the windows expanded with a wave of Raiden’s hand. He looked over at Raiden, determination plastered on their face through the cacophony of robbery happening in the background.

Harlow had to retract the fire when a few spikes of ice slammed themselves from the ceiling, it wavering back into the lighter as people wearing full black dropped down.

Storm, kid! Liam’s voice pounded through his head.

Roger.

“I’ve got the cops!” Raiden shouted over to him.

One of the Storm agents that had dropped through the roof snickered at him. “This is absolutely ridiculous. Cinder sent in a D-class?”

“You betcha,” Harlow replied without missing a beat, swinging fire in an arc that caused the agent to throw themselves backwards, grumbling as their ice turned to water and took new frozen shape beside their hand.

A few floor tiles shot up from beneath him, and he had to sidestep, ducking under ice that was thrown his way.

He ended up rolling onto his side when they caught him, blood beginning to spill from their leg around what was now a pretty nasty burn. They took some of their water and froze over the wound, inhaling sharply.

With no time to hesitate, he picked himself up, transforming the small lighter flame into a small wall of fire that melted the ice reaching after him. He stepped to the side when a few shards of glass flew past, grazing his arm. It was enough to send pain flooding down it, though, and he had to grip the lighter harder.

He stole a quick glare Raiden’s way, a flurry of blue exploding down through a dance of kicks and punches.

They’d be fine.

Harlow grabbed onto the next thing of ice, stabbing the agent with it in the side, using the opening they gave him by retracting the ice into water to swing in with fire again. Then the geokinetic pulled him back by the shirt, to which he quickly flared up the fire to their face.

When he got free, he had to melt the ice again, resolutely deciding what he needed to do about it in the next few moments.

The geokinetic was writhing in pain, clutching their face on the floor.

Harlow expanded the little lighter’s flame as it ran open in his hand, red flame turning bright blue as he clutched upon it.

Then he swung his hand, getting thrown to the ground by an officer as the agent’s ice turned into the atmosphere. Only the best of hydrokinetics could draw from the air around them. Seemed this was not one of them.

He had to wrench his hand free from the officer, jabbing his elbow into their neck and rolling away, taking a deep breath.

The hydro, out of liquid water, was trying to scoop up the geokinetic. Harlow had no time to stop them, having to grab his lighter and back away from the officer before they stole it from him.

“Let’s roll, guys! Let’s go!” Liam’s voice rang through the building as he scrambled to his feet, clicking the lighter down and making a break for the truck, helping lift the last Cinder operative in as Raiden started accelerating it the fuck out of there.

Harlow was quickly getting his lighter out again to slice through a carbon net, watching it clatter into the road and hold off the cops a little.

When he turned back around, half the money was gone from the truck. Liam was teleporting in and out, and Harlow was left leaving small trails of fire to steer the faster cars around the street. The first blockade Raiden had drove right past with a hole one of the Cinder ops had made in the side of the building, this one coming up wasn’t going to be as easy.

Harlow didn’t look at Raiden in the driver’s seat, staring out at the sea of sirens. Clearly they’d attracted some unwanted attention.

“Raiden, flare it up!”

“You sure?”

“I am definitely sure!”

Harlow swung the fire away from the comfort of his hand, strain building as he shot its pinpointed strength in the center of the scrambled blockade. As promised, he felt Raiden explode it, sending the flimsy police walls skidding off to the side.

The armored truck slid right past, and when Harlow turned back around, all of the money in the truck and the rest of the operative team were gone except for Liam.

“Sorry, kid. Matty’s orders!”

“What?” Harlow’s eyes widened as Liam shrugged, guilt tugging at his mind again, truck lurching over a speed bump as Raiden and Liam were teleported away. His lighter slipped from his hand, clattering into the road as instinct kicked in. “Fucker!”

Harlow swung the door closed in front of him, exterior collecting a few bullets. He closed the other door as soon as he could, shoving himself into the driver’s seat and slamming on the gas.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Harlow pulled up the GPS system, sleeve’s supposed ‘access’ not working. He leaned over in the passenger, yanking down the compartment and taking out a spare hidden in there. Plain black. The GPS system unlocked for him, and he quickly picked some random place on it and set the truck into automatic. He needed fire. Something to give him fire.

Between heaving breaths and rummaging around for any kind of lighter, the truck skidded around a corner at the speed he had put it at, sending him scrambling around the back.

He didn’t have time for this. There had to be some other way to get out of here.

Ground yourself. You’re in a car, Harlow. Raiden’s talked about cars plenty of times before. How can you get fire?

His mind drifted off to a movie he and Raiden had watched in theaters and got kicked out of before it ended because Raiden wouldn’t shut up about the inaccuracies and stupidity of the driving scenes.

“Why did they climb onto the hood?” He distinctly remembered the whisper. “Just shoot the engine from underneath the wheel.” Harlow bit his lip, gripping onto a handle on the side of the truck as it sped around another corner. He had to do something, and running wasn’t an answer.

“Alright,” he told himself, opening the driver’s door just slightly. “It’s this or rehab, Harlow. You know how rehab ends.”

He wished he had Raiden to give him conviction rather than himself.

“This or rehab.”

After a moment, he dug out the pistol from his holster, aiming up at where Raiden said the engine should be. Looking out the front window, making sure no one was around. Listening to the gunfire behind him.

When they reloaded, Harlow fired the damn thing, immediately gripping onto the fire as it blasted him out the door to the side, rolling onto the concrete with a harsh thud. It’d exploded faster than he’d expected. Shielding himself from the blast sent pain writhing through his body.

He couldn’t lie here.

Harlow got to his feet, dashing into the nearest alley. Everything hurt like hell.

“Agh⸺” he stumbled, hitting the ground with such a lack of grace it would have sent him and Raiden drowning in their own laughter. He pulled himself up again, cursing out Liam.

“You are one crazy bastard,” the devil themselves said from behind him, wrapping an arm under his shoulders as he heaved out.

“Yeah? And you left me to die.”

“Matty said you had more to prove than Raiden does. Sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

“Oh, okay. That was easy.”

“You’re just proving I can’t trust anything Cinder says.”

“Nevermind.”

“Seriously,” Harlow scoffed, Liam guiding him with sweat rolling down his face. “You gave me a sleeve that doesn’t even work. You were trying to get rid of me.”

Liam was quiet for a few moments. “Amaterasu’s like that, more often than I’d like to admit. She sees—saw you as more of a pest than anything. I’m going to hope her opinion changed. Probably thought your weakness, or I guess class, meant you were better off locked away in the government’s little safe holes. Though who it keeps the most safe between you or everyone else, I think you’re the only one who knows.”

“How inspiring from someone who tried to kill me just now.”

“Let me make it clear, Amaterasu was trying to get you arrested. Not killed.”

“Really seemed like it.”

When they rounded another corner, Raiden came running up and stole Harlow right from Liam’s grip, and Harlow slouched into them.

“I’m going to sock that asshole in the face.”

“I’m not going to tell you not to, Rai.”

Liam grumbled under his breath. “We need to get going. Police have probably started scanning the area already, doesn’t take long to figure out someone didn’t explode themselves in an armored truck.”

Raiden opened their mouth, but one of the other Cinder operatives shut them up quick. “We were all under instruction to leave the blonde one behind to the cops. So if you want to ‘sock’ one of us in the face, at least wait a little bit and then sock everyone in the face. Fighting two Storm ops at the same time should’ve been enough of a cue for Boss to change her mind, in my book. But not following orders tends to get everyone killed.”

They all stood there before Raiden started dragging Harlow over to the van Liam had started.

When the van doors closed, one of the operatives elbowed him playfully. “First explosion?”

“Ha ha.”

“Don’t take it too personally. Boss tends to mean well, even if it makes her look like a bitch.”

“Now that’s the funniest joke I’ve heard all week,” a smile tugged at Raiden’s lips. They kicked a bag of money on the van’s floor. “How’d you even explode the damn truck, Urb?”

“Just like you told me to,” Harlow said.

The puzzled look on Raiden’s face lightened him up instantly, and he took a playful jab at Raiden’s ribs.

next chapter

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yes, the title of this chapter is an entry point (roblox) reference, and no i will not elaborate on that, because it's genius

i dedicate this chapter to my economics teacher because of one small fact about reserve rates in it and to my boyfriend for knowing more about cars than i do

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