Nine-to-Five 021 (Patreon)

Career Opportunities VI

~~~

Amanda had no idea what she was doing.

The statement was a figurative one, of course. Amanda was making her way to the lounge car as sneakily as possible, and she felt she was doing a decent job. This was helped by the low number of passengers on the train. Only about six compartments in the first three train cars had people in them. Had they taken the 5:00 AM or 7:00 AM trains, it would be a different story. There were many people who lived in Port Stanley but worked in the cities and towns surrounding it. Those people left early in the morning and came back late in the afternoon.

Those people were lucky they got to avoid all this commotion. Amanda and Ms. Martel had not run into any more armed men in the cars adjacent to theirs, but they did find panicked passengers who had just been held at gunpoint. They managed to convince them to stay inside their compartments until this was all over.

They also found the guards in charge of keeping them safe just one train car away. They had been playing cards, completely oblivious to what was happening elsewhere. It made Amanda feel decidedly less confident in the security she had secured for her parents.

Still, finding them hadn’t been without its upsides. They helped them tie up the unconscious criminals and lock them in an empty compartment. They were also better suited to operating the walkie-talkies the two men had been carrying, and just in time too. Someone had tried contacting them shortly after, and neither Amanda nor Ms. Martel could convincingly fake a man’s voice.

Apparently, the men they had knocked out were supposed to have called a couple of minutes ago. The guards made up the excuse of having to deal with a few troublesome passengers. Ms. Martel had done an excellent job playing the part of a shrill, outraged woman.

It was a short call, but it confirmed these men were after the toad Exceed, and that they were holding some of the passengers hostage in the lounge car.

However, how exactly did it follow that it had to be Amanda who went there alone?

Why her and not literally anyone else? The big, bad security guards worked for them, didn’t they? It was literally their job to keep them safe. They could even use those ski masks to mix in with the other criminals! If everyone was wearing masks, no one would know it was them until it was too late!

Actually… that wasn’t a half-bad plan. Why weren’t they doing tha-

Footsteps.

Amanda dived into an empty compartment and noiselessly closed the door. A few seconds later, the door to the train car opened. One set of footsteps reached her ears. Possible estimates of the person’s height and weight flashed through her mind as well as the reminder they were fairly loose estimates due to the scarcity of data.

Amanda did her best not to pay attention to that. It was wrong and weird, and she wanted no part of it.

The moment the footsteps grew close enough, she struck. She opened the door hard and fast, hitting the man in the face with it. He was, thankfully, one of the ski-mask-wearing criminals and not some clueless passenger. She hit him again with the door before stepping out. To his credit, the man, though dazed, tried to hit her. Amanda caught his arm by the wrist and punched him in the face once. Twice. Thrice.

The fourth strike missed only because the man had already collapsed. The whole thing did not even take three seconds.

Right.

This was why she was the one they sent ahead.

“These men are not bullet-proof, Ms. Collins. Not like you.”

That had gotten Amanda sputtering denials and waving her hands around. There was no way. Ms. Martel was right. She wasn’t… she couldn’t be…

“Are you going to deny what you just did?

She had.

Ms. Martel then calmly sliced her doubts by calmly using a knife to slice her wrist. At least, that was what should have happened. Amanda had no idea where Ms. Martel took out that knife or how she had done it without her noticing. She also didn’t really care to find out.

All that mattered was that the knife had failed to do its job. It couldn’t slice through her skin.

Do you mean to tell me you had not yet noticed?”

When should it have become obvious?

When she started running but failed to become tired? When she always got a good night’s sleep regardless of how late she went to bed? When she stopped tripping or bumping into anything at all? When her skin remained clear for weeks? When she helped Tim with his weight-lifting that one time and never had any trouble moving those weights?

They had all been easily overlooked and easily dismissed. Taking up running was something many people did. Getting a good night’s sleep was nothing to be alarmed by. People didn’t end the day marveling at their perfect balance, nor did they begin it by looking into the mirror and thanking every deity out there for their healthy skin.

...

Okay, maybe some people did that last one, but not her. That wasn’t the point either.

The point was she wasn’t supposed to have powers! She wasn’t some random person, ignorant of how things worked. Her mother worked with Exceeds, and Amanda had talked with a few of them long enough to know this wasn’t how things were supposed to go! Exceeding was supposed to be significant. It didn’t always have big consequences, but the Exceed never missed their moment of ascension.

She somehow had.

There had never been a moment where she figured out she had powers. Why should she when she wasn’t accidentally pulling doors out of their hinges or anything like that? This wasn’t right.

It also wasn’t something she had any time to think about because…

“Is everything alright, Ms. Collins?”

Matilda Martel’s voice came in through the headset Amanda was wearing under the ski mask. Amanda was also wearing a black jacket she had gotten from one of the guards. It was big, bulky, and disguised most of her body. Not quite a hero suit, but she had no intention of being one. This was just… circumstance.

“Yes,” Amanda said as she shoved the man she had just knocked out into one of the empty compartments. “I am almost in the lounge car now.”

Not that she could go inside. That was where the rest of the criminals were gathered. There were only two ways inside, and both were likely to be guarded.

“Any sign of the Exceed?”

Amanda sighed and immediately frowned because of it. Doing it while wearing a mask felt icky.

“No,” Amanda whispered. “I haven’t found him yet.”

Which was bad. That man may have a silly power, but he was still an Exceed. Everything Amanda could do, he should be able to do as well. If he decided to fight the criminals inside the train, it might start a shoutout.

“A pity. He may already be held hostage in the lounge car, but at least he has yet to start a commotion.”

Unless you counted the toads. Amanda had found five more while walking through the train.

“What do we do? I can’t just enter the car.” She paused for a moment, then added, “This would really work a lot better if it was one of the others doing this. They could pass themselves as members of the gang to enter!”

“Too risky. Remain outside for now.”

“Why?” Amanda was starting to lose her patience. “Look, if it is so important I go in as well, then they can take me as a hostage or whatever.”

“Ms. Collins, do you really think Mr. Lewis will be able to remain calm if he sees you captured?”

Oh.

Yes, there was that too.

Tim had been heading to the lounge car when this whole thing began, and Tim… he had powers too.

“Did you really think we didn’t have cameras in the gym?”

Powers which Regum already knew about as well. Amanda groaned. This was going to be such a headache after this was done. She just knew it.

Amanda could only hope Tim was doing better than her.

~~~

“I think it’s pretty obvious I am definitely doing better than you here.”

“You’re cra-Argh!”

The man’s words were cut by Tim slamming him against the train.

The exterior of the train.

It hadn’t been easy getting out. Train windows had very small openings. Safety first and all that. Tim got that. Couldn’t have anyone falling through the windows while the train was going at full speed. Still, while Tim had been able to slip through it, squeezing a grown man through such a tight opening had proved challenging.

It was probably pretty painful too.

Not that Tim cared. This guy was part of the group holding the train hostage. Tim wasn’t about to play any violins for him. Not even a small one. Not that he could, which, come to think of it, would be awesome.

Note to self: Learn to play the violin.

“Let’s try this again,” Tim said. He had the man by the neck and was dangling him above the train tracks. Though the train was moving at full speed, Tim had no trouble balancing himself. “What exactly do you think you’re doing here?”

To think the day had been going so well. Ms. Martel had given him a lot of money to buy their food, way more money than Tim had ever held in his hands before. He’d known people at Regum made a lot of money, but that Ms. Martel could just give him five hundred bucks for brunch put a lot of things into perspective.

Then the gunmen came in.

There were four of them. One of them raised his gun and told them they were all hostages now.

That hadn’t gone well. One old lady fainted. A kid started crying. One guy tried to make a dash for the door, only for the sight of cold steel to stop him in his tracks.

Then the toads popped up everywhere.

About a hundred toads had just appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the lounge car, causing even more panic among the passengers. It had helped Tim learn that silencers were poorly named. Having one did not make the ensuing shot silent, even if said shot did help silence the entire rest of the train car.

Regardless, that little circus gave him the opening he needed to dash for the exit. One of the hijackers had chased after him for that.

That hadn’t gone well for the guy.

“Seriously. That wasn’t a rhetorical question or anything,” Tim said, shaking the man. “You come in, take hostages, rob them, and ride into the sunset? That the plan?”

The man struggled in vain against Tim’s grip. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t even budge him. The difference in strength between the two was too great.

“Because it sounds kind of cool. Got to admit it. Robbing a train, I mean. It’s got a Wild West vibe to it, you know? Pretty romantic. But well…”

Tim’s eyes narrowed.

“Last time I was in a situation like this, I let things play out, thinking that was the right call. It wasn’t.

And yet, he was trying to play it safe once again. He could have tried to take down the robbers back there, but that might have led to someone getting hurt by a stray bullet. The risk had not allowed him to do more.

“You’re going to tell me everything I want to know. Then when your buddies come looking for you, I’m going to beat them up.”

“Fuck you!”

The man took a knife out of his pocket and stabbed Tim’s arm with it. Tim just rolled his eyes as the weapon bounced harmlessly off his skin.

“Yeah, brilliant move there. Come on, dude! Think for a second. What exactly do you think happens if I let you go right now?”

Tim forced the man to look down.

“I’m literally holding you over the edge. If you had actually stabbed me, I’d have dropped you. At this speed, the fall would have killed you… I might still drop you if you keep struggling.”

The man renewed his futile struggles as soon as Tim said that, adding kicking to his repertoire of options. His shoes got Tim’s pants dirty but did little else.

Tim squeezed the man’s neck. Just a little.

The man went deathly still.

“Better,” Tim said. “But really. Don’t struggle. You don’t want me to do that again.”

He could kill him by doing that. It’d be easy. Super easy, even. Tim was strong enough to lift a car. Probably. Crushing a grown man’s neck would be kinda like squeezing a grape.

He literally had this person’s life in his hand.

Huh. A person’s life. In his hands.

Funny.

That was big, wasn’t it? How many people could claim that?

Actually, probably a fair bit now that Tim gave it some thought. Not in the sense of having super strength. More like, when you thought about it, killing people wasn’t exactly that hard, was it? Forget about poison, guns, and other weapons. You could push someone down the stairs or out the window. You could run someone down with your car or push them in front of a bus. Those methods were readily available to the average person.

Life was that frail.

And yet, most people didn’t go around killing each other. The option existed, but it wasn’t something people seriously considered doing, so it might as well not exist. People didn’t work like that, because… because… Law? Morality? Common sense? Fear?

Probably all of those.

Tim’s hand twitched.

“Sorry,” Tim said, putting his free hand over his face. “I think… I think I just blew my own mind a bit.”

He took a deep breath.

“Anyway, let’s take it from the top. Goals. Numbers. Anything of relevance, really.”

Most people didn’t seriously consider killing someone.

But he had just had… and if he did…

He’d probably be able to sleep just fine at night.

~~~

Everything was going horribly wrong.

York, the previous leader of the Diamonds, hadn’t been the sort of person who shared much. That had made his disappearance, along with that of the rest of the leadership, so damaging. Even though they turned his apartment upside down, it had taken them a long time to find out where they were supposed to meet their informant.

Still, that little piece of paper hidden under the parquet had been what Jeremy needed to get things moving again, something his superiors had been pushing for a while.

The plan had been a simple one.  They would secure their target in the train and get off in the first station without causing a fuss. All of this would take place outside the city limits, which would greatly reduce any potential collateral damage should the interference of CHEM be required.

After that, they would use their hostage as leverage to arrange a meeting with the ones behind soma. Kevin King, the Exceed who had made it rain toads over the city, had been approached by his superiors and agreed to the plan. He may not have an impressive power, but he had Jeremy’s respect for willingly putting himself in danger like that. Of course, ideally, no serious harm should fall on him.

Jeremy looked at all the cowering passengers.

Ideally, something like this should have never happened.

However…

“He’s taking an awfully long time to capture one kid, isn’t he?” asked the man who had declared himself leader of their group. He had shown up one day before the operation and taken over, radically altering the plan.

He had a lean body with prominent cheekbones and electric blue eyes. His blond hair was slicked back, not that anyone could see that under the ski mask.

His name was Jack Gorman. Better known as Jack Frost.

A true blue Exceed.

~~~