A Classic Heist - RPG

Martin sighed, at 2:37 AM on the dot. It was just another night of strolling through the Museum of Priceless Heirlooms. From all across the world, royal families and clans of wealthy ancestry fell from power or descended into a drastic decline. Such was history. Therefore, some of these social groups decided to house their heritage into a collective gathering and lock them away so that their legacies could at least be remembered.

As a result, the museum was practically a hodgepodge of various clothing, jewels, sarcophagi, wood carvings, stonework, bones, mummified patrons and matrons, sceptres, weapons, armors, cannons, paintings, busts and statues... the list went on. It was impossible to keep track of absolutely everything, and the collections shifted from time to time. But the attraction that seemed to grab everyone's attention was a curious Diamond Skull. It was a human skull, emblazoned with flawless diamonds upon every facet save for the teeth. Those were lacquered, perfectly preserved against the ravages of time at the cost of permanent discoloration. But it was a small price to pay for the inhuman beauty of the object. It was altogether morbid and entrancing.

Martin honestly didn't much care about it. He saw the words "actual human skull" and grimaced. The story behind it involved a king or warlord who was obsessed with diamonds and fed his enemies to crocodiles. The king kept the heads in salt to preserve them, and when he was finally dethroned it was no small irony that he was himself decapitated. The second irony was that those same diamonds he coveted were put into his skull. During that time the stones were practically worthless and his skull was kept in a rival warlord's court for generations. Only now did it come to America.

The security guard kept moving and passed George. He was another guard, an older man.

"Quiet night?" he asked. George nodded.

"Yeah, the statues aren't moving so..."

"They'd be moving faster than you if they did," Martin laughed.

George shuffled by, huffing in response.

Martin continued into the Hall of Portraits. He hated this part. The paintings were mostly of cruel-looking people, no matter how softly the artist put them to canvas. Dark eyes always stared out from the higher echelons of the room. Even the closer pieces seemed to glare at him from the shadows. His flashlight was the only source of illumination he had. The Hall had no windows to let in moonlight, so he was alone in this. Each time he swayed his lantern, the shapes he left behind caused his eyes to instinctively look back to make sure nothing was moving.

But, much like every night, the factor of creepiness to the room dissolved once he left leaving nothing unusual behind him. He decided to go back to the Diamond Skull just to see how far George went in the time it took him to clear the Hall. He was curious, and wanted to make sure that the old guy was alright. He rounded the corner, and froze. There were only a few things that squealed like what he heard. He instantly reached for his pistol. Sure enough, as he came to the Diamond Skull, the glass was being cut into. He was confused, though, and kept his firearm aimed down.

"George?"

The old man lowered the Diamond Skull into an insulated duffel bag. He was moving faster than he usually did, and his back was straight. But... there was something else in his hand. A mask? A mask that looked like his face. That's when Martin saw that George, despite his uniform, was thinner. His face was concealed by another, completely featureless, mask. Martin raised the gun again.

"Freeze!" he commanded now, but he didn't dare fire off any shots from this range. He might hit something he would have to pay for until he was in the grave.

The figure knew this, and used it to his advantage. He bolted from the scene. Martin's only saving grace was that he forced the trespasser into activating the silent alarms he had somehow evaded during the actual robbery. The security guard ran after him and answered his walkie talkie once police started to patch into it.

"Suspect is about six foot tall, 170 or 180 pounds. White mask," he grimaced. "He can turn into people. I don't know how."

It didn't seem natural.

Heathen crawled out from the air ducts, his contortionist's body folding out with the intent of emerging from a chrysalis. The Diamond Skull rested under one arm, the mask of George Langcraft sitting idly in his vest pocket. He ditched the uniform in the museum hall, hooking it specifically to convey the illusion of him having run out the front door despite it being tightly chained up. The vent he escaped through was twenty feet up a wall with no grip. He had already slithered through that same duct, and kept the screws. It was difficult to do in a hurry, but the ascent was made absolutely trivial by the Typhon mask - one that granted him flight, amongst other powers. He couldn't use it for long, but the fact that it made escapes practically guaranteed was a godsend.

Now Typhon rested next to the others in his vest, and Heathen unzipped the bag to make sure of his prize.

@thisisgonnahurt:

Originally, Catherine did not want to undergo the changes into a magic enhanced human because she began to notice changes in her personality. She was becoming a completely different person upon each new emerging superpower that popped up. At first, she tried valiantly to fight off the changes but quickly learned she couldn't fight off what seemed second nature to her. It eventually got to the point where Catherine readily accepted the changes and a whole new persona rose to take the place of the boring goody two shoes she had once been. Oh if Salvio could see her now, he would not recognize her as the person he had first met.

Tonight is the first night for the newly dubbed Black Felina. She feels the inner desire to steal pretty little things and now she's here at the Museum of Priceless Heirlooms. Might as well start high, right? She's sneaking past some guards above them in the rafters when they pass underneath. One of them asks that it's a quiet night and the other agrees. She stops briefly to let them pass and so they won't hear her. Remaining perfectly still, Catherine waits for them to skedaddle. One of the guards seems...off. But Catherine doesn't focus on that since her attention is elsewhere.

Coming to the room Black Felina is targeting, she silently slips inside like a noiseless shadow before making her way over to the safe behind the painting. Thanks to her enhanced senses, no safe can remain hidden from her. She begins to play with the combination, listening to inner locks make their tel-tale clicking sounds until she lands on the series of numbers that are like sweet music to her ears.

As if on cue, that's when the so-called silent alarms begin to ring. Black Felina's sense of danger buzzes in her skull to inform her she's about to be discovered. "Oh, fiddlesticks!" She says, thinking she must have tripped something, not aware there is another thief in the building. She opens the safe and grabs everything inside and places it in her bag before she closes it and begins to leave the same way she had come. Once again leaping into the rafters above, she begins making her way to the exit.

That is when Black Felina spots a man running on the floor beneath her carrying a duffle bag. This is quickly followed by a guard in hot pursuit frantically calling for back-up. Now it dawns on the human feline that she didn't trip the alarms, after all, it was another thief. The guard pulls a gun as he gets ready to shoot Heathen but acting quickly, Catherine grabs her whip and uses it to latch onto the man's wrist and forces it up so that the gun is shot into the air. Then she leaps from the rafters, slamming into the guard feet first from above and knocking him out. The crunching sound of bones means he will be in the hospital but he will live.

Catherine now follows the thief but by now he's out of sight. However, she quickly comes upon a discarded uniform and for a split second, she thinks he must have run out the front door. But she tilts her head, sniffing the air. The air duct! Leaping up to it, she rips it open and crawls upward with her claws. It's difficult due to the tight space but she makes it. Emerging out in the night air, she turns her head to see him checking out some kind of diamond skull. That must be the thief! And the object he stole is quite the prize.

Black Felina is curious about him. She decides to make her presence known just in case Heathen hasn't noticed her yet, "Quite the prize you have there." She says, almost purring, glancing down at a claw of hers as she glances at him with her sparkling green eyes, "No need to run, you're in good company. Both of us are thieves, handsome. Tell me your name and I'll tell you mine." She says with a seductive lick of her lips.

@black_felina:

Heathen rolled the skull around in his hands. It definitely had the size and shape of bonafide human remains, and the diamonds... oh by Zeus they were beautiful. There were so many of them, and they didn't deform the overall silhouette of the skull in the slightest. He would have looked over it more, if it weren't for something amiss. A congratulatory nod towards his expertise as a thief, but it was misplaced. He turned his head and tilted his expressionless face. Though it was a blank slate of a mask, he could still convey curiosity - and slight annoyance.

"If we're both thieves, there's nothing to stop us stealing from each other," he stated bluntly.

He went from a kneeling position to a standing one, putting the skull back into the duffel bag and zipping it closed. He was holding one of his masks. It was too crumpled in his hand to immediately see, but he knew what it was: Typhon, again, for a quick getaway if she tried anything.

"I'm Heathen. I'm new," he said those words carefully, not really believing them himself. He slid the strap of the bag over his neck so he could have more freedom with his right hand, the only unoccupied one of his.

His body was already aching from the first use of Typhon's mask tonight. Flight at high speeds wasn't intended as something for humans to achieve on their own, let alone endure point-blank. Even that twenty-foot ascension pulled at the muscles in his legs and at his lungs. His diaphragm was moving strangely, but it would recover. He shuddered at the thought, but sitting in Warspool's mask was probably something he would have to do much like after his encounter with the Immortal Thunderfist. That maniac's regenerative factor was necessary for Heathen's continued existence.

"The police are on their way, but they'll be looking for the perpetrator outside of the museum. I suppose we could talk," he continued. "That handsome comment is obtuse, by the way. You have no idea what I look like."

@thisisgonnahurt:

"If we're both thieves, there's nothing to stop us stealing from each other."

"A fair point, but we only just met so why would we?" She says, making a great point herself. Oh how she loves a good comeback line!

Black Felina takes notes of several things. First, the crystal skull is now back in the duffle bag. Second, she now knows his name but likely not his real name. Third, he's holding some kind of mask in one of his hands. And judging by the discarded guard uniform she saw earlier, she wages a guess that he's some sort of master of disguise.

"Another thing we have in common, I'm new too." She says, admitting to the truth. This is literally her first night out and her first job. How ironic they are both rookies.

Catherine's enhanced hearing picks up the tel-tale sign of the police siren call approaching long before any normal human can. She chooses to keep this information to herself, however.

At his last comment, Catherine giggles, "Handsome is in the eye of the beholder." She says, then adds, "Let's talk somewhere else, I'll let you lead." That way he's in control of where they talk next and that will lower his guard a little. Hopefully. Not that it matters because Catherine just wants to talk.

@black_felina:

"We're staying here," Heathen tilted his head. She was apprehensive about something. He didn't know why, considering that it was just the police who were coming. Perhaps she had some bad run-ins before. She seemed agile enough to get away easily. Not everyone could change with a new mask, after all.

Furthermore, he didn't want to move considering his physical limitations regarding that change. His body was screaming or him to stand his ground. He had to reserve any energy he had left over just in case she tried something invasive or if he had to get away quickly. This wasn't the time to cause a ruckus by running in a directionless sprint.

"I don't know this town, so why let me lead?" he inquired of her.