Dirty Little Secret - Patron Bonus

Thief gave a name to the barista.

It was the third coffee shop she’d visited in as many days as she tried out a tip she’d read online. You gave a name you were trying and then you waited to see how it felt to have that name called out to mean you.

She’d decided to try to keep the first initial ‘E’, as she’d gotten used to it over the last few years. However, her first try of ‘Ellen’ really didn’t feel fitting. Nor did the second day’s ‘Emily’.

So, today she was waiting impatiently for the latest effort. Hoping it would click with her.

Only to barely register when one of the servers called out the name ‘Eve’ for her coffee.

She went and picked up her order, but her shoulders were slumped all the same as she headed out. Thief found a spot in a nearby park to sit down in and stare out at the Moose River flowing past. Even with the warm coffee it got cold in Northford by November, and so she shivered a bit in the empty riverfront park.

She really needed to come up with an actual name. She was only an ‘on call’ super, after all. Her powers had limited applicability. She couldn’t fight muggers or do anything special to help with a burning building or a crashing airplane. All she was good for was dealing with true supervillains.

So it meant she still had her day job. Still had to handle her bills and taxes and all of that. And so her legal real name mattered in her life.

She took another sip of her coffee and wondered what to try next. ‘Eleanor’ seemed like a very ‘old lady’ name to her. And then the website had been full of a bunch of Celtic names she couldn’t even guess how to pronounce. Or alternative spellings of common names.

Maybe ‘Ellie’ worked? That was sort of cute and spunky.

A click caught her attention, causing her to briefly wonder if some supers obsessed paparazzo was taking a picture of Captain Wrecking Ball’s new girlfriend.

That thought only lasted as long as it took her to turn her head in the direction of the click, however. Because she then found herself staring at a tired looking man with a pistol in his hand.

“Is this a mugging?” she asked. “I don’t carry much cash, fair warning.”

Northford had a bit of a crime issue, outside of the supervillains, after all. Too many henchmen who found themselves out of jobs when their bosses were captured, and so turned to petty crimes to make ends meet until the next maniac with plans to take over the city started hiring.

“A mugg—I’m taking you hostage!” the man shouted.

Her eye twitched slightly. “Oh. Is this because of Cap?”

The man nodded. “He put my brother behind bars!”

Thief stood up from the bench, and took another sip of her coffee. “And what’s your plan?”

“I’m going to make him bust my brother out. A one for one trade,” the man said. “Now, put these on.”

The man then threw her a pair of handcuffs. She caught them with her free hand (barely, since she wasn’t exactly a star baseball player and it was her off hand). She clamped the one cuff around the wrist she was holding the coffee in, switching hands, and then clamped the other one. While catching things wasn’t her strong suit, using handcuffs was something she was fairly familiar with.

“Huh, I didn’t think you’d been a super long enough to be that smooth with cuffs,” the man mumbled.

“Right. Yes. Crime fighting. Definitely why I know what I’m doing,” she replied, blushing slightly.

Couldn’t she at least have some dignity while being taken hostage? First the Gremlin, insisting she was a bottom. Now this guy, making comments on her familiarity with handcuffs.

Either way, he then led her into a car. An older model. From that company that had made death traps that could barely drive themselves (when they weren’t catching on fire).

Still, if it had lasted this long it was probably one of the rare ones that had actual decent craftsmanship, so she got in without too much complaint. It was almost certainly safer than getting shot at. Especially because, while this man seemed tired and stressed out, he seemed to know what he was doing with his gun. He continued to watch her, his pistol held low as the car pulled out of the small parking lot and headed out into the city.

“So,” Thief asked, trying to keep her mind busy and not think about the gun pointed at her so much, “who did your brother work for?”

“Hm?”

“As a henchman? Since he ended up in prison,” she explained.

“He didn’t work for anyone. He’s a super. Bankbuster,” the man replied. “That’s why I need Captain Wrecking Ball to break him out, and need such an important hostage to him.”

Thief nodded, not sure what to say. Bankbuster was… well, he wasn’t exactly known for being the sharpest of villains. So odds were pretty good he’d be back in prison soon enough even if Ilya broke him out.

Which made the whole situation feel especially annoying to her.

But she wasn’t bulletproof, so she wanted to behave while the gun was pointed at her. It was better to play along.

After a few minutes of the car driving along the man called out for the car’s assistant system to dial the Keep’s hotline. Which led to the joy of an automated recording asking if we wanted service in English or French. Followed by a menu which didn’t have any specific option that seemed to fit ‘you’ve taken a member hostage and want to make demands’.

After a few moments of the man trying to decide between ‘option 2: You have a Crime to Report’ and ‘option 5: You would like to contact a specific guardian of the Keep’ Thief decided to peep up with an option.

“I could just call Cap directly?” she offered.

“Pardon?” the man asked.

“With my phone. He’d answer for sure,” she replied.

“You have—right, I forg—throw it out the window!” he said, gestring with his pistol. “Right now!”

“It’s new,” she mumbled, not wanting to lose it so soon.

“They can track it! Out the window!” he hissed.

She complied, pushing the window down and then tossing it out onto the road. To get run over, no doubt. She’d been given a pretty good phone case, but not an indestructible level one, so a pickup would flatten the poor thing.

Thief decided to pout. Sure, it wasn’t as bad as losing her car, like happened last time she was kidnapped, but it was still annoying.

Her pouting was interrupted by the man asking for Cap’s number, however. He’d apparently chosen option 5, and was now stuck on hold. The hold music was apparently getting to him, so he wanted the direct number.

“Nope. You made me lose my new phone,” she muttered. “I’m not making this easier for you.”

“I have you at gunpoint!” the man hissed.

“More reason for me to be in a bad mood,” she grumbled. “And you’re not going to shoot me over this. We’re still in the city, though. People would hear the gunfire and call the Keep.”

They were heading out of the city, however. She didn’t much like that. Northford was surrounded by hundreds of kilometres of boreal forest. Cochrane was hours away, and there were plenty of side roads leading off to cottages all around.

Thankfully the man’s patience lasted longer than the hold time on his call, and he was soon patched through to Ilya’s number.

“Hello, Captain Wrecking Ball here, how can I help you?” his voice asked, sounding so pleasant and grounding for Thief in this stressful moment.

“Hello Captain,” the kidnapper said, his voice dripping with hatred. “I’d like to offer you a little exchange. Something of yours for something of mine.”

There was a bit of a pause on Ilya’s end. “Pardon?”

“Your girlfriend for my brother,” the man replied.

“My—is Thief there? Can I talk to her?” Ilya asked.

“I’m here. This goon has me at gunpoint,” Thief replied, glaring at her kidnapper.

“Where are you?” Ilya asked, worry in his voice.

“In a car,” she replied.

“And that’s all you need to know for now,” the kidnapper replied. “Don’t worry, though. Nothing’ll happen to her as long as you hold up your end of the bargain and get my brother out of prison.”

There was a bit of a pause, before Ilya finally spoke again. “S-sorry. I nodded, but I guess you couldn’t see that. Who’s your brother?”

The man’s eye twitched. “Bankbuster.”

“Bank—Bankbuster? I… that might be a bit tricky to manage for you,” Ilya said. “He’s under pretty high security.”

“Well, work something out, or else your blonde here gets it,” the man hissed.

Huh. So the guy was Francophone. Well, that wasn’t exactly rare in Northford. The city was full of Francophones… sure, Montreal was a healthy city these days, but back during the 70s and 80s when those separatist supers had caused a bunch of trouble…

Well, it wasn’t just those nuclear icebreakers that had helped Nortford boom during the later part of the last century.

Though, as usual, Thief wasn’t thinking much about the big picture of social trends. Having a gun pointed at her right now made that rather forgivable, for once.

The kidnapper had ended the call and the car had continued to head out, deeper into the woods. Which left Thief trying to think through her options. She wanted to get out of this mess, but she also had to wonder when the next one might happen. This was her second time getting kidnapped by someone trying to get to Ilya, after all.

Even if she played her cards well and behaved herself every time, eventually someone was going to get an itchy trigger finger. She didn’t want to get shot at some point. She definitely didn’t want to get killed. So she needed to do something to scare people off of future kidnappings.

About forty minutes after they’d left Northford’s true urban area the car pulled up to a charging station sitting amongst a small cluster of houses. Whether these were exurbs filled with people who, for reasons Thief would never understand, chose to live at the end of a forty plus minute commute just so they could have a larger home that had to have a septic system since they were off the sewer grid, or if these were weekend cottages, Thief couldn’t say.

The kidnapper backed out of the front door, keeping his pistol pointed at her until he’d closed the door.

Which left her trapped, because, again, this old car was a deathtrap and you couldn’t open the doors from the inside if the connected app told the car to stay locked. So all she had to do was watch him as he went around to plug the car in. Then he headed into the store connected to the charging lot.

At least it gave her time to think.

She looked down at the cuffs around her wrists, and an idea struck her. It was a lie, but it would be a pretty terrifying story to those who didn’t know better.

Hopefully Ilya wouldn’t be too upset at her for spreading a false rumour about him.

-

It took about thirty minutes for the man to return from the shop. He had a few bags in his hands. Bags he hadn’t gone in with.

That annoyed her. It seemed he was one of those jerks who just bought new reusable bags every time he went to the store. Causing more waste than old single use plastic bags had ever been. He was probably the type not to mask when he was sick too.

Some people…

She supposed it was a bit silly to have something like that annoy her more than the kidnapping part, but kidnappers (thankfully) weren’t a daily annoyance in her life. Wasteful self centred jerks were. So she had less patience left for them.

Thief glared daggers at the man as he slipped back into the driver's side seat. He didn’t care, though, and simply ordered the car to continue on the journey.

Which proved to be another forty minutes of driving. They’d ended up off paved roads about ten minutes after the charging station. Thief had then felt like what they drove on for the last fifteen minutes didn’t really count as a ‘road’, even a dirt one. It was more just well worn tracks.

As they were arriving the man’s phone chirped alive, and he patched it through on the car dashboard.

“Well?” he asked.

“I can’t find him,” Ilya said.

“What do you mean ‘you can’t find him?’” the man hissed.

“I would guess it means he can’t find him,” Thief muttered, getting a glare from her kidnapper.

“He’s—there’s something classified going on. That’s all I know. I have fairly limited clearance,” Ilya replied.

“Limited… you’re Captain Wrecking Ball!?” the kidnapper shouted.

“Yes. I’m the guy who stands around in public and gets into fistfights with monsters. I don’t really handle much of the planning, research, or cloak and dagger sort of things,” Cap explained. “I’m sorry.”

“Well… show some initiative! Shake some people down! Do something to protect your girlfriend!”

“It’ll take time. I don’t even know who’s involved, let alone what they’re doing. It could be a security agency. Maybe the military. In either case he might not even be in the country anymore,” Ilya replied.

“That’s your problem, Cap. I just need your solutions,” the man said. “Otherwise your—your…”

He stared at Thief for a moment. His eyes dropped to her collar, and he seemed to debate saying something she really didn’t want to be called. However, he seemed to think better of it.

“Your tall girlfriend gets it.”

“Alright, but be patient,” Ilya replied.

The kidnapper swore in French and slammed the dashboard’s touchscreen to hang up.

“Be patient,” Thief repeated.

“I don’t need you echoing your boyfriend’s requests. I heard him fine,” the man muttered.

“It’s not a request. It’s advice. You don’t want to do anything you’ll regret,” Thief said, putting concern in her voice.

“I’ve got no reason to worry about regretting anything I do here,” the man replied sharply.

“Oh. You definitely do. Think about how much you want to get back at Cap for putting your brother away. Now… think about how much worse it would be if he’d hurt your brother,” she explained.

“I’d want to kill him,” the man muttered.

“Mhm. So imagine how he’ll feel if you hurt me,” Thief replied.

“Oh, please. Mister perfect superhero? Getting angry?” the kidnapper asked in an unbelieving tone.

“It’s the ones who never seem to get angry that you need to worry about. Especially because Cap has studied exactly how much pain a human body can take. Originally academically, to keep from seriously hurting anyone when he didn’t mean to, but then… well, academic study tends to lead to people wanting to try applying what they’ve learned,” Thief said, trying to show concern in her eyes and voice.

“What?” the man said, seeming more confused than anything.

“It’s like you said, I seemed a bit too familiar with handcuffs. That’s because I didn’t learn how they worked from crime fighting,” she replied. “Cap wanted someone willing to explore the limits of what humans could handle and I’d always been into that sort of thing. Doing that with someone who’s practically a living god? Now that’s…”

She bit her lip and wiggled her eyebrows.

“Of course, I doubt you’d be into that sort of stuff? Not one to find excitement out of struggling to breathe ten kilometres up? Or the thrill of being dropped from that height, and waiting for Cap to catch you?”

“If—if you’re so into getting hurt, then why don’t you want to get shot?” the man asked, seeming not completely convinced.

“That’s like asking a woman why she doesn’t want a kiss from a random stranger if she’ll accept them from her boyfriend,” Thief said, placing a hand on her chest in indignation.

“You’re… you’re messing with me,” the kidnapper said.

“Do you really think anyone can be as perfect as Captain Wrecking Ball acts like he is to the world?” Thief replied. “Everyone has secrets, and the cleaner they try to seem the dirtier those secrets are.”

“That’s…”

“Well, I suppose you could test it. See if the man who can fly at nine hundred kilometres per hour, pull an ocean liner into port on his own, and shrug off virtually every weapon known to man is actually the perfect angel you’re telling yourself he is,” she said, shifting to offer the man a large grin. “It’s your life you’re gambling with.”

“I-it’s your life too!” the man stammered, staring at her as fear filled his eyes.

“Yes, but we’ve already proven I’m a bit of an adrenaline junky,” she replied.

The man stammered, clearly at a loss for words. Despite trying very hard to find some.

“Also,” she said, shifting expressions to seem a bit more pitying. “My phone wasn’t the only thing on me that can be tracked.”

“What.”

She started to point to her neck when a hand smashed through the window behind the man, pulling him out before he could respond. Ilya had him pressed against the ground a moment later, his face squished into the frozen earth.

“D-don’t hurt me!” the man squeaked. “I didn’t hurt her!”

“Uh,” Ilya said, turning to look at Thief for help.

She hurried over, across the car. She silently mouthed ‘play into it’. Which got a confused look from Ilya, and what she was pretty sure was a ‘how?’.

Poor Ilya wasn’t the boyscout everyone thought, but he also didn’t have a dominating bone in his body. (Well… currently. Thief sometimes helped with that.)

“You better not have,” Ilya said in his best attempt at a stern voice.

He then lifted the man with one hand, walking over to tie him to a tree about a metre off the ground. The man was visibly terrified, between what Thief had said and seeing Ilya’s larger than life physique up close.

The man secured well outside of earshot, Ilya returned, crouching down to offer Thief his powers. It was easier for her to get herself out of the cuffs than him to break them while she was wearing them unpowered.

“What did you tell him, anyhow?” Ilya whispered.

“I claimed we did some… mildly unsafe BDSM practices with you as the dom,” she replied.

“… why?” he squeaked.

“Something to scare people off trying to kidnap me. I hope you don’t mind too much?” she replied.

He nodded. “You do seem to get kidnapped a lot. We need to get you some serious combat and escape training. But… I suppose some rumours to spook criminals aren’t that bad.”

Thief nodded. “Also, though. I think I figured out the name I want to go with.”

“While being kidnapped?” Ilya asked.

“Mhm. Something he said stuck out to me… Echo.”

Ilya turned to her. “A bit on the nose, isn’t it?”

“We’re superheroes. On the nose is good,” she replied.

“Very well. It is fairly cute, Echo.”

“Thanks… baby girl.”

Ilya spun around, to make sure the captured kidnapper couldn’t see his blush.